Decay of Military Discipline
With these elements of political convulsion was combined the rapidly spreading decay of decorous soldierly habits and of military discipline. The seeds, which were sown by the enrolment of the proletariate in the army, developed themselves with alarming rapidity during the demoralizing insurrectionary war, which compelled Rome to admit to the service every man capable of bearing arms without distinction, and which above all carried political partizanship directly into the headquarters and into the soldiers' tent. The effects soon appeared in the slackening of all the bonds of the military hierarchy. During the siege of Pompeii the commander of the Sullan besieging corps, the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus, was put to death with stones and bludgeons by his soldiers, who believed themselves betrayed by their general to the enemy; and Sulla the commander-in-chief contented himself with exhorting the troops to efface the memory of that occurrence by their brave conduct in presence of the enemy. The authors of that deed were the marines, from of old the least respectable of the troops. A division of legionaries raised chiefly from the city populace soon followed the example thus given. Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it laid hands on the consul Cato. By an accident he escaped death on this occasion; Titius was arrested, but was not punished. When Cato soon afterwards actually perished in a combat, his own officers, and particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were—whether justly or unjustly, cannot be ascertained—designated as the authors of his death.
Economic CrisisMurder of Asellio
To the political and military crisis thus beginning fell to be added the economic crisis—perhaps still more terrible—which set in upon the Roman capitalists in consequence of the Social war and the Asiatic troubles. The debtors, unable even to raise the interest due and yet inexorably pressed by their creditors, had on the one hand entreated from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to usury(21) and, according to the rule established in olden times, had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest paid to them contrary to the law. Asellio lent himself to bend the actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and put into shape in the usual way the desired actions for interest; whereupon the offended creditors assembled in the Forum under the leadership of the tribune of the people Lucius Cassius, and attacked and killed the praetor in front of the temple of Concord, just as in his priestly robes he was presenting a sacrifice—an outrage which was not even made a subject of investigation (665). On the other hand it was said in the circles of the debtors, that the suffering multitude could not be relieved otherwise than by "new account-books," that is, by legally cancelling the claims of all creditors against all debtors. Matters stood again exactly as they had stood during the strife of the orders; once more the capitalists in league with the prejudiced aristocracy made war against, and prosecuted, the oppressed multitude and the middle party which advised a modification of the rigour of the law; once more Rome stood on the verge of that abyss into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him. Only, since that time the simple civil and moral organization of a great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms of a capital of many nations, and by that demoralization in which the prince and the beggar meet; now all incongruities had come to be on a broader, more abrupt, and fearfully grander scale. When the Social war brought all the political and social elements fermenting among the citizens into collision with each other, it laid the foundation for a new resolution. An accident led to its outbreak.
The Sulpician LawsSulpicius Rufus
It was the tribune of the people Publius Sulpicius Rufus who in 666 proposed to the burgesses to declare that every senator, who owed more than 2000 -denarii- (82 pounds), should forfeit his seat in the senate; to grant to the burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts liberty to return home; to distribute the new burgesses among all the tribes, and likewise to allow the right of voting in all tribes to the freedmen. They were proposals which from the mouth of such a man were at least somewhat surprising. Publius Sulpicius Rufus (born in 630) owed his political importance not so much to his noble birth, his important connections, and his hereditary wealth, as to his remarkable oratorical talent, in which none of his contemporaries equalled him. His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering on theatrical display, the luxuriant copiousness of his flow of words arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers. As a partisan he was from the outset on the side of the senate, and his first public appearance (659) had been the impeachment of Norbanus who was mortally hated by the government party.(22) Among the conservatives he belonged to the section of Crassus and Drusus. We do not know what primarily gave occasion to his soliciting the tribuneship of the people for 666, and on its account renouncing his patrician nobility; but he seems to have been by no means rendered a revolutionist through the fact that he, like the whole middle party, had been persecuted as revolutionary by the conservatives, and to have by no means intended an overthrow of the constitution in the sense of Gaius Gracchus. It would rather seem that, as the only man of note belonging to the party of Crassus and Drusus who had come forth uninjured from the storm of the Varian prosecutions, he felt himself called on to complete the work of Drusus and finally to set aside the still subsisting disabilities of the new burgesses—for which purpose he needed the tribunate. Several acts of his even during his tribuneship are mentioned, which betray the very opposite of demagogic designs. For instance, he prevented by his veto one of his colleagues from cancelling through a decree of the people the sentences of jurymen issued under the Varian law; and when the late aedile Gaius Caesar, passing over the praetorship, unconstitutionally became a candidate for the consulship for 667, with the design, it was alleged, of getting the charge of the Asiatic war afterwards entrusted to him, Sulpicius opposed him more resolutely and sharply than any one else. Entirely in the spirit of Drusus, he thus demanded from himself as from others primarily and especially the maintenance of the constitution. But in fact he was as little able as was Drusus to reconcile things that were incompatible, and to carry out in strict form of law the change of the constitution which he had in view—a change judicious in itself, but never to be obtained from the great majority of the old burgesses by amicable means. His breach with the powerful family of the Julii—among whom in particular the consular Lucius Caesar, the brother of Gaius, was very influential in the senate— and withthesectionof the aristocracy adhering to it, beyond doubt materially cooperated and carried the irascible man through personal exasperation beyond his original design.
Tendency of These Laws
Yet the proposals brought in by him were of such a nature as to be by no means out of keeping with the personal character and the previous party-position of their author. The equalization of the new burgesses with the old was simply a partial resumption of the proposals drawn up by Drusus in favour of the Italians; and, like these, only carried out the requirements of a sound policy. The recall of those condemned by the Varian jurymen no doubt sacrificed the principle of the inviolability of such a sentence, in defence of which Sulpicius himself had just practically interposed; but it mainly benefited in the first instance the members of the proposer's own party, the moderate conservatives, and it may be very well conceived that so impetuous a man might when first coming forward decidedly combat such a measure and then, indignant at the resistance which he encountered, propose it himself. The measure against the insolvency of senators was doubtless called forth by the exposure of the economic condition of the ruling families—so deeply embarrassed notwithstanding all their outward splendour—on occasion of the last financial crisis. It was painful doubtless, but yet of itself conducive to the rightly understood interest of the aristocracy, if, as could not but be the effect of the Sulpician proposal, all individuals should withdraw from the senate who were unable speedily to meet their liabilities, and if the coterie-system, which found its main support in the insolvency of many senators and their consequent dependence on their wealthy colleagues, should be checked by the removal of the notoriously venal pack of the senators. At the same time, of course, we do not mean to deny that such a purification of the senate-house so abruptly and invidiously exposing the senate, as Rufus proposed, would certainly never have been proposed without his personal quarrels with the ruling coterie-heads. Lastly, the regulationin favour of the freedmen had undoubtedly for its primary object to make its proposer master of the street; but in itself it was neither unwarranted nor incompatible with the aristocratic constitution. Since the freedmen had begun to be drawn upon for military service, their demand for the right of voting was so far justified, as the right of voting and the obligation of service had always gone hand in hand. Moreover, looking to the nullity of the comitia, it was politically of very little moment whether one sewer more emptied itself into that slough. The difficulty which the oligarchy felt in governing with the comitia was lessened rather than increased by the unlimited admission of the freedmen, who were to a very great extent personally and financially dependent on the ruling families and, if rightly used, might quite furnish the government with a means of controlling the elections more thoroughly than before. This measure certainly, like every other political favour shown to the proletariate, ran counter to the tendencies of the aristocracy friendly to reform; but it was for Rufus hardly anything else than what the corn-law had been for Drusus—a means of drawing the proletariate over to his side and of breaking down with its aid the opposition against the truly beneficial reforms which he meditated. It was easy to foresee that this opposition would not be slight; that the narrow-minded aristocracy and the narrow-minded bourgeoisie would display the same stupid jealousy after the subduing of the insurrection as they had displayed before its outbreak; that the great majority of all parties would secretly or even openly characterize the partial concessions made at the moment of the most formidable danger as unseasonable compliances, and would passionately resist every attempt to extend them. The example of Drusus had shown what came of undertakingto carry conservative reforms solely in reliance on the majority of the senate; it was a course quite intelligible, that his friend who shared his views should attempt to carry out kindred designs in opposition to that majority and under the forms of demagogism. Rufus accordingly gave himself no trouble to gain the senate over to his views by the bait of the jury courts. He found a better support in the freedmen and above all in the armed retinue—consisting, according to the report of his opponents, of 3000 hired men and an "opposition-senate" of 600 young men from the better class—with which he appeared in the streets and in the Forum.
Resistance of the GovernmentRiotsPosition of Sulla
His proposals accordingly met with the most decided resistance from the majority of the senate, which first, to gain time, induced the consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus, both declared opponents of demagogism, to enjoin extraordinary religious observances, during which the popular assemblies were suspended. Sulpicius replied by a violent tumult, in which among other victims the young Quintus Pompeius, son of the one and son-in-law of the other consul, met his death and the lives of both consuls themselves were seriously threatened—Sulla is said even to have escaped only by Marius opening to him his house. They were obliged to yield; Sulla agreed to countermand the announced solemnities, and the Sulpician proposals now passed without further difficulty. But this was far from determining their fate. Though the aristocracy in the capital might own its defeat, there was now—for the first time since the commencement of the revolution—yet another power in Italy which could not be overlooked, viz. the two strong and victorious armies of the proconsul Strabo and the consul Sulla. The political position of Strabo might be ambiguous, but Sulla, although he had given way to open violence for the moment, was on the best terms with the majority of the senate; and not only so, but he had, immediately after countermanding the solemnities, departed for Campania to join his army. To terrify the unarmed consul by bludgeon-men or the defenceless capital by the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end: Sulpicius assumed that his opponent, now when he could, would requite violence with violence and return to the capital at the head of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue and his laws along with him. Perhaps he was mistaken. Sulla was just as eager for the war against Mithradates as he was probably averse to the political exhalations of the capital; considering his original spirit of indifference and his unrivalled political nonchalance, there is great probability that he by no means intended the coup d'etat which Sulpicius expected, and that, if he had been let alone, he would have embarked without delay with his troops for Asia so soon as he had captured Nola, with the siege of which he was still occupied.
Marius Nominated Commander-in-Chief in Sulla's Stead
But, be this as it might, Sulpicius, with a view to parry the presumed blow, conceived the scheme of taking the supreme command from Sulla; and for this purpose joined with Marius, whose name was still sufficiently popular to make a proposal to transfer to him the chief command in the Asiatic war appear plausible to the multitude, and whose military position and ability might prove a support in the event of a rupture with Sulla. Sulpicius probably did not overlook the danger involved in placing that old man—not less incapable than vengeful and ambitious—at the head of the Campanian army, and as little the scandalous irregularity of entrusting an extraordinary supreme command by decree of the people to a private man; but the very tried incapacity of Marius as a statesman gave a sort of guarantee that he would not be able seriously to endanger the constitution, and above all the personal position of Sulpicius, if he formed a correct estimate of Sulla's designs, was one of so imminent peril that such considerations could hardly be longer heeded. That the worn-out hero himself readily met the wishes of any one who would employ him as a -condottiere-, was a matter of course; his heart had now for many years longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and not less perhaps for an opportunity of once settling accounts thoroughly with the majority of the senate. Accordingly on the proposal of Sulpicius Gaius Marius was by decree of the people invested with extraordinary supreme, or as it was called proconsular, power, and obtained the command of the Campanian army and the superintendence of the war against Mithradates; and two tribunes of the people were despatched to the camp at Nola, to take over the army from Sulla.
Sulla's Recall
Sulla was not the man to yield to such a summons. If any one had a vocation to the chief command in the Asiatic war, it was Sulla. He had a few years before commanded with the greatest success in the same theatre of war; he had contributed more than any other man to the subjugation of the dangerous Italian insurrection; as consul of the year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with the command in it after the customary way and with the full consent of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to him by marriage. It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circumstances to an old military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings. Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such an order, nor dependent enough to need to do so. His army was— partly in consequence of the alterations of the military system which originated with Marius, partly from the moral laxity and the military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla—little more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader and indifferent to political affairs. Sulla himself was a hardened, cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler, formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily captured than Nola.
Sulla's March on Rome
On these views he acted. He assembled his soldiers—there were six legions, or about 35,000 men—and explained to them the summons that had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander- in-chief would undoubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood, but another formed of fresh troops. The superior officers, who still had more of the citizen than the soldier, kept aloof, and only one of them followed the general towards the capital; but the soldiers, who in accordance with earlier experiences(23) hoped to find in Asia an easy war and endless booty, were furious; in a moment the two tribunes that had come from Rome were torn in pieces, and from all sides the cry arose that the general should lead them to Rome. Without delay the consul started, and forming a junction with his like-minded colleague by the way, he arrived by quick marches—little troubling himself about the deputies who hastened from Rome to meet and attempted to detain him—beneath the walls of the capital. Suddenly the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; and then two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter. Many a worse quarrel, many an important feud had been brought to a settlement within those walls, without any need for a Roman army breaking the sacred peace of the city; that step was now taken, primarily for thesake of the miserable question whether this or that officer was called to command in the east.
Rome Occupied
The entering legions advanced as far as the height of the Esquiline; when the missiles and stones descending in showers from the roofs made the soldiers waver and they began to give way, Sulla himself brandished a blazing torch, and with firebrands and threats of setting the houses on fire the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market-place (not far from S. Maria Maggiore). There the force hastily collected by Marius and Sulpicius awaited them, and by its superior numbers repelled the first invading columns. But reinforcements came up from the gates; another division of the Sullans made preparations for turning the defenders by the street of the Subura; the latter were obliged to retire. At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens to throw themselves across the path of the legions. But he himself had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general. Even when the slaves were summoned to arm under the promise of freedom, not more than three of them appeared. Nothing remained for the leaders but to escape in all haste through the still unoccupied gates; after a few hours Sulla was absolute master of Rome. That night the watchfires of the legions blazed in the great market-place of the capital.
First Sullan RestorationDeath of SulpiciusFlight of Marius
The first military intervention in civil feuds had made it quite evident, not only that the political struggles had reached the point at which nothing save open and direct force proves decisive, but also that the power of the bludgeon was of no avail against the power of the sword. It was the conservative party which first drew the sword, and which accordingly in due time experienced the truth of the ominous words of the Gospel as to those who first have recourse to it. For the present it triumphed completely and might put the victory into formal shape at its pleasure. As a matter of course, the Sulpician laws were characterized as legally null. Their author and his most notable adherents had fled; they were, twelve in number, proscribed by the senate for arrest and execution as enemies of their country. Publius Sulpicius was accordingly seized at Laurentum and put to death; and the head of the tribune, sent to Sulla, was by his orders exposed in the Forum at the very rostra where he himself had stood but a few days before in the full vigour of youth and eloquence. The rest of the proscribed were pursued; the assassins were on the track of even the old Gaius Marius. Although the general might have clouded the memory of his glorious days by a succession of pitiful proceedings, now that the deliverer of his country was running for his life, he was once more the victor of Vercellae, and with breathless suspense all Italy listened to the incidents of his marvellous flight. At Ostia he had gone on board a transport with the view of sailing for Africa; but adverse winds and want of provisions compelled him to land at the Circeian promontory and to wander at random. With few attendants and without trusting himself under a roof, the grey-haired consular, often suffering from hunger, found his way on foot to the neighbourhood of the Roman colony of Minturnae at the mouth of the Garigliano. There the pursuing cavalry were seen in the distance; with great difficulty he reached the shore, and a trading— vessel lying there withdrew him from his pursuers; but the timid mariners soon put him ashore again and made off, while Marius stole along the beach. His pursuers found him in the salt-marsh of Minturnae sunk to the girdle in the mud and with his head concealed amidst a quantity of reeds, and delivered him to the civic authorities of Minturnae. He was placed in prison, and the town-executioner, a Cimbrian slave, was sent to put him to death; but the German trembled before the flashing eyes of his old conqueror and the axe fell from his hands, when the general with his powerful voice haughtily demanded whether he dared to kill Gaius Marius. When they learned this, the magistrates of Minturnae were ashamed that the deliverer of Rome should meet with greater reverence from slaves to whom he had brought bondage than from his fellow-citizens to whom he had brought freedom; they loosed his fetters, gave him a vessel and money for travelling expenses, and sent him to Aenaria (Ischia). The proscribed with the exception of Sulpicius gradually met in those waters; they landed at Eryx and at what was formerly Carthage, but the Roman magistrates both in Sicily and in Africa sent them away. So they escaped to Numidia, whose desert sand-dunes gave them a place of refuge for the winter. But the king Hiempsal II, whom they hoped to gain and who had seemed for a while willing to unite with them, had only done so to lull them into security, and now attempted to seize their persons. With great difficulty the fugitives escaped from his cavalry, and found a temporary refuge in the little island of Cercina (Kerkena) on the coast of Tunis. We know not whether Sulla thanked his fortunate star that he had been spared the odium of putting to death the victor of the Cimbrians; at any rate it does not appear that the magistrates of Minturnae were punished.
Legislation of Sulla
With a view to remove existing evils and to prevent future revolutions, Sulla suggested a series of new legislative enactments. For the hard-pressed debtors nothing seems to have been done, except that the rules as to the maximum of interest were enforced;(24) directions moreover were given for the sending out of a number of colonies. The senate which had been greatly thinned by the battles and prosecutions of the Social war was filled up by the admission of 300 new senators, who were naturally selected in the interest of the Optimates. Lastly, material changes were adopted in respect to the mode of election and the initiative of legislation. The old Servian arrangement for voting in the centuriate comitia, under which the first class, with an estate of 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds) or upwards, alone possessed almost half of the votes, again took the place of the arrangements introduced in 513 to mitigate the preponderance of the first class.(25) Practically there was thus introduced for the election of consuls, praetors, and censors, a census which really excluded the non-wealthy from exercising the suffrage. The legislative initiative in the case of the tribunes of the people was restricted by the rule, that every proposal had henceforth to be submitted by them in the first instance to the senate and could only come before the people in the event of the senate approving it.
These enactments which were called forth by the Sulpician attempt at revolution from the man who then came forward as the shield and sword of the constitutional party—the consul Sulla—bear an altogether peculiar character. Sulla ventured, without consulting the burgesses or jurymen, to pronounce sentence of death on twelve of the most distinguished men, including magistrates actually in office and the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these proscriptions; a violation of the venerable and sacred laws of appeal, which met with severe censure even from very conservative men, such as Quintus Scaevola. He ventured to overthrow an arrangement as to the elections which had subsisted for a century and a half, and to re-establish the electoral census which had been long obsolete and proscribed. He ventured practically to withdraw the right of legislation from its two primitive factors, the magistrates and the comitia, and to transfer it to a board which had at no time possessed formally any other privilege in this respect than that of being asked for its advice.(26) Hardly had any democrat ever exercised justice in forms so tyrannical, or disturbed and remodelled the foundations of the constitution with so reckless an audacity, as this conservative reformer. But if we look at the substance instead of the form, we reach very different results. Revolutions have nowhere ended, and least of all in Rome, without demanding a certain number of victims, who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone for the fault of being vanquished as though it were a crime. Any one who recalls the succession of prosecutions carried on by the victorious party after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus(27) will be inclined to yield to the victor of the Esquiline market the praise of candour and comparative moderation, in so far as, first he without ceremony accepted as war what was really such and proscribed the men who were defeated as enemies beyond the pale of the law, and, secondly, he limited as far as possible the number of victims and allowed at least no offensive outbreak of fury against inferior persons. A similar moderation appears in the political arrangements. The innovation as respects legislation—the most important and apparently the most comprehensive—in fact only brought the letter of the constitution into harmony with its spirit. The Roman legislation, under which any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any measure at pleasure and bring it to the vote without debate, had from the first been, irrational and had become daily more so with the growing nullity of the comitia; it was only tolerated, because in practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or religious veto.(28) The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers; andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow the state in due form of law. What was under such circumstances more natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect had been hitherto given by a circuitous process? Something similar may be said of the renewal of the electoral census. The earlier constitution was throughout based on it; even the reform of 513 had merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth. But since that year there had occurred an immense financial revolution, which might well justify a raising of the electoral census. The new timocracy thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful to its spirit, while it at the same time in the mildest possible form attempted at least to check the disgraceful purchase of votes with all the evils therewith connected. Lastly, the regulations in favour of debtors and the resumption of the schemes of colonization gave express proof that Sulla, although not disposed to approve the impetuous proposals of Sulpicius, was yet, like Sulpicius and Drusus and all the more far-seeing aristocrats in general, favourable to material reforms in themselves; as to which we may not overlook the circumstance, that he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own free will. If we combine with such considerations the fact, that Sulla allowed the principal foundations of the Gracchan constitution to stand and disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the largesses of grain, we shall find warrant for the opinion that the Sullan arrangement of 666 substantially adhered to the status quo subsisting since the fall of Gaius Gracchus; he merely, on the one hand, altered as the times required the traditional rules that primarily threatened danger to the existing government, and, on the other hand, sought to remedy according to his power the existing social evils, so far as either could be done without touching ills that lay deeper. Emphatic contempt for constitutional formalism in connection with a vivid appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrangements, clear perceptions, and praiseworthy intentions mark this legislation throughout. But it bears also a certain frivolous and superficial character; it needed in particular a great amount of good nature to believe that the fixing a maximum of interest would remedy the confused relations of credit, and that the right of previous deliberation on the part of the senate would prove more capable of resisting future demagogism than the right of veto and religion had previously been.
New ComplicationsCinnaStraboSulla Embarks for Asia
In reality new clouds very soon began to overcast the clear sky of the conservatives. The relations of Asia assumed daily a more threatening character. The state had already suffered the utmost injury through the delay which the Sulpician revolution had occasioned in the departure of the army for Asia; the embarkation could on no account be longer postponed. Meanwhile Sulla hoped to leave behind him guarantees against a new assault on the oligarchy in Italy, partly in the consuls who would be elected under the new electoral arrangement, partly and especially in the armies employed in suppressing the remains of the Italian insurrection. In the consular comitia, however, the choice did not fall on the candidates set up by Sulla, but Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who belonged to the most determined opposition, was associated with Gnaeus Octavius, a man certainly of strictly Optimate views. It may be presumed that it was chiefly the capitalist party, which by this choice retaliated on the author of the law as to interest. Sulla accepted the unpleasant election with the declaration that he was glad to see the burgesses making use of their constitutional liberty of choice, and contented himself with exacting from both consuls an oath that they would faithfully observe the existing constitution. Of the armies, the one on which the matter chiefly depended was that of the north, as the greater part of the Campanian army was destined to depart for Asia. Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and procured the recall of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a manner as to spare as far as possible his feelings—the more so, because the latter belonged to the equestrian party and his passive attitude during the Sulpician troubles had occasioned no small anxiety to the aristocracy. Rufus arrived at the army and took the chief command in Strabo's stead; but a few days afterwards he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo returned to the command which he had hardly abdicated. He was regarded as the instigator of the murder; it is certain that he was a man from whom such a deed might be expected, that he reaped the fruits of the crime, and that he punished the well-known originators of it only with words. The removal of Rufus and the commandership of Strabo formed a new and serious danger for Sulla; yet he did nothing to deprive the latter of his command. Soon afterwards, when his consulship expired, he found himself on the one hand urged by his successor Cinna to depart at length for Asia where his presence was certainly urgently needed, and on the other hand cited by one of the new tribunes before the bar of the people; it was clear to the dullest eye, that a new attack on him and his party was in preparation, and that his opponents wished his removal. Sulla had no alternative save either to push the matter to a breach with Cinna and perhaps with Strabo and once more to march on Rome, or to leave Italian affairs to take their course and to remove to another continent. Sulla decided—whether more from patriotism or more from indifference, will never be ascertained—for the latter alternative; handed over the corps left behind in Samnium to the trustworthy and experienced soldier, Quintus Metellus Pius, who was invested in Sulla's stead with the proconsular commandership-in-chief over Lower Italy; gave the conduct of the siege of Nola to the propraetor Appius Claudius; and in the beginning of 667 embarked with his legions for the Hellenic East.
The East and King Mithradates
State of the East
The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of provincial matters generally; and that most of all in the case of the Asiatic lands, whose remote and unwarlike nations did not thrust themselves so directly on the attention of the government as Africa, Spain, and its Transalpine neighbours. After the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of the revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs—with the exception of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652,(1) to which the Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and fleet in the eastern waters. It was not till the downfall of Marius in 654 had in some measure consolidated the government of the restoration, that the Roman authorities began anew to bestow some attention on the events in the east
Cyrene Romans
In many respects matters still stood as they had done thirty years ago. The kingdom of Egypt with its two appendages of Cyrene and Cyprus was broken up, partly de jure, partly de facto, on the death of Euergetes II (637). Cyrene went to his natural son, Ptolemaeus Apion, and was for ever separated from Egypt. The sovereignty of the latter formed a subject of contention between the widow of the last king Cleopatra (665), and his two sons Soter II Lathyrus (673) and Alexander I (666); which gave occasion to Cyprus also to separate itself for a considerable period from Egypt. The Romans did not interfere in these complications; in fact, when the Cyrenaean kingdom fell to them in 658 by the testament of the childless king Apion, while not directly rejecting the acquisition, they left the country in substance to itself by declaring the Greek towns of the kingdom, Cyrene, Ptolemais, and Berenice, free cities and even handing over to them the use of the royal domains. The supervision of the governor of Africa over this territory was from its remoteness merely nominal, far more so than that of the governor of Macedonia over the Hellenic free cities. The consequences of this measure—which beyond doubt originated not in Philhellenism, but simply in the weakness and negligence of the Roman government— were substantially similar to those which had occurred under the like circumstances in Hellas; civil wars and usurpations so rent the land that, when a Roman officer of rank accidentally made his appearance there in 668, the inhabitants urgently besought him to regulate their affairs and to establish a permanent government among them.
In Syria also during the interval there had not been much change, and still less any improvement. During the twenty years' war of succession between the two half-brothers Antiochus Grypus (658) and Antiochus of Cyzicus(659), which after their death was inherited by their sons, the kingdom which was the object of contention became almost an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the Arab sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews, and the magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more to say than the wearers of the diadem. Meanwhile the Romans established themselves in western Cilicia, and the important Mesopotamia passed over definitively to the Parthians.
The Parthian StateArmenia
The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a dangerous crisis about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in consequence of the inroads of Turanian tribes. The ninth Arsacid, Mithradates II or the Great (630?-667?), had recovered for the state its position of ascendency in the interior of Asia, repulsed the Scythians, and advanced the frontier of the kingdom towards Syria and Armenia; but towards the end of his life new troubles disturbed his reign; and, while the grandees of the kingdom including his own brother Orodes rebelled against the king and at length that brother overthrew him and had put him to death, the hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power. This country, which since its declaration of independence(2) had been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-western or Sophene, the kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one kingdom by the Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660); and this doubling of his power on the one hand, and the weakness of the Parthian rule on the other, enabled the new king of all Armenia not only to free himself from dependence on the Parthians and to recover the provinces formerly ceded to them, but even to bring to Armenia the titular supremacy of Asia, as it had passed from the Achaemenids to the Seleucids and from the Seleucids to the Arsacids.
Asia Minor
Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which had been made under Roman influence after the dissolution of the kingdom of Attalus,(3) still subsisted in the main unchanged. In the condition of the dependent states—the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus, the principalities of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the numerous city-leagues and free towns—no outward change was at first discernible. But, intrinsically, the character of the Roman rule had certainly undergone everywhere a material alteration. Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution—in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of the revenue added to their other avocations there—the Roman rule, barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for the Roman -decumanus-, and every child of free parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers. It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible passive endurance; but it was not patience and reflection that made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental lack of initiative; and in these peaceful lands, amidst these effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen, if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the signal for revolt.
Mithradates Eupator
There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI surnamed Eupator (born about 624, 691) who traced back his lineage on the father's side in the sixteenth generation to king Darius the son of Hystaspes and in the eighth to Mithradates I the founder of the Pontic kingdom, and was on the mother's side descended from the Alexandrids and the Seleucids. After the early death of his father Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope, he had received the title of king about 634, when a boy of eleven years of age; but the diadem brought to him only trouble and danger. His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to take a part in the government by his father's will, conspired against the boy-king's life. It is said that, in order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer, and during seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the homeless life of a hunter. Thus the boy grew into a powerful man. Although our accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is generated in the east with the rapidity of lightning, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samsons and Rustems. These traits, however, belong to the character, just as the crown of clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain-peaks; the outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more coloured and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered. The armour, which fitted the gigantic frame of king Mithradates, excited the wonder of the Asiatics and still more that of the Italians. As a runner he overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wild steed, and was able by changing horses to accomplish 120 miles in a day; as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in competition many a prize—it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport to carry off victory from the king. In hunting on horseback, he hit the game at full gallop and never missed his aim. He challenged competition at table also—he arranged banqueting matches and carried off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and the hardest drinker—and not less so in the pleasures of the harem, as was shown among other things by the licentious letters of his Greek mistresses, which were found among his papers. His intellectual wants he satisfied by the wildest superstition—the interpretation of dreams and the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king's hours— and by a rude adoption of Hellenic civilization. He was fond of Greek art and music; that is to say, he collected precious articles, rich furniture, old Persian and Greek objects of luxury—his cabinet of rings was famous—he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and poets in his train, and proposed prizes at his court-festivals not only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest jester and the best singer. Such was the man; the sultan corresponded. In the east, where the relation between the ruler and the ruled bears the character of natural rather than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both respects Mithradates has hardly been surpassed. By his orders there died or pined in perpetual captivity for real or alleged treason his mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons and as many of his daughters. Still more revolting perhaps is the fact, that among his secret papers were found sentences of death, drawn up beforehand, against several of his most confidential servants. In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that he afterwards, for the mere purpose of withdrawing from his enemies the trophies of victory, caused his two Greek wives, his sister and his whole harem to be put to death, and merely left to the women the choice of the mode of dying. He prosecuted the experimental study of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to look for treason and assassination at the hands of everybody and especially of his nearest relatives, and he had early learned to practise them against everybody and most of all against those nearest to him; of which the necessary consequence—attested by all his history—was, that all his undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted. At the same time we doubtless meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice: when he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who had become involved in the crime simply from their personal relations with the leading culprit; but such fits of equity are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant. What really distinguishes Mithradates amidst the multitude of similar sultans, is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine morning from his palace and remained unheard of for months, so that he was given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered incognito through all western Asia and reconnoitred everywhere the country and the people. In like manner he was not only in general a man of fluent speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two nations over which he ruled in its own language without needing an interpreter—a trait significant of the versatile ruler of the many-tongued east. His whole activity as a ruler bears the same character. So far as we know (for our authorities are unfortunately altogether silent as to his internal administration) his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assembling armies—which were usually, in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king in person, but by some Greek -condottiere—-in efforts to add new satrapies to the old. Of higher elements—desire to advance civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special gifts of genius—there are found, in our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture, which sat on him not much better than the Roman armour sat on his Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel, perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him and his unshaken courage in resistance look frequently like talent, sometimes even like genius. Granting that during the death-struggle of the republic it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complication of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it remains nevertheless true that before the Parthian wars he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the east, and that he defended himself against them as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter. Still we are not entitled, in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more than the resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature. But, whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The Mithradatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political opposition offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper grounds of antagonism—the national reaction of the Asiatics against the Occidentals. The empire of Mithradates was, like himself, Oriental; polygamy and the system of the harem prevailed at court and generally among persons of rank; the religion of the inhabitants of the country as well as the official religion of the court was pre-eminently the old national worship; the Hellenism there was little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigranids and the Arsacids of the Parthian empire. The Greeks of Asia Minor might imagine for a brief moment that they had found in this king a support for their political dreams; his battles were really fought for matters very different from those which were decided on the fields of Magnesia and Pydna. They formed—after a long truce—a new passage in the huge duel between the west and the east, which has been transmitted from the conflicts at Marathon to the present generation and will perhaps reckon its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past.
The Nationalities of Asia Minor
Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic character of the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, it is difficult definitely to specify the national element preponderating in it, nor will research perhaps ever succeed in getting beyondbgeneralities or in attaining clear views on this point. In the whole circle of ancient civilization there is no region where the stocks subsisting side by side or crossing each other were so numerous, so heterogeneous, so variously from the remotest times intermingled, and where in consequence the relations of the nationalities were less clear than in Asia Minor. The Semitic population continued in an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and to it the original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions of Caria and Lydia seems also to have belonged, while the north- western point was occupied by the Bithynians, who were akin to the Thracians in Europe. The interior and the north coast, on the other hand, were filled chiefly by Indo-Germanic peoples most nearly cognate to the Iranian. In the case of the Armenian and Phrygian languages(4) it is ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian it is highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the Zend; and the statement made as to the Mysians, that among them the Lydian and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria. As to the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the native language and writing that are in this particular instance extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather than the Semites. How all this confused mass of peoples was overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well as intellectual ascendency of the Greek nation, has been set forth in outline already.
Pontus
In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted—especially the important commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the empire—the country was still in a very primitive condition. Not that it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also comparatively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these little royal forts. We do not find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated as he was,—in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious, reaction against Hellenism,—this is easily conceivable.
Acquisitions of Territory by MithradatesColchisNorthern Shores of the Black Sea
He appears more actively employed—likewise quite in the Oriental style—in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of it. On the eastern coast of the Black Sea—which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more general knowledge by Mithradates—the region of Colchis on the Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into a satrapy of Pontus. Of still greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions—more especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts for a period of twenty-two months or longer—little adapted for agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present day.(6) The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses. Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword, lance, and bow—the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. The Scythians originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes advancing from east to west,—Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges,—who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction, particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester. Between the two there intruded themselves—probably as offsets of the great Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched the Black Sea—the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the Danube. A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere formed; every tribe lived by itself under its princes and elders.
Hellenism in That Quarter
In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the Hellenic settlements, which at the time of the mighty impetus given to Greek commerce had been founded chiefly by the efforts of Miletus on these coasts, partly as trading-marts, partly as stations for prosecuting important fisheries and even for agriculture, for which, as we have already said, the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present day. For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like the Phoenicians in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native rulers. The most important of these settlements were the free city of Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), built on the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric peninsula (Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity, under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its good constitution and the public spirit of its citizens; and Panticapaeum (Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula on the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, governed since the year 457 by hereditary burgomasters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus, the Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae. The culture of corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly raised the city to prosperity. Its territory still in the time of Mithradates embraced the lesser eastern division of the Crimea including the town of Theodosia, and on the opposite Asiatic continent the town of Phanagoria and the district of Sindica. In better times the lords of Panticapaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east coast of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panticapaeum was no longer what it had been. Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt more deeply than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a leading power—duties which certainly were specially brought home to the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain. After the downfall of the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to themselves. The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of interest as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their position with reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates. The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to buy off minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small. The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the temple-jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging without in front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers were dragged away en masse, and, what was worst of all, the weaker of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts, to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants already contemplated its entire surrender.
Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom
Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into the valleys of the Kuban and Terek and his fleet at the same time appeared in the Crimean waters. No wonder that here too, as had already been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere received the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded the half-Hellene and his Cappadocians armed in Greek fashion as their deliverers. What Rome had here neglected, became apparent. The demands on the rulers of Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons; the former were glad to surrender their hereditary lordship, and the latter their long-preserved freedom, in order to save their last possession, their Hellenism. It was not in vain. Mithradates' brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes. Neoptolemus defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly in winter on the ice; Chersonesus was delivered, the strongholds of the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was secured by judiciously constructed fortresses. Diophantus marched against the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the Roxolani (between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward to the aid of the Taurians; 50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms penetrated as far as the Dnieper.(7) Thus Mithradates acquired here a second kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, like the latter, mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns. It was called the kingdom of the Bosporus; it embraced the modern Crimea with the opposite Asiatic promontory, and annually furnished to the royal chests and magazines 200 talents (48,000 pounds) and 270,000 bushels of grain. The tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in great part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with, the Pontic king and, if they furnished him with no other aid, afforded at any rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting his armies.
Lesser ArmeniaAlliance with Tigranes
While thus the most important successes were gained towards the north, the king at the same time extended his dominions towards the east and the west. The Lesser Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a dependent principality into an integral part of the Pontic kingdom; but still more important was the close connection which he formed with the king of the Greater Armenia. He not only gave his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to Tigranes, but it was mainly through his support that Tigranes shook off the yoke of the Arsacids and took their place in Asia. An agreement seems to have been made between the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support; and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates who brought about this agreement with a view to cover his rear and to secure a powerful ally.
Paphlagonia and Cappadocia Acquired
Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards the interior of Paphlagonia—the coast had for long belonged to the Pontic empire— and towards Cappadocia.(8) The former was claimed on the part of Pontus as having been bequeathed by the testament of the last of the Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes: against this, however, legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land itself protested. As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had not forgotten that this country and Cappadocia on the sea had been formerly united, and continually cherished ideas of reunion. Paphlagonia was occupied by Mithradates in concert with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he shared the land. When the senate raised objections to this course, Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes equipped one of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and under this title retained the country to himself. The policy of the allies adopted still worse expedients in Cappadocia. King Ariarathes VI was killed by Gordius, it was said by the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes' brother-in-law Mithradates Eupator: his young son Ariarathes knew no means of meeting the encroachments of the king of Bithynia except the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for which the latter then suggested to him that he should allow the murderer of his father, who had taken flight, to return to Cappadocia. This led to a rupture and to war; but when the two armies confronted each other ready for battle, the uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand. Gordius, the murderer of the father, then undertook the government by the directions of Mithradates; and although the indignant population rose against him and called the younger son of the last king to the throne, the latter was unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior forces of Mithradates. The speedy death of the youth placed by the people on the throne gave to the Pontic king the greater liberty of action, because with that youth the Cappadocian royal house became extinct. A pseudo-Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent, just as had been done in Paphlagonia; under whose name Gordius administered the kingdom as lieutenant of Mithradates.
Empire of Mithradates
Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had been, Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and the southern shores of the Black Sea and far into the interior of Asia Minor. The resources of the king for war by land and by sea seemed immeasurable. His recruiting field stretched from the mouth of the Danube to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians, Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern Georgia) crowded under his banners; above all he recruited his war-hosts from the brave Bastarnae. For his fleet the satrapy of Colchis supplied him with the most excellent timber, which was floated down from the Caucasus, besides flax, hemp, pitch, and wax; pilots and officers were hired in Phoenicia and Syria. The king, it was said, had marched into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse, 80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this war all his resources. In the absence of any Roman or other naval power worth mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with Sinope and the ports of the Crimea as its rallying points, had exclusive command of the Black Sea.
The Romans and MithradatesIntervention of the Senate
That the Roman senate asserted its general policy—of keeping down the states more or less dependent on it—also in dealing with that of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on occasion of the succession to the throne after the sudden death of Mithradates V. From the boy in minority who followed him there was taken away Great Phrygia, which had been conferred on his father for his taking part in the war against Aristonicus or rather for his good money,(9) and this region was added to the territory immediately subject to Rome.(10) But, after this boy had at length attained majority, the same senate showed utter passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and towards the formation of this imposing power, the development of which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years. It was passive, while one of its dependent states became developed into a great military power, having at command more than a hundred thousand armed men; while the ruler of that state entered into the closest connection with the new great-king of the east, who was placed partly by his aid at the head of the states in the interior of Asia; while he annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities under pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the ill-informed and far-distant protecting power; while, in fine, he even established himself in Europe and ruled as king over the Tauric peninsula, and as lord-protector almost to the Macedono-Thracian frontier. These circumstances indeed formed the subject of discussion in the senate; but when the illustrious corporation consoled itself in the affair of the Paphlagonian succession with the fact that Nicomedes appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was evidently not so much deceived as grateful for any pretext which spared it from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints became daily more numerous and more urgent. The princes of the Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea, turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic war,(11) and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now. The scale was at last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia— who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender excluded his own—would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to intervention. The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate the Scythian princes—so far were they driven out of the track of right policy by their negligent style of government, that instead of supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their countrymen. Paphlagonia was declared independent, and the pseudo- Pylaemenes of Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country. In like manner the pseudo-Ariarathes of Mithradates was to retire from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country refused the freedom proffered to it, a king was once more to be appointed by free popular election.
Sulla Sent to Cappadocia
The decrees sounded energetic enough; only it was an error, that instead of sending an army they directed the governor of Cilicia, Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there against the pirates and robbers, to intervene in Cappadocia. Fortunately the remembrance of the former energy of the Romans defended their interests in the east better than their present government did, and the energy and dexterity of the governor supplied what the senate lacked in both respects. Mithradates kept back and contented himself with inducing Tigranes the great-king of Armenia, who held a more free position with reference to the Romans than he did, to send troops to Cappadocia. Sulla quickly collected his forces and the contingents of the Asiatic allies, crossed the Taurus, and drove the governor Gordius along with his Armenian auxiliaries out of Cappadocia. This proved effectual. Mithradates yielded on all points; Gordius had to assume the blame of the Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariarathes disappeared; the election of king, which the Pontic faction had vainly attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell on the respected Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.
First Contact between the Romans and the Parthians
When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in the region of the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman standards were then first mirrored, the Romans came for the first time into contact with the Parthians, who in consequence of the variance between them and Tigranes had occasion to make approaches to the Romans. On both sides there seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in this first contact between the two great powers of the east and the west, that neither should renounce its claims to the sovereignty of the world; but Sulla, bolder than the Parthian envoy, assumed and maintained in the conference the place of honour between the king of Cappadocia and the Parthian ambassador. Sulla's fame was more increased by this greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his victories in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy afterwards forfeited his life to his masters resentment. But for the moment this contact had no further result. Nicomedes in reliance on the favour of the Romans omitted to evacuate Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted by the senate against Mithradates were carried further into effect, the reinstatement of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by him; the earlier status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).
New Aggressions of Mithradates
So it was alleged; but in fact there was little trace of any real return of the former order of things. Scarce had Sulla left Asia, when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell upon Ariobarzanes the new king of Cappadocia, expelled him, and reinstated in his stead the Pontic pretender Ariarathes. In Bithynia, where after the death of the old king Nicomedes II (about 663) his son Nicomedes III Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the Roman senate as legitimate king, his younger brother Socrates came forward as pretender to the crown and possessed himself of the sovereignty. It was clear that the real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian troubles was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from taking any open part. Every one knew that Tigranes only acted at his beck; but Socrates also had marched into Bithynia with Pontic troops, and the legitimate king's life was threatened by the assassins of Mithradates. In the Crimea even and the neighbouring countries the Pontic king had no thought of receding, but on the contrary carried his arms farther and farther.
Aquillius Sent to Asia
The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in person, despatched to Asia Minor in support of Lucius Cassius who was governor there the consular Manius Aquillius— an officer tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars—not, however, as general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador, and directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in particular to lend armed assistance in case of need. The result was as it had been two years before. The Roman officer accomplished the commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps which the governor of the province of Asia had at his disposal, and of the levy of the Phrygians and Galatians; king Nicomedes and king Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones; Mithradates under various pretexts evaded the summons to furnish contingents, but gave to the Romans no open resistance; on the contrary the Bithynian pretender Socrates was even put to death by his orders (664).
The State of Things Intermediate between War and Peace
It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully convinced that he could do nothing against the Romans in open conflict, and was therefore firmly resolved not to allow matters to come to an open rupture and war with them. Had he not been so resolved, there was no more favourable opportunity for beginning the struggle than the present: just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia and Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of its power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome; yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to pass without profiting by the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor. This strange combination of a policy of peace at any price with a policy of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply a fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class of genuine statesmen; he knew neither how to prepare for conflict like king Philip nor how to submit like king Attalus, but in the true style of a sultan was perpetually fluctuating between a greedy desire of conquest and the sense of his own weakness. But even in this point of view his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years' experience with the Roman policy of that day. He knew very well that the Roman government were far from desirous of war; that they in fact, looking to the serious danger which threatened their rule from any general of reputation, and with the fresh remembrance of the Cimbrian war and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he did himself. He acted accordingly. He was not afraid to demean himself in a way which would have given to any energetic government not fettered by selfish considerations manifold ground and occasion for declaring war; but he carefully avoided any open rupture which would have placed the senate under the necessity of declaring it. As soon as men appeared to be in earnest he drew back, before Sulla as well as before Aquillius; he hoped, doubtless, that he would not always be confronted by energetic generals, that he too would, as well as Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned that this hope was not without reason; although the very example of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption of a Roman army with the conquest of the Roman people.