Mithridates the Great (13 page)

Unfortunately, a fire was also the signal which the Rhodians had decided upon as a warning of attack. When they perceived the Pontics sneaking upon them, the Rhodians lit their warning fire, whereupon the Pontic army rushed forward noisily, assuming they had been given the signal to attack. Since no-one was properly in position, and the Rhodians were thoroughly alerted anyway, Mithridates sensibly pulled his army back before it was committed. It took until the next morning to get everything sorted out. Though the assault went ahead anyway for form’s sake, there was no chance of the Rhodians being even slightly surprised, and they rebuffed the landward attack with ease.

The
sambucca
was a problem for the defenders though. By their nature, city walls are remarkably static, whilst being mounted on a ship gave the Pontic siege tower considerable mobility. Armed with a formidable array of siege weapons, the
sambucca
was backed up by a mass of soldiers in small boats, who stood ready to defend the tower against a sally, and being equipped with their ladders, these soldiers were equally ready to follow up any breach the
sambucca
might make in the Rhodian defences. The chosen site of the
sambucca
‘s assault was against the temple of Isis, which was apparently built into the walls. Later the Rhodians were to swear that the goddess took the Pontic assault personally, and herself appeared on the walls to heave a massive fireball at the attackers. Evidently this did the trick. Either that, or the rough seas left over from the storm meant that the pontoon supporting the tower was none too stable, and the sambucca started to collapse under its own weight as it approached the walls and encountered the higher waves near shore. Either way, Mithridates’ assault collapsed as comprehensively as his floating siege tower.

This was the last straw. Leaving a flotilla to keep the Rhodian fleet out of mischief, Mithridates returned home. He had found personal command of his army a none-too-encouraging experience, and he was determined, for the present at least, to return to his core competencies of raising troops and money. This task had become particularly pressing, for a new vista of opportunity had suddenly opened up in Greece.

Athens

Mithridates was a man who liked to know how things were going beyond his borders, and even before the start of the war with Rome his agents were active in Greece. For example, the Roman governor of Macedonia had his hands full coping with a sudden spate of Thracian incursions, and there is no reason to disbelieve the Roman suspicion that these were encouraged and sponsored by Mithridates. It is unlikely that Mithridates had any immediate plans for the area, but he was aware that any Roman attack on his lands would probably start from there, and it was his intention to make things as uncomfortable for the Romans as he could.

Athens had finished the 90s BC in the grip of a tyranny. In the ancient world ‘tyrant’ did not mean a cruel and oppressive ruler, but rather a dictator who had seized power to which he had neither a constitutional nor hereditary right. This tyrant was called Medeius. He followed a pro-Roman policy, almost certainly because he hoped that this would encourage the Romans to recognize his rule and thus give it some legitimacy. Consequently, almost by reflex, the party opposed to Medeius took an anti-Roman stance, which in those times was by definition a pro-Pontic stance.

Since Rome in 90 BC had other preoccupations than supporting Athenian usurpers, Medeius slips quietly off the pages of history, his fate unknown, when the pro-Pontic party became ascendant. A philosopher called Athenion was sent on a diplomatic embassy to Mithridates, and after his meeting sent back word to his countrymen that Mithridates was proposing to restore democracy, cancel debts, and spread largesse generously among one and all.

Athenion immediately became a local hero. When the ship bringing him home was blown off course, he was given a flotilla of warships to escort him home. Cheering crowds turned out to see Athenion carried into the city in a silver-gilded litter, to be received by the priests of Dionysius who claimed that Athenion had met with the reincarnated spirit of their God. The aristocracy, who had probably been supporters of Medeius, tried to make the best of it, and seem to have agreed to make Mithridates the eponymous archon of the year. The Athenians named their years after one of the city’s elected leaders – archons – and later made desperate efforts to persuade the Romans that the year had in fact been an
anarchia
, a year in which no archon was selected.

Athenion rode a wave of popularity to put himself into a position of power. He was a firm democrat, not to say a demagogue, and rapidly alienated the Athenian elite. The claim that Athenion himself was the son of an Egyptian slave dancer is standard political rhetoric of the time, and it cannot be
established now whether he was as corrupt and larcenous as the sources claim.
⁶
It is certain that the Athenian upper classes fled to the nearest Roman authorities for support, which made it equally certain that Athenion would swear loyalty to Mithridates.

The days of the Athenian empire were long gone, and the military support of Athens was hardly worth having. But the harbour of Athens, the Piraeus, was perhaps the finest anchorage east of Brundisium. Athens itself served as a gateway to the rest of Greece, both physically and morally, because the endorsement of Mithridates by Athens, the spiritual home of Hellenism, was a propaganda gift beyond price and one that swayed the sentiments of many other Greek cities in Mithridates’ favour. All this the intricacies of Greek politics had handed to Pontus on a plate, without Mithridates having to send a single soldier to win it.

Strategically, Greece presented Mithridates with a dilemma. His original intention had almost certainly been to fight the Romans on the beaches of Asia Minor, assuming the Roman landing force made it past his fleet in the first place. It was to make this task harder that Mithridates had tried to subjugate Rhodes, and why his general Archelaus was currently mopping up the rest of the Cyclades with a large fleet and larger army. Occupying Greece meant tying up these forces and probably more beside, and also taking on the veteran Roman army currently holding down Macedonia as soon as that army had disentangled itself from the Thracians.

On the other hand, how could the self-proclaimed leader of Hellenism shy away from the task of liberating the motherland? More cynically, since it was necessary to fight the Romans somewhere, why not in Greece? A hard-fought war in antiquity was devastating to the local countryside (southern Italy had still not fully recovered from the war against Hannibal three generations before) and a devastated Greece was far preferable to a devastated Asia Minor; even if Pontus was pushed out of Greece, Rome would have still lost a productive province. Also there was the question of momentum. Rome had been hard hit by the Italian rebellion and the loss of its lands and influence in Asia Minor had followed. Now the Greek isles were falling like dominoes. If Greece went too, who knows what might be next? Rome’s power seemed to be unravelling. Sulla’s coup had already delayed the expected Roman army of reconquest by a year. The pressure had to be kept up; it would surely be foolish to give Rome space to pull itself back together.

Athens launched an enterprising assault on Delos (another major naval trading centre), but was given a bloody nose by the island’s Roman defenders.
This hardly mattered in one way, because Archelaus took the place soon afterwards in any case, but it is possible that the defeat caused Athenion to be replaced in Athens. Hereafter, Athens was led by one Ariston - another allegedly low-born philosopher, who may, however, simply be Athenion under a different spelling (by now most upper class Athenians - the only people who wrote local history - had either abandoned the city or been killed, and internal events in Athens are very unclear).

Boeotia, the state next to Attica, collapsed quickly, with only the little city state of Thespis holding out. Pontic troops poured into Athens, and easily took Euboea. When Sparta fell into Pontic hands, it seemed as though the tide that had swept across Asia Minor and the Aegean was about to claim all of Greece as well.

The Greek campaign of 88-87 BC

The Roman governor of Macedonia, Caius Sentius Saturninus, already had a lot on his plate, but he could hardly allow Greece to fall to Mithridates by default. Fortunately for Rome, the very competent Q[uintus] Bruttius Sera was on Sentius’ staff, and this man was sent south with whatever troops could be spared. Bruttius’ brief was almost certainly to remind the locals that there was a Roman military presence in Greece and to make as much of a nuisance of himself as he could.

He started well, with a brisk naval engagement which pitted his tiny flotilla against an equally-small arm of the Pontic fleet. Bruttius used his temporary victory at sea to seize the island of Sciathos, which the Pontics were using as a storehouse for their booty from Euboea. Those escaped slaves whom Bruttius caught on the island were crucified as a reminder to slaves elsewhere in Greece that freedom under Pontus was not a risk-free option. Free men had their hands cut off. This action showed how Rome intended to counter Mithridates’ propaganda measure of allowing those Greeks who opposed him to go home unpunished. If opposing Rome involved severe penalties, and opposing Mithridates did not, then all other things being equal, choosing a side became easier for the undecided.

Now reinforced by a further 1,000 horse and foot from Macedonia, Bruttius pushed into Boeotia, perhaps hoping to take the pressure off Thespis, which Mithridates’ general Archelaus was besieging. Ariston and Archelaus took the bait and a military action followed which lasted for the next three days. Bruttius took care not to become fully committed and to keep his lines of retreat open. When, as expected, the Greek cities committed to the Pontic cause were
coerced into adding their weight to the forces opposing him, he pulled back.
⁷

Bruttius had done his job, which was to keep Pontic forces busy and out of northern Greece. It must have been with immense relief that he received messengers from Sulla’s subordinate, Lucullus, who announced that the Roman advance guard had arrived and that Sulla himself was following with five full legions. Bruttius was thanked for his efforts and ordered to take his small army post-haste back to Macedonia, where Sentius needed every man available to prepare for a second Pontic army which was reported to be closing in on Macedonia via the north shore of the Black Sea.

Sulla’s five Roman legions represented a massive reality check for those heady dreams of Greek freedom. With eighty thousand dead Romans and Italians and a brutal war in Italy still smouldering, no-one expected Sulla to try diplomacy or clemency to bring the Greek cities to his side. Sulla was currently levying auxiliaries and cavalry from the cities of northern Greece which Bruttius had saved for him. As soon as he had adequate numbers, especially of cavalry, he would head south, and Mithridates’ new allies would have to decide whether they were prepared to sacrifice themselves for his cause. Thebes was among the first cities to surrender the moment it was given the option, and soon little Thespis found that its pro-Roman stance suddenly reflected the new majority opinion in Greece.

Until now, Rome had fought its war through allied proxies. The encounter with Bruttius had been enough to show Archelaus that fighting actual Romans was a different game altogether. Furthermore, Sulla had battle-hardened veterans of the Italian war among his legionaries, making his army one of the most frightening propositions in the known world. It appears that, after a single bruising encounter (if even that – only one source, Pausanius, reports this clash), Archelaus decided to fall back on Athens, and let Sulla’s army beat itself to death against that city’s walls.

Certainly, Roman legions in the field changed the odds for the worse, but the Pontic situation was far from desperate. The Pontic army was large, well-commanded, experienced and loyal. Greece had shown itself a weathercock, ready to side with whoever could muster the greatest force at a given moment, and would therefore drop back into Pontic hands once Sulla had been dealt with.

Athens was strong defensively and Pontic naval supremacy meant that it, or at least its port of Piraeus, could be supplied from the sea. Sulla’s own supply lines were far from secure and his political situation in Rome could hardly have been worse; as soon as he had left Italy, Sulla’s enemies in Rome had assumed power and declared Sulla an outlaw and leader of a renegade army. Sulla could
be certain that neither money nor reinforcements were on the way from Rome, whilst Mithridates was busily raising large amounts of both in Asia Minor. For the moment Pontus was checked, but no-one yet knew whether Sulla’s arrival represented a temporary setback or the turn of the tide.

* The device got its name from a contemporary musical instrument, but the design of the instrument is also uncertain.

Chapter 5

Battleground Greece

Greece was something of an impromptu venue for the clash between Rome and Pontus, a theatre of war which both sides entered before they were fully prepared to do so. Certainly, if Archelaus had arrived in Greece with anything resembling the strength which he later had at his disposal, then Sura would have been brushed aside, and Sulla would have found the Pontic army challenging him as soon as he landed in Illyria.

As is clear from later developments, Mithridates intended his main blow to be a right hook over the top of the Black Sea to Macedonia, whilst Archelaus’ descent on Athens and Boeotia was more of an ad hoc response to an irresistible opportunity. Therefore, even as Sulla mustered his strength in Thessaly, Archelaus was doing the same further south. However, as a cautious and competent general, Archelaus was not prepared to keep all his eggs in the basket of Athens. Instead, he made his main supply base on Euboea, the long island which runs parallel to Attica to the east. This hardly affected the Pontic supply chain, for only a short strait separates Euboea from Marathon, which is itself, as any long-distance runner knows, about 25 miles from Athens. But for the Romans, who were totally outmatched at sea, that strait might as well have been the Atlantic Ocean.