[Sidenote: First Bovianum, and then Aesernia, becomes the confederate capital.] As the insurrection was thus being stamped out on either coast, Bovianum had become the capital of the insurgents instead of Corfinium. Now Bovianum was taken, and Aesernia became its centre. The occupation of the Hirpinian territory cut off the Samnites from the South of Italy, where the Lucanians and Bruttians remained in arms. Except for some trifling operations, which Pompeius had to carry out in order to complete the pacification of his district, all that was now left for the commanders of 88 was to crush the rebels in these two isolated divisions, and the war would be at an end. [Sidenote: B.C. 88. Desperation of the confederates.] The rebels indeed prepared for a desperate resistance. Five generals were appointed, Pompaedius Silo, the Marsian, at their head; and, by enrolling slaves and calling out fresh levies, the Samnites mustered an army of 50,000 men. Once more, almost single-handed, they prepared to strive with their old enemy for the sovereignty of Italy. The gallant Silo signalised his appointment by recovering Bovianum, but he was soon afterwards slain. He is said to have been defeated in a great battle by Mamercus Aemilius, and to have fallen in it. Appian says that Metellus defeated him in Iapygia; Orosius, that Sulpicius defeated him in Apulia. However that may be, with him the last gleam of hope for the Samnite cause faded away. They made, it is said, a treaty with Mithridates; but long before that king could have reached Italy, if he had been able to make the attempt, there would have been no allies to support him. In Lucania Aulus Gabinius, made rash by some successes, assaulted the confederate camp, but was repulsed and slain. Lamponius, the Lucanian general, remained master of the country, and attempted to take Rhegium, with the view of crossing over to Sicily and renewing the rebellion there. But the attempt failed. [Sidenote: Revolution at Rome, and the part taken by the insurgents in it.] Nola, however, still held out in Campania; and now there occurred a revolution at Rome which postponed the final subjugation of the insurgents till after the battle of the Colline Gate. For convenience and clearness the part taken by them in this revolution may be here summarised. Sulla, as consul, was besieging Nola when he was recalled to Rome by the Sulpician revolution and his election to the command against Mithridates. A Samnite army had come to relieve it, but had been defeated by Sulla. Three Roman corps still remained to keep the Samnites in check and besiege Nola, under Claudius, Metellus, and Plotius. It was to Nola that Cinna came, and seduced a large portion of the besiegers to follow him to Rome. Upon this the insurgents suddenly found themselves, instead of hunted desperadoes, courted as allies by two parties. The Senate again offered the terms of the Lex Plautia Papiria to all in arms, and some accepted them. But the Nolans, when Metellus was recalled and the long siege was then raised in 87 B.C., marched out and burnt Abella. The Samnites demanded, as the price of their assistance, that the prisoners, spoils, and deserters should be restored, and that they and the Romans who had joined them should receive the franchise. The Senate refused, and the Samnites at once joined Cinna and Marius, who were pledged not only to give the franchise, but also to enrol all the new voters in the old tribes; a measure which was ratified by the Senate in the year of Cinna's last consulship, 84 B.C. On Sulla's return to Italy they with the Lucanians, who had meanwhile been practically independent, were the most eager supporters of Marius's son. [Sidenote: Pontius of Telesia.] In 82 Pontius of Telesia, at the head of a Samnite force, with the desperate hardihood inspired by centuries of hatred, marched straight on Rome, and the city was saved only by Sulla's victory at the Colline Gate. Three days after the battle Sulla massacred all his prisoners. He knew that death alone could disarm such implacable foes. The Samnite name, he said, with his cold ferocity, must be erased from the earth, or Rome could never rest. The Samnites evacuated Nola in the year 80 B.C., and then their last great leader, C. Papius Mutilus, having fled in disguise to his wife at Teanum, was disowned by her and slew himself. [Sidenote: Fate of Samnium.] Sulla carried his threats into effect. He captured Aesernia, and spread a desolation all around, from which the country has never recovered to this day. Then, and not till then, the stubborn resistance of the most relentless foes of Rome was finally suppressed.
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The terrible disintegration which the Social War had brought on Italy was faithfully reproduced in Rome. There, too, every man's hand was against his neighbour. Creditor and debtor, tribune and consul, Senate and anti-Senate, fiercely confronted each other. Personal interests had become so much more prominent, and old party-divisions were so confused by the schemes of Italianising politicians, aristocratic in their connexions, but cleaving to part at least of the traditional democratic programme, that it is very hard to see where the views of one faction blended with those of another and where they clashed. [Sidenote: The Sulpician revolution difficult to understand.] Still harder is it to dissect the character of individuals; to decide, for instance, how far a man like Sulpicius was swayed by disinterested principles, and how far he fought for his own hand. We need not make too much of the fact that he appealed to force, because violence was the order of the day, and submission to the law simply meant submission to the law of force. But there are some parts of his career apparently so inconsistent as almost to defy explanation which in any case can be little more than guesswork.
[Sidenote: Sulpicius.] Publius Sulpicius Rufus was now in the prime of life, having been born in 124 B.C. He was an aristocrat, an orator of great force and fire, and a friend of Drusus, whose views he shared and inherited. Cicero speaks of him in no grudging terms. 'Of all the speakers I have heard Sulpicius was the grandest, and, so to speak, most tragic. Besides being powerful, his voice was sweet and resonant. His gestures and movements, elegant though they were, had nothing theatrical about them, and his oratory, though quick and fluent, was neither redundant nor verbose.' [Sidenote: Financial crisis at Rome.] The year before his tribunate had been a turbulent one at Rome. The Social War and Asiatic disturbances had brought about a financial crisis. Debtors, hard pressed by their creditors, invoked obsolete penalties against usury in their defence, and the creditors, because the praetor Asellio attempted to submit the question to trial, murdered him in the open Forum. The debtors responded by a cry fortabulae novae, or a sweeping remission of all debts. Of these debtors many doubtless would belong to the lower orders; but, from a proposal of Sulpicius made the next year, it appears probable that some were found in the ranks of the Senate. War had made money 'tight,' to use the phraseology of our modern Stock Exchange, and reckless extravagance could no longer be supported by borrowing.
[Sidenote: Sulpicius the successor of Drusus.] Sulpicius inherited the policy of Drusus, which was to reconstruct the Senatorial Government on an Italian basis. Like Drusus he had to conciliate prejudices in order to carry out his design. Plutarch says that he went about with 600 men of the equestrian order, whom he called his anti-Senate. No doubt it was to please these equites, who would belong to the party of creditors, that he proposed that no one should be a senator who owed more than 2,000 denarii. No doubt, too, he would have filled the vacancies thus created by the expulsion of reckless anti-Italian optimates, from the ranks of these equites, just as Drusus had done. [Sidenote: He attempts to remodel the government.] Just like Drusus, too, he had to court the proletariate, and this he did by proposing to enrol freedmen in the tribes. This, as they were generally dependent on men of his own order, he could do without prejudice to the new-modelled aristocracy which he was attempting to organize. He also proposed to grant an amnesty to those who had been exiled by the Lex Varia, hoping, no doubt, to gain more by the adherents who would return to Rome than he would lose by the return of men like Varius himself. He had opposed such an amnesty before; but on such a point he might have easily changed his views, especially if a strong cry was being raised by the friends of the exiles. He had a personal feud with the Julian family, because he had opposed Caesar's illegal candidature for the consulship; but, having fortified himself by such alliances, he proceeded to carry out the main design of Drusus, namely, the complete enfranchisement of the Italians. [Sidenote: Pro-Italian measure of Sulpicius.] This, perhaps, would be especially distasteful to the Julii, as superseding the Lex Julia and the Lex Plautia Papiria, which to them, no doubt, seemed ample and more than ample concessions. Sulpicius, on the other hand, and the minority of the Senate which sided with him, saw that under the cover of clemency a grievous wrong was being done. For not only were the Italians who had submitted since the terms of the Lex Plautia took effect without the franchise, but from the fact of their rebellion they had lost their old privileges as allied States. Even those who had benefited by these concessions had benefited only in name. As they voted in new tribes, their votes were valueless, and often would not be recorded at all; for a majority on most questions would be assured long before it came to their turn to vote. To a statesman imbued with the views of Drusus such a distribution of the franchise must have seemed impolitic trickery; and, like Drusus, Sulpicius resorted to questionable means in order to gain the end on which he had set his heart.
Rome was thus broken up into two camps, not as of yore broadly marked off by palpable distinctions of rank, property, or privilege, but each containing adherents of all sorts and conditions, though in the Senate the opponents of Sulpicius had the majority. When Sulpicius proposed to enrol the Italians in the old tribes, the consuls proclaimed a justitium, or suspension of all public business for some religious observances. It is said by some modern writers that the object of Sulpicius in proposing to enrol the Italians in the old tribes was to secure the election of Marius to the command against Mithridates. It is certain, indeed, that Marius longed for it. [Sidenote: Attitude of Marius.] Daily he was to be seen in the Campus Martius exercising with the young men, and, though old and fat, showing himself nimble in arms and active on horseback—conduct which excited some men's good-humoured sympathy, but shocked others, who thought he had much better go to Baiae for the baths there, and that such an exhibition was contemptible in one of his years. Sulpicius may have thought Marius quite fit for the command, and was warranted in thinking so by the events of the Social War; but there is no more ground for supposing that the election of Marius was his primary object than for considering Plutarch's diatribe a fair estimate of his character. [Sidenote: Connection of Marius and Sulpicius explained.] He was the friend and successor of Drusus, and his alliance with Marius was a means to the end which in common with Drusus he had in view, and not the end itself. This consideration is essential to a true understanding of the politics of the time, and just makes the difference whether Sulpicius was a petty-minded adventurer or deliberately following in the lines laid down for him by a succession of statesmen. [Sidenote: Street-fighting.] To the manoeuvre of the consul he replied by a violent protest that it was illegal. Rome was being paraded by his partisans—3,000 armed men, and there was a tumult in which the lives of the consuls were in danger. One, Pompeius Rufus, escaped, but his son was killed. The other, Sulla, annulled the justitium, but is said to have got off with his life only because Marius generously gave him shelter in his own house. In these occurrences it is impossible not to see that the consuls were the first to act unfairly. Sulpicius had been intending to bring forward his laws in the regular fashion. They thwarted him by a trick. Whether he in anger gave the signal for violence, or whether, as is quite as likely, his Italian partisans did not wait for his bidding, the blame of the tumult lay at the door of the other side. In such cases he is not guiltiest who strikes the first blow, but he who has made blows inevitable.
[Sidenote: The Sulpician laws carried by force.] The laws of Sulpicius were carried. [Sidenote: Sulla flies to the army, which marches on Rome.] Sulla fled to the army; and, perhaps, it was only now that Sulpicius, knowing or thinking that he knew that Sulla would march on Rome, carried a resolution in the popular assembly for making Marius commander in the east. Two tribunes were accordingly sent to the camp at Nola to take the army from Sulla. His soldiers immediately slew them; and, burning for the booty of Asia and attached to their fortunate leader, they, when without venturing to hint at the means by which he could avenge it, he complained of the wrong done to him, clamorously called on him to lead them to Rome. All his officers, except one quaestor, left him; but he set out with six legions and was joined by Pompeius on the way. Two praetors met him and forbade his advance. They escaped with their lives, but the soldiers broke their fasces and tore off their senatorial robes. A second and a third time the Senate sent to ask his intentions. 'To release Rome from her tyrants,' was the grim reply. Then he vouchsafed an offer that the Senate, Marius, and Sulpicius should meet him in the Campus Martius to come to terms. If this meant that he would come with his army at his back, it was an absurd proposal. If it meant that he would come alone, it was a falsehood. In either case it was a device to fritter away time. [Sidenote: Sulla's astuteness and superstition.] For all the while that he was bandying meaningless messages he continued his onward march. He had sacrificed, and the soothsayer Postumius, when he saw the entrails, had stretched out his hands to him, and offered to be kept in chains for punishment after the battle if it was not a victory. He, too, had himself seen a vision of good omen. Bellona, or another goddess, had, he dreamed, put a thunderbolt in his hands, and, naming his enemies one by one, bidden him strike them, and they were consumed to ashes.
Again envoys came from the Senate forbidding him to come within five miles of Rome. Perhaps they still felt as secure in the immemorial freedom of the city from military rule as the English Parliament did before Cromwell'scoup d'état. Again he amused them, and no doubt himself also, with a falsehood, and, professing compliance, followed close upon their heels. With one legion he occupied the Caelian Gate, with another under Pompeius the Colline Gate, with a third the Pons Sublicius, while a fourth was posted outside as a reserve. Thus, for the first time, a consul commanded an army in the city, and soldiers were masters of Rome. [Sidenote: Street-fighting.] Marius and Sulpicius met them on the Esquiline and, pouring down tiles from the housetops, at first beat them back. But Sulla, waving a burning torch, bade his men shoot fiery arrows at the houses, and drove the Marians from the Esquiline Forum. Then he sent for the legion in reserve, and ordered a detachment to go round by the Subura and take the enemy in the rear. In vain Marius made another stand at the temple of Tellus. In vain he offered liberty to any slaves that would join him. He was beaten and fled from the city. Thus Sulla, having by injustice provoked disorder, quelled it by the sword, and began the civil war. Sulpicius, Marius, and ten others were proscribed, and Sulla is said to have still further stimulated the pursuit of Marius by setting a price on his head. [Sidenote: Sulpicius slain.] Sulpicius was killed at Laurentum, and, according to Velleius Paterculus, Sulla fixed up the eloquent orator's head at the Rostra, a thing not unlikely to have been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly congenial. [Sidenote: Stories of Sulla.] He evinced it on this occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Hugo his episode of Lantenac and the gunner. He gave the slave who betrayed Sulpicius his freedom, and then had him hurled from the Tarpeian Rock. After this he set to work to restore such order as would enable him to hasten to the east.
[Sidenote: Why Sulla left Italy.] Various explanations have been offered to account for his moderation at this conjuncture, and for his leaving Italy precisely when his enemies were again gathering for an attack. But the true one has never yet, perhaps, been suggested. Who was it that had made him supreme at Rome? The army. What had been the bribe which had won it over? A campaign in Asia under the fortunate Sulla. Without that army he was powerless, nay, he was a dead man. Therefore it was absolutely necessary to execute his pledge to the army, which would have no keen desire to encounter its countrymen in Italy. No doubt he coveted the glory and spoil of the Asiatic command; but it is absurd to suppose that he would have quitted Italy now of his own free will. He had no choice in the matter. He was bound hand and foot by his promises to the soldiers; and all that he could do was by plausible moderation to win as many friends, conciliate as many foes, as possible, throw on Cinna, whom he could not hope to keep quiet, the guilt of perjury, and trust to fortune for the rest. This is a probable and consistent view of what now took place at Rome; and every other account makes out Sulla to have been either inconsistent, which he never was, for he was always uniformly selfish; or patriotic, which he never was, if patriotism consists in sacrificing private to public considerations; or indifferent, which he was in principle but never in practice, unless where his own interests were not threatened and only the suffering of others involved.
[Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] His first measure was to annul the Sulpician laws. Secondly, to relieve the debtors, some colonies were established, and a law was passed about interest, the terms of which we do not know. Thirdly, the Senate, thinned by the Social War and the Varian law, was recruited by 300 optimates. Fourthly, because Sulpicius had resisted the proclamation of a justitium—that device by which the Senate had virtually, though not legally, retained in its own hands the power of discussing any measure before it was submitted to the people—therefore for the future no measure was to be submitted to the people till it had been previously discussed by the Senate. In other words, the Senate was now confirmed by law in a privilege which it had hitherto only exercised by the employment of a fiction. Fifthly, the votes were to be taken, not in the Comitia Tributa, but in the Comitia of Centuries. Sixthly, the five classes were no longer to have an equal voice, but the first class was, as in the Servian constitution, to have nearly half the votes. As the first class consisted of those who had an estate of 100,000 sesterces, this ordinance changed the democracy into a timocracy, transferring the power from the people generally to the wealthier classes: but, considering how voting had been manipulated of late, it was perhaps a measure due to the Senate quite as much as to Sulla. On the whole he legislated as little as he could and proscribed as few as he could. [Sidenote: Opposition to Sulla.] But he tried to get two of his partisans, Servius and Nonius, elected consuls for the year 87. Instead of them, however, L. Cornelius Cinna, a determined leader of the populares, was elected; and though Cnaeus Octavius, his colleague, was one of the optimates, he was not Sulla's creature. In another quarter his arrangements were thwarted even more unpleasantly. He had got a decree framed by the people, giving the army of the north to his friend Q. Pompeius Rufus, and recalling Cn. Pompeius Strabo. But the latter procured the assassination of the former, and remained at the head of the army. Still Sulla showed no resentment. A tribune named Virginius was threatening to prosecute him. But he contented himself with making Cinna ascend the Capitol with a stone in his hand, and, throwing it down before a number of spectators, solemnly swear to observe the new constitution. Then, leaving Metellus in Samnium and Appius Claudius at Nola, he hurried to Capua, and embarking at Brundusium felt, no doubt, that if he must pay his debt to the army before the army would commit fresh treasons for him, it was not unpleasant now to be forced away from the wasps' nest which he had stirred up round him at home. And so, making a virtue of a necessity, he sailed with a light heart from the chance of assassination at Rome to fame and fortune in the East.
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[Sidenote: Flight of Marius.] Meanwhile what had become of Marius? Already a halo of legend was gathering round his name, and all Italy was ringing with his adventures. When he had fled from Rome (not sorry now, we may be sure, that he had gone through his late exhibitions in the Campus Martius), he had sent his son to some of his father-in-law's farms to get necessary provisions. Young Marius was overtaken by daylight, before he could get to his father-in-law's farm, and pack the things up, and was nearly caught by those on his track. But the farm-bailiff saw them in time, and, hiding him in a cart full of beans, yoked the teams, and drove him to Rome. [Sidenote: Ostia.] There young Marius went to his wife's house, and, getting what he wanted, set out at nightfall for Ostia, and finding a ship starting for Africa, went aboard. His father had not waited for his return. He too had embarked at Ostia for Africa with his son-in-law. But now in his old age the sea was not so kind to him as when, in his bold and confident youth, he had sailed to sue for his first consulship from the very land to which he was now flying. A storm came on, and the ship was blown southwards along the coast. Marius begged the captain to keep clear of Tarracina, because Geminius, a leading man there, was his bitter foe. [Sidenote: Circeii.] But the storm increased; Marius was sea-sick, and they were forced to go ashore at Circeii (Monte Circello). Some herdsmen told them that horsemen had just been there in pursuit; so they spent the night in a thick wood, hungry, and tortured by anxiety. Next day they went to the coast again, and Marius implored the men to stand by him, telling them that when he was a child an eagle's nest fell into his lap, with seven young ones in it, and the soothsayers had said that it meant that he should attain to the highest honours seven times. [Sidenote: Minturnae.] About two miles and a half from Minturnae they spied some horsemen making towards them; and, plunging into the sea, they swam towards some merchantmen near the shore. Two slaves swam with Marius, keeping him up, and he got into one ship, and his son-in-law into the other, while the horsemen shouted to the crew to put ashore, or throw Marius overboard. The captains consulted together, and a terrible moment it must have been for the fugitives. But the spell of the Cimbric victories was potent still, and the captains replied that they would not give up Marius. So the soldiers rode off in a rage. But the sailors, having so far acted generously, were anxious to get rid of their dangerous guest, and, landing at the mouth of the Liris, on pretence of waiting for a fair wind, told Marius to go ashore and get some rest, and, while he was lying down, sailed away. Half stupified, he scrambled through bogs, and dykes, and mud, till he came to an old man's cottage, and begged the owner to shelter a man who, if he escaped, would reward him beyond his hopes. The man told him that he could hide him in a safer place than his cottage; and, showing him a hole by the riverside, covered him up in it with some rushes. But he was soon rudely disturbed. Geminius was on his trail, and Marius heard some of his emissaries loudly threatening the old man for hiding an outlaw. In his terror Marius stripped and plunged into the river, and so betrayed himself to the pursuers, who hauled him out naked and covered with mud, and gave him up to the magistrates of Minturnae. By these he was placed under a strong guard in the house of a woman named Fannia. She, like Geminius, had a personal grudge against him, for in his sixth consulship he had fined her four drachmas for ill-conduct. But now when she saw his misery she forgot her resentment, and did her best to cheer him. Nor was this difficult, for the stout heart of Marius had never failed him. He told Fannia that, as he was coming to her house, an ass had come out to drink at a neighbouring fountain, and, fixing its eyes steadily on him, had brayed aloud and frisked vivaciously, whence he augured that he would find safety by sea. The magistrates, however, had resolved to kill him, and sent a Cimbrian to do the deed, for no citizen would do it. The man went armed with a sword into the gloomy room where Marius lay. But soon he ran out crying, 'I cannot slay Marius.' He had seen eyes glaring in the darkness, and had heard a terrible voice say, 'Darest thou slay Caius Marius?' His heart had failed him; he had thrown down the sword and fled. Either the magistrates now changed their minds, or the people forced them to let Marius go, or perhaps Fannia connived at his escape. Plutarch says that the people escorted him to the coast, and, when they came to a sacred grove, called the Marician Grove, which no man might enter, but which it would take a long time to go round, an old man had led the way into it, saying that no place was so sacred but that it might be entered to save Marius. [Sidenote: Aenaria.] In some way he reached the coast where a friend had secured a vessel, and being driven by the wind to Aenaria (Ischia), he there found his son-in-law and sailed for Africa.
[Sidenote: Eryx.] Want of water forced them to put in at Eryx on the N.W. of Sicily; but the Roman quaestor there was on the look-out, and killing sixteen of the crew nearly took Marius. Landing at Meninx (Jerbah), the fugitive heard that his son was in Africa too, and had gone to Hiempsal, King of Numidia, to ask for aid, upon which he set sail again and landed at Carthage. [Sidenote: Carthage.] The Roman governor there sent to warn him off from Africa. Marius was dumb with indignation, but on being asked what answer he had to send, replied, so ran the story, 'Go and say you have seen Caius Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage.'
Hiempsal meanwhile had been keeping young Marius in a sort of honourable captivity. But, according to a story similar to that told of Thomas à Becket's father, a damsel of the country had fallen in love with his handsome face, and helped him to escape. [Sidenote: Circina.] Father and son now retired to Circina (Kerkennah), where news soon reached him which brought him back to Italy.
[Sidenote: Counter-revolutions at Rome.] Hardly had Sulla left Brundusium when the truce which he had patched up was broken. Cinna being bribed, as was said probably without foundation, with 300 talents, had demanded that the Italians lately enfranchised should be enrolled in the old tribes. [Sidenote: Cinna.] We do not know very much about Cinna, but we do seem to gather that he was bold, resolute, not ungenerous or bloodthirsty; and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, like Saturninus, and Sulpicius, and Drusus, he was only demanding justice. [Sidenote: Street-fighting. Cinna driven from Rome.] Octavius opposed him, and, hearing that Cinna's partisans were threatening the tribunes in the Forum, he charged down the Via Sacra with a band of followers, and dispersed them, and a great number of Cinna's followers were slain. On this Cinna left Rome, and, joined by Sertorius, whom we shall hear of again, went round the towns mustering his friends. The Senate declared his consulship to be void, and elected L. Cornelius Merula in his place. [Sidenote: His cause espoused by the Campanian army.] Cinna, with characteristic audacity, instantly hastened to the army in Campania; and, rending his clothes and throwing himself on the ground, so worked on the pity of the soldiers that they lifted him up, and told him he was consul still, and might lead them where he pleased. [Sidenote: Marius lands in Etruria.] Then, visiting the Italian towns, he obtained many recruits; and, hearing that Marius had landed in Etruria (perhaps on his invitation), he agreed to act in concert with him, in spite of the opposition of Sertorius.
[Sidenote: The Senate summons Pompeius from Picenum.] Meanwhile Octavius and Merula had fortified the city, had sent for troops from Cisalpine Gaul, and had summoned the proconsul Pompeius from Picenum. Pompeius came and halted at the Colline Gate. It was suspected that he was waiting to join the successful side. With him was his son, afterwards called 'the Great,' who now showed of what stuff he was made by putting down a mutiny against his father and baffling a plot for his own assassination. [Sidenote: Marius sacks Ostia, and he, Sertorius, and Cinna hem Rome in.] Marius, with a band of Moors, and the slaves whom he had collected from the Etrurian field-gangs, was admitted by treachery into Ostia and sacked the town. Cinna marched to the right bank of the Tiber, opposite the Janiculum. Sertorius held the river above the city, and a corps was sent to Ariminum to prevent any help coming from North Italy. [Sidenote: The Senate summons Metellus, and courts the alliance of the Samnites.] At this crisis the Senate sent for Metellus and tried to obtain the aid of the Samnites, who, as we have seen, joined Marius and Cinna. The treachery of a tribune in command of the Janiculum gave the Marians admission to the city. But they were driven out again, and might even have been dislodged from the Janiculum had not Pompeius persuaded Octavius to check the pursuit. Pompeius was playing a waiting game, ready to join the strongest, or crush both parties, as he saw his chance. And now within the city starvation set in, and a pestilence spread. Marius had blocked up the Tiber, and occupied the outlying towns on which the communications of the capital depended. Nor could the Senate trust its own troops. [Sidenote: Death of Pompeius.] Pompeius was killed by a thunder-bolt—not less suspicious than that which slew Romulus—and his body had been torn from the bier, and dragged through the streets by the people. [Sidenote: Disaffection in the Senate's troops.] The soldiers of Octavius cheered Cinna when he marshalled his troops opposite them near the Alban Mount. Moreover the leaders themselves were at variance. Octavius, seeing the humour of his men, was afraid to fight, but would concede nothing. Metellus wished for a compromise. Both armies were now outside the city, the pestilence probably having driven the Marians to withdraw. But Marius had command of the Via Appia, the Tiber, and most of the neighbourhood; and the famine became sorer in Rome. [Sidenote: Incompetence of Octavius and Metellus.] The soldiers wished Metellus to take the command from Octavius, and, on his refusal, deserted in crowds to the enemy. So also did the slaves, to whom Octavius would not promise freedom, as Cinna gladly did. [Sidenote: The Senate submits to Cinna.] At last the Senate sent to make terms with Cinna; but while they were stickling about acknowledging his title of consul, he advanced to the gates. Then they surrendered at discretion, only begging him to swear to shed no blood. Cinna, refusing to be bound by this condition, promised that he would not voluntarily do so. For he saw by his side the grim figure of the man to whom he had given pro-consular powers, who had already taunted him with weakness for conferring with the Senate at all, and in whose sullen, unshorn face he read a craving for vengeance which nothing but blood would satisfy.
[Sidenote: A massacre at Rome.] When Cinna entered the city, Marius, with savage irony, said that an outlaw had no business within the walls, and he would not come in till the sentence had been formally rescinded by a meeting of the people in the Forum. But the gates, when once he had passed them, were closed, and for five days and five nights Rome became a shambles. Appian says that Marius and Cinna had both sworn to spare the life of Octavius. But Marius was never a liar, and the story is false on the face of it; for just before this Appian relates how, when Cinna had promised to be merciful, Marius would make no sign. [Sidenote: Death of Octavius.] Octavius is said to have seated himself in his official chair, dressed in his official robes, on the Janiculum, and to have awaited the assassins there. His head was fastened up in front of the Rostra in emulation of the ghastly precedent set by Sulla. He was an obstinate, dull man; and if this burlesque of the conduct of the senators when the Gauls took Rome was really enacted, the theatrical display must have been cold comfort for those of his party on whom his incapacity brought ruin. [Sidenote: Chief victims of the massacre.] [Sidenote: The Caesars.] Among the latter were the brothers Caesar, Caius, who had sought to be consul before he was praetor, and had been denounced for it by Sulpicius, and Lucius, the conqueror at Acerrae and author of the Julian law. [Sidenote: Publius Crassus.] Publius Crassus, consul in 97, and one of Caesar's lieutenants in the Social War, fled with his son, and when overtaken first stabbed his son and then himself. [Sidenote: Marcus Antonius.] Marcus Antonius, the great forensic orator, was so odious to Marius that the latter, on hearing that he was taken, wished, so the story runs, to go and kill him with his own hand. Antonius was in hiding, and was betrayed by the indiscretion of a slave, who, being questioned by a wine-seller why he was buying more or better wine than usual, whispered to him that it was for Marcus Antonius. On the soldiers coming to kill him, he pleaded so eloquently for his life that they wept and would not touch him. But their officer, who was waiting below, impatiently came up and cut off his head with his own hand. Lucius Merula opened his veins, and so bled to death. His crime was that he had been made consul when Cinna was deposed. His last act seems odd to us, but pathetically bespoke the man's piety and recalls the last scene in the life of Demosthenes. He wrote on a tablet that he had taken off his official cap when opening his veins, so as to avoid the sacrilege of a flamen of Jupiter dying with it on his head. [Sidenote: Catulus.] Marius had behaved generously once to Q. Lutatius Catulus, his old colleague against the Cimbri; but Catulus had helped to drive him into exile, and there was to be no second mistake of that sort. 'He must die,' he said, when the relatives of Catulus pleaded for his life. It is not unlikely that disease, and drinking, and his late hardships had made the old man insane. He had been occasionally good-natured in former days; now he seemed to gloat in carnage. For every sneer cast at him, for every wrong done to him in past years, he took a horrible revenge. When Cinna had summoned him, he had said that he would settle the question of enrolment in the tribes once for all. He wished not to select victims, but to massacre all the leading optimates. Sertorius begged Cinna to check the slaughter. Cinna did try to curb the outrages of the slave bands; but he dared not break with Marius, whom he named as joint consul with himself for the year 86. But as soon as his colleague was dead, he and Sertorius surrounded the ruffians and killed them to a man.
[Sidenote: Death of Marius.] Marius did not live much longer. He had had his revenge. He had gained his seventh consulship. It is said that, telling his friends that after such vicissitudes it would be wrong to tempt fate further, he took to his bed and after seven days died. He drank hard, was seized with pleurisy, and in his last hours became delirious. He fancied that he was in Asia, and by shouts and gestures cheered on the army of his dreams, and with 'such a stern and iron-clashing close' died January 13 or 17. He was more than seventy years old, and had enjoyed his seventh consulship for either thirteen or seventeen days.
Lucius Valerius Flaccus succeeded Marius as consul, and passed a law making one-fourth of a debt legal tender for payment of it; and probably in the same year the denarius was restored to its standard value. A census was also held, which would include the new Italian citizens, and Philippus, whose opposition to Drusus on this very question had helped to kindle the Social War, was censor. [Sidenote: Settlement of Italian disabilities by Cinna.] Cinna, as he was pledged to do so, must have carried some measure for enrolling the Italians in the old tribes; but we can only conjecture what was actually done. Sulpicius had already carried such a measure, but it had been probably revoked by Sulla before he left Italy. In 84, just before his return, the Senate, it is said, gave the Italians the right of voting, and distributed the libertini, or freed slaves, among the thirty-five tribes. Perhaps this was a formal ratification of what had been passed before under Cinna's coercion.
[Sidenote: Cinna's supremacy.] Cinna was now all-powerful at Rome. For four successive years, 87 to 84 B.C., he was consul; and with the exception of Asia, Macedonia, Greece, and Africa, where Metellus had escaped and was in arms, the whole Roman world was at his feet. But he did not know how to use his power. He may have removed the restrictions on grain, and did proclaim Sulla and Metellus outlaws; but, though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sulla's return, he did worse than nothing, and, instead of Sertorius, sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus. The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the next chapter. When Cinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and that either he must act promptly or Sulla would be in Rome, he hastened to Ancona, where he sent one division of the army across to the opposite coast. But the second division was driven back by a storm; and the soldiers then dispersed, saying that they would not fight against their own countrymen. On this the rest of the army refused to embark. Cinna went to harangue them, and one of his lictors in clearing a way struck a soldier. Another soldier struck him. [Sidenote: Cinna slain at Ancona.] Cinna told his lictors to seize this second mutineer, and in the tumult that arose Cinna was slain. Plutarch says that the troops murdered him because he was suspected of having killed Pompeius, and that, when he tried to bribe a centurion with a signet-ring to spare him, the centurion replied that he was not going to seal a bond but slay a tyrant. But Cinna probably died as he lived, a brave man, and one who could not have held ascendency for so long, and over men like Sertorius, had he not been an able as well as a brave man.
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Events have been anticipated in order to relate the close of Cinna's career. But it is time now to say what Sulla had been doing, and who that Mithridates was whose name for so long had been formidable at Rome.
[Sidenote: Foreign events after the second slave war.] After the defeat of the northern hordes and the suppression of the second slave revolt, there was a war with the Celtiberi in Spain, in 97, in which Sertorius showed himself already an adroit and bold officer. [Sidenote: Sertorius in command against the Celtiberi.] He was in winter quarters at Castulo (Cazlona), and his men were so disorderly that the Spaniards were emboldened to attack them in the town; Sertorius escaped, rallied those soldiers who had also escaped, marched back, and after putting those in the town to the sword, dressed his troops in the dead men's clothes, and so obtained admission to another town which had helped the enemy. But the hero of the campaign was Titus Didius, afterwards Caesar's lieutenant in the Social War. He had some hard fighting and captured Termesus, the chief town of the Arevaci, and Colenda.—He earned his triumph by other means also. There was a town near Colenda, the inhabitants of which the Romans wished to destroy. Didius told them that he would give them the lands of Colenda, and they came to receive their allotments. As soon as they were within his lines, his soldiers set on them and slew them all.
[Sidenote: Africa.] In 96 B.C. Ptolemaus Apion bequeathed Cyrene—a narrow strip of terraced land on the north coast of Africa, situated between the Libyan deserts and the Mediterranean—to Rome. The Romans did not refuse the legacy; but they took no trouble to govern the country. The cities of Cyrene were declared to be free. In other words, while nominally subject to Rome, so that she might interfere when she pleased, they were left to govern themselves. Such government was no government; but it was in accordance with the deliberate policy of the senatorial party.
[Sidenote: Crimes and intrigues of Mithridates.] It was in the same year that Mithridates committed the first of the series of crimes which eventually brought him into collision with Rome. His sister had married the King of Cappadocia. Mithridates assassinated him. Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, seized Cappadocia and married the widowed sister of Mithridates. Having slain one brother-in-law, Mithridates expelled the other, and set on the throne his sister's son. But when his nephew refused to welcome home Gordius, the man who had murdered his father, Mithridates marched against and assassinated him. Then he set on the throne his own son, to whom he gave his nephew's name, and made Gordius his guardian. Him the Cappadocians expelled, and raised to the throne another nephew of Mithridates; but Mithridates instantly drove him from power. Nicomedes now appealed to the Senate, and produced, as he asserted, a third nephew of Mithridates as a claimant for the crown. To support his assertion he sent his wife to Rome to swear she had had three sons. Mithridates, as if in burlesque of the imposture, sent Gordius to swear that the youth on the throne was son of a Cappadocian king who had died more than thirty years before. The Senate decided as a lion might between two jackals quarrelling over a carcase. It took Cappadocia from Mithridates and Paphlagonia from Nicomedes, and declared both countries free. But the Cappadocians clamoured for a king, and so, in 93, the Senate appointed Ariobarzanes I. Mithridates then stirred up Tigranes, King of Armenia, to expel Ariobarzanes, who fled to Rome. Sulla was sent to restore him, and did so in 92, after defeating the Cappadocians under Gordius and the Armenians. [Sidenote: The Romans come in contact with the Parthians.] It was when he was on this mission that the Romans and Parthians confronted each other for the first time. The Parthians sent an embassy to ask for the alliance of Rome. Three chairs were set for Ariobarzanes, Sulla, and Orobazus; and Sulla, who was only propraetor, took the central seat. This incensed the Parthian king; and he revenged himself not on Sulla, but on the unfortunate Orobazus, whom he put to death. A Chaldean in the Parthian's suite, after studying Sulla's face, predicted great things for him; which pleased Sulla as much as it would have done Marius, for he believed in his luck just as his rival did in his seventh consulship. But when he came home he was impeached for taking bribes from Ariobarzanes, and no doubt he had made his trip which was so gratifying to his pride not less profitable also, and had had his appetite whetted for a second taste of eastern treasures. Mithridates, meanwhile, was brooding over his humiliation and meditating revenge. He went on a journey incognito through the Roman province of Asia and Bithynia, intending to attack both if he found himself strong enough. When he came back he found that his wife, who was also his sister, had been unfaithful to him, and he put her to death. He had now murdered a wife, a sister, a brother, and a nephew. He had also imprisoned his mother, and was equally merciless to his sons, his daughters, and his concubines. At his death, it is said, a paper was found in which he had foredoomed his most trusted servants, and he slew all the inmates of his harem in order to hinder them from falling into his enemies' hands.
[Sidenote: Early years of Mithridates.] His whole history is in fact one long record of sensuality, treachery, and murder. From his earliest years he had breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of assassination. His father had been assassinated when he was eleven years old. His guardians and even his own mother had then plotted to assassinate him. They placed him on a wild horse, and made him perform exercises with the javelin on it. When his precocious vigour defeated their hopes, they tried to poison him. But by studying antidotes he made his body poison-proof, or at least was reputed to have done so, and, flying from his enemies, lived for seven years through all the hardships of a wild and wandering life, in which he never slept under a roof, and hunted and fought with wild beasts, to emerge in manhood a very tiger himself for strength, and beauty of body, and ferocity of disposition, a tyrant who spared neither man in his ambition nor woman in his lust. [Sidenote: His physical vigour.] His stature was gigantic, his strength and activity such as took captive the imagination of the East. He could, it was believed, outrun the deer; out-eat and out-drink everyone at the banquet; strike down flying game unerringly; tame the wildest steed, and ride 120 miles in a day. Twenty-two nations obeyed him, and he could speak the dialect of each. A veneer of Greek refinement was spread thinly over the savage animalism of the man. [Sidenote: Pseudo-civilisation of his court.] He was a virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep him from being grossly superstitious.
[Sidenote: His kingdom and how it was acquired.] For twenty years (110-90 B.C.) he had been with never-resting activity extending his empire, before the Romans assailed him. He had inherited from his ancestors the kingdom of Pontus, or Cappadocia on the Pontus, which had been one of the two satrapies into which Cappadocia was divided at the time of the Macedonian conquest. Mithridates IV. had married a princess of the Greek race, the sister of Seleucus, King of Syria. His grandfather had conquered Sinope and Paphlagonia, as far as the Bithynian frontier. His father had helped the Romans in the third Punic War, had been styled the friend of Rome, and had been rewarded with the province of Phrygia nominally for his services against Aristonicus, the pretender to the kingdom of Attalus, but had been deprived of it afterwards when it was found out that really it had been put up for auction by Manius Aquillius, who was completing the subjugation of the adherents of the pretender. The boundaries of Pontus at his accession cannot be strictly defined. On the east it stretched towards the Caucasus and the sources of the Euphrates, Lesser Armenia being dependent on it. On the south and south-west its frontiers were Cappadocia and Galatia. On the west nominally Paphlagonia was the frontier, for the grandfather of Mithridates had been induced by the Romans to promise to evacuate his conquests. But Sinope was then, and continued to be, the capital of the Pontic kingdom, and both Paphlagonia and Galatia were virtually dependent. This was the territory to which Mithridates was heir, and which, true to the policy of his father and grandfather, he constantly strove by force or fraud to extend. [Sidenote: Mithridates extends his kingdom.] To the east of the Black Sea he conquered Colchis on the Phasis, and converted it into a satrapy. To the north he was hailed as the deliverer of the Greek towns on that coast and in the region now known as the Crimea, which from the constant exaction of tribute by barbarous tribes were, in the absence of any protectorate like that of Athens, falling into decay. By sea, and perhaps across the Caucasus by land, Mithridates sent his troops under the Greek generals Neoptolemus and Diophantus. Neoptolemus won a victory over the Tauric Scythians at Panticapaeum (Kertch), and the kingdom of Bosporus in the Crimea was ceded to his master by its grateful king. Diophantus marched westwards as far as the Tyras (Dneister), and in a great battle almost annihilated an army of the Roxolani, a nomadic people who roamed between the Borysthenes (Dneiper) and the Tanais (Don). By these conquests Mithridates acquired a tribute of 200 talents (48,000_l_.), and 270,000 bushels of grain, and a rich recruiting ground for his armies. [Sidenote: His alliance with Tigranes.] On the east he annexed Lesser Armenia, and entered into the closest alliance with Tigranes, King of Greater Armenia, which had lately become a powerful kingdom, giving him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. If the allies had any defined scheme of conquest, it was that Mithridates should occupy Asia Minor and the coast of the Black Sea, and Tigranes the interior and Syria. How the King intrigued and meddled in Cappadocia and Bithynia has been previously related; and when he had marched into Cappadocia it was at the head of 80,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 600 scythed chariots.
Such was the history, the power, and the character of the great potentate who had yielded to the demands of Sulla, the propraetor, but who now awaited the attack of Sulla, the proconsul, with proud disdain. Much, indeed, had happened since the year 92 to justify such feelings. Hardly had Sulla reinstated Ariobarzanes when Tigranes drove him out again, and restored the son of Mithridates; while in Bithynia the younger son of Nicomedes, Socrates, appeared in arms against his elder brother, Nicomedes II., who on his father's death had been acknowledged as king by Rome. Socrates had soldiers from Pontus with him; but Mithridates, though his hand was plain in these disturbances, outwardly stood aloof; and the Senate, sending Manius Aquillius to restore the two kings, ordered Mithridates to aid him with troops if they were wanted. [Sidenote: Mithridates submits to Aquillius.] The king submitted as before, not, indeed, sending troops, but without resisting, and as a proof of his complacency put Socrates to death. This happened in the year 90, when Rome was pressed hardest by the Italians, and at first sight it seems astonishing that he should not have seized on so favourable a moment. But in those days news would travel from the west of Italy to Sinope but slowly and uncertainly, and Mithridates would have the fate of Antiochus in mind to warn him how the foes of the great republic fared, and the history of Pergamus to testify to the prosperity of those who remained its friends. Sulla's proud tone in 92 would not have lessened this impression; and, before he appealed to force, the crafty king hoped to make his position securer by fraud. Partly, therefore, from real awe, partly because he was not yet ready, he obeyed Aquillius as he had obeyed Sulla. But Aquillius, who had once put up Phrygia to auction, knew what pickings there were for a senator when war was afoot in Asia, and perhaps may have had the honester notion that, as Mithridates was sure to go to war soon, it was for the public as well as for his private interest to act boldly and strike the first blow. So he forced the reluctant Bithynian king to declare war, and to ravage with an army the country round Amastris while his fleet shut up the Bosporus. Still Mithridates did not stir; all that he did was to lodge a complaint with the Romans, and solicit their mediation or their permission to defend himself. [Sidenote: Aquillius forces on a war.] Aquillius replied that he must in no case make war on Nicomedes. It is easy to conceive how such an answer affected a man of the king's temper. He instantly sent his son with an army into Cappadocia. But once more he tried diplomacy. [Sidenote: Ultimatum of Mithridates.] Pelopidas, his envoy, came to Aquillius, and said that his master was willing to aid the Romans against the Italians if the Romans would forbid Nicomedes to attack him, their ally. If not, he wished the alliance to be formally dissolved. Or there was yet another alternative. Let the commissioners and himself appeal to the Senate to decide between them. The commissioners treated the message as an insult. Mithridates, they said, must not attack Nicomedes, and they intended to restore Ariobarzanes. Possibly the conduct of Aquillius was due to his having been heavily bribed by Nicomedes, who must have felt that when the Romans were gone he would be like a mouse awaiting the cat's spring; for it is difficult to imagine the foolhardiness which without some such tangible stimulus would at that moment have plunged him into war.
[Sidenote: War begun. Energy of Mithridates.] But when once the die was cast, Mithridates threw himself into the war with the energy of long-suppressed rage. He sent to court the alliance of Egypt and the Cretan league, to whom he represented himself as the champion of Greece against her tyrant. He tried to stir up revolts in Thrace and Macedonia. He arranged with Tigranes that an Armenian army should co-operate with him, leaving him the land it occupied, but carrying off the plunder. He gave the word, and a swarm of pirate ships swept the Mediterranean under his colours. He summoned an army of 250,000 foot, 40,000 horse, and 130 scythed chariots, a fleet of 300 decked vessels, and 100 other ships called 'Dicrota' with a double bank of oars. He formed and armed in Roman fashion a foreign contingent, in which many Romans and Italians enlisted; and he placed able Greek generals, Archelaus and Neoptolemus, over his troops. [Sidenote: Forces of Rome.] To meet this formidable array the Romans had a fleet off Byzantium, the army of Nicomedes, which was still between Sinope and Amastris, and three corps, each of 40,000 men, but composed for the most part of hastily organized Asiatics; one under Cassius between Bithynia and Galatia, another under Aquillius between Bithynia and Pontus, and a third under Oppius in Cappadocia. The war was decided almost in a single battle. [Sidenote: Victory of Mithridates over Nicomedes.] Neoptolemus and Archelaus routed the Bithynian army on the river Amnias, and captured the camp and military chest. It was a fierce and for some time a doubtful fight, and seems to have been decided by the scythed chariots, which spread terror in the Bithynian ranks. [Sidenote: Victory over Aquillius.] Nicomedes fled to Aquillius, who was defeated by Archelaus near Mount Scorobas, and fled with the king across the Sangarius to Pergamus, whence he attempted to reach Rhodes. Cassius retreated to Phrygia, and tried to discipline his raw levies. But, finding this impossible; he broke up the army and led the Roman troops with him to Apameia. The fleet in the Black Sea was surrendered by its commander.
[Sidenote: Mithridates' progress through Phrygia, Mysia and Asia.] Thus, triumphant by sea and land, Mithridates, after settling Bithynia, marched through Phrygia and Mysia into the Roman province Asia, and was hailed everywhere as a deliverer, for after his victories he had sent home all his Asiatic prisoners with presents. Then he sent messengers into Lycia and Pamphylia to seek the alliance of those countries. Oppius was in Laodicea, on the Lycus. The king offered the townsmen immunity if they surrendered him, and, when they did so, carried him about as a show. [Sidenote: Fate of Aquillius.] Aquillius was also given up by the Mytileneans and made to ride in chains on an ass, calling out who he was wherever he went. At Pergamus Mithridates slew him by pouring molten gold down his throat—a savage punishment, which, however, confirms the impression that it was Roman avarice which forced on the war. Magnesia on the Maeander, Ephesus, and Mitylene welcomed the king joyfully, and Stratoniceia, in Caria, was captured. He then attacked Magnesia near Mount Sipylus, prepared to invade Rhodes, and issued a hideous order for an exterminating massacre of every Roman and Italian in Asia on an appointed day. Punishments were proclaimed for anyone who should hide one of the proscribed or bury his body; rewards were promised for all who killed or denounced them. Slaves who slew their masters were to be freed. The murder of a creditor was to be taken as payment by a debtor of half his debt. [Massacre of Romans and Italians.] There were dreadful scenes on the fatal day—the thirtieth after the order was issued—in the Asiatic cities. In Pergamus the victims fled to the temple of Aesculapius, and were shot down as they clung to the statues. At Ephesus they were dragged out from the temple of Artemis and slain. At Adramyttium they swam out to sea, but were brought back and killed, and their children were drowned. At Cos alone was any mercy shown. There those who had taken refuge in the temple of Aesculapius were spared. The number of the slain was said to be 80,000 or even 120,000, which must have been, however, an incredible exaggeration. [Sidenote: Objects of the massacre.] By this fiendish crime Mithridates must, though he was mistaken, have felt that he cut himself off for ever from all reconciliation with Rome. But no doubt he acted on calculation. For not only did he get rid of men who might have recruited the Roman armies; not only did he gratify the long-hoarded hatred of the farmers and peasants of whom Roman publicans and Roman slave-masters had so long made a prey; not only did he oblige the debtors by wiping out their debts and even the very memory of them in their creditors' blood, but he might well count on putting his accomplices also beyond the pale of Roman mercy, and so linking them to his own fortunes. Moreover, vengeance seemed remote. For Sulla had just marched on Rome instead of to the east, and a civil war in Italy might make Mithridates permanently supreme in Asia. [Sidenote: Mithridates' settlement of his new acquisitions.] So he made Pergamus his capital, leaving Sinope to his son as vice-regent, while Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Bithynia were turned into satrapies. All arrears of taxes were remitted; and so wealthy had his spoils made him that exemption for five years to come was promised to the towns that had obeyed his orders.
[Sidenote: Reverses of Mithridates. He retires to Pergamus.] But the tide was already on the turn. In Paphlagonia there was still resistance. Archelaus was repulsed and wounded at Magnesia. Mithridates in person was forced to abandon the siege of Rhodes. His revenge was sated; he was tired of the hardships of a war which he meant his generals to conduct in future; and with a new wife he went back to Pergamus, to his rings, and his music, and debaucheries, at the very time that a shudder had gone through Italy at the tidings of the massacre, and when Sulla was on his way to avenge it.
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[Sidenote: Aristion at Athens.] A citizen of Athens, named Aristion, whose mother was an Egyptian slave, and who was the son or adopted son of one Athenion, had been sent by the Athenians as ambassador to Mithridates. He had been a schoolmaster and teacher of rhetoric, and professed the philosophy of Epicurus. He gained the ear of Mithridates, and sent home flaming accounts of the king's power, and of his intention of restoring the democracy at Athens. The Athenians sent some ships of war to bring him home from Euboea, with a present of a silver-footed litter; and in this, clothed in purple, and with a fine ring on his finger, which he had got probably from his friend Mithridates, he came back to Athens with much parade. [Sidenote: Revolt of Athens from Rome.] In a set speech he dilated on the king's splendid successes, and advised the people to declare themselves independent and elect him their general. They did so, and he very soon massacred his opponents and made himself despot. Thus Athens and the Piraeus passed into the hands of Mithridates. The spirit of disaffection to Rome spread rapidly. [Sidenote: Revolt of the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians.] When Archelaus appeared in Greece, the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians, with the exception of Thespiae, joined him, while the Pontic fleet seized Euboea and Demetrias, a town at the head of the gulf of Pagasae.
Sura was sent by the Roman governor of Macedonia to make head against the invaders. He won a naval battle and captured Sciathus, where all the spoils of the enemy were stored. [Sidenote: Conflicts between the Romans and the forces of Mithridates in Boeotia.] Then he marched into Boeotia, and, after a three days' engagement with the combined forces of Archelaus and Aristion, pushed Archelaus back to the coast. The war, perhaps, might have been ended here; but at this moment Lucullus came to announce the approach of Sulla, and to warn Sura that the war had been entrusted to him. So Sura retired to Macedonia. [Sidenote: Sulla lands in Epirus, 87 B.C., and marches on Athens.] Sulla had left Brundusium in 87, and, landing on the coast of Epirus, gathered what supplies he could from Aetolia and Thessaly, and marched straight for Athens. It was soon seen that the foundations of the empire of Mithridates were based on sand. The Boeotians at once submitted, including Thebes, which had joined the king. [Sidenote: Siege of the Piraeus and Athens.] Sulla then began two sieges, that of the Piraeus where Archelaus was, and that of Athens defended by Aristion. Archelaus had before shown himself an intrepid soldier, and he baffled all Sulla's efforts with equal ingenuity and courage. After an unsuccessful attempt to storm the walls, Sulla retired to Eleusis and Megara, thus keeping up his communications with Thebes and the Peloponnese, and set to work constructing catapults and other engines, and preparing an earthwork from which he meant to attack the wall with them. For these purposes he cut down the trees of the Academia and the Lyceum. He was kept informed of intended sallies by two slaves inside the town, who threw out leaden balls with words cut on them. But as fast as the earthwork rose Archelaus built towers on the walls opposite to it, and thence harassed the besiegers. [Sidenote: Battle at the Piraeus. Archelaus nearly taken.] He was also reinforced by Mithridates, and then came out and fought a battle which was for some time doubtful; but he was forced to retire at length with the loss of 2,000 men. He himself remained till the last. The gates were shut and he had to be drawn up by a rope over the wall.
[Sidenote: Sulla's difficulties.] The affairs of Sulla, however, were in no flourishing condition. He had come to Greece with only 30,000 men, with no fleet, and little money. He was forced to plunder the shrines of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. His messenger to Delphi came back saying that he had heard the sound of a lute in the temple, and dared not commit the sacrilege. But Sulla sent him back, saying that he was sure the sound was a note of welcome, and that the god meant him to have the treasure. He promised to pay it back some day, and he kept his word, for he confiscated half the land of Thebes and applied the proceeds to reimbursing the sacred funds. In his worst straits he was always ready with some such mockery. [Sidenote: Sulla sends Lucullus to Egypt.] Winter was now at hand, and Sulla despatched Lucullus to Egypt to get ships. The refusal of the King of Egypt shows what was now thought of the Roman power. Sulla then formed a camp at Eleusis and continued the siege, and so shook the great tower of Archelaus by a simultaneous discharge of twelve leaden balls from his catapults that it had to be drawn back. [Sidenote: Blockade of Athens.] By means of the two slaves he was also able to frustrate the attempts of Archelaus to throw supplies into Athens, which was now suffering from hunger, for Sulla had surrounded it with forts and turned the siege into a blockade. Mithridates now sent his son into Macedonia with an army, before which the small Roman force there had to retire. After this success the prince marched towards Athens, but died on the way. [Sidenote: Desperate defence of the Piraeus.] At the Piraeus scenes occurred which were afterwards repeated at the siege of Jerusalem. Archelaus undermined the earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the assailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to advance. [Sidenote: Sulla turns the siege into a blockade.] At last, wearied by this dogged resistance, Sulla turned the siege of the Piraeus also into a blockade, which meant simply that he hindered Archelaus from helping Athens, for he could not prevent the influx of supplies from the sea.
[Sidenote: Athens taken March 1, B.C. 86.] Athens meanwhile was in dreadful straits. Wheat was selling at nearly 3_l_. 10_s_. a gallon, and the inhabitants were feeding on old leather bottles, shoes, and the bodies of the dead. A deputation came out, but Sulla sent them back because they began an harangue on the deeds of their ancestors, put into their mouths, no doubt, by the rhetorician Aristion. Sulla told them they were the scum of nations, not descended from the old Athenians at all, and that instead of listening to their rhetoric he meant to punish their rebellion. On the night of March 1, 86 B.C., he broke into the town amid the blare of trumpets and the shouts of his troops. He told his men to give no quarter, and the blood, it was said, ran down through the gates into the suburbs. [Sidenote: Aristion slain.] Aristion fled to the Acropolis. Hunger forced him in the end to capitulate, and he was killed. Sulla meanwhile had forced on the siege of Piraeus still more vigorously. He got past the crescent wall, only to find other walls similarly constructed behind it; but he gradually drove Archelaus into Munychia, or the peninsular part of Piraeus, and as he had no ships he could do nothing more. [Sidenote: Archelaus sails from Piraeus, and joins Taxiles, sent by Mithridates with reinforcements.] Either before or after the capture of the Acropolis Archelaus sailed away, in obedience to a summons from Taxiles, a new general whom Mithridates had sent with an army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and ninety scythed chariots into Greece. With these forces and the troops previously sent with his master's son he formed a junction at Thermopylae, marched into Phocis down the valley of the Cephissus, attempted but failed to take Elateia, and came up with Sulla near Chaeroneia. [Sidenote: Sulla forms a junction with Hortensius.] Sulla had marched into Boeotia and joined Hortensius, who had a brought some troops from Thessaly. But he is said by Appian to have had not a third of the enemy's numbers, while Plutarch affirms that he had only 15,000 foot and 1,500 horse.
[Illustration: Map to illustrate the March of SULLA and ARCHELAUS before Chaeroneia.]
[Sidenote: Position of the two armies.] Sulla was on the west bank of the Cephissus, on an eminence named Philoboeotus, and Archelaus on the other side of the river not far off. Sulla's soldiers were alarmed by the numbers and splendour of the enemy, for the brass and steel of their armour 'kindled the air with an awful flame like that of lightning.' [Sidenote: Manoeuvres of Sulla and Archelaus.] Archelaus, marching down the valley of the Cephissus, tried to seize a strong position called the Acropolis of the Parapotamii, situated on the Assus, which joined the Cephissus to the south of both armies. But Sulla, who had wearied out his men by drudgery in dyke-making, and made them eager for a fight, crossed the Cephissus, seized the position first, and then, crossing the Assus, took up his position under Mount Edylium. Here he encamped opposite Archelaus, who, having also crossed the Assus, was now at a place called Assia, which was nearer Lake Copais. Thence Archelaus made an attempt on Chaeroneia; but Sulla was again beforehand with him, and garrisoned the place with one legion. South of Chaeroneia was a hill called Thurium. This Archelaus seized. Sulla then brought the rest of his troops across the Cephissus, to form a junction with the legion in Chaeroneia and dislodge the enemy from Thurium. He left Murena on the north of the Cephissus to keep the enemy in check at Assia. Archelaus, however, also brought his main army across the Cephissus after Sulla. Murena followed him, and Sulla drew up his army with his cavalry on each wing, himself commanding the right and Murena the left. The armies were now opposite each other, Sulla to the south, then Archelaus, then the Cephissus.
[Sidenote: Battle of Chaeroneia.] Sulla sent some troops round Thurium to the hills behind Chaeroneia, and in the enemy's rear. The enemy ran down in confusion from Thurium, where they were met by Murena with Sulla's left wing, and were either destroyed or driven back upon the centre of the line of Archelaus, which they threw into disorder. Sulla on the right advanced so quickly as to prevent the scythed chariots from getting any impetus, by which they were rendered useless, for the soldiers easily eluded them when driven at a slow pace, and as soon as they had passed killed the horses and drivers. Archelaus now extended his right wing in order to surround Murena. Hortensius, whom Sulla had posted on some hills to the left of his left wing on purpose to defeat this manoeuvre, immediately pressed forward to attack this body on its left flank. But Archelaus drove him back with some cavalry, and nearly surrounded Hortensius.
[Illustration: First position of the two armies at CHAERONEIA.][Illustration: Second position of the two armies at CHAERONEIA.]
Sulla hastened to his aid, and Archelaus, seeing him coming, instantly counter-marched and attacked Sulla's right in his absence, while Taxiles assailed Murena on the left. But Sulla hastened back, too, after leaving Hortensius to support Murena, and, when he appeared, the right wing drove back Archelaus to the Cephissus. Murena was equally triumphant on the left wing, and the barbarians fled pell-mell to the Cephissus, only 10,000 of them reaching Chalcis in Euboea. [Sidenote: Sulla's falsehood about the battle.] Appian says the Romans lost only thirteen men, while Plutarch, on the authority of Sulla's Memoirs, says that they lost four. This is absurd. Sulla seems to have told some startling lies in his Memoirs, perhaps to prove that he had been the favourite of fortune, which was a mania of his.
[Sidenote: Dorylaus reinforces Archelaus.] Mithridates, when he heard of the defeat of Archelaus, sent Dorylaus with 8,000 men to Euboea, where he joined the remnant of the army of Archelaus, and crossing to the mainland met Sulla at Orchomenus. Sulla was in Phthiotis, to confront L. Valerius Flaccus who had come to supersede him, but he returned as soon as he heard that Dorylaus had landed. Orchomenus is just north of the Cephissus where it runs into Lake Copais, and a stream called Melas, rising on the east of Orchomenus, joined the Cephissus near its mouth, the neighbouring ground being a marsh. [Sidenote: Battle of Orchomenus. Disposition of Archelaus' army.] Archelaus did not want to fight, but Dorylaus hinted at treachery and had, no doubt, been ordered by Mithridates to avenge Chaeroneia. Near Mount Tilphossium, however, to the south of Lake Copais, he was worsted by Sulla in a skirmish, and thinking better of the advice of Archelaus tried to prolong the war. Archelaus, indeed, seems to have commanded in the battle, for Mithridates was shrewd enough to know when he had a good general. He drew up his army in four lines, the scythed chariots in front, behind them the Macedonian phalanx, then his auxiliaries, including Italian deserters, and, lastly, his light-armed troops. On each flank he posted his cavalry. [Sidenote: Sulla's arrangements.] Sulla, who was weak in cavalry, dug two ditches guarded by forts, one on each flank, so as to keep off the enemy's horse. Then he drew up his infantry in three lines, leaving gaps in them for the light troops and cavalry to come through from the rear when needed. To the second line stakes were given, with orders to plant them so as to form a palisade; and the first line, when the chariots charged, retired behind the palisade, while the light troops advanced through the gaps and hurled missiles at the horses and drivers. The chariots turned and threw the phalanx into confusion, and when Archelaus ordered up his cavalry, Sulla sent round his to take them in the rear. At one time, however, the contest was doubtful, and the Romans wavered, till they were put to shame by their general, who, seizing a standard and advancing towards the foe, cried out, 'When those at home ask where it was you abandoned your leader, say, it was at Orchomenus.' This great victory, in which Sulla showed generalship of a high order, ended the first Mithridatic war. The date is not quite certain. Probably it happened in 86.
[Sidenote: Sulla winters in Thessaly.] After the battle Sulla wintered in Thessaly, where he built a fleet, being tired of waiting for Lucullus. [Sidenote: He confers with Archelaus at Delium.] At Delium he met Archelaus and each urged the other to turn traitor, Archelaus promising that Mithridates would aid Sulla against Cinna; Sulla advising Archelaus to dethrone Mithridates. It was a curious way of showing the respect which they entertained for each other's ability; but Sulla was too scornful of Asiatic aid, and Archelaus too loyal to listen to such suggestions. However, when Archelaus fell ill afterwards, Sulla was so attentive to him, besides giving him land in Euboea and styling him friend of the Roman people, that it was suspected that Archelaus had been playing into his hands all along. It was a most unlikely suspicion; for nothing was more natural than that now, when Sulla was making terms with Mithridates and going to meet Fimbria, he should wish to make Archelaus his friend. For after all he had resolved to forget the Asiatic massacre and not push Mithridates to desperation. [Sidenote: Terms offered by Sulla to Mithridates.] The terms agreed upon were these: Mithridates was to surrender Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Asia, and the islands, eighty ships of war, all prisoners and deserters; he was to give pay and provisions to Sulla's men, and provide a war indemnity of 3,000 talents (732,000_l_.); to restore to their homes the refugees from Macedonia, and those whom, as will be related hereafter, he had carried off from Chios; and to hand over more of his ships of war to such states as Rhodes in alliance with Rome. Mithridates was then to be recognised as the ally of Rome. He chafed at the terms, the proposal of which indeed brought out the long-headed intrepidity of Sulla's character in the strongest light. Walking, as it were, on the razor-edge of two precipices, he never faltered once. The Romans could not charge him with not having carried into effect the original purpose of the war—the restoration of Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes—nor could Mithridates fail in the end to listen to the voice of Archelaus. When he at first rejected the terms, Sulla advanced towards Asia, plundering some of the barbarous tribes on the frontiers of Macedonia, and reducing that province to order. But Mithridates did not hesitate long. [Sidenote: Tyranny and difficulties of Mithridates.] He, too, was in a difficult position. The inhabitants of Asia Minor soon found that in yielding to him they had exchanged whips for scorpions. He suspected that the defeat of Archelaus at Chaeroneia would excite rebellion, and he seized as many of the Galatian chiefs as he could, and slew them with their wives and children. The consequence was that the surviving chiefs expelled the man whom he had sent as satrap. He suspected the Chians also, and made them give up their arms and the children of their chief men as hostages. Then he made a requisition on them for 2,000 talents (488,000_l_.), and because they could not raise the money, or because the tyrant pretended that there was a deficiency, the citizens were shipped off to the east of the Black Sea, and the island was occupied by colonists. The man who had managed the affair of Chios was sent to play the same game at Ephesus. But the people were on their guard, slew him, and raised the standard of rebellion. Tralles, Hypaepa, Metropolis, Sardis, Smyrna, and other towns followed their example. Mithridates tried to buoy up his sinking cause, attracting debtors by the remission of debts, resident aliens by the gift of the citizenship of the towns which they inhabited, and slaves by the promise of freedom—devices of a desperate man. A plot was laid against his life which was betrayed, and in his fury he launched out into yet more savage excesses. He sent a set of men to collect depositions, and they slew indiscriminately those who were denounced, 1600, it is said, in all.
[Sidenote: Fimbria mutinies against and murders Flaccus.] These events must have occurred in the winter of 86-85 B.C., when Flaccus was on his march from the Adriatic coast through Macedonia and Thrace for Asia. Flaccus had quarrelled with his lieutenant Fimbria, and superseded him. The latter, when Flaccus had crossed from Byzantium to Chalcedon, induced the troops, who hated their general, to mutiny. Flaccus returned in haste; but, learning what had happened, fled back to Chalcedon and thence to Nicomedia. Here Fimbria, finding him hidden in a well, murdered him, and threw his head into the sea. [Sidenote: He defeats the son of Mithridates and pursues the king.] Then, attacking the king's son, he defeated him at the river Rhyndacus, and pursued the king himself to Pergamus and Pitane, where he would have taken him but that he crossed over to Mitylene, while Fimbria had no ships and was thus baulked of his prey. Another event had happened to aggravate his irritation. [Sidenote: Lucullus off the coast of Asia Minor. Overtures of Fimbria to him.] Lucullus, sent by Sulla to collect a fleet, had, as has been related (p. 153), failed in Egypt. But he had procured ships from Syria and Rhodes, induced Cos and Cnidus to revolt, and driven out the Pontic partisans from Chios and Colophon. He was now in the neighbourhood, when Mithridates was at Pitane. [Sidenote: Mithridates meets Sulla and thy come to terms.] But, he turned a deaf ear to Fimbria's request for aid, and after defeating Neoptolemus, the king's admiral, met Sulla in the Thracian Chersonese, and conveyed him across to Dardanus, in the Troad, where Mithridates came to meet him. Each had one feeling in common—dread lest the other should make terms with Fimbria; and the bargain was soon struck in spite of Sulla's soldiers, who were thus after all baulked of the long-looked-for Asiatic campaign and their desire to take revenge for the great massacre. But Sulla, as we have seen (p. 153), got some money to quiet them; and they were in his power in Asia almost as much as he had been in theirs at Rome. He at once led them against Fimbria, who was near Thyatira, in Lydia. [Sidenote: Fimbria's men desert to Sulla. Fimbria commits suicide.] He summoned that leader to hand over his army, and the soldiers began to desert to him. Fimbria tried to force them to swear obedience to him, and slew the first who refused. Then he sent a slave to assassinate Sulla; and the discovery of this attempt so maddened Sulla's soldiers that Fimbria dared not trust even Sulla's promised safe-conduct and slew himself. [Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] Sulla incorporated his troops with his own army, and proceeded to regulate the affairs of Asia. Those towns which had remained faithful to Rome or had sided with him were liberally rewarded. All slaves who refused to return to their masters were slain. The towns that resisted were punished and their walls destroyed. The ringleaders in the massacre were put to death. The taxpayers were forced to pay at once the previous five years' arrears and a fine of 20,000 talents (4,880,000_l_.), and Lucullus was left to collect it. In order to raise this sum the unhappy Asiatics were obliged to mortgage their public buildings to the Italian money-lenders; but Sulla got the whole of it, and scarcely was he gone when pirates, hounded on by Mithridates, came, like flocks of vultures, to devour what the eagles had left.