The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Victory of Cabira
As soon as he received through the first fugitives that arrived
at Cabira from the field of battle--significantly enough, the beaten
generals themselves--the fatal news, earlier even than Lucullus
got tidings of the victory, he resolved on an immediate
farther retreat. But the resolution taken by the king spread
with the rapidity of lightning among those immediately around him; and,
when the soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all haste,
they too were seized with a panic. No one was willing to be
the hindmost in decamping; all, high and low, ran pell-mell
like startled deer; no authority, not even that of the king,
was longer heeded; and the king himself was carried away amidst
the wild tumult. Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack,
and the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred almost
without offering resistance. Had the legions been able to maintain
discipline and to restrain their eagerness for spoil, hardly a man
would have escaped them, and the king himself would doubtless have
been taken. With difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few
attendants through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat
and the source of the Iris); from which, however, a Roman corps
under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and pursued him, till,
attended by not more than 2000 cavalry, he crossed the frontier
of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser Armenia. In the empire
of the great-king he found a refuge, but nothing more (end of 682).
Tigranes, it is true, ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive
father-in-law; but he did not even invite him to his court,
and detained him in the remote border-province to which he had come
in a sort of decorous captivity.
Pontus Becomes Roman
Sieges of the Pontic Cities
The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser Armenia, and as
far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance
to the conqueror. The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also
surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores
of money. The king ordered that the women of the royal harem--his
sisters, his numerous wives and concubines--as it was not possible
to secure their flight, should all be put to death by one of his
eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt). The towns alone offered
obstinate resistance. It is true that the few in the interior--
Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria--were soon in the power of the Romans;
but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus,
Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia,
defended themselves with desperation, partly animated by attachment
to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had
protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king
had called to his aid. Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels
against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope seized a Roman
flotilla which was bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula
for the army of Lucullus. Heraclea did not succumb till after
a two years' siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off the city
from intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula and treason
had broken out in the ranks of the garrison. When Amisus was reduced
to extremities, the garrison set fire to the town, and under cover
of the flames took to their ships. In Sinope, where the daring
pirate-captain Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted
the defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it withdrew,
and set on fire the ships which it could not take along with it;
it is said that, although the greater portion of the defenders
were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs were there put to death
by Lucullus. These sieges of towns lasted for two whole years
and more after the battle of Cabira (682-684); Lucullus prosecuted
them in great part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself
regulated the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded
and obtained a thorough reform.
Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that obstinate
resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the victorious Romans,
it was of little immediate use; the cause of Mithradates was none
the less lost. The great-king had evidently, for the present
at least, no intention at all of restoring him to his kingdom.
The Roman emigrants in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction
of the Aegean fleet; of the survivors not a few, such as the active
leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had made their peace
with Lucullus; and with the death of Sertorius, who perished in the year
of the battle of Cabira, the last hope of the emigrants vanished.
Mithradates' own power was totally shattered, and one after another
his remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning from Crete
and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were attacked and destroyed
by Triarius at the island of Tenedos; even the governor
of the Bosporan kingdom, the king's own son Machares, deserted him,
and as independent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded
on his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans (684).
The king himself, after a not too glorious resistance, was confined
in a remote Armenian mountain-stronghold, a fugitive from his kingdom
and almost a prisoner of his son-in-law. Although the bands
of corsairs might still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped
from Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the hardly-
accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae and Lazi,
the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and his judicious
moderation, which did not disdain to remedy the just grievances
of the provincials and to employ the repentant emigrants as officers
in his army, had at a moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor
from the enemy and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might
be converted from a Roman client-state into a Roman province.
A commission of the senate was expected, to settle in concert
with the commander-in-chief the new provincial organization.
Beginning of the Armenian War
But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.
Thata declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes
was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown.
Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view
and with a higher spirit than the senatorial college in Rome, perceived
clearly the necessity of confining Armenia to the other side
of the Tigris and of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over
the Mediterranean. He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic
affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla.
A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible
to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up
the heritage of Alexander--the obligation to be the shield and sword
of the Greeks in the east. Personal motives--the wish to earn laurels
also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-
king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator--may
doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus; but it is unjust
to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives
of duty quite suffice to explain. The Roman governing college
at any rate--timid, indolent, ill informed, and above all beset
by perpetual financial embarrassments--could never be expected,
without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition
so vast and costly. About the year 682 the legitimate representatives
of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother,
moved by the favourable turn of the Pontic war, had gone to Rome
to procure a Roman intervention in Syria, and at the same
time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt.
If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate,
be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war
which had long been necessary against Tigranes. But the senate,
while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate
kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed
intervention. If the favourable opportunity was to be employed,
and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin
the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand
and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla, placed under
the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest
interest of the existing government, not with its sanction,
but in spite of it. His resolution was facilitated by the relations
of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between
peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness
of his proceedings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.
The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded pretexts
enough; and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman
troops had violated the territory of the great-king. As, however,
the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war
against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did
with that commission, he preferred to send one of his officers,
Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender
of Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war.
Difficulties to Be Encountered
The resolution was a grave one, especially considering
the condition of the Roman army. It was indispensable during
the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus
strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia
might lose its communications with home; and besides it might be
easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his
former kingdom. The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended
the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000 men, was obviously
inadequate for this double task. Under ordinary circumstances
the general would have asked and obtained from his government
the despatch of a second army; but as Lucullus wished,
and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head
of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce
that plan and--although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian
mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops--to carry the war
over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most
15,000 men. This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness
of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour
of the army consisting throughout of veterans. A far worse feature
was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high
aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed. Lucullus
was an able general, and--according to the aristocratic standard--
an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being
a favourite with his soldiers. He was unpopular, as a decided
adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously
checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor;
unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted
on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline
in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage
of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon
and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself;
unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished,
haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever
it was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace in him
of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general
and the soldier. Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers
had every reason to complain of the unmeasured prolongation of their
term of service. His two best legions were the same which Flaccus
and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east;(14) notwithstanding
that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their
discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them
beyond the Euphrates to face a new incalculable war--it seemed
as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than
the vanquished of Cannae.(15) It was in fact more than rash that,
with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general should at his
own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance with the constitution,
undertake an expedition to a distant and unknown land, full of rapid
streams and snow-clad mountains--a land which from the very vastness
of its extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught
with danger. The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much
and not unreasonably censured in Rome; only, amidst the censure
the fact should not have been concealed, that the perversity
of the government was the prime occasion of this venturesome
project of the general, and, if it did not justify it, rendered
it at least excusable.
Lucullus Crosses the Euphrates
The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only to furnish
a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes
and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king:
in the spring of 685 the formal attack began. During the winter
the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport;
with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the further
march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to the Tigris.
This too Lucullus crossed in the region of Amida (Diarbekr),
and advanced towards the road which connected the second capital
Tigranocerta,(16) recently founded on the south frontier of Armenia,
with the old metropolis Artaxata. At the former was stationed
the great-king, who had shortly before returned from Syria,
after having temporarily deferred the prosecution of his plans
of conquest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment
with the Romans. He was just projecting an inroad into Roman Asia
from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was considering whether the Romans
would at once evacuate Asia or would previously give him battle,
possibly at Ephesus, when the news was brought to him of the advance
of Lucullus, which threatened to cut off his communications
with Artaxata. He ordered the messenger to be hanged,
but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered; so he left
the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia, in order
there to raise a force--which had not yet been done--against the Romans.
Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes with the troops actually at his disposal
and in concert with the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out
in all haste, was to give employment to the Romans. But the corps
of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman vanguard, and the Arabs
by a detachment under Sextilius; Lucullus gained the road leading
from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank
of the Tigrisa Roman detachment pursued the great-king
retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left
and marched forward to Tigranocerta.
Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta
The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison poured upon
the Roman army, and the setting fire to the besieging machines
by means of naphtha, initiated the Romans into the new dangers
of Iranian warfare; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained
the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled
from all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries
that were open to Armenian recruiting officers, and had advanced
through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital.
The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates,
advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out
the small Roman army by means of his cavalry. But when the king saw
the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising
the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men against a force
twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated
the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band,
"too many for an embassy, too few for an army," and on the other
side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea
and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of
the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone
were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which
even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting;
he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy.
But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick
eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height
which commanded the whole position of their cavalry. He hastened
to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same time his weak
cavalry by a flank attack diverted the attention of the enemy
from this movement; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led
his little band against the rear of the enemy's cavalry. They were
totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed
infantry, which fled without even striking a blow. The bulletin
of the victor--that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen
and that the king, throwing away his turban and diadem, had galloped
off unrecognized with a few horsemen--is composed in the style
of his master Sulla. Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th
October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant
stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less
momentous than brilliant.
All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans
All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians
to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost
to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, without delay
into the possession of the victor. The newly-built second capital
itselfset the example. The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers
to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman
army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage
of the soldiers. It had been created for the new great-kingdom,
and, like this, was effaced by the victor. From Cilicia and Syria
all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap
Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta.
Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern province
of Syria, and stormed Samosata, the capital; he did not reach Syria
proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far
as the Red Sea--from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs--to do homage
to the Romans as their sovereigns. Even the prince of Corduene,
the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted;
while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king
maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia.
Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic
princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus,
a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had
returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers
of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes. The immense stores
and treasures of the great-king--the grain amounted to 30,000,000
-medimni-, the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly
2,000,000 pounds)--enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war
without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow
on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present
of 800 -denarii- (33 pounds).
Tigranes and Mithradates
The great-king was deeply humbled. He was of a feeble character,
arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in adversity. Probably
an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus--
an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should
purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should
grant under tolerable conditions--had not the old Mithradates been
in existence. The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around
Tigranocerta. Liberated after twenty months' captivity about
the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred
between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched
with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten
the communications of the enemy. Recalled even before he could
accomplish anything there, when the great-king summoned his whole
force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met
on his arrival before Tigranocerta by the multitudes just fleeing
from the field of battle. To every one, from the great-king
down to the common soldier, all seemed lost. But if Tigranes
should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last
chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would
be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and certainly
Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus
had formerly acted towards Jugurtha. The king accordingly staked
his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn,
and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which
he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive
and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court
was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man, who,
although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback
in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground
like the best. Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit:
while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies
and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth
as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field
of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed
so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king
appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta;
whereas the position of Lucullus was very difficult, and, if peace
should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued,
even in a high degree precarious.
Renewal of the War
The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the great-king
almost as a father, and was now able to exercise a personal
influence over him, overpowered by his energy that weak man,
and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war,
but also to entrust Mithradates with its political and military
management. The war was now to be changed from a cabinet contest
into a national Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia
were to unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty
Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to reconcile
the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to induce them
to make common cause against Rome. At the suggestion of Mithradates,
Tigranes offered to give back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who
had reigned since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians--
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys"--and to enter into friendship
and alliance with him. But, after all that had previously taken place,
this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception;
Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates
by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans,
and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient
foreigner fought out their strife. Greater success attended
the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east
than to the kings. It was not difficult to represent the war
as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was;
it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report
might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus
was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern
Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole
region of the Euphrates.(17) From far and near the Asiatics flocked
in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect
the east and its gods from the impious foreigners. But facts had
shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts
was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching
and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered
useless and involved in the general ruin. Mithradates sought
above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among
the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry;
in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted.
For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass
of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service,
and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers. The considerable
army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-
king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman
veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself
to defence and petty warfare. Mithradates had conducted
the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating
and avoiding battle; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion,
and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war--the hereditary
land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently
adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character
and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.