PART THREE
9
Rome and the East between Aristonicus and Mithridates: The Events
Now that we have surveyed various aspects of Rome's hegemonial presence in the East between the assignment of Macedonia provincia in 148 and the Mithridatic War, we can pick up the diachronic thread which we left off in the later 120s. Unfortunately, our information about the events between the wars with Aristonicus and Mithridates is scattered and highly fragmentary; but I hope that by bringing together the material for major Roman diplomatic and military activities on both the Asian and the European continents it will be possible to gain a sense of the historical development of the Roman imperium in the East in this period of roughly a generation, and to supplement the picture of its character sketched thus far.
The Balkan Frontier
The death of the praetor Sex. Pompeius (119) in battle against the Scordisci was,[1] it shortly became evident, a harbinger of severe difficulties on the northern frontier of Macedonia. Although no military activity is recorded for Pompeius's successor, Cn. Cornelius Sisenna (pr. 119; known to us only for his part in the dispute between the Isthmian-Nemean and Athenian Dionysiac artists), or for his immediate successors,[2] in 114 for the first time since 168 a consul, C. Porcius Cato, was assigned Macedonia provincia and sent against the Scordisci—who, however, inflicted a heavy
defeat. The Senate then sent three further consuls in sequence against the Scordisci: after C. Caecilius Metellus Caprarius (cos. 113) and M. Livius Drusus (cos. 112) came M. Minucius Rufus (cos. 110), who stayed in the province into 107 or 106.[3] Although Metellus, Livius, and Minucius were all able to celebrate triumphs, the coincidence of the emergence of the Cimbric threat in 113 and the beginning of war with Jugurtha in 111 show that the consuls were not merely triumph-hunting but that the Senate regarded an extraordinary military effort in Macedonia as a stark necessity, of at least as great importance as shoring up the troubles in the West. While Metellus and Drusus appear to have concentrated on the Scordisci, whose natural invasion route was down the Axius River from the central Danube into northwest and central Macedonia,[4] Minucius Rufus claimed to have defeated the Bessi "and the rest of the Thracians" as well as the Scordisci.[5] However, report of a major winter campaign by the Hebrus[6] would seem to suggest that, despite the presence of consuls and consular armies in Macedonia between 114 and 107, the region firmly controlled by Rome had not grown eastward appreciably. Probably the Scordiscan incursions in northwest and central Macedonia had up to now rather monopolized Roman attention.
The imperium populi Romani depended on a consensus that Roman might was unchallengeable; it therefore was based in the last resort upon a perception of the inevitability of Roman victory. The defeat of Cato in 114 had to be corrected, not merely to hold the line in Macedonia but above all to confirm the Roman imperium in the East. Hence the extraordinary commitment of resources to the Scordiscan wars down to ca. 107. That this effort was not merely a matter of frontier security but concerned the hearts and minds of Greeks under Rome's imperium is shown by some curious evidence of what appears to have been something of a public-relations campaign launched by Minucius after he had fully erased the
shame of the defeat of 114. In the Panhellenic center of Delphi two equestrian statues of Minucius were erected in his honor by the citizens, celebrating in their respective Latin and Greek texts the victory over the Scordisci and Thracians.[7] Curiously, in 1932 an inscription from Europus in Macedonia was published that carried a text virtually identical with the Greek text from Delphi, a coincidence that can hardly be merely fortuitous.[8] A common source must lie behind these honorific texts, and its emergence at two places that had as little to do with each other as Europus in Macedonia and Delphi points to Minucius himself as author. Beyond this point speculation would be idle, but the affair is redolent of propaganda and suggests that the impetus for the Delphian monuments was not entirely spontaneous.[9] Of course Delphi in particular provided a fine opportunity for appropriation of the sanctuary's great mythology of the defense of Hellenism against the barbarians: the Scordisci were the new Gauls, last fought off from Apollo's shrine by the Aetolians in 279, and the Romans, by throwing them back, assumed a role appropriate to the champions of Hellas. Although there is no direct evidence that Minucius actually visited Delphi in person, we do know that his brother, serving under him as legate, came and offered a dedication to Apollo; and it is certainly tempting to infer that the proconsul did so as well in a tour of triumph that would have recalled Aemilius Paulus's visit to Greece in 168/167 after defeating Perseus.[10]
With Minucius the Scordiscan danger subsided; however, the immediately subsequent praetors sent to Macedonia continued the offensive
posture, in this case apparently eastward into Thrace. In 104 a significant victory was won over the Thracians, and not long thereafter (101 or 100) the praetor T. Didius conquered the "Caenic" Chersonese—probably the peninsula running down to the Bosporus—and earned a triumph.[11] The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis , which immediately followed Didius's victory, evidently signals an end to the Roman offensive in Macedonia and Thrace. The consuls are ordered not to bring before the Senate the question of sending replacements and additional grain to Macedonia; this implies recognition that the war had been successfully concluded.[12] Furthermore, it seems clearly implied in the law that one of its provisions was to replace the current commander of Macedonia,[13] to whose successor also various orders are given: he is to travel immediately to the Caenic Chersonese, which is to be his provincia as well as Macedonia; he is to spend no less than two months there before he is succeeded, overseeing the legitimate collection of revenues and ensuring that Roman friends and allies are not driven from their borders or attacked.[14] The law dearly im-
plies a shift from offensive operations in Macedonia and Thrace; Rome's proconsuls in the north could turn to safeguarding the security of Rome's "friends and allies." There was no better place to advertise this expression of the benevolent use of Roman power pro sociis than from the pedestal of the monument of Aemilius Paulus at Delphi.
After Didius's conquests Macedonia is relatively quiet for nearly a decade.[15] But under C. Sentius, proconsul from 93 until at least 87, instability on the frontier was renewed, culminating in the catastrophe of the Mithridatic War. Sentius was defeated by the Maedi in 92 and forced to yield the province to their ravages. In 89 a Thracian king named Sothinus invaded the province and did much damage before being driven back.[16] The Thraco-Pontic invasion of Macedonia in 87 then swept away Roman authority in the region, which was not fully reestablished, despite a punitive expedition led by Sulla, until around 80.[17]
Cilicia
While Rome's main military effort in the East toward the end of the second century was indubitably centered upon Macedonia and Thrace, near the turn of the century and virtually contemporaneous with the last offensive push under T. Didius in Thrace came a naval expedition against the pirates of Cilicia whose significance for the story of the development of Rome's hegemonial presence surpasses its immediate results.[18] The measures that the Romans henceforth took—without great success until Pompey's massive campaign in 67-66 under the terms of the lex Gabinia —mark the assumption, however halting at first, of a much-expanded responsibility for maintaining security in the Greek world.
According to Strabo (14.5.2, C668-69), Scipio Aemilianus's famous embassy to the East, as well as other, subsequent embassies, already took note of the problem of piracy off Cilicia, which was flourishing due to the col-
lapse of the Seleucid monarchy and the strong Roman demand for slaves channeled through the nearby market on Delos. The Seleucid pretender Diodotus Tryphon encouraged the Cilician pirates' raids on his rival's base in Syria, while Cyprus, Egypt, and even Rhodes smiled upon the fomenters of trouble for the Seleucid house.[19]
Whether Rome made any concrete moves to reduce the anarchy in Cilicia is unknown but probably unlikely. That Antiochus VIII Grypos honored the proconsul Cn. Papirius Carbo at Delos ca. 116 may suggest no more than the currying of Roman favor in the internecine Seleucid struggle.[20] It is possible that Roman efforts at peacemaking in Crete ca. 114 as well as ca. 142 were at least partly incited by the traditional association between the spread of piracy and instability on Crete, in many ways a natural extension of Cilician waters, but that would have been a highly indirect approach to the problem at best.[21] Even on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, where the problem seems already to have become severe, the "free" cities that lined the coast appear to have been left to their own devices. Toward the end of the second century, for example, when some Ephesians were seized by pirates, the Astypalaeans intercepted the ships and saved the unlucky captives. The inscription that describes this event says nothing at all of Roman intervention.[22] There is no evidence, in short, for even a minimal attempt by Roman proconsuls to see to the security of the coast such as we glimpse occasionally after the First Mithridatic War.
Rome's long hesitation to take any significant measures against the pirates is sometimes explained as a result of its reliance on the slave trade whose demand they met.[23] Not only does this presume a rather crude economic determinism; it also assumes that piracy was all to Rome's benefit. In fact it must have been a considerable threat to the agents of the
publicani and the negotiatores : in the famous lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis of ca. 100 the security of Romans, Italians, and Latins on the seas is given precedence.[24] But the question should be turned on its head. Rome had since 154 certainly enjoyed no surfeit of manpower and since 114 had seen its resources so stretched to meet the pressures exerted nearly simultaneously by the Cimbri and Teutones to the north, Jugurtha in Numidia, and the Scordisci and other Thracians in Macedonia that in 109, 107 and 104 it had appealed for military assistance in Numidia and Gaul from its allies abroad.[25] It can hardly have been eager, or indeed able, to take on new security commitments. To blame the Romans for not acting earlier is to presuppose that they had acknowledged a duty to ensure the general security of their Eastern allies,[26] but we have no evidence that suggests that contemporaries recognized this as an obligation before Antonius's expedition against the pirates. Prima facie, it was not Rome but the recognized sovereigns of Cilicia, the Seleucid monarchy, who bore the direct and obvious responsibility for controlling piracy based in its waters. Our surprise at the slowness of Roman reaction to the growth in piracy is based upon the traditional, exaggerated notion of Roman "rule" in the East. The defense of the Thracian frontier had been taken over by Rome after the disaster of Andriscus's coup showed that it was the linchpin of Paulus's settlement; no military functions had been assumed in Asia; and the assumption of administrative and governmental functions had been kept to the minimum. That the Senate did nothing about piracy before the end of the second century is only further confirmation of the limits of its role in the East.
The Senate was finally induced to act in 102, when M. Antonius was assigned after his praetorship a special command against the pirates in Cilicia.[27] Antonius's fleet was at least in considerable part collected west of
the Isthmus of Corinth, for he had his fleet hauled across the Isthmus rather than brave the dangerous capes of the Peloponnese late in the sailing season. This we know from a boastful epigram that Antonius's legate Hirrus, temporarily in charge of the operation, erected near the site of ancient Corinth in order to assure his glory—among those who read Latin.[28] The collection of a fleet from west of the Aegean (likely assisted by Corcyra and the Greek and Illyrian cities and towns of the Adriatic coast) instead of relying on the considerable naval resources of the cities of the Asian coast and islands, especially Rhodes, shows that the Senate had decided to mount quite an extraordinary effort. While details of the campaign are lacking, it was evidently a success in the short run at least, and Antonius earned a triumph and the consulship for 99.[29]
What explains this shift from prior Roman indifference toward piracy in the East? It has been suggested that hordes of captives from the victories over the Cimbri and Teutones made Rome less reliant on the Eastern slave trade, which could now be put down with no damage to Roman interests. Chronology provides sufficient refutation: Antonius was sent out probably before the victory at Aquae Sextiae (102) and certainly before the decisive battle at Vercellae (101).[30] I should connect the campaign against Cilicia with other evidence we have already reviewed that indicates a nascent sense of imperial responsibility in the East. Nicomedes' rebuff to Marius's plea for military assistance against the Germans in 104 (Diod. 36.3.1), I have argued in chapter 5, demonstrated the tenuousness of Rome's im-
perium in the East at the very moment that support from her Eastern allies was for the first time urgently needed. From this point through Mucius Scaevola's command in Asia ca. 98-97 a number of discrete pieces of evidence strongly suggest that the lesson was taken to heart and a real attempt was made by the Senate and its agents to restore Rome's good name in the East and thus shore up its hegemony.[31] Antonius's expedition against the pirates belongs in this context and was perhaps the most conspicuous of such measures.
The concentration of Roman attention on Cilician piracy specifically is not difficult to explain. Among the pirates' chief activities was, as noted above, the enslavement of seafarers and coastal dwellers to supply the burgeoning slave market at Delos; but the affair of Nicomedes in 104 had brought home not only the dangers of allowing the publicani to wreak havoc but also the resentment caused by Rome's toleration of the enslavement of free allied peoples. The Senate had decreed their manumission, although on Sicily at least the decree proved impracticable (Diod. 36.3). Nicomedes had complained about seizure by the publicani , and we have already reviewed evidence of stricter senatorial and proconsular supervision of their activities from this point; but the other leading practitioners of wrongful enslavement must have been the Cilician pirates. The devolution of state authority in the area had continued unchecked and evidently increased ca. 104, when the sporadic dynastic war between the Seleucid brothers, Antiochus VIII Grypos and Antiochus IX Cyzicenus, broke out with renewed intensity; according to Trogus (Prol . 39), the fighting took place in Cilicia as well as Syria.[32] At around the same time, the Ptolemaic naval command on Cyprus, which might have exerted some control over the growth of piracy in those waters, disappears from our evidence during a tumultuous period on the island.[33] Although Lycaonia and Pamphylia (?) were granted to Cappadocia for its help in the war against Aristonicus, it seems unlikely that its kings ever exerted any authority on the coast, and in any case now chaos had descended upon Cappadocia as well. As political instability became endemic the pirates became more aggressive than ever.[34] Rhodes, long the guardian of maritime security in the southern
Aegean but no longer strong enough to face the problem alone, will have been urging Rome to take some action. An embassy from Rhodes was in Rome at the time of the passage of the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis a few years later, and the (unfortunately somewhat vague) provisions mentioned there certainly suggest that the island republic had been cooperating closely with Rome against the problem of piracy.[35]
The Senate's acceptance of the need to take serious action against Cilician piracy is an important novelty in Rome's attitudes toward its Eastern imperium . But we must not overstate the case, for, notoriously, Rome was not yet prepared to commit itself on a scale and to a duration sufficient to put paid to the problem; that step was not taken until the lex Gabinia over three decades later. It is important that no immediate successor was apparently sent out, for at the date of the law on the praetorian provinces ca. 100 the only commanders abroad who were required to swear to the law were the proconsuls of Asia and Macedonia.[36] Evidently Rome evac-
uated the Pamphylian-Cilician coast as quickly as it had come and had allowed the pirates to regroup. The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis , a Roman law translated into Greek of which large but only partly overlapping fragments were found originally at Delphi, inscribed on the plinth of the monument of Aemilius Paulus, and quite recently as well at Cnidus, affords a glimpse of subsequent Roman measures, but it will require extended discussion for us to assess them.[37]
The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis appears to have taken the important step of assigning a praetor (probably of 99) again to "Cilicia"—probably, as often, in fact Pamphylia and Pisidia. The consul is to announce by letters to various cities that "Cilicia has been made a praetorian province in accordance with this law" in order that Romans, Italian allies, Latins, and friends of Rome abroad might sail in safety.[38] The praetor assigned "Cilicia" is to assure that Roman citizens, Italian allies, Latins, and foreign peoples in Rome's friendship "may be able to sail safely and gain justice."[39] There is no need to conjure up the familiar images of "organizing provinces" or "imposing Roman rule," of which nothing is said in the preserved portions of the law.[40] There is certainly nothing in the preserved
portion of the law to suggest that any tribute was to be levied. The authors of the law are careful to state that the assignment of a praetor to Cilicia is to have no effect on the sovereignty of allied kings and peoples over communities subject to them;[41] thus Seleucid and Cappadocian claims to the south coast of Asia Minor are not to be invalidated. Further, the authors of the law took care to repeat clauses of the lex Porcia that forbade operations outside a provincia .[42] These provisions probably effectively prevented the praetor of Cilicia for 99 from pursuing the pirates too deeply into Seleucid waters—for example, to their stronghold Coracesium, whose capture was left to another age, when Romans acted with less circumspection. As for the fundamental source of the problem, the pirate nests in harbors of Cilicia proper to the east, which remained under Seleucid suzerainty, the authors of the law contented themselves with a diplomatic half-measure of highly dubious prospects, given the disintegration of governmental authority from the Orontes to the Nile: the consul first elected was to write letters to the Lagid and Seleucid rivals to request that they dose their harbors to pirates and cooperate with the Roman efforts.[43] The Cilician praetor was evidently to perform a police function along the southwest coast of Asia Minor; the inland rough country of Lycaonia, on the other hand, was to remain within the Asian proconsul's sphere of operation.[44]
The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis shows that Rome did not wash its hands of the problem of Cilician piracy after Antonius's expedition: Cilicia was again assigned as a provincia for 99 (probably), and polite noises were made about eliciting cooperation from the Eastern kings. The end of the Scordiscan-Thracian wars and return to a defensive posture in Macedonia and Thrace mandated in the law might roughly balance accounts and preclude the commitment of substantial new resources to the East.[45] But the limitations of these measures should be given equal attention. Only two years after Antonius's glorious victory the pirates were again a problem that needed attention; and no one can now have believed that Cilician piracy could be eradicated without full military assistance from the kings of Syria and Cyprus (which in turn would presuppose the arrangement of peace between the Seleucid rivals), and active campaigning against the strongholds along the coast east of Pamphylia. Instead the half-measure was taken of sending another praetor to "Cilicia," whose freedom of action was apparently restricted in just the area (eastward) where it was most needed, ostensibly out of respect for friendly and allied kings. While it is not unlikely that Cilicia provincia continued to be assigned at least sporadically after 100,[46] it is probably significant that no further naval campaigns are recorded in our evidence before the Mithridatic War; on the contrary, only land operations are reported for the two "Cilician" praetors known before the war.[47] It appears that Rome was simply not yet ready to commit sufficient resources to deal with a problem whose dimensions it was just now beginning to comprehend.
The lack of a decisive response to Cilician piracy remains conspicuous, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the problem did not touch Roman interests very directly or acutely. It is worth considering whether the step of assigning a praetor to "Cilicia" in 100 was not taken above all simply for reasons of hegemonial prestige. That a Roman law is virtually the whole of our evidence may have distorted the picture by directing our attention almost exclusively to Rome. A Rhodian embassy was in Rome at the time of the drafting and passage of the law, which also provides for a senatorial audience extra ordinem for any future embassies from Rhodes. The consul's letters to the kings were to be given to the Rhodian envoys in Rome to convey to them.[48] These indications, taken together, suggest
that the Rhodians were in the midst of a diplomatic campaign to organize a common effort against the pirates, of which the next step, after the mission to Rome, would be the dispatch of embassies to the Eastern kings armed with consular letters bearing Rome's imprimatur for the Rhodian initiative. The assignment of Cilicia provincia in 100 was of more concrete assistance, although, as we have noted, it is unclear in the state of our evidence how long Roman vigilance on the coasts persisted.
The evidence is consistent, then, with the hypothesis that Rome's interest in the campaign against Cilician piracy was not direct but derived chiefly from the need, in order to maintain its imperium , not to neglect the demands put upon it from its ally, Rhodes, and other cities of the coast and islands for the sake of their own security. To this end publicity of Roman solicitude for its allies' welfare was nearly as important as concrete action: hence the consul's letters, making the point that the Roman people's concern for the safety on the seas not only of Romans and Italians but also of foreign amici had induced Rome to assign Cilicia to a praetor;[49] hence also copies of the law are to be sent out by the proconsul of Asia to a host of cities and communities to be inscribed on bronze or stone or copied onto whitened boards and to be posted prominently either in a religious precinct or in the marketplace in such a way that they can be read from the ground[50] —an extraordinary effort to publicize in Greek cities what was, after all, a Roman law that was not legally binding upon noncitizens and did not mandate in its preserved portions action from anyone other than Roman officials.[51] That the intent was above all to publicize rather than to enforce is clearly suggested by the inscribing of the law as well on the most conspicuous Roman monument in the East, that of L. Aemilius Paulus at Delphi—a sanctuary that had little to do with the campaign against piracy but much to do with Hellenic public opinion.[52]
The publication of the law in Greek cities gave those under Rome's imperium concrete and explicit knowledge of what, according to Roman law, proconsuls were permitted to do or were responsible for doing.[53]
Much remains puzzling about the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis . Who its authors were, why it takes the form of a law rather than a senatus consultum , and what role it played if any in the political crisis of 100 are questions that cannot be convincingly answered with the evidence at our disposal.[54] It is certainly dangerous to impute to it a markedly popularis character.[55] There is no suggestion in the law that a "great command" is being prepared for Marius or anyone else.[56] The Cilician command, which was after all merely praetorian, need not have been "greater" than Antonius's, and the Macedonian was positively to be downgraded. Traditionally, Saturninus and his friends are presumed to have been the authors of the law, because of its allegedly "antisenatorial" tone, and especially the oath of obedience required of magistrates[57] —hence the suggestion that, despite the publication of the law in the cities of the East, something not merely called for in the law but confirmed by the survival of our Delphi and Cnidus copies, the law was annulled with the rest of Saturninus's legislation.[58] But Saturninus's sanctio for his agrarian law was much stricter than this one, for it demanded an oath from all senators, not merely magistrates and officials—an argument against, rather than for, his sponsorship.[59] It was not, surely, uniquely popularis to assign a
praetor to Cilicia and to arrange for the succession of the proconsul in Macedonia,[60] or to give the force of law to instructions to provincial commanders that would normally have been contained in a senatus consultum ,[61] we will not set much store by the absence of senatorial legati for the settlement of the Caenic Chersonese.[62] If anything, the impression of solicitude for the welfare of the allies that the law conveys is far more characteristic of adherents to the traditional norms, such as Q. Mucius Scaevola, than of the popularis chiefs, who had since Ti. Gracchus openly advocated the use of the Empire's resources for the benefit of the Roman people; Saturninus in this very year proposed sending out Roman colonies to Macedonia and "Achaia" (presumably Corinth).[63] Conceivably the measures called for in the law were embodied in legislation rather than, as might be expected, a senatus consultum not because they contradicted the will of the Senate but because they were so comprehensive, and because a legal sanction for their enforcement seemed desirable. Saturninus, certainly, was not likely to veto a law before the assembly—usually an anti-popularis last resort, with unpleasant suggestions of suppressing the will of the people.[64] But this is of course only speculation.
Whoever the law's authors, however, and whatever its place in the domestic upheaval of 100, the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis is invaluable evidence of a developing ideology of empire.[65] A theme that runs through the law is Rome's concern for the security and rights of its
allies in the imperium . Not only Roman citizens, Italian allies, and Latins are to sail safely on the seas and enjoy their tights, but also the foreign peoples in the friendship of the Roman people; for this very purpose a praetor has been assigned "Cilicia."[66] Rome will lend its good offices to help win the crucial cooperation of the Eastern kings.[67] Roman magistrates in the provinces are reminded of the provisions of a recent law that forbade their or their staff's straying outside their provinces except for mere passage through or in the Roman public interest;[68] the proconsul of Macedonia is to supervise the legitimate collection of Roman revenues and is to protect the territorial integrity and rights of Rome's friends and allies.[69] The copy at Delphi ends with an impressive series of provisions to ensure that Roman magistrates obey the law.[70] This positive image of empire was proclaimed from copies posted in markets and sanctuaries of various Eastern titles, but most strikingly at the "center of the world," on the very plinth of L. Aemilius Paulus's spectacular monument of his victory over Perseus. We have already noted how at Delphi only a few years previously the Roman victory over a new Gallic menace had been celebrated; now, on the very monument of the victory that gave Rome its Eastern imperium , was inscribed a text that not only advertised the successful pacification of the northern frontier but also expressed explicitly and implicitly the principles of Rome's benevolent patronage of its "friends and allies" in the East. It was opportune to attempt to restore a Hellenic consensus on Rome's right to power after Minucius Rufus, Didius, and Antonius had restored the Roman name in the East, closing an unpleasant chapter marked by inauspicious defeat at the opening of the Scordiscan war, demoralization inflicted by the German invasions, and an embarrassingly long and checkered struggle against Jugurtha in Numidia.
The Struggle for the Cappadoclan Succession
The Roman presence in western Asia Minor had no noticeable effect on the traditional rivalries and sporadic wars between the dynasts of the peninsula, especially the kings of Pontus and Bithynia, in their attempts to
expand their influence to fill the vacuum caused by the collapse of the Attalid kingdom. Rome's passivity is indeed worthy of note in the face of what one scholar has called the "surprising antics and intrigues of the kings of Pontus and Bithynia,"[71] which were carried on without any apparent fear of Roman intervention. For a full discussion of these struggles toward the close of the second century and beginning of the first, I must refer the reader elsewhere.[72] The story is full of chronological and source problems that can only be touched on here. I shall give only a summary, with particular emphasis on Rome's reaction.
At some point perhaps shortly after the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus, Mithridates V Euergetes brought Cappadocia under his power by means of a military invasion and a marriage alliance.[73] We have no evidence that Rome took any interest in this affair. The notion that Rome was behind Euergetes' subsequent assassination, in the absence of any evidence for the allegation, has rightly been rejected.[74] At some time subsequent to Euergetes' death ca. 120, his successor, Mithridates VI Eupator, was by senatorial decree deprived of Greater Phrygia, given his father by Aquillius after the war with Aristonicus. The nature and timing of this event, however, need closer analysis.
The traditional view is that Rome now resumed possession of Phrygia; but Appian puts in Sulla's mouth the claim that the Senate declared Phrygia
, thereby not only removing it from Pontic control but ensuring its freedom from any tributary obligation to Rome.[75] The claim cannot be rejected simply because Appian makes it part of a rebuttal by Sulla of Mithridates' complaints against Roman sharp practice; no goodevidence contradicts it, and such a decree is paralleled by a host of like senatorial declarations of "freedom" that functioned to deny possession to a third party.[76] An inscription found in Arizli, near ancient Synnada in Phrygia, records the Senate's ratification of the acts of a dead king whose name has confidently been restored as Mithridates, although only the final sigma—a rather common termination of Greek or Hellenized names!—was thought to be preserved on the stone. But the discovery of what appears to be a second copy of the text has had an embarrassing result: what was believed to be the final sigma of
now turns out to be a reference to "Asia" in the genitive case, which is awkward on any account. Indeed, even if the inscription might still be assumed to allude to King Mithridates of Pontus's acts, it need not imply that Phrygia was now "annexed" rather than "freed": Pergamum had been given such a guarantee of Attalus's arrangements, although it had been "freed" and thus was in no sense "annexed."[77] Livy's epitomator (Per . 77) calls Phrygia in 89 provincia populi Romani , the invasion of which was a casus belli , but this scribbler is particularly sloppy in his use of the word provincia ,[78] and his remarks by no means outweigh Appian's more specific information.The date of the "freeing" of Phrygia has been problematic, more so now in view of the uncertainty surrounding the inscription. It has nor-
mally been supposed that our two sources contradict each other directly on the chronology: Pompeius Trogus, in a speech he composed for Mithridates VI Eupator, seems to assume that the king was still a young man at the time, for he is made to refer to himself as a pupillus ; the event would then have taken place not long after his accession ca. 120. On the other hand, Appian considered the event "recent" around 90 and appears to place it between Sulla's Cappadocian campaign of ca. 95 and the restoration of Nicomedes IV of Bithynia and Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia in 90.[79] It has not been noted that Trogus very likely chose pupillus here not as a chronological tag to indicate Mithridates' age at the time (adulescens would have been adequate for that rather mundane purpose) but to suggest rhetorically Rome's violation of the norms of behavior that governed the relationship between Rome and its friendly kings, often represented in authors from the late Republic onward as that between tutor and pupillus , "guardian" and "ward."[80] Trogus's word cannot be taken as a chronological indication, and Appian's implied date in the later 90s fits well in the context of other contemporary Roman attempts to block Pontic expansion.[81] The declaration of Phrygian "freedom," which belongs a generation later than where it is usually placed (ca. 119), does not affect the picture of benign senatorial indifference toward Pontus in the late second century.[82]
Eupator's youth, then the campaigns in Scythia, left Asia Minor in peace until 108/107, in which year both he and Nicomedes III of Bithynia invaded and partitioned Paphlagonia, whose king at the time of the war with Aristonicus, Pylaemenes, had assisted Rome, but about whose condition at this date we know nothing.[83] The Roman response, according to Justin, our only source, was to send envoys to both kings demanding that
they return Paphlagonia "to its previous state." Mithridates claimed, however, that Paphlagonia was his father's by inheritance, and he wondered why no complaint had been made to his father at the time of the inheritance, but only now to himself. Far from complying with the Roman request, Mithridates went on to occupy Galatia as well (Justin 37.4.6). Nicomedes, on the other hand, said that he would give Paphlagonia to its rightful king, who, not very surprisingly, turned out to be Nicomedes' own son, given for the purpose the dynastic Paphlagonian name Pylaemenes; through him he controlled the kingdom (37.4.7-8). It appears that Nicomedes was eventually able to spread Bithynian control over all Paphlagonia.[84] "Thus made sport of, the Roman envoys returned" (37.4.9).
It is not unlikely that Justin has exaggerated the kings' arrogance in this account, but it is abundantly clear that Rome did nothing. Its response was in an old tradition: to send envoys registering disapproval, but to let the matter drop when words had no effect.[85] The intrigues and expansion of the Asian dynasts need not have concerned Rome unduly as long as their quarrels were kept more or less harmlessly to themselves and did not degenerate to an open challenge to Rome's imperium . Mithridates' subsequent conquest of much, if not all of Galatia elicited no known response from Rome; in fact we can be reasonably certain that he was not requested to give it up.[86] As for Bithynia, Rome's lack of serious concern about the usurpation of Paphlagonia is illustrated by its appeal for military assistance from Nicomedes in 104—which the king felt sufficiently confident to rebuff, with a pointed complaint about the violence done by publicani upon his people.[87]
Eventually, renewed Pontic intrigues in Cappadocia led to a long struggle between rival factions supported by Mithridates, on the one hand, and Nicomedes, on the other. From the evidence of Justin, it appears that a certain Gordius killed Ariarathes VI, Mithridates' own brother-in-law,
perhaps around 116 but possibly later.[88] Nicomedes invaded Cappadocia and tried to forestall Mithridates' reaction by marrying the widowed queen, Laodice, the Pontic king's own sister. Mithridates, however, was not to be put off so easily; expelling Nicomedes and Laodice, he installed on the throne as Ariarathes VII his nephew, Laodice's son. When Ariarathes resisted by force Mithridates' plan to allow his father's murderer, Gordius, to return, Eupator swiftly disposed of him as well and boldly placed on the throne his own eight-year-old son, now dubbed Ariarathes (IX), with Gordius as his regent and adviser.[89]
What was Rome's reaction to the anarchy in Cappadocia? If our evidence does not deceive, little or nothing. The purpose of an embassy from Mithridates to the Senate perhaps in 103 goes unstated in our only source (Diod. 36.15.1), but we may guess that it was an attempt to bolster the Pontic king's claims to Cappadocia against Nicomedes and other interested parties. Saturninus's abuse of the embassy and the prevailing belief that many senators were in its pay imply that if anything the Senate was perceived to be too favorable to Mithridates, an impression duly strengthened by subsequent harassment of Saturninus in retribution.[90]
There are tantalizing notices also of diplomatic contacts between Rome and the Temple of the Great Mother in Pessinus in western Galatia in the
years on either side of the turn of the century. The Battaces, the priest of the Great Mother, undertook an embassy to Rome in 102; he brought tidings of a pollution of his goddess's temple and advised the Senate to order a public expiatory sacrifice on Rome's behalf. He also appears to have taken the occasion to report Cybele's prophecy of a Roman victory.[91] After his victory over the Germans, Marius in 99 or 98 duly traveled to Cappadocia and Galatia—according to Plutarch, "on the pretext of performing sacrifices which he had vowed to the Mother of the Gods" but really with the secret intention of stirring up the Eastern kings, and especially of inciting Mithridates to war, so that Marius might be chosen to lead an army against him.[92] On the face of it, our evidence seems to suggest that the priest at Pessinus had deftly exploited Rome's need for religious support at the moment of crisis against the Germans in order to gain honor and prestige for his goddess. The Great Mother had of course brought decisive assistance to Rome on the eve of victory against Hannibal; her intervention now, in Rome's darkest hour since the Second Punic War, recalled that occasion and will have boosted expectations of an equally felicitous result. Her efficacy was immediately demonstrated to the populace, whose religious sensibilities were at a high pitch on the eve of the war's derision: the tribune A. Pompeius treated her priest with disrespect, contemptuously dismissing him from the rostra, but paid for the sacrilege with his own death only three days later.[93] The embassy of 102, in short, makes sense on its own terms without any need to supplement our sources by introducing into the picture Mithridates' recent advance into Galatia. Furthermore, recognition of the importance for Roman morale of Cybele's intervention before the turning of the tide against the Germans induces us to give more credence than is usual to the stated purpose for Marius's visit to Asia Minor immediately after the German wars: to perform sacrifices he had vowed to Cybele, presumably for the victory she had promised. Inasmuch as her priest had called for a public sacrifice on Rome's behalf, and no source suggests that Marius was merely on a private mis-
sion, it is possible that this was no libera legatio but resembled more closely in its formal character the embassy to Attalus in 205 that brought the Magna Mater from Pessinus.[94] The man who had saved Rome from disaster and was thus honored as its "third founder" (Plut. Mar . 27.5) now came east to perform a sacrifice of victory over the Germans—a powerful symbol of the revival of Rome's fortunes, and a fitting cap for the recent victories over the Scordisci, Thracians, and Cilician pirates.[95]
It is sometimes supposed that Marius had a further brief, unmentioned in any of our sources: to investigate the state of Cappadocia, or indeed to convey a senatorial order to Mithridates to evacuate Paphlagonia and Cappadocia.[96] We do know that Marius went to Cappadocia as well as Galatia, and also that he met with the Pontic king.[97] But there is no evidence of a prior senatorial order to Mithridates to quit Cappadocia, while Paphlagonia seems to have been in the hands of Nicomedes. It would be rash to suppose that Marius was expected to do more in Cappadocia than inform himself on the Senate's behalf of the nature of the recent dynastic conflict (Scipio Aemilianus's embassy to the Eastern kings again provides a useful parallel). Mithridates, of course, was now in control of Cappadocia, a fact that provides the appropriate context for his meeting with Marius. Possibly Mithridates tried to defend his adventures in Paphlagonia, Galatia, or Cappadocia to Marius, for we hear (if we can trust Plutarch) that Marius would not "yield" to his blandishments and bluntly advised him: "Either try to
be stronger than the Romans, O King, or obey commands in silence."[98] Plutarch believes that Marius hoped with these words to provoke Mithridates to open war.[99] We may wonder how the Chaeronean knew not only Marius's words at this colloquium but his mind as well—very likely from the histories of Marius's bitter enemy P. Rutilius Rufus, a source that he certainly used for other discreditable details in this Life .[100] If this anecdote derived from Rutilius, we are entitled to wonder whether the retort deserves credence at all. But even if it is authentic, the interpretation Plutarch puts on it (or found in his source) is too obviously ex post facto, redolent as it is of the events of 89-88, to be accepted without question. With so much uncertain, including the precise context, we may as well conclude (resisting the temptation of hindsight) that Marius's intent was to ward off further adventurism with a blunt reminder to him of the meaning of Rome's imperium . It is dear that it would be dangerous to make too much of this story in reconstructing Roman policy toward the kings in the 90s,[101] particularly as Marius's standing in the Senate was quite uncertain at this time.
The next stage of the struggle over the Cappadocian succession finally induced Rome to intervene. The background is given by Justin (38.2.1-3.4): after the Cappadocian opponents of Gordius and Mithridates were defeated in battle while attempting to replace Ariarathes IX with a member of their native dynasty (an exiled brother of Ariarathes VII, thus another son of Laodice, Nicomedes of Bithynia's wife), Nicomedes derided to try his luck with the Roman Senate. Finding a third son of Laodice and Ariarathes VI, although previously only two had been known, Nicomedes sent Laodice to Rome to vouch for his legitimacy. Not to be outdone in the genealogical game, Mithridates sent an embassy led by Gordius that traced the descent of his Ariarathes (IX) one step higher on the dynastic
table, to Rome's ally in the war with Aristonicus, Ariarathes V. But the Senate concluded only that both kings were merely attempting to seize Cappadocia for themselves by championing usurpers,[102] as Nicomedes had already managed to do with success in Paphlagonia a few years earlier, and on the grounds that both native dynasties were defunct declared both Cappadocia and Paphlagonia "free."[103]
What was the meaning of this proclamation? In the first place, of course, it rejected the royal claims both of Mithridates' son in Cappadocia and Nicomedes' son in Paphlagonia and thus undermined the basis of their effective control of those areas (Justin 38.2.6-7). But this was only a pronouncement without any commitment to enforce it. Furthermore, even if it should be obeyed by the major parties, it ensured only further political chaos—as did the virtually contemporaneous declaration of the "freedom" of Cyrene in 96 after the death of Ptolemy Apion.[104] The Cappadocians themselves were not satisfied with this solution, which resolved nothing, and requested that the Senate name a king for them.[105] The Senate agreed to make king whomever the Cappadocians chose. The candidates with some claim to the throne were Ariobarzanes, who had fled Gordius's partisans and taken refuge in Rome, and Gordius; the choice fell, not surprisingly, given the venue, on Ariobarzanes.[106] But now the Senate was prepared to do more than merely assert Ariobarzanes' claim. It not only called upon Mithridates to evacuate Cappadocia and take his son with him but assigned L. Cornelius Sulla the task of escorting Ariobarzanes into Cappadocia and establishing him on his throne. Mithridates duly obeyed the demand, and Sulla marched into Cappadocia in 96 or 95, deafly expecting no substantial
resistance, for he brought only a small Roman force supplemented by levies among the allies (presumably chiefly Cappadocians).[107] Nevertheless, Gordius, abandoned by Mithridates, put up some resistance, and "many" of his Cappadocian partisans and his Armenian allies were killed in order to make Ariobarzanes secure in his kingdom. Sulla took care in addition before departing to secure Ariobarzanes' southeastern frontier. He elicited, at a meeting on the Euphrates, Parthian recognition of the new king, apparently in exchange for Roman friendship.[108]
After years of limiting itself to mere pronouncements, Rome had finally intervened directly in the geopolitical ferment of central Anatolia. Cappadocian politics as such had never held great interest for the Senate; it seems evident that the imposition of a Roman-sponsored, rather than a Pontic, candidate on the throne of Cappadocia was no more than an attempt to roll back the recent gains of the energetic Pontic king. That Mithridates was the focus of Roman attention is dear enough from the fact that following the Senate's proclamation that both Cappadocia and Paphlagonia should be "free," implying as it did that the Pontic and Bithynian puppets who held the thrones had no valid royal claim, Roman action was taken only in Cappadocia; Paphlagonia appears to have been left under Nicomedes III's de facto control.[109] The expulsion of Mithridates from Cap-
padocia was probably followed up by the "freeing" of Phrygia, depriving him of what had been a Pontic possession since the war with Aristonicus (above, pp. 240-42). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Senate, drawn into the Cappadocian imbroglio by the contending parties, recognized that Mithridates' ambitions were the chief block to a resolution, and had now determined to make a point of demanding concrete demonstration of Mithridates' submission to the imperium populi Romani just as it had in previous generations with other too-independent agents, King Perseus of Macedonia and the Achaean League.[110] Rome obviously did not expect defiance: Sulla, as we saw, brought few Roman troops and relied on the military assistance of the allies. Mithridates, for his part, obliged: we have seen that he departed Cappadocia, taking his son with him, without a fight; similarly the Senate's pronouncement had sufficed to remove Phrygia from his patrimony. Having given a lesson in the meaning of imperium , the Senate had every reason to believe that Mithridates would now behave himself and that central Anatolia could once again be left to its own devices. The events of the middle 90s do not demonstrate the emergence of a new, actively interventionist Roman policy toward the region.[111]
The Coming of War With Mithridates
As it happened, Mithridates' submission to the Roman imperium was short-lived and perhaps specious from the beginning.[112] Perhaps in 92 one Socrates Chrestus, backed by Mithridates, wrested Bithynia and Paphlagonia from his half brother Nicomedes IV, who had succeeded to the throne upon the death of Nicomedes III with the approval of Rome against the claims of Socrates. At about the same time the young king of Armenia, Tigranes, now Mithridates' son-in-law, had Ariobarzanes expelled from
Cappadocia and Ariarathes IX reintroduced to the unhappy kingdom. Naturally, both dispossessed kings appealed to Rome, and the Senate's answer was to send in 91 or 90 a commission headed by M'. Aquillius to restore Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes to their thrones.[113]
From this point events lead in a fairly direct line to war with Mithridates. In such cases it is extraordinarily difficult to escape the distorting effect of our knowledge of the outcome, particularly when the outcome is a disaster that cries out for scapegoats. Our chief source for the origins of the Mithridatic War, Appian's Mithridatica , is dearly susceptible to both historiographic sins. In this account the Roman envoys, under the guise of neutrality, insidiously force war upon Mithridates: after restoring Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes to their thrones, they urge them against their will to start a great war with Mithridates in which Rome would come to their assistance; while Ariobarzanes does nothing, the envoys are able to prod the reluctant Nicomedes into action only by means of the huge debts he owed them for securing his restoration (11). In the subsequent discussions we are reminded again and again that the envoys were attempting to force war upon Mithridates and to assist Nicomedes directly in his developing conflict with Pontus (12, 14); finally, fearing (it is implied) Mithridates' imminent formal complaint to the Senate about their behavior (16), they attacked Mithridates without waiting for the authorization of the Senate to start "a war of such magnitude" (17:
). But despite the blatant tendentiousness of Appian's account, modern scholarship has accepted it with surprising docility.[114]Some preliminary considerations should give pause. It is now clear that the Mithridatic War began in 89 at the worst possible moment for Rome, while the Italian war was still raging; and the tiny Roman military establishment in Asia Minor had evidently not been augmented for action beyond its normal peacetime duties.[115] The scapegoating tendency of Appian's source is manifest but deserves a little closer attention. It has been pointed out that the holder of imperium , C. Cassius, under whose auspices the war with Mithridates actually broke out, is lightly passed over while blame is explicitly fixed on M'. Aquillius, "the man most responsible for the embassy and this war."[116] He quickly meets a punishment appropriate to an avaricious bribe taker: molten gold is poured down his throat after his capture by Mithridates.[117] Curiously, no other source singles out Aquillius's responsibility in this way; and while Roman sources beginning with Cicero imply that Aquillius ought to have killed himself rather than fallen into the hands of his enemies, there is no suggestion that he received harsh but condign punishment; in fact, Cicero once employs Aquillius as a contrary exemplum against the doctrine that the bonus is always happy, even when tormented—which suggests a rather different assessment of Aquillius than that given by Appian.[118] Indeed, doubt is cast on Appian's account of Aquillius's end by other evidence that in 85, as part of peace negotiations with Mithridates, Sulla demanded the return of Aquillius as well as of the proconsul Oppius.[119] At the very least, then, the story of Aquillius's death
has been moved forward chronologically in order to form an effective coda to the opening chapters, which indict him for causing the war; and whatever end Aquillius actually met, there can be little doubt why Appian's source prefers the draught of gold.[120] It has been argued with great plausibility that the ultimate source of Appian's chapters on the opening of the Mithridatic War was P. Rutilius Rufus. Rutilius, much embittered by his allegedly groundless conviction for extortion, will have been glad to pin the blame for the subsequent catastrophe upon a man who, despite a reputation for avarice, had escaped his brush with the extortion court shortly before Rutilius's disaster and was an associate of Rutilius's enemy Marius.[121] The portrayal of Aquillius we find in Appian is quite in keeping with Rutilius's historiographical style, well known for its indulgence in personal vendetta.[122] Something more than personal enmity may lurk under its surface. Aquillius took refuge after Mithridates overran Asia at Mytilene, but was seized by the Mytileneans and delivered up along with other Romans to the Pontic king. Rutilius, however, a resident of the same city since his conviction some years before, escaped disaster somewhat ignominiously by shedding his toga—not perhaps, to judge from his extended residency, to escape recognition but as a renunciation of Roman allegiance.[123] Pompey's Mytilenean friend Theophanes later went so far as
to allege that Rutilius had urged Mithridates to order the massacre (Plut. Pomp . 37.2-3)—an absurd fabrication, but one that suggests that Rutilius's own escape was a sensitive point. It seems unlikely that Rutilius, writing his history, would have let the opportunity pass to explain the curious difference between his fate and that of Aquillius by diminishing the legate's moral standing as much as he dearly enhanced his own. Rutilius presented his exile as the voluntary undertaking of an innocent man disgusted at the moral turpitude of his contemporaries, and underscored the point by refusing Sulla's invitation to return to Rome after the war was over;[124] Aquillius could be made into precisely the kind of man he had turned his back on. We cannot pierce the fog of recrimination 2,000 years after the facts; what is important is to recognize its existence and to make allowance for it.
The immediate background of the crisis, in which Mithridates repeatedly retreated from direct confrontation with Rome, is a better due to contemporary perceptions than what lay still in the future: the Senate and the envoys it sent will have had every reason to expect that Mithridates would ultimately yield to Roman pressure rather than fight—hence the lack of formal authorization for war, and the failure to provide the legates with appropriate Roman forces. Aquillius may have been chosen to head the embassy precisely for his connection to Mithridates through their fathers, allies in the war against Aristonicus. Mithridates was even requested to cooperate; according to Appian, he declined, but in Trogus's speech for Mithridates at the outbreak of war he claims to have had Socrates Chrestus, Nicomedes' rival for the Bithynian throne, killed to please the Senate.[125] Aquillius and the other legates, with the cooperation of the proconsul of Asia, C. Cassius, whose small Roman contingent was supplemented with a "large" force of Galatians and Phrygians, successfully completed their mission to restore the kings in 90, clearly without meeting resistance from Mithridates.[126] Again Rome had been able to work its will without any
great effort and without increasing its manpower commitment to the East, and once again Mithridates had submitted meekly.
But there were more than two players to this game. Nicomedes IV, who had been toppled from the throne after a very short reign, stood much in need of military success to validate and secure his claim to rule. Since Mithridates evidently would not directly challenge the Roman imperium , there could be no better time for a show of strength against Mithridates than before the Roman envoys departed Asia Minor. Nicomedes invaded eastern Paphlagonia, an old bone of contention with Pontus, and plundered territory held by Mithridates as far as Amastris, while the Pontic king, as expected, fell back before him.[127] The booty won in the campaign was a precious addition to Nicomedes' empty coffers, drained by his expulsion from the kingdom and further strained by heavy debts to Roman creditors and, we are told, bribes promised to the commanders and legates who had effected his return.[128] The insistence of Appian that a reluctant Nicomedes had been forced by the Roman envoys to take this course is both gratuitous, for Nicomedes' own interests sufficiently account for his action, and too closely connected with the scapegoating Tendenz of Appian's account to be accepted without question.[129]
Mithridates showed his habitual deference to Rome's power by taking care, before responding in kind to Nicomedes, to complain to the Roman envoys and commanders and to request at least Rome's neutrality in the coming showdown on the basis of their friendship and alliance.[130] They responded that they "would not wish Mithridates to suffer any harm from Nicomedes, nor will we allow war against Nicomedes, for we do not think that it is in the Roman interest for Nicomedes to be harmed."[131] In effect, this was a warning to Mithridates not to counterattack, sugared with insincere regrets for Nicomedes' aggression. If we view this response against
the background of Mithridates' repeated retreats from confrontation with Rome, rather than projecting it against the disaster that still lay in the future, it is difficult to accept the traditional view, based on Appian's hostile account, that it was intended to force Mithridates to fight.[132] On the contrary, it seems most probable that Aquillius and Cassius expected this expression of Rome's concern for Nicomedes to leave Mithridates no choice but to patch up his differences with the new king and thereby bring to an end the crisis over the Bithynian succession.
Mithridates, however, perhaps emboldened by the progress of the Italian war and Rome's great difficulties at home, for once would not back down. Avoiding direct confrontation with Rome over Nicomedes' aggression, Mithridates continued the game of brinkmanship by sending his son Ariarathes to drive Ariobarzanes from Cappadocia yet again (App. Mith . 15). It has been thought that this action committed him to war with Rome, and that thereafter Rome "had no option but to fight."[133] In Appian's account, however, Mithridates sends again to the Roman envoys, declaring that the seizure of Cappadocia was due to their complicity in Nicomedes' attack on him and announcing his intention to take the dispute to the Senate. The Roman envoys order Mithridates to keep away from Nicomedes and Cappadocia and announce their intention to restore Ariobarzanes, forbidding Mithridates from sending to them again if he did not obey their commands.[134] Then, without awaiting ratification from the Senate and people for "such a great war," they began military preparations (Mith . 16-17). We hear nothing more from Appian about Mithridates' stated intention to appeal to the Senate; and yet, inasmuch as Mithridates' friendship and alliance with Rome still persisted, since both sides had refrained thus far from a direct clash, it would indeed be surprising if Mithridates did not send to the Senate to complain of Nicomedes' invasion. As it happens, other sources do mention such an appeal. Dio reports that Mithridates sent envoys to the Senate to complain about Nicomedes' invasion, but the partes for their part demanded that he give back Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes and make peace with Nicomedes, refusing to hear another embassy from him until he obeyed them (F 99.2); and an appeal by Mithridates to the Senate over Nicomedes' invasion is described as well by other, less authoritative sources, although placed before the invasion of
Cappadocia, rather than after, as in Dio.[135] It has been urged against the accounts of a senatorial audience on the eve of war with Mithridates that Roman legates would not normally refer back to Rome in the course of carrying out their instructions;[136] but what is at issue is not referral by the legates to Rome for "specific approval" of their actions but an appeal from a nominal ally for negotiation to avert a crisis, exactly paralleled by King Perseus's final appeal to the Senate in the winter of 172/171 while Roman legates in Greece were engaged in isolating him politically and making preparations for the eventuality of war.[137] Such an appeal is, then, probable a priori and specifically attested by sources other than Appian which have no obvious motive for fabrication, as the embassy effectively shifts responsibility for the disaster from Aquillius to the Senate. We are therefore entitled to suppose that Appian's source has suppressed the final appeal to the Senate in order to strengthen his charge that Aquillius had instigated a great war without authorization.
In either case, the point of Mithridates' invasion of Cappadocia emerges clearly. Avoiding a direct response to Nicomedes' aggression, which at this time would have left Rome little choice but to retaliate, he chose the indirect approach: the diversion to Cappadocia gave him an important bargaining chip for negotiation and put pressure on Rome to restrain its ally and alleged proxy in Bithynia; if it did not do so, Mithridates would not see himself bound to submit to Rome's will in Cappadocia, where he may now have brought home the virtual impossibility of continuously propping up Ariobarzanes, particularly under the present circumstances in Italy. In effect, Mithridates made the point that if he was to restrain his friends Gordius and Tigranes in Cappadocia, Rome would have to restrain its friend Nicomedes. But this would require Rome to back down from a position in which it had by this point invested its international prestige, and would suggest that Mithridates had emerged from sub imperio populi Romani . That could be a dangerous sign of weakness in the East, where the imperium had been upheld hitherto with a bare minimum of manpower and rested ultimately on general resignation to Rome's overwhelming power. Not surprisingly, Rome chose to reaffirm the imperium by forcing Mithridates back into the fold. It did so with a command: the response of the Senate, as I suggest, or of the envoys, if Appian's account be accepted, was framed as an order offering the choice between obedience
to Rome's will and treatment as an enemy. Mithridates was ordered to keep his hands off Cappadocia and Nicomedes, and his ambassadors were to be excluded in the future unless he obeyed. Mithridates had consistently backed down when directly confronted by Roman commands, and without clairvoyance Romans had no reason yet to think that, despite the escalation of tensions, he would not do so again when confronted with firm and decisive action.
The Roman plan, for which Aquillius, a general of some repute,[138] was probably responsible, can be divined from its field dispositions. Nicomedes was to renew his harassment of Pontic territory by invading the plain of the Amnias River, thus drawing Mithridates west, while Oppius, the proconsul of Pamphylia or Cilicia,[139] slipped into Cappadocia to restore Ariobarzanes while the Pontic king was otherwise occupied. The proconsul of Asia, C. Cassius, and Aquillius stood ready in reserve to assist Nicomedes if he required it with small Roman forces, boosted by a large native levy of Bithynians, Paphlagonians, and Galatians.[140] It seems most dubious that Aquillius expected a full-scale war against Mithridates;[141] rather, Nicomedes' invasion seems designed precisely to avoid a direct dash between Oppius and Mithridates in Cappadocia, while, on the other hand, the large reserves led by Aquillius and Cassius served as strong insurance for the Bithynian king. Even Appian concedes that Mithridates' victory over Nicomedes at the Amnias was paradoxical, for the Pontic king had been heavily outnumbered; indeed, at first the Bithynians had prevailed (Mith . 18, 19). On the other hand, Aquillius and Cassius had clearly not expected their native levies to see serious fighting. Only once Mithridates had already routed Aquillius's force did Cassius attempt briefly to train the raw, civilian recruits; but he soon gave up the idea of sending such men into
action and dismissed them before withdrawing.[142] The plan went all wrong; above all, Aquillius and his colleagues had contemptuously underestimated Mithridates' strength and decision. Mithridates threw back the Bithynian king, crushed Aquillius's reserve force, and pursued the enemy into Phrygia, whence he overran western Asia Minor and the coastal islands, except for Lycia and Rhodes, before year's end.[143]
The outbreak of war, therefore, was hardly the result of irresponsible adventurism launched by Aquillius and Cassius. Badian is closer to the mark in arguing that the war "arose (it seems) from a miscalculation rather than from deliberate provocation,"[144] although even he overestimates the resolution of the Roman legati to engage in a general war. Their actions were directed toward the successful completion of their mission to restore Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes, and they probably did not exceed their authority in attempting to drive Pontic forces from Cappadocia once again. The mission as a whole constitutes an unusually vigorous senatorial response against Mithridates' expansion, a new development perhaps born of exasperation, but not outright belligerence. Mithridates had not hitherto been a major concern in Rome. That was now to change.
Toward the end of the second century, Rome accepted some responsibility for the security of the Eastern seas. This burden was taken on only after the collapse of Seleucid authority made it dear that there was no alternative. A fleet was actually sent from the West in 102; but Roman actions in Cilicia remained sporadic and ad hoc in nature. Cilicia was probably not assigned again to a magistrate until 99, under the law on the praetorian provinces, and thenceforth perhaps only on occasion through the 90s. The Senate was not eager to increase its commitments in the East. The same attitude is apparent in its dealings with the kings of Pontus and Bithynia toward the end of the second century and the beginning of the first. The patres at first satisfied themselves with mere pronouncements, which were ignored or only speciously obeyed more often than not. After
the problem of the Cappadocian succession came to a head again in the mid-90s, Rome added to its verbal blessings for Ariobarzanes the essentially symbolic gesture of a Roman escort headed by Sulla. Soon enough Ariobarzanes had been expelled again, and this time the new Bithynian king, Nicomedes, with him. The Roman legates sent to restore the kings, deceived by Mithridates' pliability in the past, determined this time to drive home a lesson of Mithridates' vulnerability, first by inducing Nicomedes IV to raid Pontus, then by preparing a punitive expedition against Mithridates for his renewed attack on Ariobarzanes; the result was a full-scale war that they, no more than the Senate which had sent them, did not want or expect. The final crisis does not reveal a significant change in Roman policy toward Mithridates but its failure. An ambitious and expansionist Eastern king could not be contained without a commitment of forces and resources that the Senate had hitherto refused to contemplate. The disaster of 89 brings to an end an era during which Rome's supremacy and relatively limited exploitation of the East rested on an almost negligible commitment of manpower and resources, solidly buttressed by the prevailing conviction, confirmed in all previous trials of force, that Roman might was unchallengeable.[145]
10
Sulla's Settlement of the East
The course of the First Mithridatic War can be followed in a variety of excellent accounts. We need not do more than summarize a few essentials here.[1] The substantial time that any Roman reaction to Mithridates' invasion of Asia would in any case have required was of course much lengthened by the civil strife of 88. By the time Sulla crossed the Adriatic in early 87, Mithridates not only held Asia Minor but had sent an army to Greece and won over Athens,[2] Euboea, and most of Boeotia. The gains in Greece, however, were lost surprisingly quickly to Sulla's superior generalship and tenacious soldiery: on 1 March 86 Athens fell to the Romans, and the Pontic forces (recently strongly reinforced by another army which marched through Macedonia and Thessaly) lost two disastrous battles at Chaeronea and Orchomenus in the course of the year.[3]
Meanwhile Mithridates found himself, with depleted resources, fighting for his survival in Asia against a separate Roman army commanded by Sulla's enemy C. Flavius Fimbria. Sulla could not allow Fimbria to win the credit of eliminating Mithridates after he had himself done so much of the bloody work, and he therefore entered into negotiations with the Pontic king which occupied much of 85, as the imperator marched through Macedonia and toward the Hellespont. Terms of peace were agreed upon
at Dardanus in the Troad late in that year.[4] Mithridates was forced to give up all but the kingdom of Pontus (hence Paphlagonia, Galatia, Cappadocia), to hand over all prisoners and deserters, to pay an indemnity variously reported as 2,000 or 3,000 talents, and to give up seventy or eighty ships; in return, he was to be confirmed in his possession of Pontus and to be voted again an ally of Rome.[5] Memnon mentions an additional pledge by Sulla, promptly broken, not to conduct reprisals against the Greek cities that joined Mithridates.[6]
Uncertainty about the precise provisions of the Dardanus pact is not surprising in view of its subsequent history, which, anticipating somewhat, it may be useful to review at this point. It was regarded as shameful by Sulla's soldiery, who doubtless hoped to plunder the king's domains; and Sulla, it seems, was careful not to publicize its terms at the time, which later gave his legate L. Licinius Murena a pretext for renewing hostilities.[7] At first, immediately following Sulla's departure, Mithridates returned to his old tricks by failing to evacuate Cappadocia entirely before Ariobarzanes: the king, we are told, had decided that his agent Archelaus had given up too much in negotiation.[8] Such behavior was not appropriate for an
allegedly conquered enemy. Murena thus attempted to force Mithridates to relinquish all of Cappadocia and so to adhere fully to the terms of the agreement, initiating the "Second Mithridatic War" in 83. Murena's attack is universally condemned by moderns as an irresponsible provocation; on the contrary, it may have represented the best hope of saving face for his commander and of forcing Mithridates to adhere to the agreement that he was undermining. Hence the point of Murena's response to Mithridates' complaint that he was violating the treaty: he saw no treaty.[9] But Mithridates revealed that he still had plenty of fight left in him. Murena was repelled. Yet Sulla required a triumph over Mithridates, which was hardly possible while war continued, and therefore sent A. Gabinius to stop Murena and to arrange a settlement between Mithridates and Ariobarzanes. In 81 Gabinius arranged a meeting between the two kings at which Mithridates' four-year-old daughter was betrothed to Ariobarzanes, but this proved to be only a pretext under which Mithridates seized more of Cappadocia.[10] Still, the end of hostilities allowed Sulla to triumph over Mithridates on 27-28 January 81, although the king's refusal to be cowed or even to adhere fully to the pact, and indeed a second triumph celebrated over him in the very same year by Murena, did not cast the best light on the claim that Sulla had pacified him.[11] Not surprisingly, then, despite his unique position of power once in control of Rome, Sulla did not take the step of having the less-than-honorable terms agreed at Dardanus formally ratified by the Senate and instead let the matter drop as quietly as possible, while at the same time, since he could not of course afford to have another war with Mithridates on his hands, he saw to it that in practice the terms were observed. Significantly, once Sulla was dead the consuls of 78 refused even to consider the matter further.[12] The Pact of Dardanus, useful at the time it was concluded, became an embarrassment for the imperator once
he was free of the constraints—Fimbria and the uncertainty of his future in Rome—that had made it attractive.[13]
Sulla's Arrangements in Asia Minor and Greece
We return, then, to the immediate aftermath of the settlement at Dardanus in 85. Sulla's hands were now free for the elimination of Fimbria.[14] That accomplished, Sulla restored Nicomedes to Bithynia, and Paphlagonia was added to his kingdom; Galatia was left to its local dynasts.[15] Ariobarzanes was restored to Cappadocia, but as we saw, Mithridates did not entirely relinquish the disputed region, which had been one of the precipitating causes of the war. Sulla's failure to insist on Mithridates' withdrawal while his army was still in Asia Minor clearly indicates how distracted he was from the task of restoring fully the Roman imperium throughout the peninsula.
It remained for Sulla to restore Rome's supremacy in the Greek cities of Asia provincia , and not incidentally to appease his army, which was disgruntled that the wealth of Mithridates was denied them (Plut. Sull . 24.4), by means of an alternative source of loot. The army, it must be noted, was no doubt badly in arrears of pay, for Sulla, having been declared a public enemy, had clearly been reduced to living off the land.[16] According to Appian, Sulla "left free, and enrolled as friends of the Roman people, the Ilians, Chians, Lycians, Rhodians, Magnesians, and some others, either in return for their military assistance or for what they had suffered for their support for him"[17] —or for what they paid him, for we learn from
Cicero that some communities bought their "freedom" from Sulla.[18] He then sent his army round to the rest of the cities, many of which were held by Mithridates' partisans and still offered resistance, particularly after he had repealed the manumissions the Pontic king had ordered. These cities were captured and suffered harsh treatment, especially Ephesus.[19] Appian is frustratingly vague here about precisely which cities received rewards or punishment, leaving details forever uncertain, and hardly recovered in the extensive scholarly discussion of these matters.[20] We may forego consideration of whether the Magnesia Appian says was "freed" is the town on Mt. Sipylus or the one on the Maeander, or whether Smyrna lost "freedom" at this time.[21] What must be emphasized for our purposes is that the freedom from tribute and direct Roman interference that many, perhaps most, Greek cities of Asia had enjoyed since 129 now came to an end except in a very few cases. This inference has textual support in a passage from Appian's final assessment of the Mithridatic wars: "They [sc. the Romans] recovered quickly the areas of which Mithridates had deprived them: Paphlagonia, Galatia, Phrygia and its neighbor Mysia; in addition to these Lydia, Carla, Ionia and the rest of Asia around Pergamum; also old Greece and Macedonia. And they imposed tribute upon the majority of these peoples, who had not yet been tributary to them."[22] It is regrettable that we have so little specific information on the basis of which to assess more accurately the extent of territory now made subject to tribute; but in view of the conclusion reached earlier (chap. 4) that relatively few cities became tributary after the war with Aristonicus, it appears probable that the subjection of most of the Greek cities of Asia to
this most concrete manifestation of Roman supremacy, which, as we have seen, by its nature inevitably brought with it the frequent intervention of Roman officials in the local affairs of the cities, is to be dated to the settlement of the Mithridatic War. It would be rash to extrapolate the massive exploitation of Asia and complex financial links with Rome that Cicero describes in his speech for the Manilian law of 66 back to the later second century, without pausing to consider the work of Sulla.[23]
More painful in the short run was the punishment immediately meted out to the Greek cities for their adherence to Mithridates in the war. The most noxious partisans of Mithridates and those most closely associated with the massacre of the Italians were put to death at Ephesus; Appian notes, however, that the Ephesians were singled out for their destruction of Roman statues and dedications, signaling their early enthusiasm for Mithridates' cause, not as we might expect for their special zeal in obeying Mithridates' order to kill all Italians.[24] Sulla then called to Ephesus the leaders of "the cities" (presumably only those that merited punishment, but they would very likely have been the vast majority of Asian cities, so that Appian's sweeping references are not grossly misleading)[25] and distributed equally among them a massive fine, which amounted, according to Plutarch, to about 20,000 talents, or some 120 million denarii. This was clearly spent in large part on the troops, who probably received a handsome bonus as well.[26] A further bonus for the troops—and an additional, highly unpleasant burden for the cities—was their relatively luxurious urban billeting for the winter of 85-84.[27] Licinianus tells us that Mithridates had
been obliged by the terms of the Peace of Dardanus to provide supplies of grain, clothing, and pay for Sulla's army (35.77 Criniti). Possibly Mithridates had reneged on this promise as well and Sulla, declining to force him to fulfill it, obliged the Greek cities of Asia, the only remaining convenient source of supplies, to meet alone the full demands of the Roman army in its midst.
After the conclusion of the fighting in Asia Minor, Sulla, still formally a public enemy, had written to the Senate recounting his services to the res publica , particularly stressing his recent victories against Mithridates and the recovery for Rome of the territory the Pontic king had seized, and raising the issue of the exiles from the Cinnan regime and his own civil status.[28] The report on the campaign against Mithridates should be seen in the context of other such reports of victorious commanders to the Senate, which normally resulted in the immediate dispatch of a commission of ten to see to the details of the settlement in concert with the commander in the field.[29] It is possible that Sulla's account of the Mithridatic campaign was intended to give the Senate the option of sending such a senatorial commission, which would of course implicitly involve recognition of his status as Rome's imperator . The Senate, moved by a speech by its princeps , L. Valerius Flaccus, did indeed send legati to Sulla, but their discussions with the rebellious proconsul seem not to have gone beyond the question of his status and impunity for the Cinnans.[30] Thus the terms of the agreement reached at Dardanus remained without full legal force, while Sulla's
acta regarding individual communities in the aftermath of the campaigns remained without the sanction of a senatorial commission, and the legal status of such grants, conferred by a formally proclaimed public enemy, was open to doubt. The communities of the East were therefore left in a state of considerable uncertainty about the formal status of the Sullan grants until the proconsul himself was safely ensconced back in Rome. Indeed, as noted above, it was known that some of them had paid Sulla good money for his conferral of "freedom",[31] all the more reason to protect their investment by pressing immediately for senatorial ratification. Hence it is no wonder that in 81 and 80 a veritable flock of embassies from the East beat a path to Rome to obtain validation of Sulla's arrangements. We know, mainly from the random evidence of preserved inscriptions, of embassies sent in these two years to confirm grants of territory, revenues, and various guarantees, from Stratonicea, Rhodes, the guild of Dionysiac artists of Ionia and the Hellespont, Tabae, Thasos, Oropus, Chios, and Cormi.[32]
We do not hear of ratification by the Senate of Sulla's Eastern arrangements en bloc. The lex Valeria of 82, which conferred upon him the dictatorship, gave impunity and legal force to his future acts during his tenure of the office; but, contrary to one influential interpretation, we should not suppose that it formally ratified all of Sulla's acta as proconsul.[33] Appian,
it is true, says that previously, in the period between Sulla's capture of Rome and his formal election as dictator, his acts as consul and proconsul were voted to be secure and legal.[34] But it is hard to reconcile this with more specific evidence concerning Sulla's Eastern arrangements. A quotation of the lex locationis imbedded in a senatorial decree for Oropus implies the contrary when it notes that exemptions made by Sulla for territory possessed by temples and religious sanctuaries needed subsequent senatorial confirmation to be valid.[35] Certainly, as we have seen, the peace with Mithridates was never regarded as formally ratified, as it should have been had all of Sulla's acta been regarded as legally binding. Perhaps the evidence only appears to be contradictory. Appian's focus at this point is very much on Rome's internal strife; the decree to which he refers may well have been concerned with the immediately pressing question of legal immunity for Sulla himself and his actions in the civil wars since 88. We may compare Plutarch's version, which speaks explicitly of a grant of immunity (
).[36] Such a ruling, of course, would not have entailed ratification of Sulla's Eastern arrangements.In addition to the assurance that formal confirmation by the Senate would provide there is sufficient evidence in the texts of the decrees that much remained still to be put into practice, and that a visit to Rome was partly intended to spur movement in that direction. Only as a result of the embassy of the Stratoniceans in 81 did Sulla get around to determining just how much the cities he had assigned to Stratonicea were to pay it in taxes.[37] Nor, it seems, had he done more in the case of Thasos than confer benefits on paper. In 80, seven years after a Thraco-Pontic army had swept
through Macedonia, the Thasians had still not got back the land that had been seized from them by Thracians, or taken over Peparethos and Sciathos, both of which had been given to them by Sulla; in that year or the next, the proconsul Cn. Cornelius Dolabella bestirred himself to begin a letter-writing campaign on their behalf.[38] Plutarch remarks on the stream of embassies that met Sulla as he marched through Boeotia in 87;[39] this pattern doubtless recurred wherever Sulla went during his campaign. On such occasions he will rarely have clone more than write letters conferring certain benefits in rather broad terms;[40] it remained to the parties directly involved subsequently to approach the Senate and ensure that the grants were given full formal recognition and actually enacted. For obvious reasons, that could not be done until Sulla was in control of Rome.
These embassies also, naturally, had an eye to the future of their relationship with the ruling power. This explains one striking feature attested among the requests of at least two of the embassies, which doubtless came up more often than appears in our lacunose evidence. Both Stratonicea and Chios asked, in addition to confirmation of the Sullan grants by the Senate, for explicit recognition of the continued validity of their own traditional laws; Stratonicea also asked for confirmation of decrees passed "on account of the war that they declared on King Mithridates," while Chios apparently wanted explicit recognition of the principles that the Romans among them must obey Chian law, and that the city was not to be formally bound by any edict of a Roman magistrate.[41] The requests for explicit recognition of rights that would seem to be implicit in the status of a "free" Roman "friend and ally" call for comment. At first glance it would seem to imply an extraordinary degree of Roman interference in local affairs and unprecedented precariousness of local legal autonomy if
one enjoyed the fight to "use one's own laws" (suis legibus uti ) only with Rome's explicit approval; thus, according to Pliny and the emperor Trajan, in Pontus of the early second century A.D. a community without the privilege suis legibus uti was "bound by Roman law" (Romano iure obstrictum ).[42] But we are still nearly two centuries from Pliny and Trajan, and better explanations lie ready to hand for these requests than a general debasement of "freedom" at the time of the Mithridatic War.[43] The need for confirmation of the local legal autonomy of Chios emerged directly from the peculiar historical circumstances following the recent, catastrophic war.[44] The population of the city had been deported by Mithridates, all rights of possession had been thrown into confusion, and it is very likely that Romans, whom we know to have held considerable property on the island, had attempted to make use of Roman officials in the province for the purpose of reclaiming their property. Explicit confirmation of the primacy of Chian law and the principle of legal autonomy did not alter Chios's legal status vis-à-vis Rome but simply made it more difficult in practice for Roman officials to intervene; this case should be compared with the continuous struggle of Colophon, revealed in the honorific decrees for Menippus and Ptolemaeus, for full enjoyment of its autonomy.[45] The same applies to the Stratoniceans' request for confirmation of their legal autonomy. Here the impetus for reiterating this principle may have been the danger that Roman officials might be induced, perhaps by Roman citizens, to tamper with the decrees, mentioned in the same breath, that were passed "for the sake of the war." The parallel for such decrees that comes to mind is that of the emergency measures of Ephesus of 86/85 alleviating debts and enfranchising noncitizens,[46] which may well have annoyed men who had the ear of Roman officials. The problem of proconsular interference in the affairs of "free" cities was, we have seen, nothing new, but it gained particular urgency in the immediate aftermath of the Mithridatic War as Romans returned to Asia Minor and attempted to regain their
losses or to exploit favorable conditions for their individual interest. Those communities therefore that had managed to preserve good relations with Rome wisely lost no time in obtaining from the Senate explicit acknowledgment of their rights of local judicial autonomy.
Not only were some, perhaps many, of the privileges Sulla had granted yet to be put into practice at the end of the 80s, but much remained unsettled concerning the revenues to be taken in from communities newly reduced to tributary status for their behavior in the war. I have argued (above, pp. 59-65, 264-66) that in the aftermath of the First Mithridatic War there was an enormous increase in the area subject to Roman taxation, which probably now included most of the Greek cities of western Asia Minor, as well as much of central Greece, namely, Boeotia, Phocis, and Euboea. How many of these crucial decisions are to be attributed to Sulla's actions on the spot, and how many to subsequent senatorial decisions, may be questioned. Certainly we have direct testimony of Sulla's grants of "freedom" to a number of cities and communities in Asia Minor and the extraction of a fine from the others; however, we know from a reference in Cicero that the Senate subsequently (presumably soon after Sulla's death in 78) annulled some of the exemptions on the grounds that they had been bought.[47] This may suggest that a senatorial review of the new Eastern revenues took place in the early 70s and expanded considerably the area made tributary by Sulla.[48] Remarkably, it was not until 74 (probably following upon a sale of contracts in 75) that the question of whether Oropus was subject to Roman revenues was raised: Sulla had merely consigned its revenues to the Amphiareum, without any mention, as is clear from the dispute itself, of Roman taxation.[49] This may suggest that at the time of the grant (presumably 86-85) he did not assume that Roman tribute would be levied on Boeotia, and that this was done at some subsequent date. The evidence does not suggest that Sulla did more in the field than grant exemptions on his somewhat dubious authority (which could, as we have seen, yield cash and presumably more active assistance) and levy his great fine; the details could all be worked out at a later stage through the
Senate once the wars were won and enshrined in a lex locationis .[50] In any case, as we have seen, the Senate was not entirely bound even by the arrangements Sulla had made.
Asia Minor and Greece in the Aftermath of the Mithridatic War
Much was, therefore, still in flux even in 80. This applies even more to the position "on the ground" in the southern Balkans and Asia Minor. It does not seem to be sufficiently recognized that Sulla had left the East in a state very dose to chaos. Sulla and his legate L. Hortensius had undertaken punitive campaigns against the Illyrians and Thracians in 85 but evidently effected nothing more than to shore up temporarily the northern frontier, which had collapsed in the Pontic invasion of 87.[51] When Sulla left for Italy in 83, he virtually stripped Macedonia and Greece of their defenders, taking with him not only the five legions he had brought from Italy but several thousand Macedonian and Peloponnesian auxiliaries; the two Fimbrian legions stayed with L. Licinius Murena in Asia.[52] A disastrous invasion of Greece by the Maedi followed; the Thracians raided and plundered as deep as Delphi.[53] In the face of the Maedic attack Macedonia must have been temporarily lost once again; as it happens, the senatorial decree for the Stratoniceans in 81 seems to imply that in that year Greece, rather than Macedonia, was assigned as a provincia .[54]
Meanwhile the imperium in Asia Minor looked only a little more secure. Sulla had left behind Murena "to complete the settlement of Asian affairs."[55] The wording is an indication of how incomplete the Sullan dispensation remained at the rime of his departure. Murena's intervention in Cibyra in the southern corner of Phrygia, deposing its traditional dynasty and awarding two dries of the Tetrapolis to the Lycians, Rome's loyal allies in the war, is probably to be related to his task of consolidating the settlement.[56] We have already noted Murena's unsuccessful attempt to intimidate Mithridates into full compliance with the terms of the Dardanus agreement. Meanwhile, Mytilene managed to drag out its bitter resistance until 81 or 80, while pirates ravaged the coasts, even capturing Iasus, Samos, and Clazomenae, and Murena's countermeasures, for which he raised a fleet from among the Greek dries of the coast, availed little in the long run, however helpful they may have seemed at the time.[57] According to
Cicero, Murena credited the cost of the ships against the cities' tribute; a benevolent, or perhaps only realistic, measure, in view of their financial condition at this time.[58]
The huge fine levied by Sulla had been a crushing penalty after what the cities had already suffered in the war. The cities had to mortgage their buildings and properties heavily in order to come up with the amount required, at interest rates so unfavorable that (according to Plutarch) in a little over a decade the original debt had grown sixfold to 120,000 talents, though the principal had been paid twice over.[59] The money was probably lent initially not by Roman publicani , who will not yet have been present with sufficient resources in the winter of 85-84, but by local magnates or temples. It will not have taken long, however, for the shortage of capital in Asia and consequent extraordinary rates of interest to attract the publicani and other Roman financiers, who presumably provided secondary loans to cover the interest on the original debt.[60]
On the other end of the scale, many, if not most, of the cities "freed" by Sulla had suffered much in the war. Fimbria had destroyed Ilium after it had committed the crime of surrendering to Sulla rather than to him; the Chians had finally been expelled from their island by Mithridates; Magnesia, Stratonicea, and Tabae had no doubt suffered under Pontic occupation after their initial resistance; and the tenacity of the Rhodians and Lycians had surely been a considerable strain.[61] Even those who chose
the winning side in this conflict had not been able to escape paying a heavy price. Where we have evidence, it seems that Sulla as a rule rewarded these communities with grants of territory whose revenues will have assisted the cities' recovery: Rhodes received Caunus, and perhaps other territory on the mainland; Stratonicea received certain forts, villages, and harbors.[62] Nevertheless, it seems tolerably dear that in this war there were few winners among the Asian Greek communities. The fighting of 89-88 and 86-85, together with the punitive and repressive measures taken by both Mithridates and Sulla,[63] ensured that the consequences of this conflict for western Asia Minor were much graver than those of any other in the previous century since the expulsion of Antiochus III.
Plutarch's description in the Lucullus (20) of the wretched condition into which the cities of Asia subsequently sank is rhetorical and doubtless overdrawn, but perhaps not for all that entirely misleading. The first Pergamene decree in honor of Diodorus Pasparus and a recently published decree of the Koinon of Asia from Aphrodisias, if, as it appears, it belongs at this time, convey the same general impression of shattered civic finances and a miserable existence subject to the publican's rapacity.[64] There is scattered evidence of the lapse of certain festivals and sacrifices after the war.[65]
Evidence that seems to point in a contrary direction, however, serves to remind us of the inherent weakness of sweeping generalizations. Stratonicea took the opportunity in 81 to ask Roman acceptance of
for their sanctuary of Hecate and sent forth embassies throughout the Greek world to obtain for it international recognition.[66] Stratoniceans, at least, were not prevented by the grim aftermath of the Mithridatic War from pursuing prestige for their city in a great Hellenistic tradition. It is also noteworthy that in Miletus after 82/81 were no more difficult to find than before the war.[67] Contrary to the traditional view, it is also becoming clear that the production of silver coinage was by no means restricted to Ephesus after Sulla, and indeed the volume of cistophoric coinage appears to continue at much the same level in this period.[68] And we may wonder about the supposed financial ruin of Pergamum, which despite much ado about its wretched state could contemplate erecting in honor of one of its benefactors, Diodorus Pasparus, no less than five statues, two of them gilded.[69] It may be no accident that the decree, now dated to 69, immediately followed Lucullus's measures for debt relief. Even so it suggests that the "debt crisis" created by Sulla's fine had little long-term impact on Pergamum's finances. Indeed, the very fact that the debt had grown so large by 70 shows that despite the notorious brutality of the Roman creditors' collectors they had not been able to extract anything near their legal due. The high risk of offering such provincial loans is too often forgotten in our sympathy for the miserable debtors. We may compare the irregularity with which payment of outstanding debts could beextracted in Asia Minor in the 50s, about which we know a good deal from Cicero's correspondence.[70]
While it would be wrong, then, to conclude that civic life in the Greek cities of Asia Minor had been swept away, it is clear enough that their Hellenistic splendor was now largely past. They still had great orators to exhibit, of course, to young Romans on their grand tour such as Cicero in 79-77 (Cic. Brut . 315-16). But the contraction of their horizons in comparison with the prewar period is unmistakable. The honorary inscriptions on the North Hall at Priene give evidence of a still-vigorous diplomatic life around the turn of the second century: Prienean embassies rove the eastern Mediterranean and exchange courtesies with Seleucid and Cap-padocian kings. The construction of North Hall itself seems to have been linked with the name of an Ariarathes.[71] Rome's imperium and official presence in Asia Minor since 131 had not had an overwhelming impact upon Priene's international standing and participation in an old Hellenistic diplomatic tradition. Further evidence before the Mithridatic wars of such diplomatic vigor among the Greek cities of Asia Minor can be adduced.[72] Nothing similar appears in the epigraphic evidence of the generation following the First Mithridatic War. At Priene, the next honorary inscriptions to appear on the wall of the North Hall, probably late in the century, tell only of local civic affairs.[73]
Mainland Greece, at least, was spared the Sullan fine. Outside of Athens, whose case we have considered in chapter 8, and a few other cities
ravaged in the fighting, such as Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae (Plut. Sull . 26.7), the most significant change brought by the First Mithridatic War to Greece was certainly that large portions of it, very likely most of Boeotia, Euboea, and perhaps Phocis, were now made subject to Roman taxes, to be collected, in the case of Boeotia at least and probably of the others as well, by the publicani , who now at last made their debut in Greece.[74] The presence of publicani inevitably brought closer involvement of the proconsul of Macedonia, and so it is no surprise that in the 70s we at last hear of a rash of extortion accusations brought by Greeks of the mainland against Roman officials.[75] The larger role that the proconsul of Macedonia might now be required to play in Greece is indicated, for example, in the decree of the Senate of 78 B.C. awarding privileges, including tax exemption, to three Greek ship captains, including one from Greece, Polystratus of Carystus on Euboea. The proconsul of Macedonia was to ensure that Polystratus's immunity was secure, including exemption from any public debts; Polystratus might also, at his own discretion, resort to the proconsul's court.[76]
Still, such provisions for the settlement of difficulties do not imply that the proconsul was often required to act upon them, and a most interesting account of a series of incidents in Chaeronea about this time, which happens to be preserved only because Plutarch was a native of the place, suggests that in fact the proconsul of Macedonia was by no means a constant and oppressive presence in central Greece. The affair, minor in itself, deserves to be considered at some length because of the light it sheds on our subject.
Probably early in 87 the commander of a cohort wintering in Chaeronea was murdered, together with some of his men, by a band of local youths led by one Damon, who had rejected his sexual advances.[77] The gang fled, and the city council of Chaeronea passed sentence of death upon them; but one evening, according to Plutarch, Damon and his men returned, murdered a number of magistrates in the
, and fled again. L. Lucullus, passing through with an army, looked into the matter but found the city guilty of no offense. Damon, however, turned to robbery and brigandage until the Chaeroneans persuaded him to return under an amnesty and made him gymnasiarch. Damon was then murdered in turn in the bath. This ugly sequence of events might have ended here, but the Orchomenians, being at odds with the Chaeroneans, hired a Roman advocate to accuse Chaeronea of complicity in Damon's murders before the proconsul of Macedonia. (The name of the proconsul is unfortunately not preserved; as noted above, the first proconsul of Macedonia after the departure of Sulla may well have been Cn. Dolabella, who held the province in 80-78; the lawlessness in Chaeronea would fit well the disruption in Greece generally in the late 80s.) Chaeronea supported its claim of innocence by appealing to Lucullus's judgment at the time. When the proconsul wrote to Lucullus himself to verify their account, he found it true, and thus Chaeronea escaped the grave danger (). A statue of Lucullus was erected in the marketplace in gratitude for his truthful testimony.This story bears closer scrutiny. It is worth stressing that Chaeronea itself, not a Roman imperator , originally judged Damon guilty of murder and sentenced him to death for the killing of the Romans.[78] Capital crimes against Romans were not, it seems, according to some explicitly enunciated legal principle the sole preserve of Roman authorities, although of course had Lucullus not found Chaeronea's handling of the case satisfactory we
might well expect some Roman intervention, as in the case we have noted of a Colophonian murder suspect summoned to Rome from Asia in the second century (see pp. 128-29). The case came formally before the proconsul, of course, only when it reemerged as a result of a curious reversal in Chaeronea. When the city lifted the ban against Damon and even went on to honor him with the gymnasiarchy, it opened itself to the suspicion that it sanctioned the murder of the Romans. Even so, of course, it was not a Roman who revived the case but the neighboring, hostile city of Orchomenus (
).Behind this unseemly conflict between Boeotian neighbors lie, very likely, varying fortunes in the recent fighting in Greece and at the hands of Sulla. Chaeroneans had been instrumental in turning the flank of the Pontic position in the battle of 86, and Sulla had paid them a great compliment by having the names of the leaders of this operation, Homoloechus and Anaxidamus, inscribed in Greek on the trophy he posted at the point where they had broken through. The trophy, amazingly, has recently been discovered, with the inscription "Homoloechus and Anaxidamus, Heroes."[79] The monument itself stood as a powerful reminder that Chaeronea was in Sulla's, and Rome's, good graces. It would be surprising if Chaeronea was not declared "free" for its service in the war, as had been nearby Elatea (Paus. 10.34.2). Very likely, beyond the possibility of punishment for a few individuals, the city now stood to lose that privilege if it were shown to have connived at the murder of the Romans. Orchomenus, whose treatment by Sulla is uncertain but which had been on the wrong side of the battle lines at least once in 86, now perhaps saw an opportunity to raise itself in the estimation of the conqueror at the expense of its neighbor.
It is revealing that the Chaeroneans considered themselves in a position to recall from exile and honor a convicted murderer of Romans, that this occurred without complaint by Roman authorities, and that the case was finally initiated not by Roman authorities but by Orchomenus, which hired a Roman advocate and demanded justice at the tribunal of the proconsul of Macedonia, almost certainly in Macedonia itself, for as Plutarch notes, "the Romans did not yet send out commanders to Greece" (Cim . 2.1).[80] These facts reveal how little able the proconsul of Macedonia was to exercise directly or indirectly, through his subordinates, dose supervision of local affairs in Greece even in the aftermath of the First Mithridatic
War, given his chief duty of seeing to the security of the northern frontier—a perennial problem that was now particularly severe. While the extension of Roman taxation into central Greece inevitably involved Roman officials and publicani much more closely than before in local Greek affairs, the degree to which in practice local autonomy persisted should not be underestimated.
The First Mithridatic War and the Imperium Populi Romani
Mithridates and the Greeks who had sympathized with him had delivered a rather heavy shock to the imperium populi Romani in the East. Inevitably the acceptance of that imperium and loyalty to it were now thrown into question in a way they had not been before. This new tension emerges quite dearly even in our, on the face of it, rather austere epigraphic evidence.
Constant emphasis in the texts of this period on the demonstration of loyalty to Rome, expressed in the most obsequious terms, is most striking. The recurrence in these years of the phrase "those who have preserved the Roman friendship" is surely significant.[81] Cities that had received from Sulla grants of rights or territory naturally inscribed and conspicuously displayed the senatorial decrees that confirmed them on temples or in the marketplace.[82] These texts, prominently displayed, thus by their very nature served to attest to loyal service to Rome, and to its due recognition. In addition, however, they reproduced in abbreviated form the lengthy disquisitions presented in the Senate by the cities' ambassadors on their valiant efforts and sufferings in the Roman cause, and often contained some explicit senatorial acknowledgment of the veracity of these claims. So the embassy of the Stratoniceans speaks at length of their friendship toward Rome in peace and in the recent war, of their alacrity in resisting Mithridates, and of their torments at his hands; the Senate responds by assuring them that it has received word of their faithful assistance from commanders in Asia and Greece, and Sulla in his cover letter adds more
remarks of the same nature.[83] Some of the phrases used are indeed remarkable: the Stratoniceans declare that their city had "managed its own affairs according to their [sc. the Romans'] policy"; the Senate that it knows they had "most eagerly protected the Roman public interest with soldiers, grain [?], and great expenditures [?]"; and Sulla adds that they had "accepted eagerly many and various dangers for the sake of our public interest."[84] The Thasian embassy elaborated on the theme: "they had sworn oaths among themselves to kill their children and wives and to meet the forces of the enemy in battle, and to die for our [sc. the Roman] public interest in a time of need, rather than to appear in a crisis to have abandoned the friendship of the Roman people"; hence they underwent a siege, full of hardships and dangers.[85] We may imagine that the senatus consultum for Chios of 80 expressed like sentiments: it expounded the services the islanders had performed for Rome against Mithridates, and what they had suffered in consequence.[86]
A similar point was made in dossiers published by some cities after the war that advertised their loyalty or that of their prominent citizens. Nysa in Caria published a series of documents—one letter of the proconsul C. Cassius and two written by Mithridates—that attested to the great services performed by their citizen Chaeremon for the Romans when the tide of war was against them, and to his hostility toward the Pontic king.[87] A similar dossier has been found at Aphrodisias attesting to the city's dutiful assistance and that of its citizen Artemidorus during the Roman defeat.[88] Although the preserved texts were inscribed in the second century A.D ., they are likely to have been copied from an earlier monument for Arte-
midorus,[89] and it seems probable that Aphrodisias, like Nysa, did not let pass the opportunity to advertise its support for Rome in the immediate aftermath of the First Mithridatic War. One of the texts, a decree of the city passed in 89, reminded its readers of how, in response to an urgent request from Q. Oppius for military assistance, the Aphrodisians wished him to be informed immediately through Artemidorus "that the whole population was prepared to risk their lives, together with their wives, children, and property, for Quintus and the Roman interest, and that we do not even choose to live without the hegemony of the Romans."[90] A later letter of Oppius, written after his release from captivity probably in 84, was also published. In it Oppius recognized Aphrodisias's services to himself and to the Roman state: when he had requested soldiers from them they had sent them promptly, thus doing "what was incumbent upon good allies and friends of the Roman people to do."[91] In return Oppius, who now accepts their plea for him to become their patronus , will look to their interests in the future and will ensure that the Roman Senate and people know of Aphrodisias's services.[92]
Not surprisingly, the Chaeremon and Artemidorus dossiers stress assistance to Rome precisely at the moment when Roman fortunes were at their lowest ebb: aid offered during the collapse of Asia's defenses in 89-88 gave no impression of timeserving. But even those cities that had taken the lead in declaring allegiance to Mithridates sought now to proclaim their unwavering loyalty to Rome. The Ephesians, who had lost no time in declaring for Mithridates through the symbolic act of overthrowing Roman dedications in their city, and whose slaughter of Italians in the Artemision was one of the most notorious local manifestations of the massacre ordered by the Pontic king, now insisted rather lamely, in the
prescript to a document that dates to 86 or 85 and is clearly intended as much for subsequent Roman readers as for citizens of Ephesus, that
while the people [?] was preserving its long-established [?] goodwill toward the Romans, the common saviors [?] of all, and was enthusiastically receptive [?] to all demands, Mithridates, king of Cappadocia, violated the agreement with the Romans; and, having collected his forces, he attempted to become master of land that in no way belonged to him. After first seizing the cities in front of ours, he captured our city too by treachery [?], overwhelming us by his superiority in numbers and the suddenness of his attack. But our people, preserving from the first its goodwill toward the Romans, has now found an opportunity to help in the common project and has derided to declare war against Mithridates for the sake of the supremacy [hegemonia ] of the Romans and the freedom of all, all the citizens having offered themselves with one accord to the struggle for these goals.[93]
At Ephesus, however, the decision came too late to serve as a convincing gesture; as we saw, Sulla punished the city despite its professions of loyalty. For us the significant point is that the Greek cities of Asia Minor, however spotty their record in the war, took such pains to stress in their published documents their loyalty to Rome in the recent terrible circumstances. None of Rome's previous Eastern wars had elicited such a highly publicized outpouring of ostensible goodwill; the First Mithridatic War would appear to have been a crisis of allegiance on an altogether novel scale.
Particularly noteworthy is the sudden readiness of both Greek and Roman authorities to speak frankly in official documents of a Roman hegemonia . If Polybius is representative, Greeks had, of course, spoken of Rome's hegemonia for as much as a century,[94] but the appearance of the word as part of the formal diplomatic vocabulary, openly declared and inscribed in public records, is nevertheless an important step toward the full acknowledgment of the Roman imperium . As we have just seen, the Aphrodisians declare that "they do not even wish to live without the Roman hegemonia "; while sacrifices were offered, under Sulla's dispensation, at the Amphiareum at Oropus "for the victory and hegemonia of the Roman people."[95] The Ephesians present their decision to declare war against Mithridates as one taken "for the sake of the Roman hegemonia
and the freedom of all."[96] This sharp juxtaposition of Rome's supremacy with Greek freedom, implying the complete compatibility of the two, is striking and may well have been meant to be so; if we take into account the circumstances of the decree, already noted above, we recognize the distinct possibility that the Ephesians are expressing their hopes more than any realistic expectation. And yet, although the Ephesians for their own rhetorical purposes gave especially sharp expression to the idea that Rome's hegemonia did not preclude their own enjoyment of freedom, the same idea is probably implicit in the Aphrodisians' insistence that life itself was unthinkable without Rome's supremacy, and in the similar phrases we have surveyed above, from the lips of Stratonicean and Thasian ambassadors, about the priority of Roman interests—or rather, the identity of Roman with Greek interests.
Nor did Romans entirely shy away from frank acknowledgment of their hegemonia or, as they will have put it, imperium in the East. Sulla uses the word in his cover letter to the Stratoniceans: "I am quite aware that for generations you have performed all your obligations toward our hegemonia."[97] According to a convincing restoration of an epigraphic lacuna,[98] the Stratoniceans in 81 B.C. offered sacrifice on the Capitol not merely in thanks for Rome's victory, as was by now rather traditional,[99] but also, for the first time in our evidence, for "the hegemonia of the Roman people." If the restoration is correct, we have further evidence of a significant evolution in the terms in which the imperium was expressed in Rome itself, at the Capitolium, the focus of Roman public pageantry. As it happens, these signs of the full consciousness and the open profession of the existence of a Roman imperium in the East coincide chronologically with what, as Gruen rightly emphasizes, is "the first unequivocal assertion by a Roman that his state holds imperium orbis terrae " in the extant
evidence.[100] Perhaps the coincidence of evidence is fortuitous. But we may, on the other hand, justifiably suppose that emergence from the crisis in Italy and successful, if not glorious, confrontation of the first real challenge to the established Roman presence in the East gave a more concrete and more self-conscious conception of Roman world rule than had been expressed hitherto.
More evidence on this point comes once again from the Capitolium, on which was built precisely in these years, on the most probable view, a striking new monument to Roman power in the East.[101] On it were inscribed a number of texts, in many cases copied from earlier originals, dedicated on the Capitol by at least fifteen kings and peoples of Asia Minor, attesting to the benefits and security conferred on them by Rome.[102] The selection of these dedicatory tablets exclusively from Asia Minor and their publication on a single monument of some grandeur—its perimeter has been estimated at some twenty meters, and some relief sculpture has been attributed to it (though perhaps rashly)[103] —can hardly have been a random act just now, after Rome had for a brief period actually lost, then reestablished, its imperium on the Anatolian peninsula. Particularly interesting is the republication on the monument of some rather old dedications, a
few of which seem heavily ironical in view of the same parties' behavior in the recent war. A Lycian dedication that was probably nearly a century old will have harmonized well with that people's resistance to Mithridates in the war; more awkward, however, were a text advertising the "friendship and alliance" that obtained between Mithridates Eupator's grandfather (Mithridates IV) and Rome, and a commemoration by the Ephesians of the "freedom" established for them by the Romans, surely in 133-129.[104] The monument reminded Roman viewers of the power and authority their maiores had wielded in Asia Minor, set the recent victory in the context of an abiding tradition—and underscored the treachery of some dedicators' unworthy descendants.
It is further noteworthy that no Roman prescript or superscript has been discovered that might have served as an official commentary on the texts. Instead, the monument speaks, as it were, entirely in the words of non-Romans, the exterae gentes , and makes no explicit claims beyond what was directly and ostensibly spontaneously acknowledged by those subject to Rome's power. The recurring themes of the monument are Rome's high moral character (virtus or
), its goodwill (benivolentia or ), the expression of these qualities through the conferral of benefits upon others (beneficium or ), and indeed Rome's activity for their salvation (salus , hence ) and recovery of their freedom (libertas , , or ). The point was emphasized by the location of the monument: adjacent to the Temple of Fides, the guarantor of Rome's relations with other states.[105] The image of the imperium that the monument projected was precisely that of a benevolent protector, a patrocinium potius quam imperium much like that somewhat wistfully recalled by Cicero in the De officiis .[106] Implicitly the monument acknowledges, as do the texts examined earlier quite explicitly, that Asia Minorwas subject to Roman hegemony, that is, the imperium of the Roman people. Like those texts, which proclaimed in Greeks' words their enthusiasm for the Roman hegemonia , this monument signals, likewise from the testimony of Greeks, that this is all to the good of the weaker parties, for whom the Roman people is the source of benefits, security, and freedom.
It should be noted, of course, that this "official version" of the character of Rome's imperium is a construction on which Greeks and Romans collaborated; indeed, in our documents, the message is even now loudest and most direct in the voices of Greek rather than Roman speakers. But Cicero shows how well these sentiments fit into traditional Roman categories of patronage, while Sulla's cover letter cited above, the drafting of senatorial decrees that stressed the language of loyalty and the imperium , and the construction in the focal point of Rome itself of the Capitoline monument of Asian peoples and kings all conspire to demonstrate dearly enough that Greeks were saying what they knew was expected or desired of them.
The First Mithridatic War and its conclusion are an epochal moment in the history of Rome's Eastern imperium . The Romans came very dose to being expelled from the Greek East altogether. Mithridates had badly shaken the tradition according to which the imperium populi Romani could be upheld without committing more than one or two legions east of the Adriatic on a regular basis and might be reasserted against potential challenges on rare occasions by a consular army or diplomatic bluster. For the moment, Sulla had to leave Eastern affairs in considerable disarray; there was little time for a comprehensive settlement. There can be little question here of the imposition of a grand new design upon the Eastern imperium ; Sulla, the Senate, and the various affected communities muddled through a messy process of ad hoc, piecemeal revisions of the previous status quo. And yet the new emphasis on loyalty to the imperium populi Romani stressed in Greek documents, senatorial decrees, and the monument on the Capitol give a clear sense of the changed atmosphere: a novel consciousness of, or frankness about, Roman domination and the duties on both sides implicit in it. In reality Sulla had not managed to reassert fully the Roman imperium in the East. A convincing response to the disaster of 89-87 came only in the next decade, in the form of an unremitting military offensive on a number of fronts as Sulla's successors attempted to revive Roman power in the East and face down all challengers.
In the meantime, however, one crucial change of wide-ranging importance had been at least initiated by Sulla, if the details remained to be
sorted out in the Senate house over the next few years. If arguments presented in this and earlier chapters are sound, the settlement of the First Mithridatic War vastly increased the area that paid revenues to the Roman people, imposing for the first time vectigalia on the mass of the Greek cities of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and even on a number of Mithridates' onetime allies in central Greece. Magisterial intrusion would naturally increase in step with financial exploitation, as the spread of the harvest of Roman revenues demanded a wider sphere of supervision by proconsuls, who presided over the settlement of tax contracts (pactiones ) between publicani and individual communities and might act to restrain the gatherers' excesses.[107] The increased demands of the Roman state, especially Sulla's harsh fine on the Asian cities, required an infusion of capital ultimately supplied, sometimes at extortionate rates of interest, by an army of Roman financiers and businessmen, who, attracted by the investment opportunities, moved East in far greater numbers than before.[108] In the future, mediation between debtor states and Roman creditors would become an increasingly important part of the duties of officials, especially in Asia Minor; eventually, in 60, a senatorial decree had to be passed barring Roman magistrates from intervening in such affairs involving free cities.[109] The decisions taken by Sulla and by the Senate immediately following the First Mithridatic War, then, not only created something of a Roman bonanza in Asia both for the res publica and individuals but unconsciously set in motion a process that would greatly increase the administrative burden of Roman officials in the Eastern provinces and bring an intrusive Roman presence to a considerably wider area than before. Roman rule, such as it emerges from the pages of Cicero, is largely the product of the First Mithridatic War.
11
From Sulla to Pompey
The Revival of the Eastern Imperium, 81-70
The clique of Sullan partisans and timeserving latecomers to the Sullan cause that swept into power with its victory in 82 has traditionally received low marks for its turn at the helm of state in the 70s: characterized by a vicious combination of indolence, inefficiency, and corruption, the "Sullan oligarchy" inevitably collapsed in 70 of its own internal failings and inflexibility. But the faults discerned in the Sullani are old acquaintances of the Roman historian that are not met here for the first time and have a long life ahead of them in Augustan or Trajanic splendor; their prominence in the 70s, one senses, is part of the script of an old morality tale that goes back at least to Sallust but possesses great power still for modern interpreters.
Not long ago, however, a sober reassessment presented a very different picture of the 70s, portraying it more plausibly in terms of a gradual and careful return to political normalcy after the grave disruption of civil war, rather than as a process of governmental decline and fall.[1] Among the achievements of the post-Sullan era, I wish to argue, must be counted the reassertion of Roman supremacy in the East after the catastrophe of the Pontic attack had demonstrated the weakness of Rome's imperium , and Sulla's too-hasty departure left the job of restoring it incomplete. The decade of the 70s saw an unprecedented commitment of Roman military resources to the East in a succession of campaigns, for most of the period in two, and finally in three, theaters of operations, which marks a watershed in the history of the development of Rome's Eastern empire. While
individual episodes in this massive military effort, notably of course the origins and events of the Third Mithridatic War, have received dose attention, no attempt has been made to put together a more general account of Roman activities in this period not only in Asia Minor but in Thrace, Moesia, and the west coast of the Black Sea, as well as in the Aegean, Crete, and Cyrenaica. The result has been a failure to recognize the full significance of this momentous period in the history of Rome's Eastern intervention. In the sketch that follows I shall attempt to give proper weight to the less familiar campaigns and avoid, except where significant for the broader picture, rehearsal of the well-known narrative of the conflict with Mithridates.
The Restoration of Roman Power in Macedonia, Greece, and Asia Minor
We have noted the rather unsettled state in which Sulla left the East toward the end of the 80s: Macedonia and Greece virtually stripped of defenders and pressed hard by Thracian incursions; Mithridates only moderately chastened and still ready to face Roman arms in the field; the Dardanus pact an embarrassment and not officially ratified; pirates continuing to flourish on the seas. Little could be done to improve the situation until Rome itself was returned to constitutional government and Sulla's "restoration of the state" was complete, although the assignment to Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, one of the consuls of 81, of Macedonia, which had not had a consular commander since Minucius Rufus three decades previously, indicates that the restoration of security in the southern Balkans was recognized as a high priority. Still, nothing is known of Dolabella's military activity, and it seems unlikely that he did much more than consolidate Roman authority in central and coastal Macedonia, where we find him involved in effecting the restoration of Thasian mainland territory seized recently by Thracians.[2]
However, in 80 Sulla laid down the dictatorship, symbolically returning the res publica to its normal functioning under the consuls.[3] Again, there is a dear sign of Roman military priorities: the consular provinces for 79 determined in 80 under the Sempronian law were both Eastern—Mace-donia and Cilicia. The West—so it appeared—was safe: Pompey had ruthlessly put down the Cinnans in Sicily and Africa, while Sertorius, the last remnant of significant opposition, was now a refugee, driven out of Spain
by Sulla's general C. Annius (Plut. Sert . 7), and apparently not long for this world. The maintenance of Macedonia as a consular province is a noteworthy and important sign that the damage done to Roman power by the Mithridatic invasion and Thracian attacks of the previous decade had not yet been undone; but the selection of Cilicia as the destination of a second consular army is perhaps a more surprising move, requiring further explanation.
Cilicia before the Mithridatic War had sometimes been in essence a "piracy command," sometimes a base of land operations in support of Ariobarzanes in Cappadocia, anticipating its later function in the 50s as "the highroad from western Asia to Syria."[4] The attempt to pin onto the year 80 or indeed any other the establishment of a "territorial" province—a concept not recognized in Latin usage—seems fundamentally misguided in its assumption that the creation of a province was an event rather than an incremental and gradual process.[5] Nevertheless, the dual threats of Pontic meddling in Cappadocia and piracy ensured that Cilicia provincia would continue to be assigned after Murena's departure: an ex-praetor, another Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, was in command there in 80-79.[6] But in 80 Cilicia was assigned to a consul of 79; both consuls would go east, an event whose importance has not been sufficiently noted. For the single precedent for operations by two consular armies in the East we need to go back as far as 189-188 at the conclusion of the war with Antiochus and the Aetolians.
What explains this extraordinary commitment of two consular armies, which recalled the height of Rome's military efforts in the East in the early second century? Piracy had once again achieved grave proportions, and operations against the Cilician pirate strongholds did indeed ensue. But a consul had never been sent out solely on an expedition against pirates. As it happens, there was much more than mere piracy to cause concern about southern Asia Minor. Mithridates had still not yielded up all of Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, who was just now pressing his complaints against the Pontic king before the Senate.[7] Mithridates' son-in-law Tigranes, who had helped to set in motion the crisis of the later 90s by expelling Ariobarzanes, had conquered Seleucid Syria, taken the title "King of Kings," and had recently taken over much of Seleucid Cilicia (presumably Pedias), encircling further the exposed Cappadocian king.[8] The persistence of the Cappadocian dispute and Mithridates' resumption of empire building around the Black Sea must have given many Romans reason to think that the war had reached only a pause, not an end, and that the Roman position in Asia Minor needed to be reinforced in view of the possibility of a resumption of hostilities.[9] Yet, interestingly, the activities of P. Servilius Vatia, who received the province of Cilicia, would show that Rome did not desire war with Pontus. Perhaps a strong demonstration of Roman resolve would encourage Mithridates to yield up all of Cappadocia, which Sulla now ordered (
) him to do (App. Mith . 67).Mithridates now became docile, recognizing Roman determination and sobered by the failure of his recent attempt to subjugate Colchis. A new Pontic embassy to Rome arrived in 78 to declare that Mithridates had now withdrawn from Cappadocia and asked for ratification of the terms of the agreement at Dardanus.[10] Roughly at the same time that this embassy was in Rome, the proconsul Servilius was crossing to Asia Minor with at least
two legions to add to the two already there.[11] Sulla, with whose prestige the terms of the agreement at Dardanus was bound up, was now dead and could not give direction. The consuls, distracted by civil discord, refused to admit the Pontic embassy on the grounds that there was more pressing business, in effect making the Dardanus pact a dead letter and leaving much to the discretion of the commander in the field, Servilius.[12]
The sequel is significant. Servilius turned his attention to operations against coastal strongholds of the pirates in Lycia and Pamphylia, which occupied him probably through 76.[13] However, in 78 or 77, while Servilius thus busied himself, the Armenian king Tigranes invaded Cappadocia and is said to have hauled off some 300,000 persons eastward to people his new capital Tigranocerta.[14] Although Appian alleges that Mithridates was behind the raid, Tigranes, King of Kings and at the height of his power, had sufficient reasons of his own for undertaking it. It is significant that we hear nothing of Ariobarzanes on this occasion, and that Servilius chose to make no retaliatory move against either Tigranes or Mithridates. The Armenian king's invasion of Cappadocia was not used as a pretext for war either with Mithridates, who apparently made no move himself, or with the Armenian king, despite this second attack in twenty years on the much-abused Ariobarzanes. Rome, therefore, was neither seeking another dash with Mithridates, nor had it accepted a brief to defend the territorial integrity of Cappadocia against all comers. There was good reason for caution: Sertorius had returned to Spain, had caught the Sullan regime off guard, and his rebellion had now turned quite serious. This was no time for a confrontation with Mithridates. Still, one did not want to give the impression of weakness either to a foe who, from Sallust's perspective, was
clearly perceived as still menacing Roman interests in Asia.[15] Therefore Servilius's attack in 76/75 on inland Isauria, on the north slope of the Taurus Mountains and far from the coast where he had previously been operating, probably had a higher objective than military glory for the commander and booty for the army. Isauria controlled the strategic route from Pamphylia on the coast—still the heart of Cilicia provincia —through to Cappadocia.[16] But if this was a response to Tigranes' attack, it was one that left no room for a direct dash. Servilius returned home probably late in 75 to celebrate a triumph, but Cilicia was assigned again to a consul L. Octavius (cos. 75).[17] Mithridates' mere presence, despite the absence of any hostile moves, demanded the maintenance in Asia Minor of a consular army.[18]
While the guarded peace in Asia Minor persisted under Servilius, his consular colleague, Ap. Claudius Pulcher, began in 77 a major Roman offensive in the southern Balkan region that would persist through the decade, the first extended military effort on the Macedonian frontier since the passing of the Scordiscan crisis in the last decade of the second century. Claudius was detained in Italy by illness and the seditio Lepidana , but once he had arrived in Macedonia provincia he had launched an offensive against the Maedi around Mt. Rhodope and levied tribute on the Dardani settled around the upper Axius River to the northwest.[19] In 76, however,
Claudius's fortunes were varied against the Maedi, and in the same year he succumbed to sickness. Despite the Sertorian rebellion and the heightened tension in Asia Minor, C. Scribonius Curio, consul in 76, was sent out to succeed him with no less than five legions.[20] While Sallust makes the consul C. Cotta in 75 declare that, among the other ills troubling the Republic, Macedonia was plena hostium (H . 2.47.7 Maurenbrecher), Curio's campaigns fully reestablished Roman power in the southern Balkans after the vicissitudes of the previous two decades. By 73 he had terrorized into submission the Dardani, whose subjection by Claudius had been rather incomplete, became the first Roman commander to reach the Danube, and received a triumph for his efforts, perhaps in 72.[21]
Yet, although by now Rome was already involved in renewed warfare with Mithridates, Curio too received a consular successor in Macedonia, M. Terentius Varro Lucullus (cos. 73), the natural brother of L. Lucullus. The continuation of the military offensive in Thrace after the victories of Curio may seem surprising at first; its explanation presumably lies in the resumption of war against Pontus. Mithridates held sway over much of the Black Sea region, the northwest and west coast of which was an important source of revenues, supplies, allied contingents, and mercenaries.[22] M. Lucullus probably took command of the province already in the course of his consulship, in 73, since his predecessor Curio returned in that year; from the Aegean coast near Aenus he appears to have marched up the Hebrus against the Bessi, whom he defeated severely below Mt. Haemus, then eastward to the Black Sea through the land of the Moesians, capturing their stronghold Cabyle on the way.[23] He then captured the Greek cities
of the Euxine coast from Apollonia in the south as far north as Istrus, near the mouth of the Danube, and seems to have shown the flag against the Scythians.[24] Returning from the wars already in 71, Lucullus celebrated a triumph de Macedonia .[25]
M. Lucullus's campaigns in the Dobrudja and Moesia were hardly intended to put the area under firm Roman control. Although the Greek cities of the western coast of the Black Sea were apparently recognized after their capture as "allies,"[26] the Moesians, who stood between them and the Roman-dominated portion of Thrace, were not fully conquered until the campaigns of M. Licinius Crassus in 29-28 B.C. , and firm Roman control effectively terminated at Mt. Haemus.[27] Nor, further west, did Roman power extend to the Danube: Cicero in 55 still emphasized the indeterminacy of the northern frontier of the province (Pis . 38), which existed only where it could be enforced militarily against peoples who were far from permanently pacified; much work remained for Augustus before the Danube could become a dear terminus of Roman power. But the Balkan offensive of the 70s convincingly reasserted Rome's imperium in Macedonia, restoring thereby the security of Greece that had been badly disturbed from the north twice in the previous decade; and by means of a series of deep thrusts into hostile territory, it gave a clear demonstration of the revival of Roman military vigor. It is remarkable that the post-Sullan regime attempted to do this, let alone managed it, while at the same
time maintaining a consular army in Asia Minor against the threat and subsequently the reality of war with Mithridates and the long operations against Sertorius in Spain.
The Occupation of Bithynia and Pontus
Until mid-decade Roman military efforts in the East had been concentrated on Macedonia provincia , where no less than five legions were active, while four legions in Asia Minor guarded against Mithridates and performed police duties on the Lycian-Pamphylian coast and the routes over the Taurus. Every year since 78 there had been two consular armies in the East. Never had the Roman presence in the East been so massive and persistent. But events in the year 74 escalated Rome's involvement in Eastern parts far beyond even this level.
In that year Nicomedes IV, king of Bithynia, died.[28] Nicomedes had named the Roman people as his heir, evidently in case of intestacy.[29] Upon his death, the claims of a supposed son by his wife Nysa were asserted before the Senate, but certain Bithynians, who, Sallust notes, came of their own volition, denounced him as a fraud;[30] it is clearly implied that a true heir would have blocked Roman inheritance. Nicomedes' reasons for leaving his kingdom to Rome in the absence of an heir are as obscure to us as those of Attalus III, but the guess may be ventured that since he recognized that the kingdom would pass from his line in any case, this seemed the only way to deter Mithridates from seizing it and to ensure that his tra-
ditional protector from Pontus, Rome, would determine its fate rather than his enemy.
The most recent precedents—Cyrene, inherited by the Roman people in 96 but apparently neglected for decades, and Egypt, which according to testamentary terms might have passed to Rome by now—show that the assumption of control by Rome at least in the near future was not by any means inevitable.[31] Even the Attalid legacy was hardly accepted with alacrity, as we have seen. In 74, however, no hesitation to commit resources more deeply to the East is evident. Quite the reverse. No sooner was the question of Nicomedes' supposed son taken care of than the proconsul of Asia, M. Iunius Iuncus,[32] was sent to establish the Roman presence in the former kingdom, while his quaestor, Q. Pompeius, oversaw the collection of the movable royal property and its transport to Rome, a process that was apparently completed by the time of Mithridates' invasion in the spring of 73.[33] (Iuncus was already in Bithynia and, we may suppose, had his hands quite full with more pressing affairs when, probably in the winter of 74-73, an impertinent graduate student named C. Iulius Caesar appeared before him to demand the immediate punishment of some pirates he had rounded up.)[34] As we shall see, Bithynia was made a consular province already in the course of 74.
Rome, then, moved with uncharacteristic speed and resolution to take up this royal inheritance. The circumstances that demanded such a firm response seem clear. Mithridates had remained a sufficient threat to require the maintenance in Asia Minor of a consular army of four or five legions since ca. 79. He had a history of meddling in Bithynia, while the news that arrived in Rome around this time of alliance with Sertorius was certainly ominous.[35] The Pontic invasion of Bithynia, which indeed came within a year of Nicomedes' death, may well have been regarded as almost inevitable. The Senate seems to have been inclined to ensure that Bithynia's wealth would benefit Rome, whose resources were stretched to the limit around mid-decade, rather than Mithridates—hence the speed with which the royal possessions were laid hold of and spirited out of the country.[36] Thus, although the war against Sertorius continued to drag on, dearly hampered by the demands of other theaters,[37] and a consular army was operating in Macedonia, it was in Rome's interest to extend its commitments in Asia Minor in order to prevent Mithridates from growing much stronger.
Iuncus's occupation of Bithynia upon Nicomedes' death was only a temporary expedient, and war with Mithridates over the kingdom was dearly expected. Already in 74, when L. Octavius, consul in the previous year, suddenly died in his province of Cilicia, L. Licinius Lucullus, the current consul, eagerly sought and received that province and was given as well not only Asia provincia but also overall command of "the war against Mithridates." His colleague, the pompous and inept M. Aurelius Cotta, was likewise sent east with Bithynia as his province.[38] As Cicero makes
clear in a speech delivered in 63, Lucullus was expected to make a pre-emptive strike against Mithridates from the south or southwest while Cotta held Bithynia.[39] But Roman plans to seize the initiative were foiled by the aged but energetic king of Pontus, who chose to fight the war on his own terms by invading Bithynia at the opening of the campaigning season in the spring of 73, rather than await Lucullus's strike.
A problematic passage of Memnon of Heraclea may suggest that even before the consular armies appeared early in 73 Bithynia was flooded with publicani , for it seems to say that the Heracleans murdered the tax gatherers among them shortly after the arrival of Mithridates' fleet early in 73 and the Cyzicus campaign.[40] This, if true, would be remarkable testimony to the eagerness with which the Romans laid hold of the revenues of Bithynia. However, Memnon probably implies nothing of the kind. It is impossible to suppose (as Memnon has been understood to say) that the publicani swept into Heraclea shortly after Mithridates' fleet had come through and the Romans in Bithynia were in full retreat! It seems fairly dear that Memnon, having mentioned the incident that brought to an end Heraclea's privileged status as free "ally and friend" of Rome (assistance to Mithridates' fleet in 73, despite alliance with Rome), simply moved forward in time in a short digression that traces the direct consequence of that act after the expulsion of Mithridates from Bithynia—the reduction of Heraclea to tributary status, the arrival of publicani , and their murder by the proud Heracleans. If this reading of the text is right, then it is not necessary to suppose that in the short time between Iuncus's occupation of the kingdom and Mithridates' invasion it was somehow decided just which Bithynian cities would pay tribute to Rome. Although some Bithynians at least had not viewed Rome's entry into the inheritance as a catastrophe for themselves, as the rejection of the alleged pretender's claims shows,[41] others no doubt were favorable to Mithridates (Plut. Luc . 7.5), or at least hostile to Rome.
For our purposes a detailed narrative of the Third Mithridatic War is unnecessary.[42] We need only observe the broad outline of Lucullus's recovery of Bithynia and conquest of Pontus, and to bring this campaign into relation with other contemporary Roman activities in the East.
Mithridates, bursting into Bithynia, took the Romans wholly by surprise. Having quickly blockaded Cotta in Chalcedon, he pushed on into the Roman province of Asia and laid siege to Cyzicus. By capturing Cyzicus Mithridates doubtless hoped to incite a general revolt against the Romans and repeat his successes of 89-88; but the stubborn resistance of its citizens and Lucullus's wise refusal to give battle drained the Pontic attack of its momentum.[43] In the winter of 73-72 the besiegers became the besieged, and Mithridates attempted to move off but was heavily defeated on land and sea as he did so. Mithridates swiftly relinquished Bithynia and beat a retreat to Cabira in Pontus, where in 71 he was again defeated by Lucullus, to all appearances derisively. Mithridates abandoned his kingdom and fled for succor to his son-in-law, Tigranes of Armenia. By the end of 70 the last Pontic strongholds at Amisus, Sinope, Amasea, and Heraclea fell, and Mithridates' kingdom was entirely in Lucullus's hands. In 70, returning briefly to Asia provincia , Lucullus threw a great victory celebration at Ephesus for the felicitous conclusion of the war.[44]
Lucullus, and we may suppose others, believed the war essentially over: only a bit of tough diplomacy (Lucullus's legate Ap. Claudius Pulcher was sent to Tigranes to demand Mithridates' extradition)[45] or, failing that, military intimidation would be required to encourage Tigranes to hand over Mithridates for the triumph and a glorious conclusion to a stunning victory.[46] It did not seem entirely premature for Lucullus now to inform the Senate of the victorious conclusion of the war, and for the Senate to respond with the appointment of a commission of ten senators to advise the
imperator in making the settlement.[47] Lucullus's ostentatiously traditional procedure here contrasted sharply with that employed by Sulla in 85-84 and advertised symbolically not only the dominant position of the Senate in the post-Sullan regime but also the restoration of Roman power in the East (by this time, as we have seen, the war in Macedonia had reached an equally triumphant conclusion). His decision almost immediately thereafter (perhaps already in the winter of 70-69) to invade Armenia, after Ap. Claudius failed to induce Tigranes to hand over the king, eventually undid almost all he had achieved and brought personal humiliation. But at the time he surely expected that some strong arm-twisting would quickly produce the desired result and that his Armenian campaign would only provide a splendid coda to his work. He may have anticipated some criticism by passing along a rumor that the two kings were preparing to invade Asia (Plut. Luc . 23.7), but, like the identical assertion of Cicero in his speech of 66 (Leg. Man . 4, 7), this was a rhetorical point, hardly to be taken too seriously. Only with the benefit of hindsight could it be claimed that Lucullus had begun a major war without proper authority.[48]
Crete and Piracy
There was one blot on the impressive record of conquest and consolidation in the East enjoyed down to 70: the Cretan campaign of M. Antonius, son of the commander sent against the pirates in 102 and father of the triumvir.[49] And yet its failure should not obscure the importance of the fact that despite Rome's heavy commitments in Macedonia, Asia Minor, Spain, and Italy itself after the outbreak of the Spartacus revolt, yet another major military effort in the East was undertaken. The "Sullan oligarchy" was hardly lacking in vigor.
Antonius was given in 74 a novel type of command against the pirates, whose spread throughout the Mediterranean now required an imperium that was not territorially restricted to any of the traditional provinciae (such as Cilicia, his father's province); hence it could be called, perhaps
invidiously, an imperium infinitum .[50] It is unclear how far we should take Velleius's vague statement that Antonius's imperium was like Pompey's later under the lex Gabinia (2.31.3). Like Pompey's command, it covered the entire Mediterranean, but we should probably not take Velleius's reference so literally as to conclude that, as (probably) was Pompey, Antonius was expressly given superior (maius ) imperium to that of provincial commanders in the coastal regions; such an extraordinary grant by the Senate without some opposition seems highly implausible.[51] Even so, Antonius's command was a striking novelty, and an important step by the Senate toward controlling the pirate epidemic.
As we have seen, the Roman Senate and its commanders had traditionally given only sporadic attention to the problem of piracy in Eastern waters, despite the brave words of the law of ca. 100 inscribed in various coastal cities and on the monument of L. Aemilius Paulus at Delphi.[52] Since the expedition of M. Antonius the Elder against the Cilician pirates in 102, they had more recently received attention from L. Murena and his lieutenant A. Terentius Varro and even, only a few years past, from a consular army and fleet under P. Servilius Vatia.[53] Still the Senate shrank from committing resources sufficient to solve the problem. Doubtless Roman commanders in Asia Minor were constantly called upon to make do with half-measures, as, for example, the governor of Asia in 80-79, C. Claudius Nero, who ordered up from Poemaneum a dubious guard of ephebes for the protection of exposed Ilium.[54] Greek inscriptions indeed leave us in some doubt as to whether Roman-directed efforts achieved more than those undertaken on Greeks' own initiative. The Ephesians received timely help from the Astypalaeans in one incident ca. 100; there is no mention of Rome. An inscription to be dated roughly to this period commemorates
a noteworthy Athenian campaign off Cilicia against the pirates, for which the demos received the gratitude of a series of communities, including the Lycian confederation, Phaselis, and Cythnos; we should not, in view of Rome's record, assume without evidence that the expedition was undertaken on Roman orders or carried out under Roman command.[55] Another series of texts of this time commemorates a Lycian expedition led on land and sea by one Aechmon against the pirates. There is no reference to Romans.[56] On the face of it, the epigraphic record suggests that local powers of the Aegean did not simply wait for Roman direction in seeing to their security against the pirates.
The record of the Roman Senate against Eastern piracy is one of abiding indifference only rarely punctuated by significant responses. The younger Antonius's mission in 74 is an institutional novelty in the extent of the command given the praetor, therefore implying that the Senate had awakened to the need to take unprecedented steps. But it would be hasty to assume that the Senate was overly concerned about piracy specifically in Eastern waters. For all the difficulties that piracy may have caused in the East during this period, what precipitated this extraordinary mission was rather the spread of rampant piracy to the West and the consequent interruption of Rome's grain supply, a problem that became acute precisely in 75.[57] And indeed Antonius's first moves (as Pompey's later) were made in the West and were surely intended to dear the major Roman grain routes in Western waters.[58] Yet after a year or two of operations in the Western seas, Antonius's efforts focused on Crete, an objective that was
probably anticipated from the beginning. (Some textual support, for what it is worth, comes from Lactantius, who believes that Antonius's mission was "to pursue the pirates and secure the entire sea," Div. inst . 1.11.32.) Already in 73-72 Antonius's legates were mustering supplies and troops in and from the coastal towns of the Peloponnese.[59] Antonius was afterwards blamed for having attacked Crete merely out of lust for conquest (Flor. 1.42.1). This looks like the usual moralistic scapegoating of failed commanders. Crete could not be ignored by anyone charged with the job of checking piracy in the Mediterranean, for the recent troubles had shown how closely linked the maritime security of the West was to that of the East. Antonius formally complained to the Cretans that they favored Mithridates and supplied him with mercenaries against Rome, and that they had supported and provided safe haven for the pirates, perhaps out of favor for Mithridates.[60] These charges are not likely to have been entirely fabricated. Cretan pirates in fact took second place in notoriety only to their Cilician neighbors;[61] Crete was indeed the richest source of mercenaries in the Hellenistic world (hired by, among other employers, the Romans themselves),[62] and, according to Memnon, who, however, has an axe to grind here, Mithridates had actually sent some forty or so ships to Crete early in the war, which were defeated by Lucullus's legate Triarius on their return trip in 71.[63]
The concentration of Roman attention against Crete in the later 70s needs also to be set against the background of a sudden revival of interest
in Cyrenaica. Cyrene had been left to the Roman people by the testament of its former king, Apion, as far back as 96; yet it was not until 75 that Cyrene was assigned as a provincia , probably in response to a revival of Ptolemaic claims on the traditionally Lagid territory and to the suddenly pressing question of Rome's grain supply.[64] One of the great cereal-growing regions of the Mediterranean could supplement the city's stores, but only if the route the grain would travel from Cyrene, across the Mediterranean to the Peloponnese before turning west, could be made secure from piratical attack.[65] Antonius's Cretan campaign was likely therefore also in part a consequence of the decision in 75 to act on the will of Apion and exploit Rome's old rights in Cyrene. It was not solicitude for Greek welfare, still plagued after all by Cilician pirates, or a high conception of imperial duty that brought M. Antonius east, but the demands of the center of consumption at Rome, which even the post-Sullan Senate could not ignore.
Two inscriptions from coastal Peloponnese connected with Antonius's preparations for the Cretan campaign illustrate how onerous a task it was, not merely for Rome but also for the Greek cities, to organize a major naval campaign against the pirates: the texts document severe exactions of soldiers, grain, cloaks, and money among other things, as well as Antonius's quartering of troops upon the cities.[66] The campaign was notorious even in Rome for the burdens it laid upon the allies: some claimed that Antonius was a remedy more harmful than the disease.[67] Gytheum, we know from one inscription, had to borrow the better part of a talent from Roman financiers to meet the demands made of it[68] —sobering evidence that even modest exactions might be beyond the capacity of local reserves—and in Epidaurus the introduction of a garrison and its presence over an extended period of time caused a severe shortage of grain, no doubt exacerbated by the requisitions of grain taking place elsewhere.[69]
Piratical operations out of Cretan harbors were probably beyond the capacity of the island's cities to control, even had they wanted to do so, and when the Cretan response to Antonius's complaints was found to be insolent, the Roman commander made war upon them. The campaign did not go well. Antonius, with significant naval assistance from Byzantium, suffered a heavy defeat against the Cretan Lastbenes, who captured his quaestor. A truce was patched up that Antonius was pleased to present as a victory before he succumbed to illness.[70] The Senate was less easily satisfied: rather than exploiting the opportunity to cut back its Eastern commitments, by August of 70 the renewal of war against Crete was being actively contemplated, and Crete may well have been decreed as a consular province for 69 in accordance with the lex Sempronia .[71] The Cretans in alarm responded by sending an embassy of thirty of their most eminent men to try to avert conflict and to restore past friendly relations.[72] Meanwhile, Creta provincia was assigned to the new consul Q. Caecilius Metellus, for Q. Hortensius, who had received it by lot on 1 January, had chosen to remain in Italy and relinquished the province to his colleague; Metellus was to proceed to Crete to accept its surrender and make war against the recalcitrant.[73]
The Cretan envoys, who evidently knew well how things were done in Rome, went about their business very effectively, first making the rounds of salutations at the homes of the leading senators and making personal appeals. So vigorously did they press their case that it was found necessary to ban by senatorial decree loans of money to them which were being used to finance bribes. They were finally brought into the Senate auspiciously, probably only in February of 69, the month when foreign embassies were
usually heard at this time.[74] The groundwork the Cretan envoys had laid at first paid off, for, reminded by the envoys of the Cretans' past services to the imperium , the Senate voted to absolve them of the allegations against them and restore to them the title of "friends and allies," presumably on the terms settled with Antonius.[75] It may be that with the (temporary) easing of the grain shortage in Rome in the later 70s the magnitude of the task of eradicating Cretan piracy had come to seem rather daunting in comparison to the benefits it might bring.[76] The wars in Macedonia were over, that in Asia Minor apparently so: a commission of ten was soon to travel east to advise Lucullus on arrangements for a lasting peace. The imperium populi Romani , whose prestige had suffered much in the 80s, was fully restored where it most counted, thanks to the efforts of no less than eight consuls and two consular armies in constant, simultaneous operation since 77; the pleas of the Cretan envoys despite their victory showed that little damage had been done even by Antonius's failure. It might have been an appropriate time to call a halt to Rome's greatest and most extended military effort in Eastern parts and celebrate the victories of the past decade. But at this juncture P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, the future consul of 57, "invalidated" the decree, most probably by a tribunician veto—perhaps the first important use of the restored power of the tribunate.[77] We are not informed as to whether Spinther's veto implies popular impatience with senatorial inaction toward Crete perhaps exacerbated by continued discontent over the grain supply or merely partisanship in Metellus's favor. In any case, the Cretans returned home without accomplishing anything, and they and their policy were immediately discredited when an ultimatum arrived from Rome demanding the delivery of 300 hostages as well as the victor over Antonius, Lasthenes, and another chief named Panares; 4,000 talents in indemnities; all pirate ships (how
these would be distinguished was doubtless left unclear); and the return of all Roman captives (presumably by now sold as slaves, for the most part). The attempt to appease Rome had failed miserably, and Lasthenes and his supporters were now able to persuade the Cretan people to fight for their traditional freedom.[78] The Roman demands went unanswered; finally, probably only early in 68, Metellus began operations against Crete with a force of three legions and quickly blockaded Lasthenes and Panares in Cydonia.[79] As during Antonius's campaign, the war on Crete impinged on the Greeks of the mainland: Metellus's legate L. Valerius Flaccus was active in Athens, Sparta, Achaea, Boeotia, and Thessaly.[80]
There we must leave him for now, noting that despite opposition within the Senate yet another consular army was now committed to a new theater of operations in the East. The hesitancy of the Senate is, however, significant and may reflect a still limited view of Roman Eastern commitments. The restoration of security in Macedonia and Greece had justified a series of vigorous, offensive campaigns; the threat of Mithridates had required an unparalleled military buildup in Asia Minor. These efforts had by 70 met with great success: the imperium had been powerfully reasserted. It appears that a senatorial majority was ready to declare victory and turn back from the offensive against piracy begun in 74. As a body the Senate was even now not ready to commit the necessary resources to a determined effort to dear the Libyan and Aegean seas of the pirates if a face-saving peace settlement could be arranged with the troublesome Cretans. But Spinther's veto of the settlement presages the laws of the tribunes Gabinius and Manilius in 67 and 66 urging novel and dramatic solutions to the remaining problems of the imperium .
Popular Politics and Eastern Empire in the Sixties
The Gabinian Laws
The first of the two leges Gabiniae of 67 replaced Lucullus in command of the war against Mithridates. Discussion of this law must be somewhat
more extensive than its importance might seem to warrant because certain misconceptions have until quite recently clouded the manner of Lucullus's replacement.
Unfortunately for Rome, Lucullus's invasion of Armenia in 70-69 did not produce the expected result—Tigranes' betrayal of his father-in-law. Instead, despite heavy defeats inflicted by the Roman army, and Lucullus's capture of Tigranes' own capital, Tigranocerta, in 69 and Nisibis in 68, the Armenian king hung on doggedly, while Mithridates was able to slip back into his kingdom in 68 with a new army provided by Tigranes. This was a major coup for Mithridates and an inexcusable error on the part of Lucullus, for the resourceful Mithridates, once again in Pontus, was able to disrupt the Roman rear and finally inflict a devastating defeat upon Lucullus's legate Triarius at Zela in 67.[81]
Our sources tell of growing opposition to Lucullus at home in Rome from as far back as 71-70, when he took measures for debt relief in Asia. The decision in 69 that Cilicia would be a consular province for 68 and, at the beginning of 68, the assignment of Asia to a praetor are presented as attempts to erode Lucullus's position that preface the final stroke, the lex Manilia of 66 transferring the command to Pompey.[82] Modern scholars have often accepted this picture without sufficient reflection.[83] Already toward the middle of 69, before any bad news arrived from Armenia, the Senate had decreed that Cilicia would be one of the consular provinces for 68.[84] Lucullus had, after all declared the war over; the assignment of Cilicia to another—leaving, of course, Lucullus in command of the war against
Mithridates—followed from acceptance of that claim. But, in any case, interference with Lucullus's command was avoided by senatorial authorization to the consul to whom Cilicia was finally allotted in 68, Lucullus's own brother-in-law Q. Marcius Rex, to raise three new legions to take to his province.[85] Why a consul in Cilicia? Not to steal Lucullus's thunder. With preparations for war against Crete to the west against piratical colleagues of the Cilicians, and a second offensive in Armenia to the east against the kings, Cilicia had in 69 suddenly become a linchpin of strategic operations in the East, which now were to be conducted by no less than three consular armies.[86] Cilicia needed a commander on the spot, not in Armenia. In any case, Marcius did not even leave for Cilicia until 67;[87] he was hardly hastening to rob Lucullus's glory. In the event, the function Marcius was to serve was rendered obsolete by Pompey's arrival in Cilicia later in 67, but he may not have been entirely inactive in his province before Pompey appeared, since he was acclaimed as imperator and later laid claim to a triumph.[88] Marcius's refusal later to diminish his own forces when Lucullus requested troops from him may not therefore have been due entirely to petty envy.[89] Pompey's fame has entirely obscured Marcius's activities in Cilicia, but it is not unlikely that, like Pompey's own legates, Marcius laid much of the groundwork for the great man's success.[90]
Likewise the significance of the return of Asia provincia to its normal praetorian status at the beginning of 68 has been distorted, following the lead, it is true, of Dio.[91] It is hard to see how this affected Lucullus's
position in the war against Mithridates, when the assignment of Asia to praetors in subsequent years evidently in no way undermined Pompey's command under the Manilian law. Again, it is necessary to recall that Lucullus himself had advertised the return of peace in western Asia Minor with his victory celebration at Ephesus; and it was "hardly practicable for a general operating in Armenia to administer provinces to the west."[92] Dio's presentation of the provincial assignments in Asia Minor of 69-68 as punishment for Lucullus's allegedly self-interested dilatoriness (36.2.1-2) is, therefore, probably no more than an inference based on hindsight. Both of these assignments were made by the Senate, not the comitia , and the Senate was hardly attempting to sabotage the war against Mithridates and Tigranes. The ground was not being cut from under the feet of the Roman imperator in an insidious popularis or Pompeian prelude to the lex Manilia of 66.
The change came not incrementally, but in one blow. A law proposed by A. Gabinius toward the end of 68 or early in 67 sent the consul M'. Acilius Glabrio to relieve Lucullus in the command of the bellum Mithridaticum —not merely, as it is usually represented, to provide an independent command over Bithynia and Pontus, thereby fragmenting the Roman command and chipping away further at Lucullus's position for Pompey's eventual benefit.[93] Glabrio expected to finish off the war easily and snatch the prizes of victory.[94] Since he was so sanguine, and Gabinius's law also provided for the discharge of the two Fimbrian legions that had been in Asia nearly twenty years,[95] it is dear that the law was voted before
news came of the disaster at Zela in the same year. In Rome, the war was dearly thought to be virtually over, which makes it dear that this lex Gabinia was not part of a subtly orchestrated plan to put Pompey in charge of the war against Mithridates.[96]
We can infer that the main public complaint against Lucullus was his needless prolonging of the war to satisfy his private greed.[97] Lucullus later showed that he was not above gross self-indulgence, and his own huge share of the booty won in the East was dearly sharply contrasted by Gabinius in his contiones with the tight rein he kept on the soldiers under his command.[98] Lucullus had taken a considerable risk, both military and political, with his attempt to bully Tigranes into relinquishing Mithridates while announcing that the war was at an end, and two years after his invasion of Armenia it was easy to conclude that that move had been a grave error. In fact, as his offer to Pompey in 66 showed, Tigranes was on the verge of succumbing to the pressure,[99] but too late to benefit Lucullus. It is important to recognize that Gabinius's law replacing Lucullus, despite the overturning of the Senate's determination of consular provinces, inspired no opposition worthy of commemoration in our sources: with the war dragging on inconclusively more than two years after Lucullus announced its conclusion, his powerful friends in the Senate could do nothing more to help him.[100]
The more famous Gabinian law of 67 dealt derisively with the problem of piracy. As in 74, piracy was above all an explosive and "popular" issue because of the havoc it was still playing with the grain supply to the city of Rome.[101] This was above all a Western matter; but the failure of Antonius's expedition to have any lasting effect and the swift return of the
pirates to the coasts of Italy despite Metellus's operations on Crete made it clearer than ever that a truly extraordinary effort would have to be mounted against all of their strongholds at once. Now, eight years after the severe grain shortage that had precipitated Antonius's command and despite repeated attempts by the Senate to control the problem, it was if anything even more acute. We can hardly wonder that the urban populace reacted violently against all resistance to Gabinius's proposal, which effectively tapped popular resentment against the Senate's failure to secure the grain supply against the pirates.[102] But the resilience and tenacity of the pirates in the face of the Senate's best efforts of the last seven years in particular made the issue something bigger than one concerning the subsistence of the urban populace. The glory of the empire was now at stake: the arrogant depredations of the pirates, who had even attacked a Roman fleet in Ostia, sacked Caietae, and captured two Roman praetors, had at last come to appear a standing refutation of Rome's claim to imperium , above all in the East, where many notable cities had been captured and plundered, including Cnidus, Colophon, Samos, and Delos.[103] "Or did you think this was imperium, " Cicero cried in his speech for the Manilian law the next year, "when legates, quaestors, and praetors of the Roman People were being seized, when we were cut off from public and private communication with all the provinces, when all the seas were so completely closed to us that we were unable either to undertake private Or public business abroad?"[104] Only with the seas cleared of piracy, Cicero declared, did the Roman people "at last seem truly to command [imperare ] all peoples and races on land and sea."[105] Cicero's emphasis in these two passages on the appearance of imperium and the recent failure of Rome to maintain it is striking and significant: he does not, be it noted, say "at last you command" but "at last you seem to command." Plutarch and Appian
similarly stress the symbolic importance of the problem.[106] The problem of piracy had become, then, also a problem of image, in effect a standing refutation of Rome's claim to imperium. Imperium was no longer simply a matter of holding supreme power, of commanding the obedience of organized states; the growth of piracy, at first largely ignored because of the limited conception of imperium , finally came to reveal an uncomfortable contradiction between Rome's ability to command the obedience of cities and kings and its inability to enforce the obedience of pirates, mere "brigands" (latrones ).
To deal with this problem Gabinius proposed that extraordinary resources be entrusted to the state's most successful general the double triumphator Cn. Pompeius Magnus and consul of three years before. As passed in its final form, Pompey was granted for three years a provincia that was not territorially but only functionally defined—the war against the pirates—and most likely with imperium superior to all others within fifty miles of the sea. Five hundred ships, twenty legions, and a sum of HS 144,000,000 were to be at his disposal, and he was given the right to nominate personally twenty-four legates to assist him.[107] As under the law of ca. 100, all kings, chiefs, peoples, and cities were requested to cooperate in the effort (App. Mith . 94).
As it was for Antonius, Pompey's first and most important order of business was to dear the Western seas around Sicily, Africa, and Sardinia, the three chief sources of grain for the city.[108] In the meantime operations in the eastern Mediterranean were left to his legates Cn. Lentulus Marcellinus (off North Africa), M. Terentius Varro (off western and southern Greece), the historian L. Cornelius Sisenna (in the Aegean), M. Pupius Piso, L. Lollius, Q. Metellus Nepos (on the coasts of Asia Minor, from the Propontis to Cilicia), and two Pompeii (off Egypt).[109] Pompey accomplished
this most pressing, but on the whole simpler, task in a mere forty days.[110] Pompey's legates had done their work well in the meantime: aided, no doubt, by the lack of a safe haven in Crete clue to Metellus's campaigns, they had managed to drive back to their strongholds in Cilicia those pirates whom they did not immediately destroy.[111] Pompey could thus set out again from Brundisium, enjoy a trip to Athens and a meeting with Rhodes's main tourist attraction, the philosopher Posidonius, and still win a decisive victory at Coracesium in Cilicia only forty-nine days later.[112] The victory at Coracesium finally secured Roman mastery—the imperium populi Romani —over Cilicia Trachea, whose rugged coast had been infested with pirates' bases for the better part of a century. But, as usual, it is necessary once again to stress that this need not imply any legal, organizational activity formally imposing Roman rule, for which, once again, there is no evidence. When Cicero says in the speech for the Manilian law that Pompey "on the forty-ninth day joined all Cilicia to the imperium of the Roman people" he is not talking of the imposition of a provincial structure and the creation of a legal entity—on the very day of Coracesium, the forty-ninth day out of Brundisium!—but simply of the significance of the victory over the pirates, the decisiveness of which is stressed in the immediately following clauses.[113] On any account Cicero exaggerates, for Cilicia Pedias was almost certainly at this time still in the hands of Tigranes, whose conquests were not stripped away by Pompey until the settlement late in 66.
Pompey dealt with the captured pirates with unexpected leniency, and even resettled them in numerous colonies, one of which (a resettlement
of Soli) was to bear the name of the imperator himself (Pompeiopolis).[114] He was in Pamphylia, probably in the midst of organizing this task, when those Cretans who were still holding out against Metellus in Cnossos and elsewhere in the central and eastern parts of the island, and being handled very roughly, heard of his enlightened policy and, suddenly eager to classify themselves as pirates, offered to capitulate to him rather than to Metellus.[115] A famous dash of wills between the Roman commanders ensued. Pompey's legate L. Octavius was sent to accept the Cretans' surrender but found that his presence on the other side of the ramparts in no way deterred Metellus's siege operations against Eleutherna, Lappa, and Hierapytna. When another of Pompey's legates, Cornelius Sisenna, crossed from Greece to Crete with a military force and promptly died, Octavius took over his soldiers and nearly dashed openly with Metellus.
The crisis was finally averted, however, when in 66 news reached Pompey of the transfer to him of command of the Mithridatic War (Dio 36.45.1). Metellus was now left to complete the subjugation of Crete after a bitter three years' conflict.[116] Metellus imposed terms on the Cretans that signified the end of their long-lived independence, doubtless including the payment of vectigalia to Rome.[117] Crete was "ours," said Cicero in 63.[118] Likely enough, after Metellus's return Crete and Cyrenaica were assigned as a single provincia to a quaestor.[119] By 66, then, the seas were safe, and
while Pompey received most of the credit, Metellus Creticus deserved a nod as well (Cic. Flac . 30).
The tribune Gabinius's two plebiscites—the lex de bello Mithridatico , transferring command in the war to Acilius Glabrio, and the lex de piratis persequendis , which gave Pompey a special mission in the Mediterranean and enormous resources with which to perform it—were more than simply partisan maneuvers. The two Gabinian laws follow in the direction pointed by Lentulus Spinther's veto of peace with the Cretans and represent a strong assertion of the popular will for a more active, less restrained policy than that currently being followed in the Senate. The law on piracy is of particular importance: the problem of the security of the seas had at last developed from one chiefly affecting provincials and those Romans on public and private business in the provinces to one that directly impinged upon the voting urban populace. Hence, finally, the commitment to clearing the seas decisively—a momentous step that signifies a much broadened sense of the imperial mission. At last, Cicero commented in 66, the Roman people achieved the appearance of universal dominion.[120] The Manilian law of the following year continues the trend, and the valuable glimpse we receive of the public debate on the measure from Cicero's speech on it gives an indication of some of its implications.
The Manilian Law
At the beginning of 66, there were no less than four commanders of consular rank (not counting Lucullus) heading armies in the East that now totaled some seventeen legions; now for the fifth successive year since 70 more than half of the mobilized legionary strength of Rome was operating in the East.[121] But this massive military effort on a variety of fronts was not yet over. The pirates had been tamed, the war in Crete was at last reaching its end, but in Pontus the Roman defense was paralyzed by Lucullus's lack of authority and the inertia or lack of resources of the new commander, Glabrio.[122] Pompey's stunning success against the pirates pre-
sented an irrefutable argument for turning command of the Mithridatic War over to him in the current crisis. Although it was by a law of the tribune C. Manilius that the change of command was effected, this time strong support was forthcoming from within the senatorial leadership: no lesser men than the consulars P. Servilius Isauricus (cos. 79), C. Scribonius Curio (cos. 76), Cn. Lentulus Clodianus (cos. 73), and C. Cassius Longinus (cos. 73) openly supported the proposal, which made it safe for the new man Cicero, praetor in this year, to come forth in its favor and win credit with the urban populace thereby.[123] Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 78) and Q. Hortensius (cos. 69), who led the opposition as they had against the Gabinian law on piracy the previous year, did not press the point unduly,[124] and the law was passed without difficulty. The lex Manilia was not, in fact, overly controversial, for Pompey had convincingly justified the trust put in him the previous year.
Cicero's speech to the people in support of the Manilian law is a valuable document for investigation of Roman attitudes toward eastern empire as expressed in political rhetoric around the middle of the decade. We must not lose sight of the fact, of course, that the arguments employed in it must have been chosen for their appeal to its primary audience: the urban plebs , meeting in an informal assembly (contio ). Among Cicero's arguments for regarding events in Asia Minor with great seriousness, gloria imperil and the defense of allies naturally take their due place (Leg. Man . 4, 6, 11-14)—an important sign that these things did matter even to Roman city dwellers—but Cicero stresses above all the necessity to protect "your revenues" (vestra vectigalia ).[125] The theme is struck immediately, when the Mithridatic War is first mentioned (bellum grave et periculosum vestris vectigalibus ac sociis , 4), and the phrase vestra vectigalia is repeatedly stressed (4 bis, 5, 6). "Your revenues" are after all "the sinews of the state" (17), and those in the province of Asia were the richest (maxima , 6, 14) and most reliable (certissima , 6) that Rome possessed.[126] Asia, alone among the provinces, Cicero points out, was wealthy enough to pay
substantially more than was needed for its defense alone (14); while, according to the interpretation in chapter 10, revenues from it had increased vastly after the first dash with Mithridates, it had never required a sizable legionary garrison before then, nor indeed after Lucullus's victories over the Pontic king. The loss of Asia's revenues would entail the loss of "the adornments of peace" (pacis ornamenta )—a veiled reference to games, public buildings, and perhaps hoped-for grain subsidies and land distributions—and "the resources for war" (subsidia belli , 6).[127] Of course, the war was not being waged in Asia provincia , nor had it been, save for the siege of Cyzicus, which was over as early as 72.[128] Cicero needs therefore to stress at some length that in order to assure the flow of crucial revenues, Asia must be defended not merely from armed invasion, but even from any anticipation of one (14-15). A further argument aims more directly at individual interest. Many Romans, Cicero points out—not only equestrian publicani but others of all orders—have invested their fortunes in Asia (16-18; cf. 4). The beginning of the first war with Mithridates, when thousands of Romans were slaughtered and so many fortunes lost in Asia, "taught us" (nos docuit ) that private credit in the city of Rome itself depended on the survival of private investment in Asia (19). The degree to which this point must be elaborated, and the telling words "believe me," dearly imply that this argument is not so familiar to his audience, who are not themselves, for the most part, financiers, and about whose general indifference to the fate of his beloved publicani Cicero has shown himself to be more than a little worried (17-18). But many members of his audience may well have been borrowers, and so Cicero seeks to persuade them that they have a personal stake in the protection of Roman financial interests in Asia by reminding them of the collapse of credit twenty-two years before.
Cicero's arguments for the Manilian law clearly enunciate a new conception toward eastern empire, one that goes well beyond the maintenance of a hegemonial position and emphasizes above all the exploitation of the fruits of conquest not merely to maintain Roman strength in war but for the enjoyment of the Roman people in peace. Its origins can of course be
traced back to the Gracchi, who had first urged the use of Asian revenues to finance "your privileges" (vestra commoda ), as Gaius had put it.[129] Yet before 69 the practical impact of such rhetoric was quite restricted. It was the confrontation with Mithridates and the pirates, and the threat that these hostile forces came to pose not merely to the finances of the state but to the direct, material interests of Roman negotiatores, publicani , and the entire urban plebs , that made the argument for exploitation virtually unanswerable. With the recovery of the fun powers of the tribunate the Roman people would permit no scruple of international diplomacy or constitutional tradition to weaken the effort to protect and augment its commoda . The result was a sequence of tribunician interventions into the affairs of the Eastern imperium , from Spinther's veto of peace with the Cretans in 69 through the Manilian law of 66, that at last sprang the latches of the old hegemonic attitude.
Pompey's Settlement in Bithynia and Pontus
A detailed narrative of Pompey's campaigns in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Syria, and Palestine can be found elsewhere;[130] we shall survey them only in the most cursory manner. Mithridates was quickly routed in battle once again by the new Roman commander in 66. Barred by Tigranes himself from taking refuge with him again, Mithridates fled to Colchis on the southeast shore of the Black Sea, one of the last remnants of his empire, presumably in an attempt to rally his fortunes by retaking possession of the Bosporan kingdom in the Crimea, now held by his son Machares, who had come to terms with Lucullus. Pompey, late in 66, left Mithridates to his desperate flight round the Black Sea and invaded Armenia, whose king, already harassed by the Parthian Phraates at Pompey's instigation, quickly came to terms. Throwing himself at Pompey's feet, Tigranes won recognition as king but was stripped of his conquests of the last thirty years, which were now at Rome's disposal as conquered territory, and required
to pay an indemnity of 6,000 talents.[131] Pompey followed up this coup with a march into the Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, which perhaps combined the objectives of pursuing Mithridates and driving him from his last possession of Colchis and of asserting Roman supremacy over former Armenian vassals and dependents in the area, which bordered land relinquished by Tigranes.[132] But Pompey turned back without making any attempt to pursue Mithridates to the Crimea and founded a city in part from his wounded and discharged veterans in Armenia Minor. Pompey laid claim to victory over Mithridates with its very name: Nicopolis.[133] Mithridates, however, remained beyond Pompey's grasp: he had continued around the Black Sea, expelled Machares, and soon reasserted control of the Crimean Bosporus.[134] Possibly it was concern over the direction of Mithridates' flight that led the Senate in 66 to decree Macedonia once again a consular province for 65, and again in 64 for 63.[135] But the need to assert Roman control over Tigranes' former possessions gave Pompey the excuse he needed to avoid the dilemma of being forced either to return home or to pursue Mithridates.
In 65 and 64 Pompey's legates and quaestor had entered Syria and Mesopotamia to stake the Roman claim to Tigranes' former southern possessions. Late in 64 Pompey himself marched into Syria, opening a new epoch in the history of Rome's Eastern expansion. His activities in Syria and Palestine in 64-63—his refusal to restore the Seleucid Antiochus XIII to the kingdom from which he had been expelled by Tigranes, in effect abolishing the moribund Seleucid monarchy, and his embroilment in the dispute between Parthia and Armenia over Gordyene and in the struggles
of the Maccabean princes—are outside the bounds of this study.[136] Finally, as the imperator marched on Jerusalem in 63, the news came of Mithridates' suicide. Saved from the embarrassment of his main foe remaining at large, Pompey could now prepare to return home. Late in 63 he reappeared in Pontus to spend the winter at Amisus, where Pharnaces, who had finally betrayed his father, Mithridates, in the Crimea, sent him the old king's body, hostages, gifts, and the murderers of M'. Aquillius, in return for which Pompey recognized his kingship over the Crimean Bosporus and later enrolled him as a "friend and ally of the Roman people."[137] The Senate, informed by Pompey of the death of the king and the conclusion of the wars, immediately decreed a public thanksgiving of ten days, twice that given Marius for his victory over the Germans (Cic. Prov. cons . 27). The long struggle with the seemingly irrepressible king of Pontus was over.
Pompey spent the winter of 63-62 settling conditions in Pontus and Bithynia. It is unclear how much remained for Pompey to do in Bithynia. Whatever arrangements Iuncus had made in 74-73 were likely swept away with the loss of Bithynia in the following spring and the years of warfare that followed. Bithynia was, of course, entirely in Roman hands by 71, but it is noteworthy that Cicero, in his speech for the Manilian law, lays no stress whatever on possible revenues from Bithynia and notes only its ravaged state in 66 (Leg. Man . 5). We know that Pompey invalidated Lucullus's arrangements in general,[138] and that he imposed certain revisions, to be considered below, of the constitutions of the cities of the former kingdom of Bithynia. It seems, therefore, that the settlement of Bithynia was left for Pompey to undertake perhaps already in the latter part of 65 and the subsequent winter before his intervention in Syria. By 63—before Pompey's Eastern arrangements had been ratified—the publicani had certainly returned to Bithynia and were collecting rents from the former royal lands, now public land of the Roman people.[139]
The chief business, then, that confronted Pompey at Amisus was to settle the condition of the huge expanse of territory he had himself seized from Mithridates, Tigranes, and the hapless Seleucid. Native Icings and chiefs flocked to him as Pompey rewarded loyal allies and friends with a
share of the spoils.[140] From the former possessions of Mithridates, Paphlagonia was given to Attalus, Colchis to Aristarchus, and the priestly domain of Comana to Archelaus, son of the former Pontic general who had deserted to Murena after the first war with Mithridates. Pharnaces, Mithridates' son, like Tigranes, formally relinquished his kingdom of Crimean Bosporus and received it back from Pompey along with the title "friend and ally of the Roman people." Pompey, however, "freed" the city of Phanagorea, removing it from Pharnaces' dominion—an instructive example of how even now Roman conferral of the status of "free city" did not necessarily imply a privileged position in relation to Rome but titular freedom from any outside control.[141] From Tigranes' former possessions in Asia Minor, the wretched Ariobarzanes, now restored to his kingdom in Cappadocia, received a portion; Armenia Minor was given to some native dynast, perhaps Deiotarus of Galatia; Sophene was granted first to Tigranes' son, and then, when he refused to hand over its treasury to Pompey, given to Tigranes himself; and Tarcondimotus, a native chieftain in Cilicia, was given a domain between Trachea and Pedias.[142] Of Tigranes' Syrian and Mesopotamian possessions, and the former Seleucid territory, Pompey also made certain gifts to native kings and dynasts, while Hyrcanus was instated as high priest of Judaea only upon regular payment of tribute to Rome.[143] It has been argued that many of the kings to whom Pompey gave rewards of territory were similarly made subject to tribute. This hypothesis seems to rest merely on the parallel of Judaea and the magnitude of additional revenues that Pompey boasted in his triumph to have added.[144] It is perhaps unwise to accept the literal truth of Pompey's vaunt. Further, Judaea may well have been a special case: Pompey may have simply claimed for Rome, as heir to the Seleucid possessions, the
obligations once due to that dynasty. There seems insufficient reason therefore to assume that the other territories handed over to loyal local dynasts in the usual fashion were also made subject to Roman tribute. Enough revenues were to come in from the new conquests to make such a novelty unnecessary. Pompey even gave at least one major city within the former area of Roman control the reward of "freedom" from Roman tribute and magisterial interference.[145] But what was truly novel about Pompey's settlement is not the extent to which the new conquests were left in the hands of native powers—a time-honored practice, especially in Asia Minor[146] —but how much he had expanded Rome's commitments and revenues in the East. In addition to the recent acquisition of Bithynia, Pompey made much of Pontus and Syria-Palestine, as well as eastern Cilicia (Trachea and Pedias), subject to Roman tribute and supervision.
As usual the information we possess about Pompey's leges in the new provinces is highly incomplete,[147] dependent as we are on chance citations in the sources. In Cilicia, Pompey may have done little more than settle former pirates in numerous "cities" and extend arrangements for the collection of Roman revenues to Trachea and Pedias, now formally wrested from the Armenian king. Our sources tell us only that Pompey brought Cilicia fully under Roman power.[148] What remained of the Pontic kingdom after the awards to Roman allies was joined to the former kingdom of Bithynia to form one province (Strabo 12.3.1, C541). We hear of only two cities freed from Roman tribute and recognized as autonomous entities: Sinope and Amisus, former residences of the kings, both freed by Lucullus in an act evidently upheld by Pompey.[149] The formerly free and allied city of Heraclea Pontica had now lost that privilege by its adherence to the cause of Mithridates.[150]
The most remarkable feature of Pompey's settlement of Pontus was his division of the former kingdom into eleven communities (
),[151] for the most part new creations which replaced the old royal division into .[152] The new "cities" were at the same time given a constitutional form that still served as their basis in the second century A.D. , when we hear about some of the provisions of the lex Pompeia in the correspondence of the younger Pliny with Trajan. Pliny cites it for a minimum age limit of thirty for the holding of magistracies and sitting in the council, alludes to its provisions for a Western manner of enrolling the councils, complete with censors and the co-optation of ex-magistrates, and refers to a ban on dual citizenship between cities in the province.[153] Pompey parcelled out substantial portions, if not all, of Mithridates' royal lands to the new cities, contrary to assumptions prevalent in Rome in 63.[154] Under Pompey's arrangements, the publicani evidently made contracts with the individual cities for the amount of tribute due, the collection of which was left to the communities themselves; thus the notorious Roman tax gatherers were kept at one remove from the native inhabitants.[155] Although the evidence is far from compelling, it seems most probable that the sale of the tax contracts for Bithynia and Pontus, as for Asia, was to take place in Rome.[156]The foundation of cities in the East by a Roman commander was not entirely without precedent. Already in 83-82 we hear of the foundation by L. Murena of a city in Cappadocia, called after himself Licinea, to guard against Mithridates' raids—an act remarkably reminiscent of Hellenistic monarchy.[157] But nothing more is heard of this place, which was presum-
ably stillborn in the decades of war that followed. But Pompey claimed to have founded, in addition to eight cities of "Cappadocians"—that is, in Pontus and Cappadocia—various colonies (ten?) of Cilicians, as well as others in Coele-Syria and Palestine.[158] Like Murena, Pompey did not hesitate to name the new communities after himself: in Pontus, Eupatoria, Mithridates' own unfinished project commemorating himself, appropriately became Magnopolis, and Pompeiopolis and Megalopolis also appear. In contrast to the other cities, which were settled by local inhabitants, Nicopolis in Armenia Minor, a foundation that commemorated victory over Mithridates in the battle of 66, was peopled in part by Pompey's wounded and discharged veterans, and thus became the first foundation of Roman citizens in the East.[159]
Pompey's city-foundations were motivated by more than self-glorification, however, or, as has been sometimes fashionable to suggest, imitation of Alexander.[160] The numerous colonies of Cilicians were the settlements of ex-pirates already noted above, most of them of course in Cilicia itself—among these a resettlement of Soli which received the name Pompeiopolis—but also around the Mediterranean in Achaea, Calabria, and Cyrenaica.[161] In Pontus Pompey's establishment of the political forms characteristic of the polis has been explained as an answer to the novel problem of imposing Roman administration in a land formerly organized along tribal and quasi-feudal lines.[162] This is plausible and might be elab-
orated somewhat. The Romans had long faced such a situation in Spain; and the Spanish precedent may help explain the Western flavor of the new constitutions, for Pompey had recently spent six years there fighting Sertorius and his Spanish allies.[163] Above all, we should note that the new cities played a central, intermediary role in the collection of revenues, as we have just seen. It would have been an exceedingly costly and inefficient business for the publicani to gather the taxes of the Roman people from the myriad of local chiefs and tribal communities that existed before; but by dividing Pontus into eleven poleis, Pompey had provided a structure that could itself assume much of the burden of the collection of revenues. But the likely priority of fiscal considerations in the administrative restructuring of Pontus ought not to obscure the radicalism of Pompey's intervention.
Equally remarkably, Pompey's constitutional arrangements for the new "cities" of Pontus were made operative in Bithynia as well,[164] where, unlike Pontus, urban life was well established and highly developed. We need not assume that by extending the lex Pompeia to Bithynia as well the constitutions of the Bithynian cities were revised from their foundations, but at the very least the law provided for a new kind of council unfamiliar to the East, which was enrolled from ex-magistrates and subject to the scrutiny of "censors" (
) on the Roman model.[165] A property qualification for councillors is not explicitly attested but would hardly be a surprise in view of the precedents provided by Flamininus in Thessaly and Mummius in Achaea.[166] That Pompey, in establishing a new political structure in Pontus, adopted some familiar features from the Roman experience is perhaps no surprise, but his readiness to alter the constitutions of the Bithynian cities in ways that must be considered fundamental is a novelty in the history of Roman intervention in the East and calls for an explanation.[167] Perhaps the answer is to be found in the apparent hostility of the Bithynian cities to Rome in 73 attested by Plutarch (Luc . 7.5). A council that was effectively insulated by its permanence from changes of the popular will, and accountable not to the public but to censors, would be moreeasily amenable to the demands of the ruling power, and thus the local elites could be encouraged to act as virtual allies of the Roman authorities—often regarded, without good evidence, as a constant in Roman policy toward Eastern communities already from the second century.[168] The era subsequent to the First Mithridetic War is rich in novelties. Pompey's reorganization of Pontus, and his regulation of the constitutions of Pontus and Bithynia, are striking evidence of the new readiness of the Romans to resort to sweeping administrative restructuring in order to establish more securely not only their power but their capacity to draw the revenues that maintained it.
Pompey returned in the spring of 62 to Italy, making impressive stopovers at Mytilene, Ephesus, Rhodes, and Athens.[169] An inscription from Mytilene which dates to 63 or 62 honors Pompey for "having put an end by land and sea to the wars besetting the world."[170] In November of 63 Cicero spoke of the termination of all foreign wars by means of the prowess of one man and repeatedly echoed the theme in subsequent years; the bold claim was even made in the preamble to a Roman law drafted by A. Gabinius in his consulship—the man who had been responsible for conferral of the piracy command on Pompey.[171] After twenty-seven years of nearly constant warfare and chronic instability in Eastern lands and seas, Greece and Asia Minor were again able to enjoy relative peace, although preparations for C. Antonius Hybrida's ill-starred campaign against the Dardani in this very year were likely an unpleasant burden on the allies of the Greek mainland and Macedonia.[172] The augmentation of the imperium was duly celebrated in Rome. Cicero was inspired in 63 to put a new twist on
an old theme—Pompey had made the imperium coterminous with the orbis terrarum —and liked the formulation so much that he repeated it, with variations, numerous times in subsequent years.[173] For his part, Pompey advertised the extent of his conquests on placards carried in his triumph of 28-29 September 61, and on a dedicatory inscription on his temple of Minerva, which, according to Pliny's citation, asserted that Pompey had conquered an expanse from Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea.[174] He boasted that Asia, the most distant of the provinces when he had taken charge of it, was now surrounded by others.[175] The crisis that had begun with Mithridates' invasion in 89 was declared to be past; the prestige of the imperium populi Romani was at last restored, indeed vastly augmented and extended into exotic lands previously almost unheard-of.
The principle of maintaining the imperium against all challengers was an old one. In the past it had had little to do with territorial occupation, administration, or financial exploitation. But the long confrontation with Mithridates, which required a huge commitment of troops in the East over an extended period of time,[176] had brought a permanent change. For Pompey, the increase of Roman revenues was very much at issue. After his Spanish victories, the land grants voted his soldiers could not be carried out because of the weakness of state finances.[177] It is clear that the new revenues and Eastern booty gave a boost to the resumption of efforts toward land distribution from 63, and it is surely plausible to suppose that the increase in the urban grain subsidy secured by M. Porcius Cato in 62
was palatable to fiscal conservatives only in view of the fantastic sums anticipated from the East.[178] Pompey was of course alert to all of this. Plutarch tells us that, in addition to the placards indicating the wide extent of Pompey's conquests and the cities and ships taken, others contained inscriptions which indicated that
whereas the public revenues from taxes had been 50 million drachmas, they were receiving from what Pompey had conquered for the city 85 million; and that 2,000 talents in coin and gold and silver objects were being deposited in the public treasury, without counting what had been given to the soldiers, of which the smallest portion had been 1,500 drachmas.[179]
With all due allowance for self-interested exaggeration, Pompey's claim to have added 85 million denarii to the annual revenues of the state and to have nearly tripled its previous income makes clear the extraordinary nature of the increase on any accounting.[180] Such explicit reference to nova vectigalia , put on a par with the more traditional elements of a triumphal catalog of conquest, is striking. Cicero, speaking for the Manilian law, had chosen to stress the importance of securing the Asian revenues; Pompey,
returning from the campaign authorized by that very law, boasts of having multiplied the vectigalia populi Romani . The emphasis on exploitation of the imperium is unprecedented in our evidence.
In the roughly two decades after Sulla's departure from the East a combination of factors, mostly already present to some degree, conspired to transform decisively the Eastern imperium . Fundamental were the massive offensives in the Balkans and northern Asia Minor and the more sporadic operations against the pirates conducted by the Sullani in the 70s, a sequence of simultaneous, large-scale campaigns unparalleled in the history of Roman intervention in the East. Successes against the Thraco-Illyrian tribes and Mithridates were not matched by the efforts against the pirates, but Roman supremacy, the imperium in the old, restricted sense, was for the most part not only restored out of the shambles left by the First Mithridatic War but considerably enhanced. But that conflict also had forcefully brought home a new lesson: that the survival of the imperium itself and the material interests of many Roman citizens were directly bound up with the maintenance and indeed expansion of revenues from the East, particularly those from Asia Minor. Already in 88 enough private Roman capital was invested in Asia that its loss caused a collapse of credit in Rome, with unhappy consequences for citizens of all classes.[181] The loss to the state treasury of Asian revenues during the anarchy of the 80s must have been acutely felt as well. Sulla's great extension of tributary status in Asia Minor and Greece at the very time when fiscal demands imposed by extensive military commitments on various fronts soared made the Eastern revenues indisputably the foundation not only of the imperium but also of the amenities (commoda ) enjoyed by the Roman people. With the revival of the tribunate in 70, this link between exploitation of the Eastern imperium and the people's commoda became the linchpin of imperial policy, leading under Pompey first to a belated but decisive response to the plague of piracy and then to the greatest single accretion of territory subject to Roman tribute and the commands of Roman magistrates yet seen in the history of the imperium populi Romani .