The invasion of his heartlands immediately took Tigranes homeward and out of the war in Anatolia. This left an isolated Mithridates with the grim prospect of facing not only the Romans, but also the Galatians and the levies
of Bithynia and Asia. Pompey may have felt that the prospect was bleak enough for him to get Mithridates to surrender without a fight, or he may have felt that he needed more time to assess the situation and assemble his levies. In either case, his next step was to send envoys to Mithridates to discuss the king’s surrender.
It is likewise uncertain how serious Mithridates was about negotiations. He had managed to extract a very favourable deal from the Romans in the past; but that was when Sulla had been desperate to depart the theatre of operations in order to deal with pressing domestic problems. Pompey had come specifically to deal with Mithridates and Tigranes and it was unlikely that he would depart without a convincing victory to take to the Roman people. But still, Mithridates had men to train, the Bosporan kingdom to bring firmly back under his control, and perhaps his son-in-law’s war in Armenia might prove short-lived, making him available once more for an Anatolian war. In short, Mithridates was quite happy to waste a bit of time talking.
Pompey made it plain that he merely wanted to skip the war part of the business and have Mithridates behave as though he were already conquered. He was to place himself entirely at Pompey’s mercy and to hand over all his possessions and all the Roman deserters serving under his standards. Mithridates could not for a moment appear to contemplate such an offer. Had he done so, his worried Roman contingent might actually have done him physical injury. Indeed, by some reports he only managed to soothe his men by saying that he had sent envoys to the Roman camp only in order to gain from them some measure of the Roman strength.
This strength would appear to have been about 50,000 men, at a very shaky estimate.The magic of Pompey’s name had caused many of the Lucullan legionaries to re-enlist, and even a few of the veteran Fimbrians had stayed on to have a last shot at a decent pension under a commander already well known for his care for his soldiers upon their discharge. The legions were supplemented by a large force of native levies, including cavalry, and from Mithridates’ later conduct it seems likely he was outnumbered even in this, his favourite military arm. However, the key to the matter was that Mithridates 30,000 men seem to have been facing an equal number of Roman legionaries, which meant that he could never expect to win a direct confrontation.
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Given the imbalance in numbers and quality of the armies, Mithridates chose to make his stand in the eastern heartlands of his kingdom, near the northern borders of Armenia. He had decided to let Pompey come to him and
to try his now-standard tactic of hitting the Roman supply lines, rather in the manner that had worked so well against Lucullus in Armenia. In fact, according to Cassius Dio, Mithridates used a scorched earth strategy, devastating his own lands along the line of the Roman advance in the hope of making them short of supplies.
Details of the actual campaign are vague and contradictory. It appears that Mithridates was happy to let the Romans approach and even camp alongside his army, but he refused to offer to fight except from highly-defensible positions, which the mountainous lands along the Armenian border offered in abundance. There were various clashes, including, for example, one in which Pompey ordered his cavalry to feign a confused retreat from a skirmish in the hope of drawing the Pontics into an ambush; but just as the trap was sprung, Mithridates led his infantry on a sally and forced the Romans to retire.
The strategy of Mithridates is reasonably clear. To win, he had simply not to lose. Every month that he kept Pompey fruitlessly traipsing about the mountains was another month in which the glamour would wear off the Roman’s name, and the soldiers would once again tire of a war which offered all the privations of a campaign but no prospect of victory or loot. Eventually the wheel of Roman politics would turn again and Pompey would go the way of Sulla, Murena and Lucullus.
Had Mithridates known his man better, he would have realized that he was, in fact, fighting Pompey’s preferred kind of war. Once again, Pompey’s logistical genius ensured that his men remained adequately supplied, whilst it was Mithridates who had periodically to shift his camp due to lack of supplies. Pompey had his men working ceaselessly at a series of ditches and minor forts, which constantly harassed the Pontic foragers and which threatened to enclose Mithridates completely if he did not keep moving. On one occasion, Mithridates was caught and besieged by the Romans in his camp for over a month and, when he finally broke out, Mithridates had to sacrifice his sick and wounded, and all but fifty days of supplies.
His retreat had taken him up against the headwaters of the River Lycus, not far from the later city of Nicopolis. Again we have three historians who have recorded what happened here, and each gives a somewhat different version. However, it is evident that Mithridates had established his camp on a now-unknown hill called Dasteria. Approach to this camp was by way of a defile with a single road. At some point there was a sharp engagement between the Romans and the Pontic army in this defile – either because
Pompey had stolen a march on Mithridates and set up an ambush (according to Dio) or because Mithridates had set a strong rearguard to block the defile (Appian).
By Appian’s report, some of the Pontic cavalrymen were dismounted and fighting as infantry and making a good show of it until the Romans showed up with a large contingent of cavalry. At this, the Pontic cavalrymen rushed back to the camp to get their horses, precipitating a general retreat by those who did not know why their companions were running off and decided not to wait and find out. According to Appian this marked the end of the battle, but it is more probable that, as Plutarch, our third source, says, the Pontics finished up back in their camp – a secure base with a steep drop on at least one side.
Plutarch reports that Mithridates, as his men made camp for the night, was disturbed by a dream in which he was sailing pleasantly along the Black Sea with the Bosporan coast coming into sight when suddenly conditions changed, and he found himself alone in a shipwreck and clinging desperately to a plank.
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At that point his lieutenants came to him with the news that the Romans, fearing that he intended to cross the river and make for Armenia, were launching a midnight attack on his camp.
Here Plutarch and Dio agree that the moon was low on the horizon and the Romans attacked with the moon at their backs. This confused the raw Pontic troops, who launched their missiles early, mistaking the shadows thrown far ahead by the Romans for the soldiers themselves. It is in any case notoriously difficult to judge ranges up and down a slope, let alone in highly-confusing circumstances in semi-darkness. Once the experienced Roman legionaries got among the Pontic troops the battle was as good as won. The Romans fought shoulder-to-shoulder in close formation, using their stabbing swords to terrible effect on men who were more preoccupied with escape and flight than in holding the enemy off. Also, Mithridates’ foresight told against him at the last. He had made his camp at a site which was hard to get to. As his desperate troops now discovered, it was equally difficult to get out of.
Mithridates did manage to escape, fighting his way clear with 800 hundred horsemen, but at least 10,000 of his men did not. They were cut down by the Romans or, in many cases, simply forced off the edge of the cliff by the panicking throng. The Romans were not inclined to take captives and Dio reports that prisoners were far fewer than the dead. Defeated once more, and with his army dead or dispersed, Mithridates was again on the run.
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Chapter 11
The Last Stand
When victorious, Mithridates was inclined to show the vindictiveness of many a Hellenistic monarch. When in difficulty he was vicious, and because of this he had alienated potential or existing allies when he was young. But when defeated, he was magnificent. In the past, the king’s response to resounding defeats had been to pick up the pieces, retreat and attempt to gather his strength, all the while continuing to hurt his enemy with all the means still at his disposal. He did not fall into despair, or look for scapegoats. Still, after Dasteria he must have known that this defeat would be very hard to come back from.
Of the hundreds of thousands he had once had at his command, he now commanded a troop of mercenary horse and about 3,000 infantry who had escaped the disaster. Believing the Romans to be hot on his trail, Mithridates led this little force directly for the fortress of Sinora, which was situated right against the Armenian border. Plutarch romantically describes their flight thus:
one by one his followers fell away until he was left with three companions, including his concubine. She was an excellent horsewoman, dressing and riding in the Persian style, which prompted the king to nickname her Hypiscrates [‘horsemaster’]. She, with a manly and daring spirit, accompanied the king on his flight, never tiring and never failing to attend to him even after the longest journey.
However, Plutarch contradicts himself and falls into line with other historians when he says that at Sinora he opened the treasury there and discharged his men, rewarding those who had stayed with him thus far with cash and rich clothing. Those who wanted to avoid falling into Roman hands at all costs were also given deadly poisons from the king’s personal repertoire. Mithridates’ original intention was apparently to return once again to the sanctuary of Armenia, but the beleaguered Tigranes was having none of it. Suspecting Mithridates of conspiring with his rebellious son, the Armenian king let it be known that there was a huge 100-talent bounty on Mithridates’ head.
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Tigranes suspicion may not have been unfounded, since the rebel son was, after all, Mithridates’ grandson.
With Armenia ruled out, there remained a final, desperate option. The Bosporan kingdom under Menchares had early thrown in its lot with the Romans, but it had never formally renounced its allegiance to Mithridates. Mithridates therefore decided to stake his life that this formal allegiance continued because there remained a hard core of support for his rule there. Of course, before Mithridates could stake his life on this belief, he had still to reach the Bosporus alive. The Romans were now masters of the Black Sea, and the peoples of Colchis, on the land route through which Mithridates and his handful of followers had to pass, were not particularly welcoming. They had suffered under invading Pontic armies in the past, and were equally worried about Mithridates drawing the pursuing Romans after him into their lands.
This is precisely what happened, but not immediately. For a start, it may have been that the Dasteria campaign was harder than the Roman sources let on, for after beating Mithridates, Pompey went on to populate a city which he founded nearby with his sick, wounded and discharged veterans. The city was called Nicopolis in commemoration of the victory at Dasteria (Nike being the goddess of victory).
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This victory had made Pompey master of most of the Middle East, and, with his genius for organization, he immediately set about tidying the place up. Under pressure from the Parthians, and with the threat of the Romans joining in against him, Tigranes realized that he had no alternative but to throw himself on Pompey’s mercy. Once his ambassadors had conveyed the assurances of Pompey that such mercy would be forthcoming, he literally knelt at the conqueror’s feet.
Apart from administrative issues, one of the problems with pursuing Mithridates was that no-one was yet sure where he had gone. The fugitive king seemed almost literally to have dropped off the face of the known world. All that Pompey could do was set a watch on the Black Sea ports, make diligent enquiries and wait for his enemy to resurface. He reportedly whiled away some of his time reading Mithridates’ mail, as he had captured the royal correspondence along with those castles which were gradually accepting the inevitable and changing their allegiance.
Once such castle, Symphorium, was handed over by Stratonice, a wife of Mithridates who was irked that the king had left her without even the protection of a garrison. Stratonice had been the subject of a royal wooing whilst the king was at the height of his power. Her father, a musician, had sung with her at a banquet, and had afterwards been dismissed by the king without a word. But the next morning, he was awakened by servants stocking his tables with gold and silver plate and his cupboards with fine clothing, whilst a top
quality horse was brought up for him outside. Mithridates, it appeared, was taken with his daughter, and would like to wed her. The riches being bestowed on him were those of a local notable who had ‘died suddenly’. Father and daughter took the hint and the fortune which Mithridates offered. The fortune of Stratonice – in terms of both luck and money - outlasted that of her royal husband, for whilst Mithridates fled into the wilds of Scythia, Stratonice was confirmed in her current possessions.
Pompey let on what he had been reading about Mithridates. No doubt for propaganda purposes, he let slip that Mithridates had poisoned a son he believed was getting too popular, and a famous horseman from Sardis who had been impertinent enough to beat the king in a race. He also released the saucy correspondence between Mithridates and one of his concubines, and it is probably from the same source that later Roman writers claim their knowledge of the king’s pharmacological research into poisons and countermeasures.
Regaining a kingdom
While Pompey was settling the affairs of Pontus and combining it with Bithynia to form a single administrative unit, Mithridates was adding to his reputation. The land to the northeast of the Black Sea was as little known to the peoples of the Mediterranean as darkest Africa was to the Victorians, and it enjoyed much the same reputation. Yet even here Mithridates was something of a living legend. ‘He pushed on through strange and warlike Scythian tribes’, reports Appian, ‘sometimes by permission, sometimes by force, so respected and feared was he, though a fugitive in his misfortune.’ He wintered in Colchis during 66 BC and pushed on around the sea of Asov in the following year, apparently not only gaining secure passage from the local princes, but even securing the allegiance of some. We get further detail from Strabo, and though many of the peoples mentioned have passed from history, some of the epic flavour of the journey is conveyed by their names.