The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform

Marius

Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained municipal rights as Cereatae Marianae and still at the present day bears the name of "Marius' home" (Casamare). He was reared at the plough, in circumstances so humble that they seemed to preclude him from access even to the municipal offices of Arpinum: he learned early—what he practised afterwards even when a general—to bear hunger and thirst, the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and to sleep on the hard ground. As soon as his age allowed him, he had entered the army and through service in the severe school of the Spanish wars had rapidly risen to be an officer. In Scipio's Numantine war he, at that time twenty-three years of age, attracted the notice of the stern general by the neatness with which he kept his horse and his accoutrements, as well as by his bravery in combat and his decorous demeanour in camp. He had returned home with honourable scars and warlike distinctions, and with the ardent wish to make himself a name in the career on which he had gloriously entered; but, as matters then stood, a man of even the highest merit could not attain those political offices, which alone led to the higher military posts, without wealth and without connections. The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the Julii. So by dint of great efforts and after various miscarriages he succeeded, in 639, in attaining the praetorship, in which he found opportunity of displaying afresh his military ability as governor of Further Spain. How he thereafter in spite of the aristocracy received the consulship in 647 and, as proconsul (648, 649), terminated the African war; and how, called after the calamitous day of Arausio to the superintendence of the war against the Germans, he had his consulship renewed for four successive years from 650 to 653 (a thing unexampled in the annals of the republic) and vanquished and annihilated the Cimbri in Cisalpine, and the Teutones in Transalpine, Gaul—has been already related. In his military position he had shown himself a brave and upright man, who administered justice impartially, disposed of the spoil with rare honesty and disinterestedness, and was thoroughly incorruptible; a skilful organizer, who had brought the somewhat rusty machinery of the Roman military system once more into a state of efficiency; an able general, who kept the soldier under discipline and withal in good humour and at the same time won his affections in comrade-like intercourse, but looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the proper time. He was not, as far as we can judge, a man of eminent military capacity; but the very respectable qualities which he possessed were quite sufficient under the existing circumstances to procure for him the reputation of such capacity, and by virtue of it he had taken his place in a fashion of unparalleled honour among the consulars and the triumphators. But he was none the better fitted on that account for the brilliant circle. His voice remained harsh and loud, and his look wild, as if he still saw before him Libyans or Cimbrians, and not well- bred and perfumed colleagues. That he was superstitious like a genuine soldier of fortune; that he was induced to become a candidate for his first consulship, not by the impulse of his talents, but primarily by the utterances of an Etruscan -haruspex-; and that in the campaign with the Teutones a Syrian prophetess Martha lent the aid of her oracles to the council of war,—these things were not, in the strict sense, unaristocratic: in such matters, then as at all times, the highest and lowest strata of society met. But the want of political culture was unpardonable; it was commendable, no doubt, that he had the skill to defeat the barbarians, but what was to be thought of a consul who was so ignorant of constitutional etiquette as to appear in triumphal costume in the senate! In other respects too the plebeian character clung to him. He was not merely—according to aristocratic phraseology—a poor man, but, what was worse, frugal and a declared enemy of all bribery and corruption. After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond of his cups, especially in his later years; he knew not the art of giving feasts, and kept a bad cook. It was likewise awkward that the consular understood nothing but Latin and had to decline conversing in Greek; that he felt the Greek plays wearisome might pass—he was presumably not the only one who did so—but to confess to the feeling of weariness was naive. Thus he remained throughout life a countryman cast adrift among aristocrats, and annoyed by the keenly-felt sarcasms and still more keenly—felt commiseration of his colleagues, which he had not the self-command to despise as he despised themselves.

Political Position of Marius

Marius stood aloof from the parties not much less than from society. The measures which he carried in his tribunate of the people (635)—a better control over the delivery of the voting-tablets with a view to do away with the scandalous frauds that were therein practised, and the prevention of extravagant proposals for largesses to the people(1)—do not bear the stamp of a party, least of all that of the democratic, but merely show that he hated what was unjust and irrational; and how could a man like this, a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination, have been from the first a revolutionist? The hostile attacks of the aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of the opponents of the government; and there he speedily found himself elevated in the first instance to be general of the opposition, and destined perhaps for still higher things hereafter. But this was far more the effect of the stringent force of circumstances and of the general need which the opposition had for a chief, than his own work; he had at any rate since his departure for Africa in 647-8 hardly tarried, in passing, for a brief period in the capital. It was not till the latter half of 653 that he returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double honours—decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the same time a novice in politics. It was certain beyond dispute, not only that Marius had saved Rome, but that he was the only man who could have saved it; his name was on every one's lips; the men of quality acknowledged his services; with the people he was more popular than any one before or after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughness; he was called by the multitude a third Romulus and a second Camillus; libations were poured forth to him like the gods. It was no wonder that the head of the peasant's son grew giddy at times with all this glory; that he compared his march from Africa to Gaul to the victorious processions of Dionysus from continent to continent, and had a cup—none of the smallest—manufactured for his use after the model of that of Bacchus. There was just as much of hope as of gratitude in this delirious enthusiasm of the people, which might well have led astray a man of colder blood and more mature political experience. The work of Marius seemed to his admirers by no means finished. The wretched government oppressed the land more heavily than did the barbarians: on him, the first man of Rome, the favourite of the people, the head of the opposition, devolved the task of once more delivering Rome. It is true that to one who was a rustic and a soldier the political proceedings of the capital were strange and incongruous: he spoke as ill as he commanded well, and displayed a far firmer bearing in presence of the lances and swords of the enemy than in presence of the applause or hisses of the multitude; but his inclinations were of little moment. The hopes of which he was the object constrained him. His military and political position was such that, if he would not break with the glorious past, if he would not deceive the expectations of his party and in fact of the nation, if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs and put an end to the government of the restoration; and if he only possessed the internal qualities of a head of the people, he might certainly dispense with those which he lacked as a popular leader.

The New Military Organization

He held in his hand a formidable weapon in the newly organized army. Previously to his time the fundamental principle of the Servian constitution—by which the levy was limited entirely to the burgesses possessed of property, and the distinctions as to armour were regulated solely by the property qualification(2)—had necessarily been in various respects relaxed. The minimum census of 11,000 -asses- (43 pounds), which bound its possessor to enter the burgess-army, had been lowered to 4000 (17 pounds;(3)). The older six property-classes, distinguished by their respective kinds of armour, had been restricted to three; for, while in accordance with the Servian organization they selected the cavalry from the wealthiest, and the light-armed from the poorest, of those liable to serve, they arranged the middle class, the proper infantry of the line, no longer according to property but according to age of service, in the three divisions of -hastati-, -principes-, and -triarii-. They had, moreover, long ago brought in the Italian allies to share to a very great extent in war-service; but in their case too, just as among the Roman burgesses, military duty was chiefly imposed on the propertied classes. Nevertheless the Roman military system down to the time of Marius rested in the main on that primitive organization of the burgess-militia. But it was no longer suited for the altered circumstances. The better classes of society kept aloof more and more from service in the army, and the Roman and Italic middle class in general was disappearing; while on the other hand the considerable military resources of the extra-Italian allies and subjects had become available, and the Italian proletariate also, properly applied, afforded at least a very useful material for military objects. The burgess- cavalry,(4) which was meant to be formed from the class of the wealthy, had practically ceased from service in the field even before the time of Marius. It is last mentioned as an actual corps d'armee in the Spanish campaign of 614, when it drove the general to despair by its insolent arrogance and its insubordination, and a war broke out between the troopers and the general, waged on both sides with equal unscrupulousness. In the Jugurthine war it continues to appear merely as a sort of guard of honour for the general and foreign princes; thenceforth it wholly disappears. In like manner the filling up of the complement of the legions with properly qualified persons bound to serve proved in the ordinary course of things difficult; so that exertions, such as were necessary after the battle of Arausio, would have been in all probability really impracticable with the retention of the existing rules as to the obligation of service. On the other hand even before the time of Marius, especially in the cavalry and the light infantry, extra-Italian subjects—the heavy mounted troopers of Thrace, the light African cavalry, the excellent light infantry of the nimble Ligurians, the slingers from the Baleares—were employed in ever-increasing numbers even beyond their own provinces for the Roman armies; and at the same time, while there was a want of qualified burgess-recruits, the non- qualified poorer burgesses pressed forward unbidden to enter the army; in fact, from the mass of the civic rabble without work or averse to it, and from the considerable advantages which the Roman war-service yielded, the enlistment of volunteers could not be difficult. It was therefore simply a necessary consequence of the political and social changes in the state, that its military arrangements should exhibit a transition from the system of the burgess-levy to the system of contingents and enlisting; that the cavalry and light troops should be essentially formed out of the contingents of the subjects—in the Cimbrian campaign, for instance, contingents were summoned from as far as Bithynia; and that in the case of the infantry of the line, while the former arrangement of obligation to service was not abolished, every free-born burgess should at the same time be permitted voluntarily to enter the army as was first done by Marius in 647.

To this was added the reducing the infantry of the line to a level, which is likewise to be referred to Marius. The Roman method of aristocratic classification had hitherto prevailed also within the legion. Each of the four divisions of the -velites-, the -hastati-, the -principes-, and the -triarii—-or, as we may say, the vanguard, the first, second, and third line—had hitherto possessed its special qualification for service, as respected property or age, and in great part also its distinctive equipment; each had its definite place once for all assigned in the order of battle; each had its definite military rank and its own standard. All these distinctions were now superseded. Any one admitted as a legionary at all needed no further qualification in order to serve in any division; the discretion of the officers alone decided as to his place. All distinctions of armour were set aside, and consequently all recruits were uniformly trained. Connected, doubtless, with this change were the various improvements which Marius introduced in the armament, the carrying of the baggage, and similar matters, and which furnish an honourable evidence of his insight into the practical details of the business of war and of his care for his soldiers; and more especially the new method of drill devised by Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul 649) the comrade of Marius in the African war. It is a significant fact, that this method considerably increased the military culture of the individual soldier, and was essentially based upon the training of the future gladiators which was usual in the fighting- schools of the time. The arrangement of the legion became totally different. The thirty companies (-manipuli-) of heavy infantry, which— each in two sections (-centuriae-) composed respectively of 60 men in the first two, and of 30 men in the third, division—had hitherto formed the tactical unit, were replaced by 10 cohorts (-cohortes-) each with its own standard and each of 6, or often only of 5, sections of 100 men apiece; so that, although at the same time 1200 men were saved by the suppression of the light infantry of the legion, yet the total numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to from 5000 to 6000 men. The custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, but, while previously each division had formed a distinct corps, it was in future left to the general to distribute the cohorts, of which he had the disposal, in the three lines as he thought best. Military rank was determined solely by the numerical order of the soldiers and of the divisions. The four standards of the several parts of the legion—the wolf, the ox with a man's head, the horse, the boar—which had hitherto probably been carried before the cavalry and the three divisions of heavy infantry, disappeared; there came instead the ensigns of the new cohorts, and the new standard which Marius gave to the legion as a whole—the silver eagle. While within the legion every trace of the previous civic and aristocratic classification thus disappeared, and the only distinctions henceforth occurring among the legionaries were purely military, accidental circumstances had some decades earlier given rise to a privileged division of the army alongside of the legions— the bodyguard of the general. Hitherto selected men from the allied contingents had formed the personal escort of the general; the employment of Roman legionaries, or even men voluntarily offering themselves, for personal service with him was at variance with the stern disciplinary obligations of the mighty commonwealth. But when the Numantine war had reared an army demoralized beyond parallel, and Scipio Aemilianus, who was called to check the wild disorder, had not been able to prevail on the government to call entirely new troops under arms, he was at least allowed to form, in addition to a number of men whom the dependent kings and free cities outside of the Roman bounds placed at his disposal, a personal escort of 500 men composed of volunteer Roman burgesses (p. 230). This cohort drawn partly from the better classes, partly from the humbler personal clients of the general, and hence called sometimes that of the friends, sometimes that of the headquarters (-praetoriani-), had the duty of serving in the latter (-praetorium-) in return for which it was exempt from camp and entrenching service and enjoyed higher pay and greater repute.

Political Significance of the Marian Military Reform

This complete revolution in the constitution of the Roman army seems certainly in substance to have originated from purely military motives; and on the whole to have been not so much the work of an individual, least of all of a man of calculating ambition, as the remodelling which the force of circumstances enjoined in arrangements which had become untenable. It is probable that the introduction of the system of inland enlistment by Marius saved the state in a military point of view from destruction, just as several centuries afterwards Arbogast and Stilicho prolonged its existence for a time by the introduction of foreign enlistment. Nevertheless, it involved a complete—although not yet developed—political revolution. The republican constitution was essentially based on the view that the citizen was at the same time a soldier, and that the soldier was above all a citizen; there was an end of it, so soon as a soldier-class was formed. To this issue the new system of drill, with its routine borrowed from the professional gladiator, could not but lead; the military service became gradually a profession. Far more rapid was the effect of the admission—though but limited—of the proletariate to participate in military service; especially in connection with the primitive maxims, which conceded to the general an arbitrary right of rewarding his soldiers compatible only with very solid republican institutions, and gave to the capable and successful soldier a sort of title to demand from the general a share of the moveable spoil and from the stale a portion of the soil that had been won. While the burgess or farmer called out under the levy saw in military service nothing but a burden to be undertaken for the public good, and in the gains of war nothing but a slight compensation for the far more considerable loss brought upon him by serving, it was otherwise with the enlisted proletarian. Not only was he for the moment solely dependent upon his pay, but, as there was no Hotel des Invalides nor even a poorhouse to receive him after his discharge, for the future also he could not but wish to abide by his standard, and not to leave it otherwise than with the establishment of his civic status, His only home was the camp, his only science war, his only hope the general—what this implied, is clear. When Marius after the engagement on the Raudine plain unconstitutionally gave Roman citizenship on the very field of battle to two cohorts of Italian allies en masse for their brave conduct, he justified himself afterwards by saying that amidst the noise of battle he had not been able to distinguish the voice of the laws. If once in more important questions the interest of the army and that of the general should concur to produce unconstitutional demands, who could be security that then other laws also would not cease to be heard amid the clashing of swords? They had now the standing army, the soldier-class, the bodyguard; as in the civil constitution, so also in the military, all the pillars of the future monarchy were already in existence: the monarch alone was wanting. When the twelve eagles circled round the Palatine hill, they ushered in the reign of the Kings; the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed the near advent of the Emperors.

Political Projects of Marius

There is hardly any doubt that Marius entered into the brilliant prospects which his military and political position opened up to him. It was a sad and troubled time. Men had peace, but they were not glad of having it; the state of things was not now such as it had formerly been after the first mighty onset of the men of the north on Rome, when, so soon as the crisis was over, all energies were roused anew in the fresh consciousness of recovered health, and had by their vigorous development rapidly and amply made up for what was lost. Every one felt that, though able generals might still once and again avert immediate destruction, the commonwealth was only the more surely on the way to ruin under the government of the restored oligarchy; but every one felt also that the time was past when in such cases the burgess-body came to its own help, and that there was no amendment so long as the place of Gaius Gracchus remained empty. How deeply the multitude felt the blank that was left after the disappearance of those two illustrious youths who had opened the gates to revolution, and how childishly in fact it grasped at any shadow of a substitute, was shown by the case of the pretended son of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although the very sister of the two Gracchi charged him with fraud in the open Forum, was yet chosen by the people in 655 as tribune solely on account of his usurped name. In the same spirit the multitude exulted in the presence of Gaius Marius; how should it not? He, if any one, seemed the right man—he was at any rate the first general and the most popular name of his time, confessedly brave and upright, and recommended as regenerator of the state by his very position aloof from the proceedings of party—how should not the people, how should not he himself, have held that he was so! Public opinion as decidedly as possible favoured the opposition. It was a significant indication of this, that the proposal to have the vacant stalls in the chief priestly colleges filled up by the burgesses instead of the colleges themselves—which the government had frustrated in the comitia in 609 by the suggestion of religious scruples—was carried in 650 by Gnaeus Domitius without the senate having been able even to venture a serious resistance. On the whole it seemed as if nothing was wanted but a chief, who should give to the opposition a firm rallying point and a practical aim; and this was now found in Marius.

For the execution of his task two methods of operation offered themselves; Marius might attempt to overthrow the oligarchy either as -imperator- at the head of the army, or in the mode prescribed by the constitution for constitutional changes: his own past career pointed to the former course, the precedent of Gracchus to the latter. It is easy to understand why he did not adopt the former plan, perhaps did not even think of the possibility of adopting it The senate was or seemed so powerless and helpless, so hated and despised, that Marius conceived himself scarcely to need any other support in opposing it than his immense popularity, but hoped in case of necessity to find such a support, notwithstanding the dissolution of the army, in the soldiers discharged and waiting for their rewards. It is probable that Marius, looking to Gracchus' easy and apparently almost complete victory and to his own resources far surpassing those of Gracchus, deemed the overthrow of a constitution four hundred years old, and intimately bound up with the manifold habits and interests of the body-politic arranged in a complicated hierarchy, a far easier task than it was. But any one, who looked more deeply into the difficulties of the enterprise than Marius probably did, might reflect that the army, although in the course of transition from a militia to a body of mercenaries, was still during this state of transition by no means adapted for the blind instrument of a coup d'etat, and that an attempt to set aside the resisting elements by military means would have probably augmented the power of resistance in his antagonists. To mix up the organized armed force in the struggle could not but appear at the first glance superfluous and at the second hazardous; they were just at the beginning of the crisis, and the antagonistic elements were still far from having reached their last, shortest, and simplest expression.

The Popular Party

Marius therefore discharged the army after his triumph in accordance with the existing regulation, and entered on the course traced out by Gaius Gracchus for procuring to himself supremacy in the state by undertaking its constitutional magistracies. In this enterprise he found himself dependent for support on what was called the popular party, and sought his allies in its leaders for the time being all the more, that the victorious general by no means possessed the gifts and experiences requisite for the command of the streets. Thus the democratic party after long insignificance suddenly regained political importance. It had, in the long interval from Gaius Gracchus to Marius, materially deteriorated. Perhaps the dissatisfaction with the senatorial government was not now less than it was then; but several of the hopes, which had brought to the Gracchi their most faithful adherents, had in the meanwhile been recognized as illusory, and there had sprung up in many minds a misgiving that this Gracchan agitation tended towards an issue whither a very large portion of the discontented were by no means willing to follow it. In fact, amidst the chase and turmoil of twenty years there had been rubbed off and worn away very much of the fresh enthusiasm, the steadfast faith, the moral purity of effort, which mark the early stages of revolutions. But, if the democratic party was no longer what it had been under Gaius Gracchus, the leaders of the intervening period were now as far beneath their party as Gaius Gracchus had been exalted above it. This was implied in the nature of the case. Until there should emerge a man having the boldness like Gaius Gracchus to grasp at the supremacy of the state, the leaders could only be stopgaps: either political novices, who gave furious vent to their youthful love of opposition and then, when duly accredited as fiery declaimers and favourite speakers, effected with more or less dexterity their retreat to the camp of the government party; or people who had nothing to lose in respect of property and influence, and usually not even anything to gain in respect of honour, and who made it their business to obstruct and annoy the government from personal exasperation or even from the mere pleasure of creating a noise. To the former sort belonged, for instance, Gaius Memmius(5) and the well-known orator Lucius Crassus, who turned the oratorical laurels which they had won in the ranks of the opposition to account in the sequel as zealous partisans of the government.

Glaucia
Saturninus

But the most notable leaders of the popular party about this time were men of the second sort. Such were Gaius Servilius Glaucia, called by Cicero the Roman Hyperbolus, a vulgar fellow of the lowest origin and of the most shameless street-eloquence, but effective and even dreaded by reason of his pungent wit; and his better and abler associate, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, who even according to the accounts of his enemies was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by motives of vulgar selfishness. When he was quaestor, the charge of the importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on account of maladministration, as in order to confer this—just at that time popular—office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of the ruling families. This mortification had driven the aspiring and sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition; and as tribune of the people in 651 he repaid what he had received with interest. One scandalous affair had at that time followed hard upon another. He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome by the envoys of king Mithradates—these revelations, compromising in the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his life. He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus—the expulsion with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of the revision of the senatorial roll—had only miscarried through the remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus. Saturninus mainly had carried that exceptional commission against Caepio and his associates(6) in spite of the most vehement resistance by the government party; and in opposition to the same he had carried the keenly-contested re-election of Marius as consul for 652. Saturninus was decidedly the most energetic enemy of the senate and the most active and eloquent leader of the popular party since Gaius Gracchus; but he was also violent and unscrupulous beyond any of his predecessors, always ready to descend into the street and to refute his antagonist with blows instead of words.

Such were the two leaders of the so-called popular party, who now made common cause with the victorious general. It was natural that they should do so; their interests and aims coincided, and even in the earlier candidatures of Marius Saturninus at least had most decidedly and most effectively taken his side. It was agreed between them that for 654 Marius should become a candidate for a sixth consulship, Saturninus for a second tribunate, Glaucia for the praetorship, in order that, possessed of these offices, they might carry out the intended revolution in the state. The senate acquiesced in the nomination of the less dangerous Glaucia, but did what it could to hinder the election of Marius and Saturninus, or at least to associate with the former a determined antagonist in the person of Quintus Metellus as his colleague in the consulship. All appliances, lawful and unlawful, were put in motion by both parties; but the senate was not successful in arresting the dangerous conspiracy in the bud. Marius did not disdain in person to solicit votes and, it was said, even to purchase them; in fact, at the tribunician elections when nine men from the list of the government party were proclaimed, and the tenth place seemed already secured for a respectable man of the same complexion Quintus Nunnius, the latter was set upon and slain by a savage band, which is said to have been mainly composed of discharged soldiers of Marius. Thus the conspirators gained their object, although by the most violent means. Marius was chosen as consul, Glaucia as praetor, Saturninus as tribune of the people for 654; the second consular place was obtained not by Quintus Metellus, but by an insignificant man, Lucius Valerius Flaccus: the confederates might proceed to put into execution the further schemes which they contemplated and to complete the work broken off in 633.

The Appuleian Laws

Let us recall the objects which Gaius Gracchus pursued, and the means by which he pursued them. His object was to break down the oligarchy within and without. He aimed, on the one hand, to restore the power of the magistrates, which had become completely dependent on the senate, to its original sovereign rights, and to re-convert the senatorial assembly from a governing into a deliberative board; and, on the other hand, to put an end to the aristocratic division of the state into the three classes of the ruling burgesses, the Italian allies, and the subjects, by the gradual equalization of those distinctions which were incompatible with a government not oligarchical. These ideas the three confederates revived in the colonial laws, which Saturninus as tribune of the people had partly introduced already (651), partly now introduced (654).(7) As early as the former year the interrupted distribution of the Carthaginian territory had been resumed primarily for the benefit of the soldiers of Marius—not the burgesses only but, as it would seem, also the Italian allies—and each of these veterans had been promised an allotment of 100 -jugera-, or about five times the size of an ordinary Italian farm, in the province of Africa. Now not only was the provincial land already available claimed in its widest extent for the Romano-Italian emigration, but also all the land of the still independent Celtic tribes beyond the Alps, by virtue of the legal fiction that through the conquest of the Cimbri all the territory occupied by these had been acquired de jure by the Romans. Gaius Marius was called to conduct the assignations of land and the farther measures that might appear necessary in this behalf; and the temple-treasures of Tolosa, which had been embezzled but were refunded or had still to be refunded by the guilty aristocrats, were destined for the outfit of the new receivers of land. This law therefore not only revived the plans of conquest beyond the Alps and the projects of Transalpine and transmarine colonization, which Gaius Gracchus and Flaccus had sketched, on the most extensive scale; but, by admitting the Italians along with the Romans to emigration and yet undoubtedly prescribing the erection of all the new communities as burgess-colonies, it formed a first step towards satisfying the claims—to which it was so difficult to give effect, and which yet could not be in the long run refused—of the Italians to be placed on an equality with the Romans. First of all, however, if the law passed and Marius was called to the independent carrying out of these immense schemes of conquest and assignation, he would become practically—until those plans should be realized or rather, considering their indefinite and unlimited character, for his lifetime—monarch of Rome; with which view it may be presumed that Marius intended to have his consulship annually renewed, like the tribunate of Gracchus. But, amidst the agreement of the political positions marked out for the younger Gracchus and for Marius in all other essential particulars, there was yet a very material distinction between the land-assigning tribune and the land-assigning consul in the fact, that the former was to occupy a purely civil position, the latter a military position as well; a distinction, which partly but by no means solely arose out of the personal circumstances under which the two men had risen to the head of the state. While such was the nature of the aim which Marius and his comrades had proposed to themselves, the next question related to the means by which they purposed to break down the resistance—which might be anticipated to be obstinate—of the government party. Gaius Gracchus had fought his battles with the aid of the capitalist class and the proletariate. His successors did not neglect to make advances likewise to these. The equites were not only left in possession of the tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission—especially important to the merchants—as to extortions on the part of the public magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed doubtless as early as 651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian movement in Gaul. For the benefit, moreover, of the proletariate of the capital the sum below cost price, which hitherto had to be paid on occasion of the distributions of grain for the -modius-, was lowered from 6 1/3 -asses- to a mere nominal charge of 5/6 of an -as-. But although they did not despise the alliance with the equites and the proletariate of the capital, the real power by which the confederates enforced their measures lay not in these, but in the discharged soldiers of the Marian army, who for that very reason had been provided for in the colonial laws themselves after so extravagant a fashion. In this also was evinced the predominating military character, which forms the chief distinction between this attempt at revolution and that which preceded it.

Violent Proceedings in the Voting

They went to work accordingly. The corn and colonial laws encountered, as was to be expected, the keenest opposition from the government. They proved in the senate by striking figures, that the former must make the public treasury bankrupt; Saturninus did not trouble himself about that. They brought tribunician intercession to bear against both laws; Saturninus ordered the voting to go on. They informed the magistrates presiding at the voting that a peal of thunder had been heard, a portent by which according to ancient belief the gods enjoined the dismissal of the public assembly; Saturninus remarked to the messengers that the senate would do well to keep quiet, otherwise the thunder might very easily be followed by hail. Lastly the urban quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be presumed, of the general condemned three years before,(8) and like his father a vehement antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans dispersed the comitia by violence. But the tough soldiers of Marius, who had flocked in crowds to Rome to vote on this occasion, quickly rallied and dispersed the city bands, and on the voting ground thus reconquered the vote on the Appuleian laws was successfully brought to an end. The scandal was grievous; but when it came to the question whether the senate would comply with the clause of the law that within five days after its passing every senator should on pain of forfeiting his senatorial seat take an oath faithfully to observe it, all the senators took the oath with the single exception of Quintus Metellus, who preferred to go into exile. Marius and Saturninus were not displeased to see the best general and the ablest man among the opposing party removed from the state by voluntary banishment.

The Fall of the Revolutionary Party

Their object seemed to be attained; but even now to those who saw more clearly the enterprise could not but appear a failure. The cause of the failure lay mainly in the awkward alliance between a politically incapable general and a street-demagogue, capable but recklessly violent, and filled with passion rather than with the aims of a statesman. They had agreed excellently, so long as the question related only to plans. But when the plans came to be executed, it was very soon apparent that the celebrated general was in politics utterly incapable; that his ambition was that of the farmer who would cope with and, if possible, surpass the aristocrats in titles, and not that of the statesman who desires to govern because he feels within him the power to do so; that every enterprise, which was based on his personal standing as a politician, must necessarily even under the most favourable circumstances be ruined by himself.

Opposition of the Whole Aristocracy

He knew neither the art of gaining his antagonists, nor that of keeping his own party in subjection. The opposition against him and his comrades was even of itself sufficiently considerable; for not only did the government party belong to it in a body, but also a great part of the burgesses, who guarded with jealous eyes their exclusive privileges against the Italians; and by the course which things took the whole class of the wealthy was also driven over to the government. Saturninus and Glaucia were from the first masters and servants of the proletariate and therefore not at all on a good footing with the moneyed aristocracy, which had no objection now and then to keep the senate in check by means of the rabble, but had no liking for street-riots and violent outrages. As early as the first tribunate of Saturninus his armed bands had their skirmishes with the equites; the vehement opposition which his election as tribune for 654 encountered shows clearly how small was the party favourable to him. It should have been the endeavour of Marius to avail himself of the dangerous help of such associates only in moderation, and to convince all and sundry that they were destined not to rule, but to serve him as the ruler. As he did precisely the contrary, and the matter came to look quite as if the object was to place the government in the hands not of an intelligent and vigorous master, but of the mere -canaille-, the men of material interests, terrified to death at the prospect of such confusion, again attached themselves closely to the senate in presence of this common danger. While Gaius Gracchus, clearly perceiving that no government could be overthrown by means of the proletariate alone, had especially sought to gain over to his side the propertied classes, those who desired to continue his work began by producing a reconciliation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.

Variance between Marius and the Demogogues

But the ruin of the enterprise was brought about, still more rapidly than by this reconciliation of enemies, through the dissension which the more than ambiguous behaviour of Marius necessarily produced among its promoters. While the decisive proposals were brought forward by his associates and carried after a struggle by his soldiers, Marius maintained an attitude wholly passive, just as if the political leader was not bound quite as much as the military, when the brunt of battle came, to present himself everywhere and foremost in person. Nor was this all; he was terrified at, and fled from the presence of, the spirits which he had himself evoked. When his associates resorted to expedients which an honourable man could not approve, but without which in fact the object of their efforts could not be attained, he attempted, in the fashion usual with men whose ideas of political morality are confused, to wash his hands of participation in those crimes and at the same time to profit by their results. There is a story that the general once conducted secret negotiations in two different rooms of his house, with Saturninus and his partisans in the one, and with the deputies of the oligarchy in the other, talking with the former of striking a blow against the senate, and with the latter of interfering against the revolt, and that under a pretext which was in keeping with the anxiety of the situation he went to and fro between the two conferences—a story as certainly invented, and as certainly appropriate, as any incident in Aristophanes. The ambiguous attitude of Marius became notorious in the question of the oath. At first he seemed as though he would himself refuse the oath required by the Appuleian laws on account of the informalities that had occurred at their passing, and then swore it with the reservation, "so far as the laws were really valid"; a reservation which annulled the oath itself, and which of course all the senators likewise adopted in swearing, so that by this mode of taking the oath the validity of the laws was not secured, but on the contrary was for the first time really called in question.

The consequences of this behaviour—stupid beyond parallel—on the part of the celebrated general soon developed themselves. Saturninus and Glaucia had not undertaken the revolution and procured for Marius the supremacy of the state, in order that they might be disowned and sacrificed by him; if Glaucia, the favourite jester of the people, had hitherto lavished on Marius the gayest flowers of his jovial eloquence, the garlands which he now wove for him were by no means redolent of roses and violets. A total rupture took place, by which both parties were lost; for Marius had not a footing sufficiently firm singly to maintain the colonial law which he had himself called in question and to possess himself of the position which it assigned to him, nor were Saturninus and Glaucia in a condition to continue on their own account the work which Marius had begun.

Saturninus Isolated
Saturninus Assailed and Overpowered

But the two demagogues were so compromised that they could not recede; they had no alternative save to resign their offices in the usual way and thereby to deliver themselves with their hands bound to their exasperated opponents, or now to grasp the sceptre for themselves, although they felt that they could not bear its weight. They resolved on the latter course; Saturninus would come forward once more as a candidate for the tribunate of the people for 655, Glaucia, although praetor and not eligible for the consulship till two years had elapsed, would become a candidate for the latter. In fact the tribunician elections were decided entirely to their mind, and the attempt of Marius to prevent the spurious Tiberius Gracchus from soliciting the tribuneship served only to show the celebrated man what was now the worth of his popularity; the multitude broke the doors of the prison in which Gracchus was confined, bore him in triumph through the streets, and elected him by a great majority as their tribune. Saturninus and Glaucia sought to control the more important consular election by the expedient for the removal of inconvenient competitors which had been tried in the previous year; the counter-candidate of the government party, Gaius Memmius—the same who eleven years before had led the opposition against them(9)—was suddenly assailed by a band of ruffians and beaten to death. But the government party had only waited for a striking event of this sort in order to employ force. The senate required the consul Gaius Marius to interfere, and the latter in reality professed his readiness now to draw for the conservative party the sword, which he had obtained from the democracy and had promised to wield on its behalf. The young men were hastily called out, equipped with arms from the public buildings, and drawn up in military array; the senate itself appeared under arms in the Forum, with its venerable chief Marcus Scaurus at its head. The opposite party were doubtless superior in a street-riot, but were not prepared for such an attack; they had now to defend themselves as they could. They broke open the doors of the prisons, and called the slaves to liberty and to arms; they proclaimed— so it was said at any rate—Saturninus as king or general; on the day when the new tribunes of the people had to enter on their office, the 10th of December 654, a battle occurred in the great market-place—the first which, since Rome existed, had ever been fought within the walls of the capital. The issue was not for a moment doubtful. The Populares were beaten and driven up to the Capitol, where the supply of water was cut off from them and they were thus compelled to surrender. Marius, who held the chief command, would gladly have saved the lives of his former allies who were now his prisoners; Saturninus proclaimed to the multitude that all which he had proposed had been done in concert with the consul: even a worse man than Marius was could not but shudder at the inglorious part which he played on this day. But he had long ceased to be master of affairs. Without orders the youth of rank climbed the roof of the senate-house in the Forum where the prisoners were temporarily confined, stripped off the tiles, and with these stoned their victims. Thus Saturninus perished with most of the more notable prisoners. Glaucia was found in a lurking-place and likewise put to death. Without sentence or trial there died on this day four magistrates of the Roman people—a praetor, a quaestor, and two tribunes of the people—and a number of other well-known men, some of whom belonged to good families. In spite of the grave faults by which the chiefs had invited on themselves this bloody retribution, we may nevertheless lament them: they fell like advanced posts, which are left unsupported by the main army and are forced to perish without aim in a conflict of despair.

Ascendency of the Government
Marius Politically Annihilated

Never had the government party achieved a more complete victory, never had the opposition suffered a more severe defeat, than on this 10th of December. It was the least part of the success that they had got rid of some troublesome brawlers, whose places might be supplied any day by associates of a like stamp; it was of greater moment that the only man, who was then in a position to become dangerous to the government, had publicly and completely effected his own annihilation; and most important of all that the two elements of the opposition, the capitalist order and the proletariate, emerged from the strife wholly at variance. It is true that this was not the work of the government; the fabric which had been put together by the adroit hands of Gaius Gracchus had been broken up, partly by the force of circumstances, partly and especially by the coarse and boorish management of his incapable successor; but in the result it mattered not whether calculation or good fortune helped the government to its victory. A more pitiful position can hardly be conceived than that occupied by the hero of Aquae and Vercellae after such a disaster—all the more pitiful, because people could not but compare it with the lustre which only a few months before surrounded the same man. No one either on the aristocratic or the democratic side any longer thought of the victorious general on occasion of filling up the magistracies; the hero of six consulships could not even venture to become a candidate in 656 for the censorship. He went away to the east, ostensibly for the purpose of fulfilling a vow there, but in reality that he might not be a witness of the triumphant return of his mortal foe Quintus Metellus; he was allowed to go. He returned and opened his house; his halls stood empty. He always hoped that conflicts and battles would occur and that the people would once more need his experienced arm; he thought to provide himself with an opportunity for war in the east, where the Romans might certainly have found sufficient occasion for energetic interference. But this also miscarried, like every other of his wishes; profound peace continued to prevail. Yet the longing after honours once aroused within him, the oftener it was disappointed, ate the more deeply into his heart. Superstitious as he was, he cherished in his bosom an old oracular saying which had promised him seven consulships, and in gloomy meditation brooded over the means by which this utterance was to obtain its fulfilment and he his revenge, while he appeared to all, himself alone excepted, insignificant and innocuous.

The Equestrian Party

Still more important in its consequences than the setting aside of the dangerous man was the deep exasperation against the Populares, as they were called, which the insurrection of Saturninus left behind in the party of material interests. With the most remorseless severity the equestrian tribunals condemned every one who professed oppositional views; Sextus Titius, for instance, was condemned not so much on account of his agrarian law as because he had in his house a statue of Saturninus; Gaius Appuleius Decianus was condemned, because he had as tribune of the people characterized the proceedings against Saturninus as illegal. Even for earlier injuries inflicted by the Populares on the aristocracy satisfaction was now demanded, not without prospect of success, before the equestrian tribunals. Because Gaius Norbanus had eight years previously in concert with Saturninus driven the consular Quintus Caepio into exile(10) he was now (659) on the ground of his own law accused of high treason, and the jurymen hesitated long—not whether the accused was guilty or innocent, but whether his ally Saturninus or his enemy Caepio was to be regarded as the most deserving of their hate—till at last they decided for acquittal. Even if people were not more favourably disposed towards the government in itself than before, yet, after having found themselves, although but for a moment, on the verge of a real mob-rule, all men who had anything to lose viewed the existing government in a different light; it was notoriously wretched and pernicious for the state, but the anxious dread of the still more wretched and still more pernicious government of the proletariate had conferred on it a relative value. The current now set so much in that direction that the multitude tore in pieces a tribune of the people who had ventured to postpone the return of Quintus Metellus, and the democrats began to seek their safety in league with murderers and poisoners—ridding themselves, for example, of the hated Metellus by poison—or even in league with the public enemy, several of them already taking refuge at the court of king Mithradates who was secretly preparing for war against Rome. External relations also assumed an aspect favourable for the government. The Roman arms were employed but little in the period from the Cimbrian to the Social war, but everywhere with honour. The only serious conflict was in Spain, where, during the recent years so trying for Rome (649 seq.), the Lusitanians and Celtiberians had risen with unwonted vehemence against the Romans. In the years 656-661 the consul Titus Didius in the northern and the consul Publius Crassus in the southern province not only re-established with valour and good fortune the ascendency of the Roman arms, but also razed the refractory towns and, where it seemed necessary, transplanted the population of the strong mountain-towns to the plains. We shall show in the sequel that about the same time the Roman government again directed its attention to the east which had been for a generation neglected, and displayed greater energy than had for long been heard of in Cyrene, Syria, and Asia Minor. Never since the commencement of the revolution had the government of the restoration been so firmly established, or so popular. Consular laws were substituted for tribunician; restrictions on liberty replaced measures of progress. The cancelling of the laws of Saturninus was a matter of course; the transmarine colonies of Marius disappeared down to a single petty settlement on the barbarous island of Corsica. When the tribune of the people Sextus Titius—a caricatured Alcibiades, who was greater in dancing and ball-playing than in politics, and whose most prominent talent consisted in breaking the images of the gods in the streets at night—re-introduced and carried the Appuleian agrarian law in 655, the senate was able to annul the new law on a religious pretext without any one even attempting to defend it; the author of it was punished, as we have already mentioned, by the equites in their tribunals. Next year (656) a law brought in by the two consuls made the usual four-and-twenty days' interval between the introduction and the passing of a project of law obligatory, and forbade the combination of several enactments different in their nature in one proposal; by which means the unreasonable extension of the initiative in legislation was at least somewhat restricted, and the government was prevented from being openly taken by surprise with new laws. It became daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which had survived the fall of its author, was now, since the multitude and the moneyed aristocracy no longer went together, tottering to its foundations. As that constitution had been based on division in the ranks of the aristocracy, so it seemed that dissensions in the ranks of the opposition could not but bring about its fall. Now, if ever, the time had come for completing the unfinished work of restoration of 633, for making the Gracchan constitution share the fate of the tyrant, and for replacing the governing oligarchy in the sole possession of political power.

Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of the Provinces

Everything depended on recovering the nomination of the jurymen. The administration of the provinces—the chief foundation of the senatorial government—had become dependent on the jury courts, more particularly on the commission regarding exactions, to such a degree that the governor of a province seemed to administer it no longer for the senate, but for the order of capitalists and merchants. Ready as the moneyed aristocracy always was to meet the views of the government when measures against the democrats were in question, it sternly resented every attempt to restrict it in this its well-acquired right of unlimited sway in the provinces. Several such attempts were now made; the governing aristocracy began again to come to itself, and its very best men reckoned themselves bound, at least for their own part, to oppose the dreadful maladministration in the provinces. The most resolute in this respect was Quintus Mucius Scaevola, like his father Publius -pontifex maximus- and in 659 consul, the foremost jurist and one of the most excellent men of his time. As praetorian governor (about 656) of Asia, the richest and worst-abused of all the provinces, he—in concert with his older friend, distinguished as an officer, jurist, and historian, the consular Publius Rutilius Rufus— set a severe and deterring example. Without making any distinction between Italians and provincials, noble and ignoble, he took up every complaint, and not only compelled the Roman merchants and state-lessees to give full pecuniary compensation for proven injuries, but, when some of their most important and most unscrupulous agents were found guilty of crimes deserving death, deaf to all offers of bribery he ordered them to be duly crucified. The senate approved his conduct, and even made it an instruction afterwards to the governors of Asia that they should take as their model the principles of Scaevola's administration; but the equites, although they did not venture to meddle with that highly aristocratic and influential statesman himself, brought to trial his associates and ultimately (about 662) even the most considerable of them, his legate Publius Rufus, who was defended only by his merits and recognized integrity, not by family connection. The charge that such a man had allowed himself to perpetrate exactions in Asia, almost broke down under its own absurdity and under the infamy of the accuser, one Apicius; yet the welcome opportunity of humbling the consular was not allowed to pass, and, when the latter, disdaining false rhetoric, mourning robes, and tears, defended himself briefly, simply, and to the point, and proudly refused the homage which the sovereign capitalists desired, he was actually condemned, and his moderate property was confiscated to satisfy fictitious claims for compensation. The condemned resorted to the province which he was alleged to have plundered, and there, welcomed by all the communities with honorary deputations, and praised and beloved during his lifetime, he spent in literary leisure his remaining days. And this disgraceful condemnation, while perhaps the worst, was by no means the only case of the sort. The senatorial party was exasperated, not so much perhaps by such abuse of justice in the case of men of stainless walk but of new nobility, as by the fact that the purest nobility no longer sufficed to cover possible stains on its honour. Scarcely was Rufus out of the country, when the most respected of all aristocrats, for twenty years the chief of the senate, Marcus Scaurus at seventy years of age was brought to trial for exactions; a sacrilege according to aristocratic notions, even if he were guilty. The office of accuser began to be exercised professionally by worthless fellows, and neither irreproachable character, nor rank, nor age longer furnished protection from the most wicked and most dangerous attacks. The commission regarding exactions was converted from a shield of the provincials into their worst scourge; the most notorious robber escaped with impunity, if he only indulged his fellow-robbers and did not refuse to allow part of the sums exacted to reach the jury; but any attempt to respond to the equitable demands of the provincials for right and justice sufficed for condemnation. It seemed as if the intention was to bring the Roman government into the same dependence on the controlling court, as that in which the college of judges at Carthage had formerly held the council there. The prescient expression of Gaius Gracchus was finding fearful fulfilment, that with the dagger of his law as to the jurymen the world of quality would lacerate itself.

Livius Drusus

An attack on the equestrian courts was inevitable. Every one in the government party who was still alive to the fact that governing implies not merely rights but also duties, every one in fact who still felt any nobler or prouder ambition within him, could not but rise in revolt against this oppressive and disgraceful political control, which precluded any possibility of upright administration. The scandalous condemnation of Rutilius Rufus seemed a summons to begin the attack at once, and Marcus Livius Drusus, who was tribune of the people in 663, regarded that summons as specially addressed to himself. Son of the man of the same name, who thirty years before had primarily caused the overthrow of Gaius Gracchus(11) and had afterwards made himself a name as an officer by the subjugation of the Scordisci,(12) Drusus was, like his father, of strictly conservative views, and had already given practical proof that such were his sentiments in the insurrection of Saturninus. He belonged to the circle of the highest nobility, and was the possessor of a colossal fortune; in disposition too he was a genuine aristocrat—a man emphatically proud, who scorned to bedeck himself with the insignia of his offices, but declared on his death-bed that there would not soon arise a citizen like to him; a man with whom the beautiful saying, that nobility implies obligation, was and continued to be the rule of his life. With all the vehement earnestness of his temperament he had turned away from the frivolity and venality that marked the nobles of the common stamp; trustworthy and strict in morals, he was respected rather than properly beloved on the part of the common people, to whom his door and his purse were always open, and notwithstanding his youth, he was through the personal dignity of his character a man of weight in the senate as in the Forum. Nor did he stand alone. Marcus Scaurus had the courage on occasion of his defence in the trial for extortion publicly to summon Drusus to undertake a reform of the judicial arrangements; he and the famous orator, Lucius Crassus, were in the senate the most zealous champions of his proposals, and were perhaps associated with him in originating them. But the mass of the governing aristocracy was by no means of the same mind with Drusus, Scaurus, and Crassus. There were not wanting in the senate decided adherents of the capitalist party, among whom in particular a conspicuous place belonged to the consul of the day, Lucius Marcius Philippus, who maintained the cause of the equestrian order as he had formerly maintained that of the democracy(13) with zeal and prudence, and to the daring and reckless Quintus Caepio, who was induced to this opposition primarily by his personal hostility to Drusus and Scaurus. More dangerous, however, than these decided opponents was the cowardly and corrupt mass of the aristocracy, who no doubt would have preferred to plunder the provinces alone, but in the end had not much objection to share the spoil with the equites, and, instead of taking in hand the grave and perilous struggle against the haughty capitalists, reckoned it far more equitable and easy to purchase impunity at their hands by fair words and by an occasional prostration or even by a round sum. The result alone could show how far success would attend the attempt to carry along with the movement this body, without which it was impossible to attain the desired end.

Attempt at Reform on the Part of the Moderate Party

Drusus drew up a proposal to withdraw the functions of jurymen from the burgesses of equestrian rating and to restore them to the senate, which at the same time was to be put in a position to meet its increased obligations by the admission of 300 new members; a special criminal commission was to be appointed for pronouncing judgment in the case of those jurymen who had been or should be guilty of accepting bribes. By this means the immediate object was gained; the capitalists were deprived of their political exclusive rights, and were rendered responsible for the perpetration of injustice. But the proposals and designs of Drusus were by no means limited to this; his projects were not measures adapted merely for the occasion, but a comprehensive and thoroughly-considered plan of reform. He proposed, moreover, to increase the largesses of grain and to cover the increased expense by the permanent issue of a proportional number of copper plated, alongside of the silver, -denarii-; and then to set apart all the still undistributed arable land of Italy—thus including in particular the Campanian domains—and the best part of Sicily for the settlement of burgess-colonists. Lastly, he entered into the most distinct obligations towards the Italian allies to procure for them the Roman franchise. Thus the very same supports of power and the very same ideas of reform, on which the constitution of Gaius Gracchus had rested, presented themselves now on the side of the aristocracy—a singular, and yet easily intelligible coincidence. It was only to be expected that, as the -tyrannis- had rested for its support against the oligarchy, so the latter should rest for its support against the moneyed aristocracy, on the paid and in some degree organized proletariate; while the government had formerly accepted the feeding of the proletariate at the expense of the state as an inevitable evil, Drusus now thought of employing it, at least for the moment, against the moneyed aristocracy. It was only to be expected that the better part of the aristocracy, just as it formerly consented to the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus, would now readily consent to all those measures of reform, which, without touching the question of a supreme head, only aimed at the cure of the old evils of the state. In the question of emigration and colonization, it is true, they could not go so far as the democracy, since the power of the oligarchy mainly rested on their free control over the provinces and was endangered by any permanent military command; the ideas of equalizing Italy and the provinces and of making conquests beyond the Alps were not compatible with conservative principles. But the senate might very well sacrifice the Latin and even the Campanian domains as well as Sicily in order to raise the Italian farmer class, and yet retain the government as before; to which fell to be added the consideration, that they could not more effectually obviate future agitations than by providing that all the land at all disposable should be brought to distribution by the aristocracy itself, and that according to Drusus' own expression, nothing should be left for future demagogues to distribute but "the street-dirt and the daylight." In like manner it was for the government—whether that might be a monarch, or a close number of ruling families—very much a matter of indifference whether the half or the whole of Italy possessed the Roman franchise; and hence the reforming men on both sides probably could not but coincide in the idea of averting the danger of a recurrence of the insurrection of Fregellae on a larger scale by a judicious and reasonable extension of the franchise, and of seeking allies, moreover, for their plans in the numerous and influential Italians. Sharply as in the question of the headship of the state the views and designs of the two great political parties differed, the best men of both camps had many points of contact in their means of operation and in their reforming tendencies; and, as Scipio Aemilianus may be named alike among the adversaries of Tiberius Gracchus and among the promoters of his reforming efforts, so Drusus was the successor and disciple no less than the antagonist of Gaius. The two high-born and high-minded youthful reformers had a greater resemblance than was apparent at the first glance; and, personally also, the two were not unworthy to meet, as respects the substance of their patriotic endeavours, in purer and higher views above the obscuring mists of prejudiced partisanship.

Discussions on the Livian Laws

The question at stake was the passing of the laws drawn up by Drusus. Of these the proposer, just like Gaius Gracchus, kept in reserve for the moment the hazardous project of conferring the Roman franchise on the Italian allies, and brought forward at first only the laws as to the jurymen, the assignation of land, and the distribution of grain. The capitalist party offered the most vehement resistance, and, in consequence of the irresolution of the greater part of the aristocracy and the vacillation of the comitia, would beyond question have carried the rejection of the law as to jurymen, if it had been put to the vote by itself. Drusus accordingly embraced all his proposals in one law; and, as thus all the burgesses interested in the distributions of grain and land were compelled to vote also for the law as to jurymen, he succeeded in carrying the law with their help and that of the Italians, who stood firmly by Drusus with the exception of the large landowners, particularly those in Umbria and Etruria, whose domanial possessions were threatened. It was not carried, however, until Drusus had caused the consul Philippus, who would not desist from opposition, to be arrested and carried off to prison by a bailiff. The people celebrated the tribune as their benefactor, and received him in the theatre by rising up and applauding; but the voting had not so much decided the struggle as transferred it to another ground, for the opposite party justly characterized the proposal of Drusus as contrary to the law of 656(14) and therefore as null.

highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the Zend; and the statement made as to the Mysians, that among them the Lydian and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria. As to the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the native language and writing that are in this particular instance extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather than the Semites. How all this confused mass of peoples was overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well as intellectual ascendency of the Greek nation, has been set forth in outline already.

Pontus

In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted—especially the important commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the empire—the country was still in a very primitive condition. Not that it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also comparatively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these little royal forts. We do not find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated as he was,—in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious, reaction against Hellenism,—this is easily conceivable.

Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black Sea

He appears more actively employed—likewise quite in the Oriental style—in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of it. On the eastern coast of the Black Sea—which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more general knowledge by Mithradates—the region of Colchis on the Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into a satrapy of Pontus. Of still greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions.(5) The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions—more especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts for a period of twenty-two months or longer—little adapted for agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present day.(6) The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses. Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword, lance, and bow—the ancestors of the modern Cossacks. The Scythians originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes advancing from east to west,—Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges,—who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction, particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester. Between the two there intruded themselves—probably as offsets of the great Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched the Black Sea—the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the Danube. A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere formed; every tribe lived by itself under its princes and elders.

Hellenism in That Quarter

In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the Hellenic settlements, which at the time of the mighty impetus given to Greek commerce had been founded chiefly by the efforts of Miletus on these coasts, partly as trading-marts, partly as stations for prosecuting important fisheries and even for agriculture, for which, as we have already said, the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present day. For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like the Phoenicians in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native rulers. The most important of these settlements were the free city of Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), built on the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric peninsula (Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity, under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its good constitution and the public spirit of its citizens; and Panticapaeum (Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula on the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, governed since the year 457 by hereditary burgomasters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus, the Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae. The culture of corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly raised the city to prosperity. Its territory still in the time of Mithradates embraced the lesser eastern division of the Crimea including the town of Theodosia, and on the opposite Asiatic continent the town of Phanagoria and the district of Sindica. In better times the lords of Panticapaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east coast of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panticapaeum was no longer what it had been. Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt more deeply than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a leading power—duties which certainly were specially brought home to the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain. After the downfall of the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to themselves. The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of interest as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their position with reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates. The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to buy off minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small. The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the temple-jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging without in front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers were dragged away en masse, and, what was worst of all, the weaker of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts, to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants already contemplated its entire surrender.

Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom

Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into the valleys of the Kuban and Terek and his fleet at the same time appeared in the Crimean waters. No wonder that here too, as had already been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere received the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded the half-Hellene and his Cappadocians armed in Greek fashion as their deliverers. What Rome had here neglected, became apparent. The demands on the rulers of Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons; the former were glad to surrender their hereditary lordship, and the latter their long-preserved freedom, in order to save their last possession, their Hellenism. It was not in vain. Mithradates' brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes. Neoptolemus defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly in winter on the ice; Chersonesus was delivered, the strongholds of the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was secured by judiciously constructed fortresses. Diophantus marched against the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the Roxolani (between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward to the aid of the Taurians; 50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms penetrated as far as the Dnieper.(7) Thus Mithradates acquired here a second kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, like the latter, mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns. It was called the kingdom of the Bosporus; it embraced the modern Crimea with the opposite Asiatic promontory, and annually furnished to the royal chests and magazines 200 talents (48,000 pounds) and 270,000 bushels of grain. The tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in great part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with, the Pontic king and, if they furnished him with no other aid, afforded at any rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting his armies.

Lesser Armenia
Alliance with Tigranes

While thus the most important successes were gained towards the north, the king at the same time extended his dominions towards the east and the west. The Lesser Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a dependent principality into an integral part of the Pontic kingdom; but still more important was the close connection which he formed with the king of the Greater Armenia. He not only gave his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to Tigranes, but it was mainly through his support that Tigranes shook off the yoke of the Arsacids and took their place in Asia. An agreement seems to have been made between the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support; and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates who brought about this agreement with a view to cover his rear and to secure a powerful ally.

Paphlagonia and Cappadocia Acquired

Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards the interior of Paphlagonia—the coast had for long belonged to the Pontic empire— and towards Cappadocia.(8) The former was claimed on the part of Pontus as having been bequeathed by the testament of the last of the Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes: against this, however, legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land itself protested. As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had not forgotten that this country and Cappadocia on the sea had been formerly united, and continually cherished ideas of reunion. Paphlagonia was occupied by Mithradates in concert with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he shared the land. When the senate raised objections to this course, Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes equipped one of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and under this title retained the country to himself. The policy of the allies adopted still worse expedients in Cappadocia. King Ariarathes VI was killed by Gordius, it was said by the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes' brother-in-law Mithradates Eupator: his young son Ariarathes knew no means of meeting the encroachments of the king of Bithynia except the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for which the latter then suggested to him that he should allow the murderer of his father, who had taken flight, to return to Cappadocia. This led to a rupture and to war; but when the two armies confronted each other ready for battle, the uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand. Gordius, the murderer of the father, then undertook the government by the directions of Mithradates; and although the indignant population rose against him and called the younger son of the last king to the throne, the latter was unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior forces of Mithradates. The speedy death of the youth placed by the people on the throne gave to the Pontic king the greater liberty of action, because with that youth the Cappadocian royal house became extinct. A pseudo-Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent, just as had been done in Paphlagonia; under whose name Gordius administered the kingdom as lieutenant of Mithradates.

Empire of Mithradates

Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had been, Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and the southern shores of the Black Sea and far into the interior of Asia Minor. The resources of the king for war by land and by sea seemed immeasurable. His recruiting field stretched from the mouth of the Danube to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians, Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern Georgia) crowded under his banners; above all he recruited his war-hosts from the brave Bastarnae. For his fleet the satrapy of Colchis supplied him with the most excellent timber, which was floated down from the Caucasus, besides flax, hemp, pitch, and wax; pilots and officers were hired in Phoenicia and Syria. The king, it was said, had marched into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse, 80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this war all his resources. In the absence of any Roman or other naval power worth mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with Sinope and the ports of the Crimea as its rallying points, had exclusive command of the Black Sea.

The Romans and Mithradates
Intervention of the Senate

That the Roman senate asserted its general policy—of keeping down the states more or less dependent on it—also in dealing with that of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on occasion of the succession to the throne after the sudden death of Mithradates V. From the boy in minority who followed him there was taken away Great Phrygia, which had been conferred on his father for his taking part in the war against Aristonicus or rather for his good money,(9) and this region was added to the territory immediately subject to Rome.(10) But, after this boy had at length attained majority, the same senate showed utter passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and towards the formation of this imposing power, the development of which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years. It was passive, while one of its dependent states became developed into a great military power, having at command more than a hundred thousand armed men; while the ruler of that state entered into the closest connection with the new great-king of the east, who was placed partly by his aid at the head of the states in the interior of Asia; while he annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities under pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the ill-informed and far-distant protecting power; while, in fine, he even established himself in Europe and ruled as king over the Tauric peninsula, and as lord-protector almost to the Macedono-Thracian frontier. These circumstances indeed formed the subject of discussion in the senate; but when the illustrious corporation consoled itself in the affair of the Paphlagonian succession with the fact that Nicomedes appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was evidently not so much deceived as grateful for any pretext which spared it from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints became daily more numerous and more urgent. The princes of the Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea, turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic war,(11) and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now. The scale was at last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia— who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender excluded his own—would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to intervention. The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate the Scythian princes—so far were they driven out of the track of right policy by their negligent style of government, that instead of supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their countrymen. Paphlagonia was declared independent, and the pseudo- Pylaemenes of Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country. In like manner the pseudo-Ariarathes of Mithradates was to retire from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country refused the freedom proffered to it, a king was once more to be appointed by free popular election.

Sulla Sent to Cappadocia

The decrees sounded energetic enough; only it was an error, that instead of sending an army they directed the governor of Cilicia, Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there against the pirates and robbers, to intervene in Cappadocia. Fortunately the remembrance of the former energy of the Romans defended their interests in the east better than their present government did, and the energy and dexterity of the governor supplied what the senate lacked in both respects. Mithradates kept back and contented himself with inducing Tigranes the great-king of Armenia, who held a more free position with reference to the Romans than he did, to send troops to Cappadocia. Sulla quickly collected his forces and the contingents of the Asiatic allies, crossed the Taurus, and drove the governor Gordius along with his Armenian auxiliaries out of Cappadocia. This proved effectual. Mithradates yielded on all points; Gordius had to assume the blame of the Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariarathes disappeared; the election of king, which the Pontic faction had vainly attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell on the respected Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.

First Contact between the Romans and the Parthians

When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in the region of the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman standards were then first mirrored, the Romans came for the first time into contact with the Parthians, who in consequence of the variance between them and Tigranes had occasion to make approaches to the Romans. On both sides there seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in this first contact between the two great powers of the east and the west, that neither should renounce its claims to the sovereignty of the world; but Sulla, bolder than the Parthian envoy, assumed and maintained in the conference the place of honour between the king of Cappadocia and the Parthian ambassador. Sulla's fame was more increased by this greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his victories in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy afterwards forfeited his life to his masters resentment. But for the moment this contact had no further result. Nicomedes in reliance on the favour of the Romans omitted to evacuate Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted by the senate against Mithradates were carried further into effect, the reinstatement of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by him; the earlier status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).

New Aggressions of Mithradates

So it was alleged; but in fact there was little trace of any real return of the former order of things. Scarce had Sulla left Asia, when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell upon Ariobarzanes the new king of Cappadocia, expelled him, and reinstated in his stead the Pontic pretender Ariarathes. In Bithynia, where after the death of the old king Nicomedes II (about 663) his son Nicomedes III Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the Roman senate as legitimate king, his younger brother Socrates came forward as pretender to the crown and possessed himself of the sovereignty. It was clear that the real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian troubles was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from taking any open part. Every one knew that Tigranes only acted at his beck; but Socrates also had marched into Bithynia with Pontic troops, and the legitimate king's life was threatened by the assassins of Mithradates. In the Crimea even and the neighbouring countries the Pontic king had no thought of receding, but on the contrary carried his arms farther and farther.

Aquillius Sent to Asia

The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in person, despatched to Asia Minor in support of Lucius Cassius who was governor there the consular Manius Aquillius— an officer tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars—not, however, as general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador, and directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in particular to lend armed assistance in case of need. The result was as it had been two years before. The Roman officer accomplished the commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps which the governor of the province of Asia had at his disposal, and of the levy of the Phrygians and Galatians; king Nicomedes and king Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones; Mithradates under various pretexts evaded the summons to furnish contingents, but gave to the Romans no open resistance; on the contrary the Bithynian pretender Socrates was even put to death by his orders (664).

The State of Things Intermediate between War and Peace

It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully convinced that he could do nothing against the Romans in open conflict, and was therefore firmly resolved not to allow matters to come to an open rupture and war with them. Had he not been so resolved, there was no more favourable opportunity for beginning the struggle than the present: just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia and Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of its power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome; yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to pass without profiting by the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor. This strange combination of a policy of peace at any price with a policy of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply a fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class of genuine statesmen; he knew neither how to prepare for conflict like king Philip nor how to submit like king Attalus, but in the true style of a sultan was perpetually fluctuating between a greedy desire of conquest and the sense of his own weakness. But even in this point of view his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years' experience with the Roman policy of that day. He knew very well that the Roman government were far from desirous of war; that they in fact, looking to the serious danger which threatened their rule from any general of reputation, and with the fresh remembrance of the Cimbrian war and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he did himself. He acted accordingly. He was not afraid to demean himself in a way which would have given to any energetic government not fettered by selfish considerations manifold ground and occasion for declaring war; but he carefully avoided any open rupture which would have placed the senate under the necessity of declaring it. As soon as men appeared to be in earnest he drew back, before Sulla as well as before Aquillius; he hoped, doubtless, that he would not always be confronted by energetic generals, that he too would, as well as Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned that this hope was not without reason; although the very example of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption of a Roman army with the conquest of the Roman people.

Aquillius Brings about War
Nicomedes

Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked quite as if they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position. But it was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this; and, as he could not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he made use of Nicomedes for that purpose. The latter, who was under the power of the Roman general and was, moreover, his debtor for the accumulated war expenses and for sums promised to the general in person, could not avoid complying with the suggestion that he should begin war with Mithradates. The declaration of war by Bithynia took place; but, even when the vessels of Nicomedes closed the Bosporus against those of Pontus, and his troops marched into the frontier districts of Pontus and laid waste the region of Amastris, Mithradates remained still unshaken in his policy of peace; instead of driving the Bithynians over the frontier, he lodged a complaint with the Roman envoys and asked them either to mediate or to allow him the privilege of self-defence. But he was informed by Aquillius, that he must under all circumstances refrain from war against Nicomedes. That indeed was plain. They had employed exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself against them. Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the Carthaginians had done; but, while the Phoenicians yielded from despair, the king of Sinope did the very opposite and assembled his troops and ships. "Does not even he who must succumb," he is reported to have said, "defend himself against the robber?" His son Ariobarzanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia; a message was sent once more to the Roman envoys to inform them of the step to which necessity had driven the king, and to demand their ultimatum. It was to the effect which was to be anticipated. Although neither the Roman senate nor king Mithradates nor king Nicomedes had desired the rupture, Aquillius desired it and war ensued (end of 665).

Preparations of Mithradates

Mithradates prosecuted the political and military preparations for the passage of arms thus forced upon him with all his characteristic energy. First of all he drew closer his alliance with Tigranes king of Armenia, and obtained from him the promise of an auxiliary army which was to march into western Asia and to take possession of the soil there for king Mithradates and of the moveable property for king Tigranes. The Parthian king, offended by the haughty carriage of Sulla, though not exactly coming forward as an antagonist to the Romans, did not act as their ally. To the Greeks the king endeavoured to present himself in the character of Philip and Perseus, as the defender of the Greek nation against the alien rule of the Romans. Pontic envoys were sent to the king of Egypt and to the last remnant of free Greece, the league of the Cretan cities, and adjured those for whom Rome had already forged her chains to rise now at the last moment and save Hellenic nationality; the attempt was in the case of Crete at least not wholly in vain, and numerous Cretans took service in the Pontic army. Hopes were entertained that the lesser and least of the protected states—Numidia, Syria, the Hellenic republics—would successively rebel, and that the provinces would revolt, particularly the west of Asia Minor, the victim of unbounded oppression. Efforts were made to excite a Thracian rising, and even to arouse Macedonia to revolt. Piracy, which even previously was flourishing, was now everywhere let loose as a most welcome ally, and with alarming rapidity squadrons of corsairs, calling themselves Pontic privateers, filled the Mediterranean far and wide. With eagerness and delight accounts were received of the commotions among the Roman burgesses, and of the Italian insurrection subdued yet far from extinguished. No direct relations, however, were formed with the discontented and the insurgents in Italy; except that a foreign corps armed and organized in the Roman fashion was created in Asia, the flower of which consisted of Roman and Italian refugees. Forces like those of Mithradates had not been seen in Asia since the Persian wars. The statements that, leaving out of account the Armenian auxiliary army, he took the field with 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry, and that 300 Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put to sea, seem not too exaggerated in the case of a warlike sovereign who had at his disposal the numberless inhabitants of the steppes. His generals, particularly the brothers Neoptolemus and Archelaus, were experienced and cautious Greek captains; among the soldiers of the king there was no want of brave men who despised death; and the armour glittering with gold and silver and the rich dresses of the Scythians and Medes mingled gaily with the bronze and steel of the Greek troopers. No unity of military organization, it is true, bound together these party-coloured masses; the army of Mithradates was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic war-machines, which had so often already—on the last occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia— succumbed to a superior military organization; but still the east was in arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the empire also matters looked far from peaceful.

Weak Counterpreparatons of the Romans

However much it was in itself a political necessity for Rome to declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular moment was as unhappily chosen as possible; and for this reason it is very probable that Manius Aquillius brought about the rupture between Rome and Mithradates at this precise time primarily from regard to his own interests. For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius Cassius and the militia of western Asia, and, owing to the military and financial distress in which they were placed at home in consequence of the insurrectionary war, a Roman army could not in the most favourable case land in Asia before the summer of 666. Hitherto the Roman magistrates there had a difficult position; but they hoped to protect the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as they stood—the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in its position taken up in the previous year in the Paphlagonian territory between Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius Aquillius, and Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian, and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued to blockade the Bosporus.

Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There

In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king was indebted for this brilliant success. The far more wretched Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed. A Roman division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into Apamea. Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships that were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies that were from the first turned towards him. Now the whole country as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under the name of the new Dionysus. The cities and islands sent messengers to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite "the delivering god" to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in front of their gates to receive him. Several places delivered the Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town, and Mytilene in Lesbos the consular Manius Aquillius.(12) The whole fury of the barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of the war. The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor, sometimes on foot chained to a powerful mounted Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and proclaiming his own name; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle again arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the king's orders molten gold was poured down his throat—in order to satiate his avarice, which had really occasioned the war— till he expired in torture.

Orders Issued from Ephesus for a General Massacre

But the king was not content with this savage mockery, which alone suffices to erase its author's name from the roll of true nobility. From Ephesus king Mithradates issued orders to all the governors and cities dependent on him to put to death on one and the same day all Italians residing within their bounds, whether free or slaves, without distinction of sex or age, and on no account, under severe penalties, to aid any of the proscribed to escape; to cast forth the corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds; to confiscate their property and to hand over one half of it to the murderers, and the other half to the king. The horrible orders were—excepting in a few districts, such as the island of Cos—punctually executed, and eighty, or according to other accounts one hundred and fifty, thousand—if not innocent, at least defenceless—men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor; a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at least as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge. In a political point of view this measure was not only without any rational object—for its financial purpose might have been attained without this bloody edict, and the natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven into warlike zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained guilt—but even opposed to the king's designs, for on the one hand it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was still capable of energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of the war, and on the other hand it struck at not the Romans merely, but the king's natural allies as well, the non-Roman Italians. This Ephesian massacre was altogether a mere meaningless act of brutally blind revenge, which obtains a false semblance of grandeur simply through the colossal proportions in which the character of sultanic rule was here displayed.

Organization of the Conquered Provinces

The king's views altogether grew high; he had begun the war from despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and the non-arrival of the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transition to the most highflown hopes. He set up his home in the west of Asia Minor; Pergamus the seat of the Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom of Sinope was handed over to the king's son Mithradates to be administered as a viceroyship; Cappadocia, Phrygia, Bithynia were organized as Pontic satrapies. The grandees of the empire and the king's favourites were loaded with rich gifts and fiefs, and not only were the arrears of taxes remitted, but exemption from taxation for five years was promised, to all the communities- a measure which was as much a mistake as the massacre of the Romans, if the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of the inhabitants of Asia Minor.

The king's treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished otherwise by the immense sums which accrued from the property of the Italians and other confiscations; for instance in Cos alone 800 talents (195,000 pounds) which the Jews had deposited there were carried of by Mithradates. The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered to Rome; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets. The south- west alone, the city-leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes, resisted him. In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood a severe siege, in which Mithradates' ablest officer Archelaus was defeated and wounded. Rhodes, the asylum of the Romans who had escaped from Asia with the governor Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part of Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of force. But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty under the eyes of the king, were awkward novices, and so Rhodian squadrons vanquished those of Pontus four times as strong and returned home with captured vessels. By land also the siege made no progress; after a part of the works had been destroyed, Mithradates abandoned the enterprise, and the important island as well as the mainland opposite remained in the hands of the Romans.

Pontic Invasion of Europe
Predatory Inroads of the Thracians
Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies
Pontic Fleet in the Aegean

But not only was the Asiatic province occupied by Mithradates almost without defending itself, chiefly in consequence of the Sulpician revolution breaking out at a most unfavourable time; Mithradates even directed an attack against Europe. Already since 662 the neighbours of Macedonia on her northern and eastern frontier had been renewing their incursions with remarkable vehemence and perseverance; in the years 664, 665 the Thracians overran Macedonia and all Epirus and plundered the temple of Dodona. Still more singular was the circumstance, that with these movements was combined a renewed attempt to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the person of one Euphenes. Mithradates, who from the Crimea maintained connections with the Thracians, was hardly a stranger to all these events. The praetor Gaius Sentius defended himself, it is true, against these intruders with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae; but it was not long before mightier opponents came against him. Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the bold resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the war for the sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and had by land and sea directed thither the flower of his troops. His son Ariarathes penetrated from Thrace into the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing the country as he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies. Abdera and Philippi became the principal bases for the operations of the Pontic arms in Europe. The Pontic fleet, commanded by Mithradates' best general Archelaus, appeared in the Aegean Sea, where scarce a Roman sail was to be found. Delos, the emporium of the Roman commerce in those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000 men, mostly Italians, were massacred there; Euboea suffered a similar fate; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory were soon in the hands of the enemy; they might proceed to attack the mainland itself. The assault, no doubt, which the Pontic fleet made from Euboea on the important Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the brave lieutenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even occupied the island of Sciathus; but he could not prevent the enemy from establishing himself in Greece proper.

The Pontic Proceedings in Greece

There Mithradates carried on his operations not only by arms, but at the same time by national propagandism. His chief instrument for Athens was one Aristion, by birth an Attic slave, by profession formerly a teacher of the Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of Mithradates; an excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant career which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob, and with due gravity to assure them that help was already on the way to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years lying in ruins. These addresses of the new Pericles were so far effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned formally renounced the Roman rule. So the ex-philosopher became a despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced an infamous and bloody rule; and the Piraeeus was converted into a Pontic harbour. As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a footing on the Greek continent, most of the small free states—the Achaeans, Laconians, Boeotians—as far as Thessaly joined them. Sura, after having drawn some reinforcements from Macedonia, advanced into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thespiae and engaged in conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during three days at Chaeronea; but they led to no decision and Sura was obliged to retire when the Pontic reinforcements from the Peloponnesus approached (end of 666, beg. of 667). So commanding was the position of Mithradates, particularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could invite him to make an attempt to land in Italy; but their cause was already by that time lost, and the king rejected the suggestion.

Position of the Romans

The position of the Roman government began to be critical. Asia Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia to a considerable extent, in the enemy's hands; by sea the Pontic flag ruled without a rival. Then there was the Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on the whole, still held the undisputed command of wide districts of Italy; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened every moment to break out afresh and more formidably; and, lastly, the alarming commercial and monetary crisis(13) occasioned by the internal troubles of Italy and the enormous losses of the Asiatic capitalists, and the want of trustworthy troops. The government would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla; for the northern army was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional embarrassment. Sulla had to choose which of these three tasks he would undertake; he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war. It was no trifling matter—we should perhaps say, it was a great act of patriotism—that in this conflict between the general interest of his country and the special interest of his party the former retained the ascendency; and that Sulla, in spite of the dangers which his removal from Italy involved for his constitution and his party, landed in the spring of 667 on the coast of Epirus.

Sulla's Landing
Greece Occupied

But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had been wont to make their appearance in the East. That his army of five legions or of at most 30,000 men,(14) was little stronger than an ordinary consular army, was the least element of difference. Formerly in the eastern wars a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in fact without exception commanded the sea; Sulla, sent to reconquer two continents and the islands of the Aegean sea, arrived without a single vessel of war. Formerly the general had brought with him a full chest and drawn the greatest portion of his supplies by sea from home; Sulla came with empty hands—for the sums raised with difficulty for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy—and found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions. Formerly the general had found his only opponent in the enemy's camp, and since the close of the struggle between the orders political factions had without exception been united in opposing the public foe; but Romans of note fought under the standards of Mithradates, large districts of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him, and it was at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow the glorious example that Sulla had set before it, and keep truce with him so long as he was fighting against the Asiatic king. But the vigorous general, who had to contend with all these embarrassments, was not accustomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers before finishing the task immediately in hand. When his proposals of peace addressed to the king, which substantially amounted to a restoration of the state of matters before the war, met with no acceptance, he advanced just as he had landed, from the harbours of Epirus to Boeotia, defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and Aristion there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory possessed himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves, and which he failed to carry by a coup de main. A Roman division under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into Macedonia; another under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis, to keep off the enemy's corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which he commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prosecuted the siege of the city and harbour of Athens. The Hellenic cities, governed as they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom themselves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions and men and paying fines.

Protracted Siege of Athens and the Piraeus
Athens Falls

The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly. Sulla found himself compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the timber. Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made frequent and not seldom successful sorties. The Pontic army of Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which Sulla's brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly. From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile definitively established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour- fortress; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to make various attempts to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which were not wholly unsuccessful. So the winter of 667-8 passed away tediously without result. As soon as the season allowed, Sulla threw himself with vehemence on the Piraeus; he in fact succeeded by missiles and mines in making a breach in part of the strong walls of Pericles, and immediately the Romans advanced to the assault; but it was repulsed, and on its being renewed crescent-shaped entrenchments were found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the invaders found themselves assailed on three sides with missiles and compelled to retire. Sulla then raised the siege, and contented himself with a blockade. In the meanwhile the provisions in Athens were wholly exhausted; the garrison attempted to procure a capitulation, but Sulla sent back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood before them not as a student but as a general, and would accept only unconditional surrender. When Aristion, well knowing what fate was in store for him, delayed compliance, the ladders were applied and the city, hardly any longer defended, was taken by storm (1 March 668). Aristion threw himself into the Acropolis, where he soon afterwards surrendered. The Roman general left the soldiery to murder and plunder in the captured city and the more considerable ringleaders of the revolt to be executed; but the city itself obtained back from him its liberty and its possessions— even the important Delos,—and was thus once more saved by its illustrious dead.

Critical Position of Sulla
Want of a Fleet

The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished; but the position of Sulla remained in the highest degree difficult, and even desperate. He had now been more than a year in the field without having advanced a step worth mentioning; a single port mocked all his exertions, while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest of Macedonia by Mithradates' lieutenants had recently been completed by the capture of Amphipolis. Without a fleet—it was becoming daily more apparent—it was not only impossible to secure his communications and supplies in presence of the ships of the enemy and the numerous pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see how ships of war were to be got. As early as the winter of 667-8 Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous officers, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships there if possible. Lucullus put to sea with six open boats, which he had borrowed from the Rhodians and other small communities; he himself merely by an accident escaped from a piratic squadron, which captured most of his boats; deceiving the enemy by changing his vessels he arrived by way of Crete and Cyrene at Alexandria; but the Egyptian court rejected his request for the support of ships of war with equal courtesy and decision. Hardly anything illustrates so clearly as does this fact the sad decay of the Roman state, which had once been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of Egypt to assist the Romans with all their naval force, and now itself seemed to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt. To all this fell to be added the financial embarrassment; Sulla had already been obliged to empty the treasuries of the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of the Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated by the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban territory. But far worse than all this military and financial perplexity was the reaction of the political revolution in Rome; the rapid, sweeping, violent accomplishment of which had far surpassed the worst apprehensions. The revolution conducted the government in the capital; Sulla had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been entrusted to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who might be daily looked for in Greece. The soldiers had no doubt adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them in good humour; but what could be expected, when money and supplies were wanting, when the general was deposed and proscribed, when his successor was on the way, and, in addition to all this, the war against the tough antagonist who commanded the sea was protracted without prospect of a close?

Pontic Armies Enter Greece
Evacuation of the Piraeus

King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist from his perilous position. He it was, to all appearance, who disapproved the defensive system of his generals and sent orders to them to vanquish the enemy with the utmost speed. As early as 667 his son Ariarathes had started from Macedonia to combat Sulla in Greece proper; only the sudden death, which overtook the prince on the march at the Tisaean promontory in Thessaly, had at that time led to the abandonment of the expedition. His successor Taxiles now appeared (668), driving before him the Roman corps stationed in Thessaly, with an army of, it is said, 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry at Thermopylae. Dromichaetes joined him. Archelaus also—compelled, apparently, not so much by Sulla's arms as by his master's orders— evacuated the Piraeeus first partially and then entirely, and joined the Pontic main army in Boeotia. Sulla, after the Piraeeus with all its greatly-admired fortifications had been by his orders destroyed, followed the Pontic army, in the hope of being able to fight a pitched battle before the arrival of Flaccus. In vain Archelaus advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in suspense. Now just as formerly under Darius and Antiochus, the masses of the Orientals, like animals terrified in the midst of a fire, flung themselves hastily and blindly into battle; and did so on this occasion more foolishly than ever, since the Asiatics might perhaps have needed to wait but a few months in order to be the spectators of a battle between Sulla and Flaccus.

Battle of Chaerones

In the plain of the Cephissus not far from Chaeronea, in March 668, the armies met. Even including the division driven back from Thessaly, which had succeeded in accomplishing its junction with the Roman main army, and including the Greek contingents, the Roman army found itself opposed to a foe three times as strong and particularly to a cavalry fur superior and from the nature of the field of battle very dangerous, against which Sulla found it necessary to protect his flanks by digging trenches, while in front he caused a chain of palisades to be introduced between his first and second lines for protection against the enemy's war-chariots. When the war chariots rolled on to open the battle, the first line of the Romans withdrew behind this row of stakes: the chariots, rebounding from it and scared by the Roman slingers and archers, threw themselves on their own line and carried confusion both into the Macedonian phalanx and into the corps of the Italian refugees. Archelaus brought up in haste his cavalry from both flanks and sent it to engage the enemy, with a view to gain time for rearranging his infantry; it charged with great fury and broke through the Roman ranks; but the Roman infantry rapidly formed in close masses and courageously withstood the horsemen assailing them on every side. Meanwhile Sulla himself on the right wing led his cavalry against the exposed flank of the enemy; the Asiatic infantry gave way before it was even properly engaged, and its giving way carried confusion also into the masses of the cavalry. A general attack of the Roman infantry, which through the wavering demeanour of the hostile cavalry gained time to breathe, decided the victory. The closing of the gates of the camp which Archelaus ordered to check the flight, only increased the slaughter, and when the gates at length were opened, the Romans entered at the same time with the Asiatics. It is said that Archelaus brought not a twelfth part of his force in safety to Chalcis; Sulla followed him to the Euripus; he was not in a position to cross that narrow arm of the sea.

Slight Effect of the Victory
Sulla and Flaccus

It was a great victory, but the results were trifling, partly because of the want of a fleet, partly because the Roman conqueror, instead of pursuing the vanquished, was under the necessity in the first instance of protecting himself against his own countrymen. The sea was still exclusively covered by Pontic squadrons, which now showed themselves even to the westward of the Malean promontory; even after the battle of Chaeronea Archelaus landed troops on Zacynthus and made an attempt to establish himself on that island. Moreover Lucius Flaccus had in the meanwhile actually landed with two legions in Epirus, not without having sustained severe loss on the way from storms and from the war-vessels of the enemy cruising in the Adriatic; his troops were already in Thessaly; thither Sulla had in the first instance to turn. The two Roman armies encamped over against each other at Melitaea on the northern slope of Mount Othrys; a collision seemed inevitable. But Flaccus, after he had opportunity of convincing himself that Sulla's soldiers were by no means inclined to betray their victorious leader to the totally unknown democratic commander-in chief, but that on the contrary his own advanced guard began to desert to Sulla's camp, evaded a conflict to which he was in no respect equal, and set out towards the north, with the view of getting through Macedonia and Thrace to Asia and there paving the way for further results by subduing Mithradates. That Sulla should have allowed his weaker opponent to depart without hindrance, and instead of following him should have returned to Athens, where he seems to have passed the winter of 668-9, is in a military point of view surprising. We may suppose perhaps that in this also he was guided by political motives, and that he was sufficiently moderate and patriotic in his views willingly to forgo a victory over his countrymen, at least so long as they had still the Asiatics to deal with, and to find the most tolerable solution of the unhappy dilemma in allowing the armies of the revolution in Asia and of the oligarchy in Europe to fight against the common foe.

Second Pontic Army Sent to Greece
Battle of Orchomenus

In the spring of 669 there was again fresh work in Europe. Mithradates, who continued his preparations indefatigably in Asia Minor, had sent an army not much less than that which had been extirpated at Chaeronea, under Dorylaus to Euboea; thence it had, after a junction with the remains of the army of Archelaus, passed over the Euripus to Boeotia. The Pontic king, who judged of what his army could do by the standard of victories over the Bithynian and Cappadocian militia, did not understand the unfavourable turn which things had taken in Europe; the circles of the courtiers were already whispering as to the treason of Archelaus; peremptory orders were issued to fight a second battle at once with the new army, and not to fail on this occasion to annihilate the Romans. The master's will was carried out, if not in conquering, at least in fighting. The Romans and Asiatics met once more in the plain of the Cephissus, near Orchomenus. The numerous and excellent cavalry of the latter flung itself impetuously on the Roman infantry, which began to waver and give way: the danger was so urgent, that Sulla seized a standard and advancing with his adjutants and orderlies against the enemy called out with a loud voice to the soldiers that, if they should be asked at home where they had abandoned their general, they might reply—at Orchomenus. This had its effect; the legions rallied and vanquished the enemy's horse, after which the infantry were overthrown with little difficulty. On the following day the camp of the Asiatics was surrounded and stormed; far the greatest portion of them fell or perished in the Copaic marshes; a few only, Archelaus among the rest, reached Euboea. The Boeotian communities had severely to pay for their renewed revolt from Rome, some of them even to annihilation. Nothing opposed the advance into Macedonia and Thrace; Philippi was occupied, Abdera was voluntarily evacuated by the Pontic garrison, the European continent in general was cleared of the enemy. At the end of the third year of the war (669) Sulla was able to take up winter-quarters in Thessaly, with a view to begin the Asiatic campaign in the spring of 670,(15) for which purpose he gave orders to build ships in the Thessalian ports.

Reaction in Asia Minor against Mithradates

Meanwhile the circumstances of Asia Minor also had undergone a material change. If king Mithradates had once come forward as the liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true character, and had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of the Roman governors—a despotism which drove even the patient inhabitants of Asia Minor to open revolt. The sultan again resorted to the most violent expedients. His decrees granted independence to the townships which turned to him, citizenship to the -metoeci-, full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none, freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought in the army of Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result of this high-handed subversion of all existing order. The most considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, Tralles, Sardes, closed their gates against the king's governors or put them to death, and declared for Rome.(16) On the other hand the king's lieutenant Diodorus, a philosopher of note like Aristion, of another school, but equally available for the worst subservience, under the instructions of his master caused the whole town-council of Adramyttium to be put to death. The Chians, who were suspected of an inclination to Rome, were fined in the first instance in 2000 talents (480,000 pounds) and, when the payment was found not correct, they were en masse put on board ship and deported in chains under the charge of their own slaves to the coast of Colchis, while their island was occupied with Pontic colonists. The king gave orders that the chiefs of the Celts in Asia Minor should all be put to death along with their wives and children in one day, and that Galatia should be converted into a Pontic satrapy. Most of these bloody edicts were carried into effect either at Mithradates' own headquarters or in Galatia, but the few who escaped placed themselves at the head of their powerful tribes and expelled Eumachus, the governor of the king, out of their bounds. It may readily be conceived that such a king would be pursued by the daggers of assassins; sixteen hundred men were condemned to death by the royal courts of inquisition as having been implicated in such conspiracies.

Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast

While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking his temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land. Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian fleet against Mithradates, had with better success repeated his efforts to procure vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and reinforced his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to the attack. He dexterously avoided measuring himself against superior forces and yet obtained no inconsiderable advantages. The Cnidian island and peninsula were occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and Chios were wrested from the enemy.

Flaccus Arrives in Asia
Fimbria
Fimbria's Victory at Miletopolis
Perilous Position of Mithradates

Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Macedonia and Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing the straits, had reached Chalcedon (end of 668). There a military insurrection broke out against the general, ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil from the soldiers. The soul of it was one of the chief officers of the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in Rome for a true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who, after having differed with his commander-in-chief, transferred the demagogic practices which he had begun in the Forum to the camp. Flaccus was deposed by the army and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far from Chalcedon; Fimbria was installed by decree of the soldiers in his stead. As a matter of course he allowed his troops every indulgence; in the friendly Cyzicus, for instance, the citizens were ordered to surrender all their property to the soldiers on pain of death, and by way of warning example two of the most respectable citizens were at once executed. Nevertheless in a military point of view the change of commander-in-chief was a gain; Fimbria was not, like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic and talented. At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the west of Brussa) he defeated the younger Mithradates, who as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had marched against him, completely in a nocturnal assault, and by this victory opened his way to Pergamus, the capital formerly of the Roman province and now of the Pontic king, whence he dislodged the king and compelled him to take flight to the port of Pitane not far off, with the view of there embarking. Just at that moment Lucullus appeared in those waters with his fleet; Fimbria adjured him to render assistance so that he might be enabled to capture the king. But the Optimate was stronger in Lucullus than the patriot; he sailed onward and the king escaped to Mitylene. The situation of Mithradates was even thus sufficiently embarrassed. At the end of 669 Europe was lost, Asia Minor was partly in rebellion against him, partly occupied by a Roman army; and he was himself threatened by the latter in his immediate vicinity. The Roman fleet under Lucullus had maintained its position on the Trojan coast by two successful naval engagements at the promontory of Lectum and at the island of Tenedos; it was joined there by the ships which had in the meanwhile been built by Sulla's orders in Thessaly, and by it position commanding the Hellespont it secured to the general of the Roman senatorial army a safe and easy passage next spring to Asia.

Negotiations for Peace

Mithradates attempted to negotiate. Under other circumstances no doubt the author of the edict for the Ephesian massacre could never have cherished the hope of being admitted at all to terms of peace with Rome; but amidst the internal convulsions of the Roman republic, when the ruling government had declared the general sent against Mithradates an outlaw and subjected his partisans at home to the most fearful persecutions, when one Roman general opposed the other and yet both stood opposed to the same foe, he hoped that he should be able to obtain not merely a peace, but a favourable peace. He had the choice of applying to Sulla or to Fimbria; he caused negotiations to be instituted with both, yet it seems from the first to have been his design to come to terms with Sulla, who, at least from the king's point of view, seemed decidedly superior to his rival. His general Archelaus, a instructed by his master, asked Sulla to cede Asia to the king and to expect in return the king's aid against the democratic party in Rome. But Sulla, cool and clear as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement of Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things in Italy, estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian alliance for the war impending over him in Italy as very slight, and was altogether too much of a Roman to consent to so disgraceful and so injurious a concession.

Preliminaries of Delium

In the peace conferences, which took place in the winter of 669-70, at Delium on the coast of Boeotia opposite to Euboea, Sulla distinctly refused to cede even a foot's-breadth of land, but, with good reason faithful to the old Roman custom of not increasing after victory the demands made before battle, did not go beyond the conditions previously laid down. He required the restoration of all the conquests made by the king and not wrested from him again— Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor and the islands—the surrender of prisoners and deserters, the delivering up of the eighty war-vessels of Archelaus to reinforce the still insignificant Roman fleet; lastly, pay and provisions for the army and the very moderate sum of 3000 talents (720,000 pounds) as indemnity for the expenses of the war. The Chians carried off to the Black Sea were to be sent home, the families of the Macedonians who were friendly to Rome and had become refugees were to be restored, and a number of war-vessels were to be delivered to the cities in alliance with Rome. Respecting Tigranes, who in strictness should likewise have been included in the peace, there was silence on both sides, since neither of the contracting parties cared for the endless further steps which would be occasioned by making him a party. The king thus retained the state of possession which he had before the war, nor was he subjected to any humiliation affecting his honour.(17) Archelaus, clearly perceiving that much comparatively beyond expectation was obtained and that more was not obtainable, concluded the preliminaries and an armistice on these conditions, and withdrew the troops from the places which the Asiatics still possessed in Europe.

New Difficulties
Sulla Proceeds to Asia

But Mithradates rejected the peace and demanded at least that the Romans should not insist on the surrender of the war-vessels and should concede to him Paphlagonia; while he at the same time asserted that Fimbria was ready to grant him far more favourable conditions. Sulla, offended by this placing of his offers on an equal footing with those of an unofficial adventurer, and having already gone to the utmost measure of concession, broke off the negotiations. He had employed the interval to reorganize Macedonia and to chastise the Dardani, Sinti, and Maedi, in doing which he at once procured booty for his army and drew nearer Asia; for he was resolved at any rate to go thither, in order to come to a reckoning with Fimbria. He now at once put his legions stationed in Thrace as well as his fleet in motion towards the Hellespont. Then at length Archelaus succeeded in wringing from his obstinate master a reluctant consent to the treaty; for which he was subsequently regarded with an evil eye at court as the author of the injurious peace, and even accused of treason, so that some time afterwards he found himself compelled to leave the country and to take refuge with the Romans, who readily received him and loaded him with honours. The Roman soldiers also murmured; their disappointment doubtless at not receiving the expected spoil of Asia probably contributed to that murmuring more than their indignation—in itself very justifiable— that the barbarian prince, who had murdered eighty thousand of their countrymen and had brought unspeakable misery on Italy and Asia, should be allowed to return home unpunished with the greatest part of the treasures which he had collected by the pillage of Asia. Sulla himself may have been painfully sensible that the political complications thwarted in a most vexatious way a task which was in a military point of view so simple, and compelled him after such victories to content himself with such a peace. But the self- denial and the sagacity with which he had conducted this whole war were only displayed afresh in the conclusion of this peace; for war with a prince, to whom almost the whole coast of the Black Sea belonged, and whose obstinacy was clearly displayed by the very last negotiations, would still under the most favourable circumstances require years, and the situation of Italy was such that it seemed almost too late even for Sulla to oppose the party in power there with the few legions which he possessed.(18) Before this could be done, however, it was absolutely necessary to overthrow the bold officer who was at the head of the democratic army in Asia, in order that he might not at some future time come from Asia to the help of the Italian revolution, just as Sulla now hoped to return from Asia and crush it. At Cypsela on the Hebrus Sulla obtained accounts of the ratification of the peace by Mithradates; but the march to Asia went on. The king, it was said, desired personally to confer with the Roman general and to cement the peace with him; it may be presumed that this was simply a convenient pretext for transferring the army to Asia and there putting an end to Fimbria.

Peace at Dardanus
Sulla against Fimbria
Fimbria's Death

So Sulla, attended by his legions and by Archelaus, crossed the Hellespont; after he had met with Mithradates on its Asiatic shore at Dardanus and had orally concluded the treaty, he made his army continue its march till he came upon the camp of Fimbria at Thyatira not far from Pergamus, and pitched his own close beside it. The Sullan soldiers, far superior to the Fimbrians in number, discipline, leadership, and ability, looked with contempt on the dispirited and demoralized troops and their uncalled commander-in- chief. Desertions from the ranks of the Fimbrians became daily more numerous. When Fimbria ordered an attack, the soldiers refused to fight against their fellow-citizens, or even to take the oath which he required that they would stand faithfully by each other in battle. An attempt to assassinate Sulla miscarried; at the conference which Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his appearance, but contented himself with suggesting to him through one of his officers a means of personal escape. Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was no poltroon; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla offered to him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to Pergamus and fell on his own sword in the temple of Asklepios. Those who were most compromised in his army resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates, with whom they found ready reception; the main body placed itself under the orders of Sulla.

Regulation of Asiatic Affairs

Sulla determined to leave these two legions, whom he did not trust for the impending war, behind in Asia, where the fearful crisis left for long its lingering traces in the several cities and districts. The command of this corps and the governorship of Roman Asia he committed to his best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena. The revolutionary measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation of the slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled; a restoration, which in many places could not be carried into effect without force of arms. The towns of the territory on the eastern frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted. Justice moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term. The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the massacre of the Italians were punished with death. The persons liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000 talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius Lucullus was left behind. These were measures fearful in their rigour and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively mild retaliation. That the exactions in other respects were not unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about 1,000,000 pounds. The few communities on the other hand that had remained faithful—particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander—were richly rewarded: Rhodes received back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after the war against Perseus.(19) In like manner compensation was made as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla. Sulla had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not descended of royal blood—the slave, as he called him—to his presence. Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms evacuated by Mithradates.

Sulla Embarks for Italy

The goal was thus attained. After four years of war the Pontic king was again a client of the Romans, and a single and settled government was re-established in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor; the requirements of interest and honour were satisfied, if not adequately, yet so far as circumstances would allow; Sulla had not only brilliantly distinguished himself as a soldier and general, but had the skill, in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve the difficult mean between bold perseverance and prudent concession. Almost like Hannibal he had fought and conquered, in order that with the forces, which the first victory gave him, he might prepare forthwith for a second and severer struggle. After he had in some degree compensated his soldiers for the fatigues which they had undergone by luxurious winter-quarters in the rich west of Asia Minor, he in the spring of 671 transferred them in 1600 vessels from Ephesus to the Piraeeus and thence by the land route to Patrae, where the vessels again lay ready to convey the troops to Brundisium. His arrival was preceded by a report addressed to the senate respecting his campaigns in Greece and Asia, the writer of which appeared to know nothing of his deposition; it was the mute herald of the impending restoration.