The Gracchi Marius and Sulla Part 5

Sulpicius, Marius, and ten others were proscribed, and Sulla is said to have still further stimulated the pursuit of Marius by setting a price on his head. [Sidenote: Sulpicius slain.] Sulpicius was killed at Laurentum, and, according to Velleius Paterculus, Sulla fixed up the eloquent orator's head at the Rostra, a thing not unlikely to have been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly congenial. [Sidenote: Stories of Sulla.] He evinced it on this occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Hugo his episode of Lantenac and the gunner. He gave the slave who betrayed Sulpicius his freedom, and then had him hurled from the Tarpeian Rock.

After this he set to work to restore such order as would enable him to hasten to the east.

[Sidenote: Why Sulla left Italy.] Various explanations have been offered to account for his moderation at this conjuncture, and for his leaving Italy precisely when his enemies were again gathering for an attack. But the true one has never yet, perhaps, been suggested. Who was it that had made him supreme at Rome? The army. What had been the bribe which had won it over? A campaign in Asia under the fortunate Sulla. Without that army he was powerless, nay, he was a dead man.

Therefore it was absolutely necessary to execute his pledge to the army, which would have no keen desire to encounter its countrymen in Italy. No doubt he coveted the glory and spoil of the Asiatic command; but it is absurd to suppose that he would have quitted Italy now of his own free will. He had no choice in the matter. He was bound hand and foot by his promises to the soldiers; and all that he could do was by plausible moderation to win as many friends, conciliate as many foes, as possible, throw on Cinna, whom he could not hope to keep quiet, the guilt of perjury, and trust to fortune for the rest. This is a probable and consistent view of what now took place at Rome; and every other account makes out Sulla to have been either inconsistent, which he never was, for he was always uniformly selfish; or patriotic, which he never was, if patriotism consists in sacrificing private to public considerations; or indifferent, which he was in principle but never in practice, unless where his own interests were not threatened and only the suffering of others involved.

[Sidenote: Sulla's measures.] His first measure was to annul the Sulpician laws. Secondly, to relieve the debtors, some colonies were established, and a law was pa.s.sed about interest, the terms of which we do not know. Thirdly, the Senate, thinned by the Social War and the Varian law, was recruited by 300 optimates. Fourthly, because Sulpicius had resisted the proclamation of a just.i.tium--that device by which the Senate had virtually, though not legally, retained in its own hands the power of discussing any measure before it was submitted to the people--therefore for the future no measure was to be submitted to the people till it had been previously discussed by the Senate. In other words, the Senate was now confirmed by law in a privilege which it had hitherto only exercised by the employment of a fiction.

Fifthly, the votes were to be taken, not in the Comitia Tributa, but in the Comitia of Centuries. Sixthly, the five cla.s.ses were no longer to have an equal voice, but the first cla.s.s was, as in the Servian const.i.tution, to have nearly half the votes. As the first cla.s.s consisted of those who had an estate of 100,000 sesterces, this ordinance changed the democracy into a timocracy, transferring the power from the people generally to the wealthier cla.s.ses: but, considering how voting had been manipulated of late, it was perhaps a measure due to the Senate quite as much as to Sulla. On the whole he legislated as little as he could and proscribed as few as he could.

[Sidenote: Opposition to Sulla.] But he tried to get two of his partisans, Servius and Nonius, elected consuls for the year 87.

Instead of them, however, L. Cornelius Cinna, a determined leader of the populares, was elected; and though Cnaeus Octavius, his colleague, was one of the optimates, he was not Sulla's creature. In another quarter his arrangements were thwarted even more unpleasantly. He had got a decree framed by the people, giving the army of the north to his friend Q. Pompeius Rufus, and recalling Cn. Pompeius Strabo. But the latter procured the a.s.sa.s.sination of the former, and remained at the head of the army. Still Sulla showed no resentment. A tribune named Virginius was threatening to prosecute him. But he contented himself with making Cinna ascend the Capitol with a stone in his hand, and, throwing it down before a number of spectators, solemnly swear to observe the new const.i.tution. Then, leaving Metellus in Samnium and Appius Claudius at Nola, he hurried to Capua, and embarking at Brundusium felt, no doubt, that if he must pay his debt to the army before the army would commit fresh treasons for him, it was not unpleasant now to be forced away from the wasps' nest which he had stirred up round him at home. And so, making a virtue of a necessity, he sailed with a light heart from the chance of a.s.sa.s.sination at Rome to fame and fortune in the East.

CHAPTER X.

MARIUS AND CINNA.

[Sidenote: Flight of Marius.] Meanwhile what had become of Marius?

Already a halo of legend was gathering round his name, and all Italy was ringing with his adventures. When he had fled from Rome (not sorry now, we may be sure, that he had gone through his late exhibitions in the Campus Martius), he had sent his son to some of his father-in-law's farms to get necessary provisions. Young Marius was overtaken by daylight, before he could get to his father-in-law's farm, and pack the things up, and was nearly caught by those on his track. But the farm-bailiff saw them in time, and, hiding him in a cart full of beans, yoked the teams, and drove him to Rome. [Sidenote: Ostia.] There young Marius went to his wife's house, and, getting what he wanted, set out at nightfall for Ostia, and finding a ship starting for Africa, went aboard. His father had not waited for his return. He too had embarked at Ostia for Africa with his son-in-law.

But now in his old age the sea was not so kind to him as when, in his bold and confident youth, he had sailed to sue for his first consulship from the very land to which he was now flying. A storm came on, and the ship was blown southwards along the coast. Marius begged the captain to keep clear of Tarracina, because Geminius, a leading man there, was his bitter foe. [Sidenote: Circeii.] But the storm increased; Marius was sea-sick, and they were forced to go ash.o.r.e at Circeii (Monte Circello). Some herdsmen told them that hors.e.m.e.n had just been there in pursuit; so they spent the night in a thick wood, hungry, and tortured by anxiety. Next day they went to the coast again, and Marius implored the men to stand by him, telling them that when he was a child an eagle's nest fell into his lap, with seven young ones in it, and the soothsayers had said that it meant that he should attain to the highest honours seven times. [Sidenote: Minturnae.] About two miles and a half from Minturnae they spied some hors.e.m.e.n making towards them; and, plunging into the sea, they swam towards some merchantmen near the sh.o.r.e. Two slaves swam with Marius, keeping him up, and he got into one ship, and his son-in-law into the other, while the hors.e.m.e.n shouted to the crew to put ash.o.r.e, or throw Marius overboard. The captains consulted together, and a terrible moment it must have been for the fugitives. But the spell of the Cimbric victories was potent still, and the captains replied that they would not give up Marius. So the soldiers rode off in a rage. But the sailors, having so far acted generously, were anxious to get rid of their dangerous guest, and, landing at the mouth of the Liris, on pretence of waiting for a fair wind, told Marius to go ash.o.r.e and get some rest, and, while he was lying down, sailed away. Half stupified, he scrambled through bogs, and d.y.k.es, and mud, till he came to an old man's cottage, and begged the owner to shelter a man who, if he escaped, would reward him beyond his hopes. The man told him that he could hide him in a safer place than his cottage; and, showing him a hole by the riverside, covered him up in it with some rushes. But he was soon rudely disturbed. Geminius was on his trail, and Marius heard some of his emissaries loudly threatening the old man for hiding an outlaw. In his terror Marius stripped and plunged into the river, and so betrayed himself to the pursuers, who hauled him out naked and covered with mud, and gave him up to the magistrates of Minturnae. By these he was placed under a strong guard in the house of a woman named Fannia. She, like Geminius, had a personal grudge against him, for in his sixth consulship he had fined her four drachmas for ill-conduct.

But now when she saw his misery she forgot her resentment, and did her best to cheer him. Nor was this difficult, for the stout heart of Marius had never failed him. He told Fannia that, as he was coming to her house, an a.s.s had come out to drink at a neighbouring fountain, and, fixing its eyes steadily on him, had brayed aloud and frisked vivaciously, whence he augured that he would find safety by sea. The magistrates, however, had resolved to kill him, and sent a Cimbrian to do the deed, for no citizen would do it. The man went armed with a sword into the gloomy room where Marius lay. But soon he ran out crying, 'I cannot slay Marius.' He had seen eyes glaring in the darkness, and had heard a terrible voice say, 'Darest thou slay Caius Marius?' His heart had failed him; he had thrown down the sword and fled. Either the magistrates now changed their minds, or the people forced them to let Marius go, or perhaps Fannia connived at his escape. Plutarch says that the people escorted him to the coast, and, when they came to a sacred grove, called the Marician Grove, which no man might enter, but which it would take a long time to go round, an old man had led the way into it, saying that no place was so sacred but that it might be entered to save Marius. [Sidenote: Aenaria.] In some way he reached the coast where a friend had secured a vessel, and being driven by the wind to Aenaria (Ischia), he there found his son-in-law and sailed for Africa.

[Sidenote: Eryx.] Want of water forced them to put in at Eryx on the N.W. of Sicily; but the Roman quaestor there was on the look-out, and killing sixteen of the crew nearly took Marius. Landing at Meninx (Jerbah), the fugitive heard that his son was in Africa too, and had gone to Hiempsal, King of Numidia, to ask for aid, upon which he set sail again and landed at Carthage. [Sidenote: Carthage.] The Roman governor there sent to warn him off from Africa. Marius was dumb with indignation, but on being asked what answer he had to send, replied, so ran the story, 'Go and say you have seen Caius Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage.'

Hiempsal meanwhile had been keeping young Marius in a sort of honourable captivity. But, according to a story similar to that told of Thomas a Becket's father, a damsel of the country had fallen in love with his handsome face, and helped him to escape. [Sidenote: Circina.]

Father and son now retired to Circina (Kerkennah), where news soon reached him which brought him back to Italy.

[Sidenote: Counter-revolutions at Rome.] Hardly had Sulla left Brundusium when the truce which he had patched up was broken. Cinna being bribed, as was said probably without foundation, with 300 talents, had demanded that the Italians lately enfranchised should be enrolled in the old tribes. [Sidenote: Cinna.] We do not know very much about Cinna, but we do seem to gather that he was bold, resolute, not ungenerous or bloodthirsty; and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that, like Saturninus, and Sulpicius, and Drusus, he was only demanding justice. [Sidenote: Street-fighting. Cinna driven from Rome.] Octavius opposed him, and, hearing that Cinna's partisans were threatening the tribunes in the Forum, he charged down the Via Sacra with a band of followers, and dispersed them, and a great number of Cinna's followers were slain. On this Cinna left Rome, and, joined by Sertorius, whom we shall hear of again, went round the towns mustering his friends. The Senate declared his consulship to be void, and elected L. Cornelius Merula in his place. [Sidenote: His cause espoused by the Campanian army.] Cinna, with characteristic audacity, instantly hastened to the army in Campania; and, rending his clothes and throwing himself on the ground, so worked on the pity of the soldiers that they lifted him up, and told him he was consul still, and might lead them where he pleased. [Sidenote: Marius lands in Etruria.] Then, visiting the Italian towns, he obtained many recruits; and, hearing that Marius had landed in Etruria (perhaps on his invitation), he agreed to act in concert with him, in spite of the opposition of Sertorius.

[Sidenote: The Senate summons Pompeius from Picenum.] Meanwhile Octavius and Merula had fortified the city, had sent for troops from Cisalpine Gaul, and had summoned the proconsul Pompeius from Picenum.

Pompeius came and halted at the Colline Gate. It was suspected that he was waiting to join the successful side. With him was his son, afterwards called 'the Great,' who now showed of what stuff he was made by putting down a mutiny against his father and baffling a plot for his own a.s.sa.s.sination. [Sidenote: Marius sacks Ostia, and he, Sertorius, and Cinna hem Rome in.] Marius, with a band of Moors, and the slaves whom he had collected from the Etrurian field-gangs, was admitted by treachery into Ostia and sacked the town. Cinna marched to the right bank of the Tiber, opposite the Janiculum. Sertorius held the river above the city, and a corps was sent to Ariminum to prevent any help coming from North Italy. [Sidenote: The Senate summons Metellus, and courts the alliance of the Samnites.] At this crisis the Senate sent for Metellus and tried to obtain the aid of the Samnites, who, as we have seen, joined Marius and Cinna. The treachery of a tribune in command of the Janiculum gave the Marians admission to the city. But they were driven out again, and might even have been dislodged from the Janiculum had not Pompeius persuaded Octavius to check the pursuit. Pompeius was playing a waiting game, ready to join the strongest, or crush both parties, as he saw his chance. And now within the city starvation set in, and a pestilence spread. Marius had blocked up the Tiber, and occupied the outlying towns on which the communications of the capital depended. Nor could the Senate trust its own troops. [Sidenote: Death of Pompeius.] Pompeius was killed by a thunder-bolt--not less suspicious than that which slew Romulus--and his body had been torn from the bier, and dragged through the streets by the people. [Sidenote: Disaffection in the Senate's troops.] The soldiers of Octavius cheered Cinna when he marshalled his troops opposite them near the Alban Mount. Moreover the leaders themselves were at variance. Octavius, seeing the humour of his men, was afraid to fight, but would concede nothing. Metellus wished for a compromise.

Both armies were now outside the city, the pestilence probably having driven the Marians to withdraw. But Marius had command of the Via Appia, the Tiber, and most of the neighbourhood; and the famine became sorer in Rome. [Sidenote: Incompetence of Octavius and Metellus.] The soldiers wished Metellus to take the command from Octavius, and, on his refusal, deserted in crowds to the enemy. So also did the slaves, to whom Octavius would not promise freedom, as Cinna gladly did.

[Sidenote: The Senate submits to Cinna.] At last the Senate sent to make terms with Cinna; but while they were stickling about acknowledging his t.i.tle of consul, he advanced to the gates. Then they surrendered at discretion, only begging him to swear to shed no blood.

Cinna, refusing to be bound by this condition, promised that he would not voluntarily do so. For he saw by his side the grim figure of the man to whom he had given pro-consular powers, who had already taunted him with weakness for conferring with the Senate at all, and in whose sullen, unshorn face he read a craving for vengeance which nothing but blood would satisfy.

[Sidenote: A ma.s.sacre at Rome.] When Cinna entered the city, Marius, with savage irony, said that an outlaw had no business within the walls, and he would not come in till the sentence had been formally rescinded by a meeting of the people in the Forum. But the gates, when once he had pa.s.sed them, were closed, and for five days and five nights Rome became a shambles. Appian says that Marius and Cinna had both sworn to spare the life of Octavius. But Marius was never a liar, and the story is false on the face of it; for just before this Appian relates how, when Cinna had promised to be merciful, Marius would make no sign. [Sidenote: Death of Octavius.] Octavius is said to have seated himself in his official chair, dressed in his official robes, on the Janiculum, and to have awaited the a.s.sa.s.sins there. His head was fastened up in front of the Rostra in emulation of the ghastly precedent set by Sulla. He was an obstinate, dull man; and if this burlesque of the conduct of the senators when the Gauls took Rome was really enacted, the theatrical display must have been cold comfort for those of his party on whom his incapacity brought ruin. [Sidenote: Chief victims of the ma.s.sacre.] [Sidenote: The Caesars.] Among the latter were the brothers Caesar, Caius, who had sought to be consul before he was praetor, and had been denounced for it by Sulpicius, and Lucius, the conqueror at Acerrae and author of the Julian law.

[Sidenote: Publius Cra.s.sus.] Publius Cra.s.sus, consul in 97, and one of Caesar's lieutenants in the Social War, fled with his son, and when overtaken first stabbed his son and then himself. [Sidenote: Marcus Antonius.] Marcus Antonius, the great forensic orator, was so odious to Marius that the latter, on hearing that he was taken, wished, so the story runs, to go and kill him with his own hand. Antonius was in hiding, and was betrayed by the indiscretion of a slave, who, being questioned by a wine-seller why he was buying more or better wine than usual, whispered to him that it was for Marcus Antonius. On the soldiers coming to kill him, he pleaded so eloquently for his life that they wept and would not touch him. But their officer, who was waiting below, impatiently came up and cut off his head with his own hand. Lucius Merula opened his veins, and so bled to death. His crime was that he had been made consul when Cinna was deposed. His last act seems odd to us, but pathetically bespoke the man's piety and recalls the last scene in the life of Demosthenes. He wrote on a tablet that he had taken off his official cap when opening his veins, so as to avoid the sacrilege of a flamen of Jupiter dying with it on his head.

[Sidenote: Catulus.] Marius had behaved generously once to Q. Lutatius Catulus, his old colleague against the Cimbri; but Catulus had helped to drive him into exile, and there was to be no second mistake of that sort. 'He must die,' he said, when the relatives of Catulus pleaded for his life. It is not unlikely that disease, and drinking, and his late hardships had made the old man insane. He had been occasionally good-natured in former days; now he seemed to gloat in carnage. For every sneer cast at him, for every wrong done to him in past years, he took a horrible revenge. When Cinna had summoned him, he had said that he would settle the question of enrolment in the tribes once for all.

He wished not to select victims, but to ma.s.sacre all the leading optimates. Sertorius begged Cinna to check the slaughter. Cinna did try to curb the outrages of the slave bands; but he dared not break with Marius, whom he named as joint consul with himself for the year 86. But as soon as his colleague was dead, he and Sertorius surrounded the ruffians and killed them to a man.

[Sidenote: Death of Marius.] Marius did not live much longer. He had had his revenge. He had gained his seventh consulship. It is said that, telling his friends that after such vicissitudes it would be wrong to tempt fate further, he took to his bed and after seven days died. He drank hard, was seized with pleurisy, and in his last hours became delirious. He fancied that he was in Asia, and by shouts and gestures cheered on the army of his dreams, and with 'such a stern and iron-clashing close' died January 13 or 17. He was more than seventy years old, and had enjoyed his seventh consulship for either thirteen or seventeen days.

Lucius Valerius Flaccus succeeded Marius as consul, and pa.s.sed a law making one-fourth of a debt legal tender for payment of it; and probably in the same year the denarius was restored to its standard value. A census was also held, which would include the new Italian citizens, and Philippus, whose opposition to Drusus on this very question had helped to kindle the Social War, was censor. [Sidenote: Settlement of Italian disabilities by Cinna.] Cinna, as he was pledged to do so, must have carried some measure for enrolling the Italians in the old tribes; but we can only conjecture what was actually done.

Sulpicius had already carried such a measure, but it had been probably revoked by Sulla before he left Italy. In 84, just before his return, the Senate, it is said, gave the Italians the right of voting, and distributed the libertini, or freed slaves, among the thirty-five tribes. Perhaps this was a formal ratification of what had been pa.s.sed before under Cinna's coercion.

[Sidenote: Cinna's supremacy.] Cinna was now all-powerful at Rome.

For four successive years, 87 to 84 B.C., he was consul; and with the exception of Asia, Macedonia, Greece, and Africa, where Metellus had escaped and was in arms, the whole Roman world was at his feet. But he did not know how to use his power. He may have removed the restrictions on grain, and did proclaim Sulla and Metellus outlaws; but, though he should have bent every energy to hinder Sulla's return, he did worse than nothing, and, instead of Sertorius, sent the incapable Flaccus and the ruffian Fimbria against the general who had just taken Athens and defeated Archelaus. The miscarriage of their enterprise will be told in the next chapter. When Cinna suddenly became alive to the fact that the avenger was at hand, and that either he must act promptly or Sulla would be in Rome, he hastened to Ancona, where he sent one division of the army across to the opposite coast.

But the second division was driven back by a storm; and the soldiers then dispersed, saying that they would not fight against their own countrymen. On this the rest of the army refused to embark. Cinna went to harangue them, and one of his lictors in clearing a way struck a soldier. Another soldier struck him. [Sidenote: Cinna slain at Ancona.] Cinna told his lictors to seize this second mutineer, and in the tumult that arose Cinna was slain. Plutarch says that the troops murdered him because he was suspected of having killed Pompeius, and that, when he tried to bribe a centurion with a signet-ring to spare him, the centurion replied that he was not going to seal a bond but slay a tyrant. But Cinna probably died as he lived, a brave man, and one who could not have held ascendency for so long, and over men like Sertorius, had he not been an able as well as a brave man.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR.

Events have been antic.i.p.ated in order to relate the close of Cinna's career. But it is time now to say what Sulla had been doing, and who that Mithridates was whose name for so long had been formidable at Rome.

[Sidenote: Foreign events after the second slave war.] After the defeat of the northern hordes and the suppression of the second slave revolt, there was a war with the Celtiberi in Spain, in 97, in which Sertorius showed himself already an adroit and bold officer.

[Sidenote: Sertorius in command against the Celtiberi.] He was in winter quarters at Castulo (Cazlona), and his men were so disorderly that the Spaniards were emboldened to attack them in the town; Sertorius escaped, rallied those soldiers who had also escaped, marched back, and after putting those in the town to the sword, dressed his troops in the dead men's clothes, and so obtained admission to another town which had helped the enemy. But the hero of the campaign was t.i.tus Didius, afterwards Caesar's lieutenant in the Social War. He had some hard fighting and captured Termesus, the chief town of the Arevaci, and Colenda.--He earned his triumph by other means also. There was a town near Colenda, the inhabitants of which the Romans wished to destroy. Didius told them that he would give them the lands of Colenda, and they came to receive their allotments. As soon as they were within his lines, his soldiers set on them and slew them all.

[Sidenote: Africa.] In 96 B.C. Ptolemaus Apion bequeathed Cyrene--a narrow strip of terraced land on the north coast of Africa, situated between the Libyan deserts and the Mediterranean--to Rome. The Romans did not refuse the legacy; but they took no trouble to govern the country. The cities of Cyrene were declared to be free. In other words, while nominally subject to Rome, so that she might interfere when she pleased, they were left to govern themselves. Such government was no government; but it was in accordance with the deliberate policy of the senatorial party.

[Sidenote: Crimes and intrigues of Mithridates.] It was in the same year that Mithridates committed the first of the series of crimes which eventually brought him into collision with Rome. His sister had married the King of Cappadocia. Mithridates a.s.sa.s.sinated him.

Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, seized Cappadocia and married the widowed sister of Mithridates. Having slain one brother-in-law, Mithridates expelled the other, and set on the throne his sister's son. But when his nephew refused to welcome home Gordius, the man who had murdered his father, Mithridates marched against and a.s.sa.s.sinated him. Then he set on the throne his own son, to whom he gave his nephew's name, and made Gordius his guardian. Him the Cappadocians expelled, and raised to the throne another nephew of Mithridates; but Mithridates instantly drove him from power. Nicomedes now appealed to the Senate, and produced, as he a.s.serted, a third nephew of Mithridates as a claimant for the crown. To support his a.s.sertion he sent his wife to Rome to swear she had had three sons. Mithridates, as if in burlesque of the imposture, sent Gordius to swear that the youth on the throne was son of a Cappadocian king who had died more than thirty years before. The Senate decided as a lion might between two jackals quarrelling over a carcase. It took Cappadocia from Mithridates and Paphlagonia from Nicomedes, and declared both countries free. But the Cappadocians clamoured for a king, and so, in 93, the Senate appointed Ariobarzanes I. Mithridates then stirred up Tigranes, King of Armenia, to expel Ariobarzanes, who fled to Rome. Sulla was sent to restore him, and did so in 92, after defeating the Cappadocians under Gordius and the Armenians. [Sidenote: The Romans come in contact with the Parthians.]

It was when he was on this mission that the Romans and Parthians confronted each other for the first time. The Parthians sent an emba.s.sy to ask for the alliance of Rome. Three chairs were set for Ariobarzanes, Sulla, and Orobazus; and Sulla, who was only propraetor, took the central seat. This incensed the Parthian king; and he revenged himself not on Sulla, but on the unfortunate Orobazus, whom he put to death. A Chaldean in the Parthian's suite, after studying Sulla's face, predicted great things for him; which pleased Sulla as much as it would have done Marius, for he believed in his luck just as his rival did in his seventh consulship. But when he came home he was impeached for taking bribes from Ariobarzanes, and no doubt he had made his trip which was so gratifying to his pride not less profitable also, and had had his appet.i.te whetted for a second taste of eastern treasures. Mithridates, meanwhile, was brooding over his humiliation and meditating revenge. He went on a journey incognito through the Roman province of Asia and Bithynia, intending to attack both if he found himself strong enough. When he came back he found that his wife, who was also his sister, had been unfaithful to him, and he put her to death. He had now murdered a wife, a sister, a brother, and a nephew.

He had also imprisoned his mother, and was equally merciless to his sons, his daughters, and his concubines. At his death, it is said, a paper was found in which he had foredoomed his most trusted servants, and he slew all the inmates of his harem in order to hinder them from falling into his enemies' hands.

[Sidenote: Early years of Mithridates.] His whole history is in fact one long record of sensuality, treachery, and murder. From his earliest years he had breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of a.s.sa.s.sination. His father had been a.s.sa.s.sinated when he was eleven years old. His guardians and even his own mother had then plotted to a.s.sa.s.sinate him. They placed him on a wild horse, and made him perform exercises with the javelin on it. When his precocious vigour defeated their hopes, they tried to poison him. But by studying antidotes he made his body poison-proof, or at least was reputed to have done so, and, flying from his enemies, lived for seven years through all the hardships of a wild and wandering life, in which he never slept under a roof, and hunted and fought with wild beasts, to emerge in manhood a very tiger himself for strength, and beauty of body, and ferocity of disposition, a tyrant who spared neither man in his ambition nor woman in his l.u.s.t. [Sidenote: His physical vigour.] His stature was gigantic, his strength and activity such as took captive the imagination of the East. He could, it was believed, outrun the deer; out-eat and out-drink everyone at the banquet; strike down flying game unerringly; tame the wildest steed, and ride 120 miles in a day.

Twenty-two nations obeyed him, and he could speak the dialect of each. A veneer of Greek refinement was spread thinly over the savage animalism of the man. [Sidenote: Pseudo-civilisation of his court.] He was a virtuoso, and had a wonderful collection of rings. He maintained Greek poets and historians, and offered prizes for singing. He had shrewdness enough to employ Greek generals, but not enough to keep him from being grossly superst.i.tious.

[Sidenote: His kingdom and how it was acquired.] For twenty years (110-90 B.C.) he had been with never-resting activity extending his empire, before the Romans a.s.sailed him. He had inherited from his ancestors the kingdom of Pontus, or Cappadocia on the Pontus, which had been one of the two satrapies into which Cappadocia was divided at the time of the Macedonian conquest. Mithridates IV. had married a princess of the Greek race, the sister of Seleucus, King of Syria.

His grandfather had conquered Sinope and Paphlagonia, as far as the Bithynian frontier. His father had helped the Romans in the third Punic War, had been styled the friend of Rome, and had been rewarded with the province of Phrygia nominally for his services against Aristonicus, the pretender to the kingdom of Attalus, but had been deprived of it afterwards when it was found out that really it had been put up for auction by Manius Aquillius, who was completing the subjugation of the adherents of the pretender. The boundaries of Pontus at his accession cannot be strictly defined. On the east it stretched towards the Caucasus and the sources of the Euphrates, Lesser Armenia being dependent on it. On the south and south-west its frontiers were Cappadocia and Galatia. On the west nominally Paphlagonia was the frontier, for the grandfather of Mithridates had been induced by the Romans to promise to evacuate his conquests.

But Sinope was then, and continued to be, the capital of the Pontic kingdom, and both Paphlagonia and Galatia were virtually dependent.

This was the territory to which Mithridates was heir, and which, true to the policy of his father and grandfather, he constantly strove by force or fraud to extend. [Sidenote: Mithridates extends his kingdom.]

To the east of the Black Sea he conquered Colchis on the Phasis, and converted it into a satrapy. To the north he was hailed as the deliverer of the Greek towns on that coast and in the region now known as the Crimea, which from the constant exaction of tribute by barbarous tribes were, in the absence of any protectorate like that of Athens, falling into decay. By sea, and perhaps across the Caucasus by land, Mithridates sent his troops under the Greek generals Neoptolemus and Diophantus. Neoptolemus won a victory over the Tauric Scythians at Panticapaeum (Kertch), and the kingdom of Bosporus in the Crimea was ceded to his master by its grateful king. Diophantus marched westwards as far as the Tyras (Dneister), and in a great battle almost annihilated an army of the Roxolani, a nomadic people who roamed between the Borysthenes (Dneiper) and the Tanais (Don). By these conquests Mithridates acquired a tribute of 200 talents (48,000_l_.), and 270,000 bushels of grain, and a rich recruiting ground for his armies. [Sidenote: His alliance with Tigranes.] On the east he annexed Lesser Armenia, and entered into the closest alliance with Tigranes, King of Greater Armenia, which had lately become a powerful kingdom, giving him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage. If the allies had any defined scheme of conquest, it was that Mithridates should occupy Asia Minor and the coast of the Black Sea, and Tigranes the interior and Syria. How the King intrigued and meddled in Cappadocia and Bithynia has been previously related; and when he had marched into Cappadocia it was at the head of 80,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and 600 scythed chariots.

Such was the history, the power, and the character of the great potentate who had yielded to the demands of Sulla, the propraetor, but who now awaited the attack of Sulla, the proconsul, with proud disdain. Much, indeed, had happened since the year 92 to justify such feelings. Hardly had Sulla reinstated Ariobarzanes when Tigranes drove him out again, and restored the son of Mithridates; while in Bithynia the younger son of Nicomedes, Socrates, appeared in arms against his elder brother, Nicomedes II., who on his father's death had been acknowledged as king by Rome. Socrates had soldiers from Pontus with him; but Mithridates, though his hand was plain in these disturbances, outwardly stood aloof; and the Senate, sending Manius Aquillius to restore the two kings, ordered Mithridates to aid him with troops if they were wanted. [Sidenote: Mithridates submits to Aquillius.] The king submitted as before, not, indeed, sending troops, but without resisting, and as a proof of his complacency put Socrates to death.

This happened in the year 90, when Rome was pressed hardest by the Italians, and at first sight it seems astonishing that he should not have seized on so favourable a moment. But in those days news would travel from the west of Italy to Sinope but slowly and uncertainly, and Mithridates would have the fate of Antiochus in mind to warn him how the foes of the great republic fared, and the history of Pergamus to testify to the prosperity of those who remained its friends.

Sulla's proud tone in 92 would not have lessened this impression; and, before he appealed to force, the crafty king hoped to make his position securer by fraud. Partly, therefore, from real awe, partly because he was not yet ready, he obeyed Aquillius as he had obeyed Sulla. But Aquillius, who had once put up Phrygia to auction, knew what pickings there were for a senator when war was afoot in Asia, and perhaps may have had the honester notion that, as Mithridates was sure to go to war soon, it was for the public as well as for his private interest to act boldly and strike the first blow. So he forced the reluctant Bithynian king to declare war, and to ravage with an army the country round Amastris while his fleet shut up the Bosporus. Still Mithridates did not stir; all that he did was to lodge a complaint with the Romans, and solicit their mediation or their permission to defend himself. [Sidenote: Aquillius forces on a war.] Aquillius replied that he must in no case make war on Nicomedes. It is easy to conceive how such an answer affected a man of the king's temper. He instantly sent his son with an army into Cappadocia. But once more he tried diplomacy. [Sidenote: Ultimatum of Mithridates.] Pelopidas, his envoy, came to Aquillius, and said that his master was willing to aid the Romans against the Italians if the Romans would forbid Nicomedes to attack him, their ally. If not, he wished the alliance to be formally dissolved. Or there was yet another alternative. Let the commissioners and himself appeal to the Senate to decide between them.

The commissioners treated the message as an insult. Mithridates, they said, must not attack Nicomedes, and they intended to restore Ariobarzanes. Possibly the conduct of Aquillius was due to his having been heavily bribed by Nicomedes, who must have felt that when the Romans were gone he would be like a mouse awaiting the cat's spring; for it is difficult to imagine the foolhardiness which without some such tangible stimulus would at that moment have plunged him into war.

[Sidenote: War begun. Energy of Mithridates.] But when once the die was cast, Mithridates threw himself into the war with the energy of long-suppressed rage. He sent to court the alliance of Egypt and the Cretan league, to whom he represented himself as the champion of Greece against her tyrant. He tried to stir up revolts in Thrace and Macedonia. He arranged with Tigranes that an Armenian army should co-operate with him, leaving him the land it occupied, but carrying off the plunder. He gave the word, and a swarm of pirate ships swept the Mediterranean under his colours. He summoned an army of 250,000 foot, 40,000 horse, and 130 scythed chariots, a fleet of 300 decked vessels, and 100 other ships called 'Dicrota' with a double bank of oars. He formed and armed in Roman fashion a foreign contingent, in which many Romans and Italians enlisted; and he placed able Greek generals, Archelaus and Neoptolemus, over his troops. [Sidenote: Forces of Rome.] To meet this formidable array the Romans had a fleet off Byzantium, the army of Nicomedes, which was still between Sinope and Amastris, and three corps, each of 40,000 men, but composed for the most part of hastily organized Asiatics; one under Ca.s.sius between Bithynia and Galatia, another under Aquillius between Bithynia and Pontus, and a third under Oppius in Cappadocia. The war was decided almost in a single battle. [Sidenote: Victory of Mithridates over Nicomedes.] Neoptolemus and Archelaus routed the Bithynian army on the river Amnias, and captured the camp and military chest. It was a fierce and for some time a doubtful fight, and seems to have been decided by the scythed chariots, which spread terror in the Bithynian ranks. [Sidenote: Victory over Aquillius.] Nicomedes fled to Aquillius, who was defeated by Archelaus near Mount Scorobas, and fled with the king across the Sangarius to Pergamus, whence he attempted to reach Rhodes. Ca.s.sius retreated to Phrygia, and tried to discipline his raw levies. But, finding this impossible; he broke up the army and led the Roman troops with him to Apameia. The fleet in the Black Sea was surrendered by its commander.

[Sidenote: Mithridates' progress through Phrygia, Mysia and Asia.]

Thus, triumphant by sea and land, Mithridates, after settling Bithynia, marched through Phrygia and Mysia into the Roman province Asia, and was hailed everywhere as a deliverer, for after his victories he had sent home all his Asiatic prisoners with presents.

Then he sent messengers into Lycia and Pamphylia to seek the alliance of those countries. Oppius was in Laodicea, on the Lycus. The king offered the townsmen immunity if they surrendered him, and, when they did so, carried him about as a show. [Sidenote: Fate of Aquillius.]

Aquillius was also given up by the Mytileneans and made to ride in chains on an a.s.s, calling out who he was wherever he went. At Pergamus Mithridates slew him by pouring molten gold down his throat--a savage punishment, which, however, confirms the impression that it was Roman avarice which forced on the war. Magnesia on the Maeander, Ephesus, and Mitylene welcomed the king joyfully, and Stratoniceia, in Caria, was captured. He then attacked Magnesia near Mount Sipylus, prepared to invade Rhodes, and issued a hideous order for an exterminating ma.s.sacre of every Roman and Italian in Asia on an appointed day.

Punishments were proclaimed for anyone who should hide one of the proscribed or bury his body; rewards were promised for all who killed or denounced them. Slaves who slew their masters were to be freed. The murder of a creditor was to be taken as payment by a debtor of half his debt. [Ma.s.sacre of Romans and Italians.] There were dreadful scenes on the fatal day--the thirtieth after the order was issued--in the Asiatic cities. In Pergamus the victims fled to the temple of Aesculapius, and were shot down as they clung to the statues. At Ephesus they were dragged out from the temple of Artemis and slain. At Adramyttium they swam out to sea, but were brought back and killed, and their children were drowned. At Cos alone was any mercy shown.

There those who had taken refuge in the temple of Aesculapius were spared. The number of the slain was said to be 80,000 or even 120,000, which must have been, however, an incredible exaggeration. [Sidenote: Objects of the ma.s.sacre.] By this fiendish crime Mithridates must, though he was mistaken, have felt that he cut himself off for ever from all reconciliation with Rome. But no doubt he acted on calculation. For not only did he get rid of men who might have recruited the Roman armies; not only did he gratify the long-h.o.a.rded hatred of the farmers and peasants of whom Roman publicans and Roman slave-masters had so long made a prey; not only did he oblige the debtors by wiping out their debts and even the very memory of them in their creditors' blood, but he might well count on putting his accomplices also beyond the pale of Roman mercy, and so linking them to his own fortunes. Moreover, vengeance seemed remote. For Sulla had just marched on Rome instead of to the east, and a civil war in Italy might make Mithridates permanently supreme in Asia. [Sidenote: Mithridates' settlement of his new acquisitions.] So he made Pergamus his capital, leaving Sinope to his son as vice-regent, while Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Bithynia were turned into satrapies. All arrears of taxes were remitted; and so wealthy had his spoils made him that exemption for five years to come was promised to the towns that had obeyed his orders.

[Sidenote: Reverses of Mithridates. He retires to Pergamus.] But the tide was already on the turn. In Paphlagonia there was still resistance. Archelaus was repulsed and wounded at Magnesia.

Mithridates in person was forced to abandon the siege of Rhodes. His revenge was sated; he was tired of the hardships of a war which he meant his generals to conduct in future; and with a new wife he went back to Pergamus, to his rings, and his music, and debaucheries, at the very time that a shudder had gone through Italy at the tidings of the ma.s.sacre, and when Sulla was on his way to avenge it.