The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]

While yet unchecked by the best troops and most accomplished generals of the republic, Mithridates had obtained the most astounding successes. The kingdoms of Bithynia and Cappadocia had fallen without resistance into his hands. The Roman province of Asia had succumbed, and even received its new master with acclamations. From thence he had crossed the Ægean Sea, accepting the submission of its rich and flourishing islands, and his admiral Archelaus had captured Athens itself, with its harbour in the Piræus and all its naval stores and equipments. The Greek cities were, for the most part, favourably disposed towards the liberator, who promised to break the rod of proconsular oppression. It was impossible to foresee how far the contagion of provincial disaffection might spread; and when Sulla landed on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, his task had swelled to the reconquest of one hemisphere of the empire.

SULLA IN GREECE

Nor had he now, like his predecessors in the career of eastern conquest, the undivided resources of the commonwealth to sustain him. Sulla was conscious that he was only the general of a party which, though for the moment triumphant, was, he well knew, insecure, and every express that arrived to him from Rome brought him alarming accounts of the fears and perils of the friends he had left behind him. He reached Greece at the commencement of the year 87 with a force of five legions, which he had no means of recruiting, and he might apprehend that in the course of another year he would be superseded by another commander, the nominee, perhaps, of his enemies. He had not a moment to lose. Instead of checking the licentiousness of his soldiers, and drawing tighter the long relaxed bands of discipline, which must have been a work of time and leisure, he was compelled to stimulate their ardour and secure their obedience by additional indulgence and license more complete. The course of his march he allowed to be marked by plunder, devastation, and sacrilege. He traversed Greece and Asia to gorge his men with booty before he turned their arms against the invader from the East. The sacred treasures of the temples at Epidaurus, Ephesus, and Olympia fell successively into his hands. When the spirits of his soldiers were elated to the utmost, he led them under the walls of Athens, which he speedily reduced, and devoted to pillage. In Bœotia he encountered the enemy in the open field, and routed them in the great battle of Chæronea (86). Flaccus was now advancing upon his steps, and summoning him to surrender his command to his legitimate successor.

[86-84 B.C.]

He was about to turn boldly upon the intruders, confident of his soldiers’ devotion, when Mithridates placed a second army within his reach. A second great battle at Orchomenos broke the power of the king of Pontus, reducing him to act on the defensive beyond the waters of the Ægean. Greece remained as a clear stage for the Roman armies to contend upon. At the close of the year 86 Sulla had taken up his quarters in Thessaly, while Flaccus, not venturing to engage him, had moved in a lateral direction, and watched him from the neighbourhood of Byzantium. Among the new consul’s officers was Flavius Fimbria, the tribune whose ferocity has already been signalised. Beloved by the soldiers whose licentiousness he encouraged, while his general strove fruitlessly to repress it, Fimbria conceived the idea of making himself independent of the government at home, and acting the part of a Strabo or a Sulla himself. Flaccus was assassinated in his camp, and Fimbria, who may be supposed to have instigated the deed, was proclaimed general in his room by the soldiers themselves. But neither they nor their new leader chose to measure themselves with the rival imperator in Thessaly. Passing over into Asia (85) they ravaged every fertile plain and wealthy city, attacked the forces of Mithridates wherever they could reach them, and defeated a son of the great king himself. Mithridates was driven out of Pergamus, and reduced to shelter himself in Pitane, where he must have been captured, had not Lucullus, a lieutenant of Sulla, removed the fleet with which he co-operated to a distance, in order to prevent the upstart Fimbria from snatching the honour of such a triumph from his own superior. Mithridates escaped by sea, and Sulla opened negotiations with him. Upon his surrendering Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, renouncing his pretensions to the province of Asia, and delivering up a large portion of his fleets and treasures, he was solemnly admitted to the alliance and amity of Rome. Sulla thus confined the enemy of the republic to the limits of his dominions, such as they existed before the war; but, doubtless, had his own resources been more abundant and his position more secure, he would not have been content with a barren victory, nor have returned from the frontiers of the empire without an effort to advance them.