Mithridates the Great (21 page)

Now Nemesis, the goddess of divine justice, had taken up residence outside the Fimbrian camp, her vengeance taking the shape of Sulla’s army. As Sulla’s circumvallation closed about him, Fimbria tried with ever-increasing desperation to stem the steady flow of deserters openly leaving to join Sulla, fraternizing with the enemy and even pitching in to help with the construction of the earthworks surrounding their camp. Fimbria was unable to persuade even his closest aides to swear an oath of loyalty to him. Weeping, he threw
himself at the feet of his men, begging them not to abandon him; and when that failed, he tried bribing a slave to assassinate Sulla. This effort also failed as the slave confessed his mission to Sulla. Thereafter, predictably enough, Sulla was not disposed to meet Fimbria face-to-face when he requested a meeting. Instead, he passed the message that he would not bother killing Fimbria if the latter sailed back to Rome immediately and alone. Fimbria’s pride reasserted itself. Informing Sulla that he knew of a quicker way home, he went to a nearby temple and stabbed himself, though it required one of his slaves to finish the job.

Fimbria’s death and the surrender of his army removed one affliction from Asia Minor, but the region’s troubles were far from over. As well as declaring that Rome was owed the stupendous sum of 20,000 talents in reparations and back taxes, Sulla ordered his soldiers to be quartered with individual families in the various cities.
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Each family had to provide meals, an allowance and clothing to the soldiers whom they unwillingly hosted, as well as having to put up with the conduct of ‘guests’ who were less than sympathetic to the people who had killed 80,000 of their countrymen. On the other hand, those cities, such as Rhodes, which had stood by Rome were richly rewarded, partly because Sulla believed in standing by his friends, and partly to encourage resistance to any future invaders of the region.

Sulla then formally reported his settlement of the war to the senate, blithely ignoring the fact that this same senate considered him a public enemy under sentence of death. He then set off for Rome himself, leaving the administration of his settlement to Lucullus, who could at least be relied on to spread the misery equally and impartially. The Fimbrians, organized into two legions, were placed under the command of Murena, the commander who had distinguished himself at Chaeronea.
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Whilst the Romans were tidying their dominions, Mithridates too had sorting out to do at home. However much he tried to pass off the result of the war as a draw which left Pontus pretty much as it had been in 88 BC, the fact was that the king had been forced to terms by the loss of two major battles and 160,000 lives. This made Mithridates vulnerable to dissent, and this was being expressed in Colchis and the Bosporus vigorously enough to almost count as a rebellion. In part, this was probably due to poor administration as Mithridates had understandably been distracted elsewhere. To prevent this happening again, the Bosporans asked that they be given the king’s son (another Mithridates) to rule over them. This son had acquitted himself reasonably well in the fighting against Fimbria, and
should therefore have had his father’s affection and attention.

However, the promptness with which the area returned to its allegiance once they had their requested ruler aroused Mithridates’ suspicions. He suspected that much of the unrest had been deliberately engineered so that his son could get himself put in charge. Consequently, the governorship of young Mithridates was revoked; he was brought back to Pontus in chains (albeit chains of gold, since he was after all, the king’s son) and executed on his arrival.

The execution of their chosen ruler aroused some dismay and anger among the Bosporans, as the wily Mithridates had foreseen and positively welcomed. To ‘suppress unrest’ on the northern shores of the Black Sea, he began assembling an army and fleet out of all proportion to the forces required to resolve the problem. That he did so not only indicates that he did not trust the Romans to stick to their peace agreement, but that he himself intended to test its limits as soon as he was able.

As part of the peace of Dardanus, Sulla had recognized Mithridates as
rex socius et amicus:
an allied and friendly king.
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Though this was regarded in Rome and by many later historians as mutual acknowledgement of the king’s client status, the title was a prized appellation among the kings themselves, as it obliged Rome to come to their aid if they were attacked. In theory, Mithridates could call for help to Murena and his legions of Fimbrians. In practice, Mithridates needed to become strong quickly enough to withstand the predatory interest of his so-called protectors. Sulla had a civil war to fight in Italy. This meant that Rome would be distracted by internal conflict exactly as had occurred in 90 BC, with the dangers and opportunities which this presented. And of course, if Sulla lost, then his settlement was null and void, and the war would be back on again.

The fact that he was able to kit out an army so quickly is further proof that Mithridates, foreseeing the probable outcome of the peace negotiations, had used the period before Dardanus to comprehensively loot the rest of Asia Minor before the Romans did the same with his leftovers. Add the fact that trade had been at a standstill and the cities disrupted by successive changes of power, dispossessions and repossessions, and it becomes clear why it took almost a century to make good the economic devastation thus caused.

Unlike the other leaders in Asia Minor, Mithridates was neither cowed nor submissive. Even as he ordered his troops to cease operations against Sulla, he was diverting funds and resources to the Cilician pirates. These, already a
plague on the coast of Anatolia, expanded their operations accordingly. Whilst Sulla was at Samothrace on his way back to Italy, the pirates gave him a sendoff by devastating the lands around him. Sulla had no choice but to endure this, as the heavy fighting ships handed over by Mithridates were practically useless against their swarms of small fast boats.

Pirate operations extended across almost the whole the Mediterranean -the pirates who assisted Sertorius, the anti-Sullan rebel in Spain, were probably Cilicians. Inland, the unholy alliance of Mithridates and the pirates combined to make the states east of the Meander river almost ungovernable. Isauria and Pisidia openly sided with Mithridates, and in Lycia a robber baron allied with the pirates wielded greater power than the Roman-sponsored authorities. Mytilene on Lesbos more or less openly repudiated Sulla’s settlement and the Romans found it easier to accept the city’s surly defiance than risk a protracted siege in which supply ships would require close escort through pirate-infested waters.

Another sign that Mithridates intended business as usual was that he was back to his normal tricks in Cappadocia, where Ariobarzanes was having a hard time getting comfortable on his throne. Mithridates occupied large chunks of the country, whilst blandly denying that he was doing anything of the sort. He had also suborned many of the most powerful and influential aristocrats during his earlier occupation of the country. Many of these, looking askance at the Roman treatment of the lands to their west, openly preferred that the rule of Mithridates should continue.

It is probably at this point that Mithridates gave some thought to the reorganization of his army. The comprehensive defeat at Chaeronea had followed similar victories of legion over phalanx in the Macedonian and Syrian wars, and Mithridates seems to have come to the conclusion that this formation was fatally flawed, at least as far as fighting Romans was concerned. He now concentrated on building up his forces in the areas where the Romans were weakest: missile troops and cavalry. Militarily, this combination could work, as the Parthians were to prove by conclusively defeating the Romans at Carrhae in 53 BC, but it required lots of flat open terrain which was easier to find in Syria than Pontus. Plutarch reports on the reforms:

Instead of an inefficient army which made a good show but was less than useful...he knocked his forces into a leaner, more serviceable shape...gone were the mixed multitudes and howling threats of barbarian tribes with their jewelled ornaments of gold which the enemy found more tempting than threatening. Now the men were armed and formed up in Roman style, with horses better suited for service than show.
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This army was taken to the Bosporus and practiced its skills on the native tribes of the interior, who had been exploiting the confusion to launch pillaging raids. Since the Bosporans seemed happiest when ruled directly by the Mithridatids, another of the king’s sons, Menchares, was made governor. Archelaus was pointedly left out of these arrangements. The general’s closeness to Sulla had been noted, as had been the Roman offer to make him Archelaus I of Pontus. And whatever his loyalty, Mithridates may have felt that there was no reason to give Archelaus, who had lost him two armies, the chance to lose a third.

Archelaus evidently felt that loss of influence was the precursor to loss of life, and he pre-empted matters by defecting to Murena. Possibly he may have considered whether the offer of kingship was still open, for he immediately attempted to move Murena in the direction of war. He claimed that Mithridates was developing his army for use against the Romans, which he certainly was, and that he intended to deploy it at any moment, which Mithridates almost certainly was not.

Hostilities resume

Murena did not need convincing to go to war so much as an excuse to do so. He had gained his present command through extraordinary circumstances and it would be years before such an opportunity came again. Pontus, just over the River Halys, was stuffed with the booty of Asia Minor and Murena was itching to get his hands on some of it. The restive Fimbrians were easier to manage in war than in peacetime, and had already proved that they could handle the Pontic army. And of course, not only riches but political kudos would go to the man who finished Sulla’s war and avenge the Roman and Italian victims of the Asian Vespers.

Murena had already moved against the pirates, and annexed the city of Cybria. It might be at this time that he founded, as a deliberate provocation, a settlement right against the Pontic border which he gave his family name of Licinia. Therefore Archelaus’ arrival in his camp provided the match to a fire already set. There was no point in waiting for authorization from Rome, as Sulla was currently campaigning in Italy with the object of
conquering the place, so in the late summer of 83 BC Murena and his army crossed into Pontus. This was less an attempt at conquest than a massive plundering raid on the temple complex of Ma at Comana, the booty from which would have gone some way to fulfilling Murena’s ambition of becoming very rich.

Mithridates sent a detachment of cavalry to find out what was going on and discovered that the Romans were hostile when he lost a large proportion of that force. He indignantly sent ambassadors to Murena, pointing out that his conduct was directly contrary to the agreement at Dardanus. Murena was unimpressed, possibly because Mithridates, in haste, had chosen Greek ambassadors who spent as much time denigrating the king as they did putting forward his views. Murena mockingly sent back to Mithridates asking him to show the provisions of the treaty in question, knowing full well that the agreement with Sulla had never been committed to writing.

All that could be said for the diplomatic interlude was that it lasted until the end of the campaigning season and allowed Mithridates to gather his forces and send vehement representations to Sulla, as well as a stern warning to the independent city of Heraclea to stay out of the brewing confrontation.

Perhaps word that an ambassador had come from Rome caused Murena to kick off the next campaigning season early. He had to cross the flood-swollen waters of the River Halys before he could start a massive plundering raid which swept through an alleged 400 villages. Mithridates did nothing but noisily protest about the injustice done to him, not least as Murena’s repeated harassment allowed him to reinforce his claim that he was the victim of Roman aggression. It is quite probable that Mithridates still retained control of part of Cappadocia and that Murena was combining personal enrichment with politics, using the raids on Pontic territory to loosen Mithridates’ bulldog grip on lands he should have given up immediately after Dardanus.

Back in Phrygia, and considerably richer, Murena was met by the expected ambassador. This was Calidius, a member of Sulla’s entourage. Mithridates’ old foe was now dictator at Rome and the (violently pruned) senate was only too happy to convert Sulla’s orders into senatorial decrees. It was odd, therefore, that their message to Murena to leave Mithridates alone was not, in fact, couched as an official decree. Contemporary conspiracy theorists -Mithridates foremost amongst them - made much of the fact that Calidius spent far longer cloistered with Murena in a private conference than he did at
the official meeting. The upshot of the intervention from Rome was that Murena invaded Pontus again.

This time Mithridates was compelled to act. Firstly, he had established his victim status beyond all doubt and further failure to react to the repeated Roman incursions would erode the bedrock of support in his native land. Secondly, the government in Rome had finally intervened and its intervention was apparently worse than useless. Thirdly, and most importantly, Murena seems to have moved from mere punitive raids to an attempt at conquest. His troops were driving north, almost certainly up the valley of the River Halys, with the apparent intention of capturing Sinope; in short, as Mithridates explicitly said, the Romans had now started an out-and-out war.
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Murena may have believed that he was following in the footsteps of Sulla, but in taking on Mithridates with an army composed mainly of Bithynian, Galatian and Cappadocian levies he was closer to the unfortunate Manius Aquillius. Murena in his turn was to discover how dangerous the Pontic army was when campaigning on home ground. His army was shadowed from across the river by Mithridates’ general Gordius, and it soon became apparent that Gordius was keeping in touch with the Romans until Mithridates could arrive with the main Pontic army. When Mithridates did arrive, his men promptly crossed the river and soundly thrashed the Roman force. A startled Murena retreated to a strong position on a nearby hill, but before he could dig in the Pontic army swept over this too. There was nothing for it but for the remnants of the Roman expeditionary force to fall back through the trackless mountains of Phrygia, harassed all the way by Pontic skirmishers.
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