Mithridates the Great (27 page)

Almost all that could be said for Clodius’ style of is that it produced prompt results. The Roman demand was flatly rejected and Clodius was sent packing. After almost twenty months in a marshy backwater, Mithridates was brought to the Armenian court, honoured by Tigranes as his father-in-law and given a place on the royal council. Whether intending to or not, Clodius had immensely helped the cause of Mithridates by making Tigranes an offer he had to refuse and almost certainly bringing Armenia into the war on the side of Pontus against the Romans.

Mithridates celebrated his return to a position of power in typical fashion, by throwing himself into palace politics and ensuring that those who had shown insufficient passion for promoting his cause came to a sticky end. Mithridates would have been dismayed by the news that the last of his strongholds in Pontus had finally fallen, but would have certainly been encouraged by the dogged loyalty shown to his cause by the defenders of cities such as Sinope and Amisus. Nevertheless, by 69 BC, Pontus was effectively in Roman hands, although the Bosporan kingdom remained under the rule of Menchares, Mithridates’ traitorous son, who was now officially a ‘friend of the Roman people’.

The Armenian campaign

It is possible that Mithridates did his best to convince Tigranes that the Romans would never dare to come against him in Armenia – after all, he wanted his son-in-law to assemble his army for a campaign in Asia Minor.
Tigranes himself might or might not have been considering a foreign adventure against the Romans, but he literally refused to consider the idea that the Romans might have the temerity to march on him. The first messenger who came with news that Lucullus was indeed on his way was beheaded for being alarmist.

Nevertheless, the news was correct. Whether Lucullus jumped at the opportunity which the undiplomatic Clodius had presented, or whether Clodius had been requested to produce exactly the outcome which transpired will never be known. In either case, it was Lucullus who went onto the offensive. He did this against a major foreign power which had so far stayed scrupulously neutral, and absolutely on his own authority. The senate in Rome was more than somewhat astonished to hear that they were now at war with Armenia, and that Lucullus had taken the army on what many regarded as virtually a massive private plundering raid. Lucullus, already unpopular in Rome for his sensible settlement of Asia, could expect very little sympathy if anything went wrong with his unauthorized invasion, and could confidently expect to have to defend himself in court even if everything went right.
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Clodius did not accompany his brother-in-law. He had fallen out with Lucullus and took his revenge by stirring up the Fimbrians to the point of mutiny. Being unceremoniously booted from Lucullus’ presence, Clodius joined the army of Marcius Rex in western Anatolia. Marcius gave Clodius a minor command against the pirates. After being captured and ransomed by the pirates, Clodius rejoined the Roman land army and this time did successfully instigate a mutiny, in the course of which he almost lost his life. After this it was decided that Clodius and Asia Minor were not suited to each other and Clodius returned to Rome.
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Meanwhile, in the spring of 69 BC, Lucullus handed command of Pontus to Sornatius (who had acquitted himself well in the Cabira campaign) and headed for Tigranocerta, the Armenian capital. He was accompanied by Murena junior, who probably commanded auxiliary troops, and two picked legions under Lucullus’ personal control. In the context of the Fimbrians, ‘picked legions’ meant the two legions least likely to mutiny, though they were far from delighted with the honour which their commander had done them. Overall, Lucullus probably had some 12,000-18,000 foot and 3,000 horse. Given the length of their service, the two legions were probably severely under-strength and the infantry numbers were made up with auxiliaries – Lucullus prided himself on using native resources whenever possible. The Roman general was marching his surly, unwilling little army
into the heartland of an enemy who could be confidently expected to raise ten times as many infantry, and at least twenty times the cavalry. No wonder Tigranes was incredulous.

Tigranocerta lay slightly north of due east from Comana in Cappadocia (which was probably the jumping-off point of Lucullus’ invasion). Therefore, there was only one sensible route for the Roman army to follow – which is along the east-west valley of the anti-Taurus which has Edessa on the other side of the mountain range, and which finishes at the head of the River Tigris, where Mosul stands today. This is the route which Crassus later scorned in favour of taking his army along the more direct route to Parthia, 150 miles to the south, which in his case finished at Carrhae in 53 BC when the Parthian cavalry wiped him out.

The initial part of the route wound between snow-covered mountains and torrents still swollen with snowmelt. There was some apprehension at the prospect of crossing the headwaters of the Euphrates into the small, Armenian-controlled principality of Sophene, but it turned out that the Euphrates was at its lowest in living memory
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The army could simply wade across, something Lucullus did not hesitate to point out as a signal of divine favour. With Tigranes still wilfully ignorant of their coming, the Romans made their way eastward, the Fimbrians muttering darkly about not being allowed to plunder the countryside as they went along. However, Lucullus would not have wanted his army either slowed down by loot, or to have lost its appetite for plunder before it reached its destination. Besides, nothing encouraged a native population to help an army on its way more than if it was friendly but showing signs of changing its mind.

The Romans rounded the headwaters of the Tigris and were set to fall on Tigranocerta itself before one of the favourites of the King of Kings decided to literally risk his neck by bringing his royal master up to date with developments. For his reward, this man, Mithrobarzanes, was given a force of cavalry several thousand strong along with instructions to crush the impertinent Roman army and bring its commander to Tigranes alive.

Mithrobarzanes seems to have decided that his only chance of surviving his mission was to hit the Romans suddenly with all his strength and hope that they had been lulled into complacency by the total lack of opposition along their march so far. However, Lucullus was an old hand at fighting in Asia Minor and, unlike the average Roman general, he appreciated the importance of scouts. Warned of Mithrobarzanes’ approach, Lucullus sent out a force of some 3,500, infantry and cavalry in equal proportion, and told them to stand
the Armenians off until the Romans had fortified a camp. This Roman force met the Armenian cavalry, which attempted to disperse it with a headlong charge. Against experienced infantry who knew how to stand their ground such a cavalry charge was suicidal, and the Fimbrians were very experienced. Mithrobarzanes and most of his force duly perished on the spot.

The Battle of Tigranocerta

The brusque treatment of his advance force finally convinced Tigranes that the Romans were both a serious and imminent threat. As his levies had not yet completed their muster, he decided to withdraw from his capital to Taurus and gather his army about him there. En route, he discovered that he would have to do without his Arab levies, as one of Lucullus’ commanders, Sextilius, came across the Arabian camp, attacked it and dispersed the entire force. Murena junior, meanwhile, was hot upon the trail of Tigranes. At one point he was so close on the king’s heels that Tigranes had to abandon his baggage and make a dash for safety. While this was going on, Lucullus settled down to besiege Tigranocerta. This was the standard Roman campaign tactic – find something the enemy valued and march straight at it. The enemy would eventually muster an army to defend the target of the Roman advance and would be defeated. Indeed, the massive walls of Tigranocerta would not have been an easy nut to crack, had Lucullus intended a serious investment rather than a provocation to Tigranes.

At this early stage of the campaign Tigranes was still confident that he could handle the Roman threat, and paid little heed to Mithridates. In fact Mithridates was not even included in the retinue of the King of Kings and had to make do with frantic letters and pleas transmitted through an ambassador called Taxiles. After his experiences at Cyzicus, Mithridates had become a convert to the idea of victory by malnutrition. Now he pointed in vain to the long and exposed Roman supply lines and argued that Tigranes and his hordes of cavalry could starve the Romans into submission without a battle. His proposal fell on deaf ears. With his precious new capital under siege and a massive multi-national army gathering about him, Tigranes was determined to fight. The hard-won experience of Mithridates was construed as envy that someone else was going to crush the Romans, or alternatively as proof that the Romans had broken his spirit.

It is hard to determine the size of the Armenian force, as Roman chroniclers are prone to exaggeration, but Appian gives Tigranes credit for raising the suspiciously-round numbers of 250,000 foot and 50,000 horse.
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Plutarch
claims as his source the actual report of Lucullus to the senate, and this allowed him to give a more detailed breakdown. By this account, 35,000 of the Armenian army were a pioneer and engineering corps, supplying their comrades with wood, bridging small rivers and making roads. The backbone of the army was 150,000 heavy infantry arranged into cohorts or phalanxes according to the preferred disposition of the subject people who had supplied the troops. Of the 55,000 cavalry, Plutarch says 17,000 were completely armoured, probably in the style of Parthian cataphracts. At the fore of this massive force were 20,000 light missile troops, a mix of slingers, archers and javelineers, who by themselves easily outnumbered the entire Roman force.
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By way of contrast, an independent account, admittedly late and fragmentary, comes from one Phlegon of Tralles. He puts the number of effectives in the Armenian infantry at 40,000 – perhaps a more realistically-sized, but still formidable, force. Phlegon’s assessment of cavalry numbers is still high at 30,000.
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Even by this lowest estimate, however, the Romans were still massively outnumbered.

The high morale of the Armenians could be seen in the heroics of a force of 6,000 cavalry who broke through the Roman siege lines into Tigranocerta, then broke out again with Tigranes’ royal harem and a good portion of the royal treasury in tow.

The substantial Armenian garrison of Tirganocerta, strengthened by a large number of Greek mercenaries, was yet another problem for Lucullus. If he turned to face Tigranes, he risked having the garrison fall on his back, yet an army of up to a quarter of a million men was impossible to ignore. The only solution was for Lucullus to divide his already-tiny army, leave Tigranocerta to Murena and 6,000 foot, and take the rest against Tigranes. This gave Lucullus twenty-four cohorts, or about 10,000 men, with about another 1,000 mixed cavalry and skirmishers and an unknown number of auxiliary troops. These formed up on the plain beside ‘the river’. Because we do not know the exact location of now-vanished Tigranocerta, it is not certain what this river was, though it was either the upstream Tigris or a tributary thereof. The river today called the Zgran is a very plausible candidate. We know the battle took place within sight of Tigranocerta (wherever it was), but given the paucity of detail about the battle and the incompatibility of the details we do have, only a rough outline of events can be reconstructed.
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It is reasonable to suppose that Lucullus first intended to take on the Armenians as they attempted to cross the river. Since Lucullus had to use a ford when going the other way, it seems certain the river was not something
which could be crossed by an army in battle formation. Therefore it would appear that Lucullus intended to hit the relieving force as it came across the river with an eye to defeating its units in detail as they crossed. However, as the huge Armenian force hove into view, another possibility, based on the enemy’s line of approach, presented itself to him. His scouts had shown him a ford perhaps slightly to the north, where the river curved westward, its course affected by a gently rising plateau on the other side.

At this point the Armenians were not fully deployed and, in any case, were working on the not-unreasonable belief that they were going to be the aggressors in the coming battle. Indeed, Tigranes was far from certain that there was going to be a battle at all. Eyeing the diminutive Roman force, he remarked jokingly ‘if that’s a diplomatic mission, it’s too big. If it’s an army, it’s too small’. Consequently, he was unsurprised when the Romans wheeled left, and trotted away along the river bank. Taxiles pointed out that the Romans were not backing off. The men of a retreating Roman army would have put their shields back into their leather covers – not presented them freshly polished. The Romans were dressed for battle, with plumes affixed to their helmets, a sure sign that they were expecting an engagement.

There was considerable confusion as the large and unwieldy Armenian force was reconfigured to fight its battle on the east bank of the river, a confusion which was more acute because Lucullus had screened his infantry with his cavalry. Consequently, Tigranes was unaware that the Roman infantry had not stopped going once it had crossed the river but instead the legionaries were looping round to gain the higher ground of the plateau at the rear of the Armenian right flank. ‘Are they on us?’ asked the bewildered Tigranes. Still uncertain of where his enemy had got to, he closed the main body of his infantry about himself at the centre, and sent a large force of cataphracts to push the Roman cavalry aside.

Cataphracts were a reasonable choice, since these were very heavily-armoured cavalrymen, and thus more capable of standing against the infantry which Tigranes expected to find behind the Roman horsemen. However, rather than stand and fight, the Roman cavalry gave way. By this hypothesis, they gave way rapidly along their river flank, falling back more slowly toward the plateau, whilst the Armenian cavalry probed forward along the line of least resistance looking for the legionaries who should be there. The cavalry nearest Lucullus on the plateau (Lucullus had chosen to fight on foot with his legionaries) were now almost on the right flank of the cataphracts furthest from the river, and Lucullus saw his chance. His cavalrymen were sword-armed
Galatian and Thracian irregulars, and hitting the lance-armed cataphracts on the flank meant that the lighter-armed horsemen could use their swords to beat down the Armenians’ lances before they could be swung around.