From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (14 page)

Sulla was rewarded for his services in the war by election to the consulship of 88; later he was granted the province of Asia and the command against Mithridates who was on the war-path in the East. Sulla’s colleague in the consulship was an Optimate of no great distinction, Q. Pompeius Rufus. A more dominant figure however, was one of the tribunes, Publius Sulpicius,
²⁰
a former friend of the younger Drusus and a great orator, whose main object was apparently to secure fair play for the newly enfranchised Italians, whom (together with all freedmen) he was ultimately to propose to distribute over the thirty-five tribes. Such a statesmanlike measure was bound to provoke the opposition of the Optimates which in turn provoked Sulpicius to collect some armed bands in his support (even though the story that he had an escort of 600 young Equites who were called ‘anti-senators’
may be doubtful). He then turned for co-operation to Marius with whom he had already collaborated in opposing the consular candidature (for 88) for Caesar Strabo. Marius’ support would be valuable because it would swing the Equites behind Sulpicius, but it was dangerous: Marius had been curiously neglected since 90 and was now embittered; Sulpicius therefore agreed to secure the transference of the Mithridatic command from Sulla to Marius. Such a proposal was constitutionally improper and was not justified on military grounds since Marius was now nearly seventy and Sulla’s war-record was quite creditable. Marius, however, had long hankered for such a command (he had visited Asia Minor after his sixth consulship, partly in order to investigate the eastern situation). With this backing Sulpicius could now proceed with his programme which included lesser measures: to recall exiles and to expel from the Senate all members who owed more than 2000
denarii
(this would please the Equites). When the consuls tried to check the tribune’s work by proclaiming a suspension of public business (
iustitium
), Sulpicius declared this to be illegal. An armed clash took place in the Forum, in which Pompeius Rufus’ son was killed and Sulla was forced to seek refuge in the house of Marius. After this indignity Sulla called off the
iustitium
and joined his army that was mustering for the Mithridatic war at Nola.

Now master in Rome Sulpicius secured the passing of all his laws, including the transference of the Eastern command. Had Marius hastened to Campania, he might possibly have won over the army; instead he stopped in Rome and allowed Sulla the initiative. Sulla promptly appealed to the troops, and they stoned Sulpicius’ envoys. Then a momentous event in Rome’s history took place. At the head of six legions Sulla marched on Rome which he captured after a few hours of street-fighting since Marius and Sulpicius had no troops available. They fled, leaving Sulla in undisputed control of the city.

With an army at his call Sulla easily persuaded the Senate and Comitia to implement his wishes. Marius, Sulpicius and their followers, though unheard and untried, were declared outlaws. Sulpicius, a tribune in office, was hunted down and killed. Marius was luckier: after many adventures which included hiding in the marshes of Minturnae, he escaped to Africa where many of his old soldiers were settled.
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Sulpicius’ laws were then declared invalid, as carried
per vim
. Sulla, however, did not intend to forgo his Mithridatic command and so he passed some measures through the Comitia to strengthen the Senate until his return. It was enacted that all business brought before the People must go to the more conservative Comitia Centuriata (as tribunes could not present bills to the Populus but only to the Plebs, their activities were thus skilfully curtailed) and at the same time no business that had not previously received the Senate’s approval was to be brought before the
People. If Sulla thought of adding 300 new members to the Senate, this plan was certainly not implemented, but he did carry an emergency measure to relieve debt. He allowed the consular elections to take their course, though his own nephew failed and one of the successful candidates was L. Cornelius Cinna on whose support he could hardly count; he perhaps made Cinna swear not to interfere with his arrangements. The other consul-elect, Cn. Octavius, was a loyal Optimate. Finally, in order to check Strabo, who still had an army in central Italy, Sulla transferred this command to his own colleague, Pompeius Rufus, though in fact the troops preferred Strabo and later murdered Rufus in a disturbance in which Strabo himself clearly was not disinterested if not involved. Sulla and his army then left Italy.

Scarcely was Sulla’s back turned when Cinna, oblivious of his oath, proposed to re-introduce Sulpicius’ measure for the new citizens. After some violence in the Forum Cinna was driven from Rome by his colleague Octavius and was declared a public enemy by the Senate. He then won over a legion which Sulla had left besieging Nola and he was soon joined by many disgruntled ex-allies and others. Meantime Marius had returned from Africa and was raising troops in Etruria. The Senate, thus threatened from north and south, was in a perilous position since it lacked an army on the spot; it hastily summoned Strabo from Picenum and levies from Transpadane Gaul, but the latter were intercepted by Cinnan troops. Strabo responded, but slowly. Finally under the weak protection of Strabo and Octavius, Rome was attacked by Marius, who reached the Janiculum after seizing Ostia, and by three divisions of Cinna’s forces, led by himself, Q. Sertorius and Cn. Carbo. Strabo died of disease, a man who had shown a certain moderation and willingness to compromise though the Optimate tradition regarded him as ‘dis ac nobilitati perinvisum’.
²²
Before the end of the year (87) Rome had fallen: Marius and Cinna controlled its fate.

That fate proved terrible. Marius, maddened by hate, allowed his troops and slaves to loot and murder. Although official executions may have been limited, they included Octavius, the orator M. Antonius and Q. Catulus (
cos
. 102). After five days even Cinna was disgusted and ended the bloodbath by force. Marius and Cinna were then declared consuls for 86, Sulla was formally exiled and his laws repealed, but a few days after entering upon his seventh consulship Marius died, and Rome breathed more freely.
²³

For the next three years Cinna was in control: he managed to secure his re-election to the consulship each year without undue regard to the formalities, and took as his colleagues L. Valerius Flaccus for 86 and Cn. Carbo for 85–84. Some attempt was made to improve economic conditions. Flaccus
carried a measure which cancelled three-quarters of all outstanding debts. The Equites would be more pleased with a currency reform announced in the edict of a praetor, Marius Gratidianus, which re-asserted the old official exchange rates of silver and bronze.
²⁴
But the greatest achievement of these years of Cinna’s
dominatio
was the final settlement of the citizenship question. Censors were appointed for 86 to carry out the registration of the new citizens, and some progress was made. At last too the new citizens received justice: they were distributed throughout the thirty-five tribes, though perhaps not until 84 B.C.
²⁵

But if these years were peaceful at home, over all loomed the shadow of Sulla. In 86 Flaccus had been sent with a force to the East against Mithridates (cf. p. 64), but neither he nor his legate Fimbria who soon murdered him could win the co-operation of Sulla in joint operations. It then became clear that Sulla’s campaign against Mithridates was ending in victory and that he would soon seek to return. In a despatch at the end of 85 he complained of his treatment, reminded the Senate of his past services and perhaps guaranteed to respect the rights of the new citizens. The Senate tried to open negotiations with him by offering an amnesty. But meantime Cinna had to prepare for the risk of war and possibly he took a bold decision: he would, if necessary, face Sulla in Greece and spare Italy further civil war at home. He shipped some troops across the Adriatic, but other men waiting to embark at Ancona, mutinied and killed him (84). The government was left in the hands of Carbo, who with considerable skill averted the election of a colleague and remained sole consul. Resistance to Sulla must now be built up in Italy, the more so as a further defiant message proclaimed that Sulla would not be reconciled with his enemies, nor disband his loyal troops, but would see to his own safety. In 83 while Carbo as proconsul took up a strong position in Cisalpine Gaul, the two consuls, L. Scipio and C. Norbanus, advanced to Campania. Soon afterwards Sulla landed with some 40,000 men at Brundisium.
²⁶

Sulla’s opponent, Mithridates, was no common man. His kingdom lay in central Asia Minor, south of the Black Sea.
²⁷
Formed some two hundred years before, it was rich in natural resources, especially metals. It remained largely a country of villages, studded with royal castles, in a feudal state of development. Essentially the population was oriental in outlook, though the royal house, which was descended from the nobles of Persia, had acquired a considerable tincture of Hellenistic civilization, the official language being Greek. There were in fact a few Greek cities on the northern coast, but their cultural influence did not spread far inland, and the Greek and Iranian elements in
the civilization of Pontus never really fused together. Under Mithridates V (150–121 B.C.) relations with Rome had been friendly and he had lent some help against Aristonicus (p. 33). His son, who secured sole rule by imprisoning his mother and murdering his brother, reigned as Mithridates VI Eupator. He was a man of exceptional physical strength and force of character, of whose energy and exploits many a tale was told. Imbued with a real admiration for Greek culture and art, he yet retained beneath the surface some of the attributes of an oriental despot. His ambitions were great, so that he readily responded to an appeal from the Greek cities of Bosporus and Chersonesus in the Crimea (S. Russia) to help them against the pressure from Scythian and Sarmatian tribes in the north. Posing as a champion of Greeks against barbarians, Mithridates sent the help and as a result became master of the whole north coast of the Black Sea, with a capital for this new Pontic empire at Panticapaeum. This conquest, together with an advance east from his kingdom to Colchis and the Caucasus, provided him with immense supplies of corn, money and men which enabled him to build up and support a large army and navy. Thus within a few years he became one of the most powerful rulers in Asia.

His ambition, however, reached farther. He sought a large Anatolian Empire in addition to his Pontic realm. Though expansion would bring him into conflict with neighbouring rulers who were friends of Rome, such a thought did not dismay him, especially as at this time Rome had Jugurtha and the Northern menace on her hands. Rather, he may even have dreamed of posing as a champion of the Asiatic Greeks and of sweeping the Roman foreigners right out of Asia Minor. Whether or not his thoughts were yet running on so far, he did not shrink from a clash with Rome, but at first he played his cards with shrewd caution.

Nicomedes II king of Bithynia, though a ‘friend and ally’ of Rome, had little reason to love the Romans because Bithynia was being exploited by Roman money-lenders; he was thus ready to fall in with Mithridates’ suggestion that they should seize Galatia and Paphlagonia (104). This was done; at Rome only Saturninus raised a protest which was quickly smothered with bribes. The two kings then turned against Cappadocia but soon quarrelled over its control. Marius, who had failed to secure a command in the East as war with Mithridates had been averted, was in the East on his own business in 98 and warned Mithridates to take care; a year or two later the Senate decided to support the claim of Ariobarzanes to Cappadocia. The task of installing the new king was given to Sulla, who was proconsul of Cilicia in 96. He had clashed with some troops of Tigranes of Armenia, and went on to the Euphrates where he accepted an offer of friendship from a Parthian envoy: thus Rome made official contact with the great Parthian Empire which was to cause her so much trouble in the future. Mithridates was thus checked, but he
soon secured Tigranes as a son-in-law; he was biding his time, and he did not have to wait long.
²⁸

As soon as Rome was busy with the Social War Mithridates, helped by Tigranes, seized Bithynia and Cappadocia (90). The Romans, however, sent out Manius Aquilius and a commission to act with the governor of Asia in restoring Nicomedes to the Bithynian throne. Feeling perhaps that a real settlement could be reached only if he made more drastic demands than those of Sulla, Aquilius ordered Mithridates to withdraw from the two kingdoms, which he did, and to supply troops, which he refused (89)
²⁹
; Aquilius then persuaded Nicomedes to attack Pontus. Careful as he had so far been to avoid responsibility for starting a war, Mithridates now acted and again invaded Cappadocia. In 88 the Romans, who had only one legion in Asia, sent forward the unfortunate Nicomedes, who was defeated, and divided their own forces into three; all were beaten and Aquilius was ultimately captured and cruelly killed. Mithridates then swept through the province of Asia, promising freedom to the Greek cities and cancelling debts; he was received with much enthusiasm, though some cities resisted him and had to stand siege. His victorious fleet sailed into the Aegean, where Rhodes however managed to resist his attack. Hailed as a deliverer, he was then faced with the problem of what to do with the large number of Roman and Italian business men in the province. His solution was simple, but terrible. He ordered that on a fixed day all men, women and children, should be massacred: the victims numbered some 80,000. All the Asiatic cities who complied with his order were thus irrevocably bound to the cause of the enemy of Rome. Lord of Asia, Mithridates now looked westwards to Europe.

He soon received an invitation from the democratic party in Athens to cross over and liberate Greece. The ambassador, named Aristion, who had brought the message, on his return home managed to become tyrant of Athens and murdered members of the aristocratic party. Mithridates therefore in the autumn of 88 sent a force across the Aegean under the command of Archelaus, who plundered Delos on the way. Rome had few troops in Greece, but a legate, whom the governor of Macedonia hastily sent southwards, managed to save northern Greece and forced Archelaus back into Attica. Then in 87 Sulla landed with five legions in Epirus and marched hurriedly to Athens, where he besieged Aristion and penned up Archelaus in the Peiraeus. But his position was dangerous. Another Pontic army, on its way to Greece through Macedonia, might arrive from the north, and without command of the sea he could not reduce the Peiraeus. He therefore sent Lucullus to collect a fleet, while he plundered the treasuries of Delphi and
Olympia for funds. At last early in 86 he carried Athens by assault; Peiraeus fell soon after and Archelaus embarked his troops to join the Pontic army which had now reached Thessaly.
^29a

Sulla met these combined forces, which outnumbered his own men perhaps by three to one, at Chaeronea in a set battle.
³⁰
By skilful tactics, speed of movement and personal intervention at critical points, Sulla routed the enemy despite their numbers and scythe-chariots. Mithridates, however, made a further effort. Another Pontic army was sent by sea to Euboea, where it joined Archelaus’ defeated survivors. Sulla met them again in Boeotia, at Orchomenus. After digging trenches to cover his flanks against their superior cavalry, he succeeded in driving their chariots back on their phalanx, and thus won his second victory. Archelaus fled to Euboea; the invasion of Greece was ended, and before the end of the year Sulla met Archelaus on the coast of Boeotia to begin negotiating a settlement.

Sulla, however, had other pre-occupations. Not only had he been declared an enemy of the Roman People by the government in Rome, but Flaccus had been sent out by Cinna against Mithridates (rather than against Sulla, as the latter afterwards claimed).
³¹
Flaccus with his two legions marched straight to his province of Asia. Here he, and then his lieutenant Fimbria who succeeded to his command by murdering him, found great distress. Many of the Greek cities, discontented with Mithridates the Liberator, were in revolt against him and during a reign of terror were discovering in him an Oriental tyrant. They were indeed between the devil and the deep sea because Fimbria also did not hesitate to plunder many of them as he marched to defeat an army that Mithridates managed to put into the field on the banks of the Rhyndacus. He might even have captured Mithridates himself, if Lucullus, who was coasting by with his fleet, had been willing to co-operate.

At last Mithridates was ready to come to terms. Having in vain tried to play off Fimbria against Sulla, he met Sulla in the summer of 85 at Dardanus near Troy, where he accepted the terms already discussed by Archelaus, who now enjoyed the title of ‘friend and ally’ of the Roman People. Mithridates agreed to surrender seventy ships, evacuate all territory that he had conquered in Asia Minor and pay an indemnity of 2000 talents: in return he was recognized as King of Pontus and ally of Rome. He might well thank his lucky stars that Sulla had business in the west – else he would scarcely have received such lenient terms. Sulla then made short work of Fimbria, who soon afterwards fell on his sword.

The settlement that Sulla imposed on the unhappy province was bitter. It was now conquered territory, and even the free cities that had been Rome’s allies had, by receiving the enemy, lost their former rights and independence; any privileges they now received were granted by the grace of Sulla and the Senate. Cities that had remained loyal to Rome (e.g. Rhodes) were rewarded,
but those that had received the enemy (e.g. Pergamum, Ephesus, Miletus) now lost their freedom and became liable to the regular taxes collected by the
publicani
; many were plundered and had their walls razed. Sulla imposed on the province an indemnity of 20,000 talents (the cost of the war and five years arrears of taxation) and through the winter of 85/4 he billeted his troops on the unfortunate provincials who had to pay, feed and clothe them.
³²
Unable fully to meet their obligations, they had to borrow and thus became the victims of heartless exploitation by Roman business-men. A further cause of trouble was the increasing raids of the pirates who were now becoming the scourage of the eastern Mediterranean: they even carried off 1000 talents’ worth of booty from Samothrace, while Sulla himself was staying on the island. Thus when he sailed for Greece in 84, Sulla left debt and despair behind him in Asia.

Asia even had to endure some further fighting, which has been dignified with the title of the Second Mithridatic War (83–82). Though Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes were restored to their thrones, Mithridates remained quiet until he was stung into action by the aggressions of L. Licinius Murena, whom Sulla had left in the province in command of the two legions that he had taken over from Fimbria. Alleging that Mithridates was rearming, Murena attacked him and continued to raid his territory despite a warning from the Senate. Only after he had been beaten in battle by the king, did he finally obey an order from Sulla to desist. Sulla, now dictator in Rome, had other matters on hand.