The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) · Chapter 115Chapter IV (1)
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Pompeius and the East
Pompeius Suppresses Piracy
We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687 Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants, for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part of the ships of war that were available—among which on this occasion also those of Rhodes were distinguished—early in the year to sea, and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain from these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts. It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province of Narbo—an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared in Rome.(1) When at the end of forty days the navigation had been everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean, Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy, the Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious resistance. The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence. The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory. Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission. Soon the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender. Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas, Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.
The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope with a well-organized police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate such a razzia as a victory. But when compared with the prolonged continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil, it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better than the collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats, including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt. Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.
Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete
A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however, disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms. There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command, and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially effected—of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern waters. A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius. He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment, from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt, not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when, utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius, he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested; in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there; Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna, besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner. Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna, at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna, where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus after the most obstinate resistance.
In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy. It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state, that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably" side by side in the senate.
Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates
Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor. The portion of the Lucullan army that was still left after the losses which it had suffered and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering on the Pontic territory. Lucullus still held provisionally the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued to linger in the west of Asia Minor. The three legions commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive in Cilicia. The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria, pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the east did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans, either because it formed no part of their plan, or—as was asserted— because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia with the troops stationed there, as well as the management of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace, and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion, were transferred to Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels; he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia. Yet amidst this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy, which was perpetually raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia (691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose was granted by the senate. They continued to protect the coasts with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696 and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.
War Preparations of Pompeius Alliance with the Parthians Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes
The few months which still remained before the commencement of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander- in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military preparations. Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre than to attempt a serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance. To counteract this, Roman envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles, which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid. A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open insurrection. Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid, and intrigued against his father there. It was partly due to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward which was offered to him by both sides for his accession—the secured possession of Mesopotamia—from the hand of the Romans, renewed with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate in concert with the Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians, for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The great-king cherished in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand in the insurrection of his grandson—Cleopatra the mother of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates— and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment when it was most urgently needed.
At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations with energy. The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned to furnish the stipulated contingents. Public notices summoned the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality to obey the call. The whole force united under the orders of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries, to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)
Pompeius and Lucullus
In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions were directed to follow. At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi, the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends had hoped to effect, was not accomplished. The preliminary courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met. As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to his own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right; customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.
Invasion of Pontus Retreat of Mithradates
So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed the frontier of Pontus. There they were opposed by king Mithradates with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. Left in the lurch by his allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy, he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded—what worse could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy, and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone, proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates, crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire. But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates, and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province, he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira, which was strong and well provided with water, and from which with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius, still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected by rocky ravines and deep valleys. It was not till the troops from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman detachments scoured the country far and wide. The distress in the Pontic camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops, and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards the east. Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land: the march was now approaching the boundary which separated the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined not to permit this.
Battle at Nicopolis
The two armies lay close to each other. During the rest at noon the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement, made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes, at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The following morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner, and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after, accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied. Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers, chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile failed to take effect. When the Romans had expended their darts, they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans. With three attendants—two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side— he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him. He divided among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold (1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison; and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.
Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates Mithradates Crosses the Phasis
This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time existed no longer. During the conflicts between Mithradates and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince, had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains. The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata; but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son intended to betake himself to his grandfather. So he entered into negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance which linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had arrived at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds) on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them to the Romans. King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps dislodging his son Machares—who had revolted and entered into connection with the Romans(6)—once more from the Bosporan kingdom, and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects. So he turned northward. When the king in his flight had crossed the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.
Pompeius at Artaxata Peace with Tigranes
Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles from the city. There he was met by the son of the great-king, who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father and the Romans. The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase peace at any price. On horseback and without his purple robe, but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted to the presence of the Roman general. After having given up at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands. Pompeius, highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia of his dignity, and dictated the peace. Besides a payment of; 1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii- (2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper, and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end. In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings of Pontus and Armenia. At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil, in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur, from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.
The Tribes of the Caucasus Iberians Albanians
But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the middle and eastern Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping on their territory. There—in the fertile and well-watered tableland of the modern Georgia—dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized, agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession, without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators. Army and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler- clans—out of which the eldest always presided over the whole Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader of the army—partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance. The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king. Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower stage of culture. Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated with the old wooden plough without iron share. Coined money was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred. Each of their tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct dialect. Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians could not at all cope with them in bravery. The mode of fighting was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves. Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete independence preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit; now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves to defend it also against the Romans.
Albanians Conquered by Pompeius Iberians Conquered
Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander-in-chief intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus—for Mithradates, they heard, was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale and Anaklia) on the Black Sea—the Albanians under their prince Oroizes first crossed the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689 and threw themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake of its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer, Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person. But Celer, on whom the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur. Artoces the king of the Iberians kept quiet and promised peace and friendship; but Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the Caucasus, advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora (Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia. Artoces, surprised by the enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge over the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior. Pompeius occupied the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank of the Kur; by which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission. But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior, and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so not to surrender but to fight. The Iberian archers however withstood not for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted at length to the conditions which the victor proposed, and sent his children as hostages.
Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis
Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had formerly projected, marched through the Sarapana pass from the region of the Kur to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea, where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already awaited him. But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought to the richly fabled shores of Colchis. The laborious march just completed through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing when compared with what still awaited them, and if they should really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes, on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where at certain places the mountains sink perpendicularly into the sea and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships— if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal— what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended, so long as the old king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which this unparalleled chase was to be instituted? Was it not better even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous voices in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital, urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price; but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs, partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price have kept the too-powerful Imperator aloof from the capital and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east. Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an officer to stake his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received instructions to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader who should break the blockade. Pompeius conducted the land troops not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream, into the Albanian plain.