Mithridates the Great (26 page)

Details of the campaign which followed are hopelessly confused, with different sources giving different and incompatible chronologies. However, a number of events are commonly agreed on, though not the order in which they occurred. Militarily, it would appear that Lucullus had first to storm the fortress of Eupatoria, which Mithridates had constructed specifically to guard the approaches to Cabira. It may be that this was where Phoenix was stationed, for we are told that after informing Mithridates that the Romans were coming, he promptly defected to them. However, as the historian Memnon is clear that this fortress was captured at the end of the Cabira campaign, this suggests that Lucullus left the fortress in native hands and at some point it returned its allegiance to Mithridates.
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It is also clear that Mithridates gave Lucullus a warm welcome to Cabira and inflicted a sharp setback on some of his troops in a highly-confused skirmish which seems to have developed from an attack on Roman foragers. Confronting Mithridates in Cabira had been a bold move by Lucullus and, despite this setback, the Roman proceeded to push his luck even harder. Some local Greeks offered to lead the Roman force to an advantageous position and Lucullus accepted. Since this involved passing through a dangerously narrow valley, he took advantage of the fact that he had veteran troops under his command and performed the manoeuvre at night. To slow the enemy reaction, the Romans first lit camp fires and generally gave the impression that they were settled until dawn.

In fact, dawn saw the Romans occupying an old fort on the heights overlooking Cabira. This was a secure position defensively and one from which the Romans could easily move to the plain.

But that narrow defile meant that Lucullus was cut off from his recent conquests in Pontus and was now dependent on supplies from Cappadocia in the south to keep his army fed. The vulnerability of that supply line was soon demonstrated by a violent skirmish with the Pontic cavalry. At first the Pontics got the worse of this confrontation but Mithridates himself led a countercharge, and gave the Romans such a fright that they continued to retreat long after the Pontic forces had pulled back.

Now fighting on his home turf, it was Mithridates who offered battle on the favourable ground of the plain, and Lucullus who declined. While this stalemate dragged on, Mithridates appears to have attempted to decapitate the
Roman force with the assassination of Lucullus. He fell out very publicly with a barbarian chieftain called Olthacus, and this man promptly followed the prevailing trend and defected to the Romans. Olthacus gave Lucullus intelligence which was checked and proven trustworthy, with the result that Olthacus himself became a trusted member of Lucullus’ entourage. One midday, the barbarian presented himself at the commander’s tent with urgent news, and as was his custom, a dagger on his belt. An officious attendant told Olthacus that Lucullus was asleep and had ordered that he should not be disturbed no matter how urgent the tidings. Olthacus must wait until the general had awakened. This was far from convenient, because the would-be assassin had parked his horse just outside the camp for a quick getaway, and it was only a matter of time before this suspicious positioning was noted. After being physically prevented from forcing his way into the Lucullan bedchamber, Olthacus gave up the attempt. Since he was hopelessly compromised anyway, he mounted his horse and rode back to Mithridates. As Plutarch commented, many a general has come to grief from being asleep at the wrong moment, but only Lucullus was saved by being asleep at the right time.
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The war of attrition continued. At Cyzicus, Mithridates had been taught that a strong position with poor supply lines was at least as bad as a poor position with good supply lines, and he was determined to give Lucullus the benefit of this lesson. The Pontic cavalry made a violent attack on a supply convoy which was bringing corn from Cappadocia. The convoy had an escort of ten cohorts of infantry, commanded by one Sornatius, and these succeeded in holding off the attack, so Mithridates decided that the next attempt by the Pontics would constitute a mixed force of infantry and cavalry.

Some 4,000 infantry and the Pontic cavalry fell upon the next Roman supply convoy but, possibly due to poor coordination between foot and horse, the battle took place in the narrow valley where the horsemen were almost unable to deploy. The infantry and half the Pontic cavalry were wiped out. The infantry were not a serious loss but, with his cavalry crippled, Mithridates was unable to dominate the plain. Almost certainly, as soon as Lucullus comprehended this he would descend from his hill and either force the Pontic infantry to battle on the plain or, if battle was declined, lay siege to the Pontic camp. Mithridates, harbouring no illusions as to what would happen to his foot soldiers if the Fimbrians got to grips with them, made ready to withdraw.

In order to minimize panic in his camp, the king gave out that in the recent fight his men had merely got the worst of a minor skirmish. He instructed his guards to stop anyone from leaving the camp and discreetly ordered the royal
treasure to be evacuated on muleback. Rumours of a major Pontic defeat were exaggerated by the survivors of the battle in the valley as they trickled back into camp. It also became clear from the loaded waggons approaching the Roman camp that the Pontic attack had failed miserably. Those who knew of Mithridates’ plan to evacuate his treasure took the chance to send away their own baggage as well. It did not take long for the soldiers to connect the crush around the camp gates with the reports of a major defeat, and the dissimulation of their commanders led the normally-obedient infantry to conclude that their betters intended to leave them in the lurch.

Mithridates in his tent became aware of general tumult outside. It was too late to rally his troops, who had decided that it was now every man for himself. No one listened to the king; he was knocked from his horse and one of his priests, Hermaeus, was trampled to death by the crowd trying to get out of the gates. With commendable promptness, Lucullus divined what was happening and sent his army to harry the retreating force, giving explicit instructions as to which members of Mithridates’ entourage he wanted captured alive. The Romans reached the camp and slew the few who had remained as they were attempting to pack tidily.

Lucullus knew his men and had specifically told them to ignore the camp and concentrate on killing as much of the Pontic army as possible whilst it was disorganized and vulnerable. However, the Fimbrians finally had the chance to get what they had signed up for – loot in portable, easily-converted form. They stopped to plunder the camp. Even then they might have caught Mithridates, for the king was reduced to just another body in the flow pushing its heedless way out of the gates. Fortunately, one of the king’s entourage observed the plight of his sovereign. He forced his horse through the throng and, at considerable personal risk, gave his mount to the king. Being on horseback once more allowed Mithridates to put some distance between himself and the Romans and to become reunited with his treasure train.

The Roman cavalry were still closing and Mithridates again became in danger of capture. The enemy had him in sight when the king tried a last desperate stratagem. He – with his own hand, by some reports – slashed open the bottom of some treasure sacks and drove off the mules. A fortune in gold and jewellery was scattered across Mithridates’ line of retreat, and no pack of hounds ever swerved so readily after a red herring as the Roman pursuit which took off on the treasure trail.

A frustrated Lucullus learned that Mithridates had slipped through his fingers and that Callistratus, the king’s chief attendant and one of the men
whom Lucullus was most eager to question, had been killed by soldiers who suspected him of concealing gold. Of course, that is exactly what Callistratus had been doing – not in his girdle as the soldiers suspected, but by the waggon load in fortresses and strong points out of Roman reach. This fortune had now to be ferreted out item by item. However, with the Pontic army all but destroyed and Mithridates in headlong flight, Lucullus was prepared to dedicate plenty of time to the job.

The exile

Not all fortresses surrendered readily to Lucullus but, as well as treasure, many Roman sympathizers captured by Mithridates over the years fell into Roman hands and were freed from their imprisonment. Also, Nysia, the sister of Mithridates, became a Roman prisoner, which caused Mithridates to determine that the same would not happen to his wives and concubines. These were kept at a place called Phernacia along with Roxane and Statira, two unmarried sisters who, though in their forties, the king was keeping in secluded reserve for a diplomatic marriage if required, and to prevent them from producing any rival heirs for the Pontic throne in any other case. Since it was impossible to evacuate this harem to safety, Mithridates decided that their death should come before the dishonour of falling into Roman hands.

A eunuch was sent with the king’s order that the harem commit suicide. It is reported that reactions varied, with some praising the king for taking the time to consider their honour even in his hour of need, whilst others, as they died, wished their own fate upon their royal husband. Each chose death as she felt most appropriate. Some took poison but one Monime of Miletus
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chose to hang herself by her royal diadem. This was because she had held out against the courtship of Mithridates until she received the status of wife and queen. She got her wish, only to discover that the honour meant that she was secluded in a harem and ignored for long periods by ‘more of a keeper than a husband’. The stifling boredom of the royal seraglio had replaced the usual social interactions of a Greek noblewoman and now Monime decided that the the diadem which had brought her so much misery could release her from it as well. Even in this, her crown failed to meet her expectations. It refused to bear Monime’s weight once she put herself into the noose she had attached to it. After spitting on the broken crown, the unhappy girl finally presented her throat to the eunuch’s dagger.

Mithridates, with 2,000 horsemen, headed for the last sanctuary available to him, the kingdom of his son-in-law, Tigranes. Given that family solidarity
was not a strong point among the royal families of the region, it is unlikely that Mithridates was counting on Tigranes welcoming a relative fallen on hard times. Rather, once he had publicly made himself a supplicant to the Armenian power, Tigranes had either to accept his inconvenient guest or openly show his subservience to Rome by meekly handing him over. This was something that the man who titled himself the King of Kings would not do readily, and it was this pride rather than family sentiment on which Mithridates gambled for his salvation. Yet family ties were indeed to save him, albeit in an unexpected way.

Unsurprisingly, Tigranes was less than thrilled with the arrival of Mithridates on his metaphorical doorstep, but, as the Pontic king had calculated, Tigranes was not prepared for the damage which his public image would suffer were he to simply abandon his son-in-law and erstwhile ally to his fate. Mithridates was kept in in the manner to which his royal person was accustomed, but in a castle well away from the Armenian court and guarded so closely as to almost be a prisoner. Tigranes hurried himself off to Syria to further distance himself from whatever happened in Anatolia, and to gain time to prepare for the inevitable envoy from the Romans.

This is where family ties came to the help of Mithridates. Lucullus was hosting in his camp the noble, pig-headed and dissolute Clodius, scion of Rome’s ancient and patrician Claudian house, and his brother-in-law. The antipathy which Lucullus rapidly developed for his brash and arrogant relative probably inspired the idea of sending him as envoy to Tigranes the demand the person of Mithridates. Clodius duly set off for Armenia, leaving Lucullus to settle down to conquering Armenia Minor and returning to the sieges of Amisus and Sinope without the distraction of his demanding relative.
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Arrogant and ignorant he may have been, but Clodius was no fool. He soon determined that Tigranes was trying to run him in circles, from the guides who literally attempted to do so with a highly-circuitous route to the capital, to the messengers who regularly informed him that the king would welcome him personally in the very near future. Clodius ditched his guides and made his own way to the capital, and, by way of encouraging the king to speed up his audience, he began intriguing with various members of the Armenian court, promising some aid from Lucullus if they moved against Tigranes.
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Clodius also showed admirable dedication to his duty. Regularly offered an abundance of treasure by Tigranes as ‘presents’, Clodius reluctantly accepted but a single cup – not enough even to avoid insulting the king, let alone enough to count as accepting a bribe.

This stubbornness on Clodius’ part boded ill for the meeting with Tigranes. What Tigranes hoped to gain from the meeting will never be known. Perhaps he hoped that Rome would leave him alone in exchange for a promise that Mithridates would never leave his gilded captivity. It is fair to guess that a suitable incentive, such as offering Tigranes suzerainty of Cappadocia, would have seen Mithridates promptly handed over in chains. However, as his refusal of bribes had shown, the Roman had come with a different purpose in mind.

Clodius, who like all Roman aristocrats was essentially a politician, deliberately chose to imitate Gaius Popillius Laenas, who in 168 BC had drawn a line in the sand around King Antiochus IV and bluntly told him to decide on peace or war with Rome before he stepped out of the circle. This Republican plain speaking and scorn of kings played well at home and Clodius had a political career to build. So, he bluntly told Tigranes to hand over Mithridates or face the consequences. No bribes or concessions were offered apart from this naked threat.