J. Roman Intervention in Cyrenaica in the 70s
The development of Roman interests in Cyrene from the death of its last king in 96, though strictly outside the geographical limits of this study, helps us to understand Roman intervention in neighboring Cretan waters in the later 70s.
As far back as 96 King Apion had left Cyrene to the Roman people as his heir, but at the time the Senate seems to have done little more than to declare the cities of the former kingdom "free."[102] Whether in the subsequent two decades Rome made any consistent effort to exploit the new possessions financially is controversial and quite obscure.[103] But it is clear that despite the testament of King Apion, no Roman magistrate had been assigned Cyrene as a provincia before 75, when, Sallust tells us, "Publius Lentulus Marcellinus . . . was sent as quaestor to a new provincia , Cyrene" (H . 2.43 Maurenbrecher).[104] L. Lucullus had visited Cyrene (as well as Crete and Egypt) on his ship-mustering expedition in 86 and had helped to settle stasis in the city, a festering problem throughout the region, but this had evidently not resumed any Roman claims to the area.[105]
A recent reexamination of the palimpsest that contains this fragment of Sallust has yielded important information, surprisingly passed over by the investigator himself in his publication. The text, as it is now established, seems to show that in 75 the Senate chose to assign Cyrene as a province only after rejecting the claims of two unidentified men who would be the Ptolemaic princes Auletes, now on the throne of Egypt since 80, and his younger brother, who held Cyprus at this time.[106] Cicero mentions incidentally in the fourth Verrine oration an embassy to the Senate at precisely this time undertaken by Cleopatra Selene, probably the mother of Auletes and the Cypriot king, and her children by her Seleucid husband, among them the current claimant to the Syrian throne, Antiochus XIII Asiaticus. Cleopatra and her children attempted to claim the Egyptian throne as well as the Seleucid, but they were snubbed and permitted neither an audience with the Senate nor the privilege of dedicating offerings to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.[107] We should note also that Auletes in 76/75 at last underwent his formal coronation, postponed for five years from his assumption of the throne in 80.[108] The delay is surely linked to the recent testament of Ptolemy Alexander I (d. 87) or II (d. 80), which conferred the kingdom upon Rome[109] ; but the end of Auletes' hesitation coincides intriguingly with the embassy of Cleopatra and the senatorial decision on Cyrene.
It is unlikely that these events are unrelated. I suggest that in the winter of 76-75 the Senate was confronted with a number of claims by rivals for the thrones of Egypt and Cyrene. The beginning of a new fiscal quinquennium in 75 may well have raised the issue of whether the outstanding Ptolemaic legacies—both Egyptian and Cyrenaican—should be accepted, just as it did precisely a decade later. Regarding Cyrene, it is significant that despite its passing to Rome by testament in 96 the Ptolemaic rivals evidently regarded the Roman claim to it still as an open issue. However, they were both disappointed, and now their dispute over its possession served as the impetus for Rome to assume control itself. But as we shall see, the decision was probably motivated by much more than mere determination to prevent Cyrene's falling into others' hands.
The sending of a quaestor to assert Roman control over an area claimed by testamentary fight is a novelty, later to provide a precedent for Cato's mission to Cyprus in 58.[110] We do not strictly know whether Marcellinus received a successor in Cyrene; Sallust's reference to Cyrene as a nova provincia need hardly imply that the quaestor organized the "permanent annexation" of the area.[111] The first Roman official attested in Cyrene after P. Marcellinus is Pompey's legate in 67, Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus, who appears in a series of inscriptions from Cyrene in various, unfortunately mostly obscure, contexts, and after him, M. Iuventius Laterensis, quaestor there ca. 63.[112] It has been properly noted that had there been a governor of Cyrene in 67 his name ought to have appeared in the contexts in which we find that of Cn. Marcellinus.[113] As usual here again the "organizing" of a "province" at 75, 67, or any other time passes without direct attestation in our evidence, and such a conception is singularly unhelpful for understanding the peculiar character of Roman intervention in Cyrene at this time.[114]
The sudden concern of the Senate with Cyrene in 75, manifested by P. Marcellinus's quaestorian mission, has not been satisfactorily explained. An older view posits that the objective was above all cash with which to alleviate financial difficulties ostensibly implied by the acute grain shortage of 75.[115] But the problem of the mid-70s does not seem to have been one simply of finances: the interruption of the grain routes by the pirates was even more fundamental.[116] More recently the "annexation" of Cyrene—I should say rather the exertion of a measure of Roman control, though sporadic—has been interpreted as an attempt to control piracy, which was endemic off its shores as well as in Cilicia and Crete.[117] But this may be to put the cart before the horse: sending a quaestor across the Mediterranean to far-off Cyrene was an odd way of combatting a problem that, before Antonius launched his ships in 74, was sorely vexing Italy itself and the Sardinian, Sicilian, Spanish, and North African grain routes. Nor is a quaestor a likely choice as commander of a significant military operation. The most plausible hypothesis is a modification of the first: Cyrene was "reclaimed" in 75 in order to supplement from one of the great cereal regions of the Mediterranean the grain supply of Rome, which, it is surely no accident, was severely strained precisely in 75, when a consul was actually attacked by an angry mob.[118] The interest of the Senate in Cyrene was on this view extremely restricted in scope in the 70s and 60s, and it is therefore no surprise that signs of Rome's presence are so scarce and sporadic in subsequent years, for the crisis had receded—due surely to Antonius's efforts in the West as well as to the exploitation of Cyrene—by 73, when the state could again offer subsidized grain.[119]