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

[73-70 B.C.]

Thus the Pontian fleet, which swept the Black Sea and the Propontis, met with no opposition in its expedition to the Ægean Sea, and it was said that the Roman exiles who commanded it had decided to attempt a landing in Italy. However, Lucullus himself, who had turned westward from Cyzicus, commanded the little fleet, which had been collected in the Ægean waters and defeated the enemy’s squadron in a battle between Lemnos and Scyros in which most of the Roman exiles lost their lives.

In the meanwhile, Lucullus’ deputies Voconius, Barba, and Triarius, united against Mithridates, who was stationed with his troops at Nicomedia (Bithynia). The king avoided a battle and fled on a pirate ship, besieged Heraclea on the way, where he assembled the rest of his fleet which the storm had almost entirely scattered, and then proceeded past Sinope to Amisus. The foes being now driven back to their own domains, the Romans took the offensive.

Aurelius Cotta stationed himself at Heraclea. Lucullus himself passed in the autumn of the year 73 into the Pontian district. Mithridates avoided a battle and retired inland where the pursuing enemy would find it difficult to obtain supplies. Lucullus followed, leaving parties to besiege or watch Amisus and Eupatoria, the most important cities of Pontus; and deaf to the murmurs of his soldiers, quickly pursued the king and arrived in the spring of 72 at Cabira (on the Lycus in Pontus).

Roman Galley

The king had looked in vain for allies in the winter; neither the great ruler of Armenia, his son-in-law Tigranes, nor the Parthians would support him. But a powerful army of forty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry was meanwhile levied in his own states under the command of Diophantus and Taxiles, whilst Lucullus only mustered three legions. Mithridates’ cavalry, his best support, was completely defeated by Lucullus’ deputy, M. Fabius Hadrianus, and when the king ordered a further retreat, the camp became the scene of blind fear and confusion which was turned into a complete rout by a timely onslaught from Lucullus. The king fled with two thousand cavalry over the border of his kingdom to Armenia, where his son-in-law Tigranes received him. The rich booty of the camp fell into the hands of the Roman soldiers; by the king’s command an eunuch forced the women of the harem to drink of a flagon of poison to save them from falling into the hands of the enemy—the greatest of all disgraces for an oriental ruler.

There was now a pause in the war. The flat country submitted everywhere to the Romans; only Amisus on the Pontian coast, Sinope and Amastris on the Paphlagonian, and Heraclea on the Bithynian coast, made an obstinate resistance, supported by the troops of the king and his allies, the corsairs, with their ships.

While the deputies were occupied with these sieges, from 72-70, the commander-in-chief organised the internal affairs of the Asiatic province, where there was a pressing need for the attention of an upright man like Lucullus. Sulla’s peace had left the inhabitants of these beautiful countries to their hopeless misery under Roman tax gatherers. The twenty thousand talents which Sulla had imposed on them had grown to a debt of 120,000 talents under the usurious interest of the Roman capitalists, who advanced the community the money for the indemnity; and to satisfy the creditors the sacred vessels in the temples of the gods had to be melted down, freemen sold their sons and daughters into slavery, and where payment was delayed or impossible every torture was resorted to which inventive avarice could devise; so that according to Plutarch’s expression “slavery seemed like peace and seisachtheia[101] in comparison.”

To mitigate this disgraceful state of things, Lucullus issued a decree at Ephesus forbidding more than twelve per cent. interest, releasing debtors from the obligation to pay interest whose total exceeded the original capital, and prohibiting the creditor from claiming more than a quarter of the debtor’s property.

The provincials congratulated themselves on having such a just and humane proconsul, but his policy aroused the deadly hatred of the Roman capitalists as it injured their business, and they spared no efforts in Rome to accomplish his fall as soon as possible. In this they received great assistance from the increasing discontent of the soldiers who were as much opposed to the justice and moderation of Lucullus as they were to the long continuation of the war, which had just taken a fresh start.

Mithridates had worked the whole winter trying to draw Tigranes into the Roman war which he must sooner or later be unable to avoid. His own power had broken down, his son Machares, the satrap of his kingdom of the Bosporus had made peace with Lucullus on his own account and his ships returning from Crete and Spain had been destroyed by Lucullus’ deputy at Tenedos.