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 good
evidence 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]