Mithridatic Wars

Now Tigranes and Mithridates traversed the country [*](B.C. 68) collecting a new army, the command of which was committed to Mithridates, because Tigranes thought that his disasters must have taught him some lessons. They also sent messengers to Parthia to solicit aid from that quarter. Lucullus sent opposing legates asking that the Parthians should either help him or remain neutral. Their king made secret agreements with both, but was in no haste to help either of them. Mithridates manufactured arms in every town. The soldiers he recruited were almost wholly Armenians. From these he selected the bravest to the number of about 70,000 foot and half that number of horse and dismissed the rest. He divided them into companies and cohorts as nearly as possible according to the Italian system, and turned them over to Pontic officers to be trained. When Lucullus moved toward them Mithridates, with all the foot-soldiers and a part of the horse, held his forces together on a hill. Tigranes, with the rest of the horse, attacked the Roman foragers and was beaten, for which reason the Romans foraged more freely afterward even in the vicinity of Mithridates himself, and encamped near him. Again a great dust arose indicating the approach of Tigranes. The two kings had resolved to surround Lucullus. The latter perceived their movement and sent forward the best of his horse to engage Tigranes at as great a distance as possible, and prevent him from deploying from his line of march into order of battle. He also challenged Mithridates to fight. [*](At this place there is a lacuna in the text.) He began to surround him with a ditch, but could not draw him out. Finally, winter came on and interrupted the work on both sides.

Tigranes now withdrew into the interior of Armenia and Mithridates hastened to what was left of his own kingdom of Pontus, taking with him 4000 of his own troops and as many more that he had received from Tigranes. Lucullus slowly followed him, but was obliged to turn back frequently for want of provisions. Mithridates made haste and attacked Fabius, who had been left in command by Lucullus, put him to flight, and killed 500 of his men. Fabius freed the slaves who had been in his camp and fought again an entire day, but the battle was going against him until Mithridates was struck by a stone on the knee and wounded by a dart under the eye, and was hastily carried out of the fight. For many days thereafter his forces were alarmed for his safety, and the Romans were quiet on account of the great number of wounds they had received. Mithridates was cured by the Agari, a Scythian tribe, who make use of the poison of serpents as remedies. Some of this tribe always accompanied the king as physicians. Triarius, the other general of Lucullus, now came with his own army to the assistance of Fabius and received from the latter his forces and authority. He and Mithridates not long afterward joined battle, during which a tempest of wind, the like of which had not been known in the memory of man, tore down the tents of both, swept away their beasts of burden, and even dashed some of their men over precipices. Both sides then retreated. [*](Y.R. 687)

News having been received that Lucullus was corning, Triarius hastened to anticipate his action and made a night attack upon the outposts of Mithridates. The fight continued for a long time doubtful, until the king made a powerful charge on that division of the enemy that was opposed to him and decided the battle. He broke through their ranks and drove their infantry into a muddy trench, where they were unable to stand and were slaughtered. He pursued their horse over the plain and made the most spirited use of the stroke of good luck until a certain Roman centurion, who was riding with him in the guise of an attendant, gave him a severe wound with a sword in the thigh, as he could not expect to pierce his back through his corselet. Those who were near immediately cut the centurion in pieces. Mithridates was carried to the rear and his friends recalled the army, by a hasty signal, from their [*](B.C. 67) splendid victory. Confusion befell them by reason of the unexpectedness of the signal, and fear lest some disaster had happened elsewhere. When they learned what it was they gathered around the person of the king on the plain in consternation, until Timotheus, his physician, had stanched the blood and lifted the king up so that he could be seen. In like manner in India, when Alexander was cured, he showed himself on a ship to the Macedonians, who were alarmed about him. As soon as Mithridates came to himself he reproved those who had recalled the army from the fight, and led his men again the same day against the camp of the Romans. But they had already fled from it in terror. In stripping the dead there were found 24 tribunes and 150 centurions. So great a number of officers had seldom fallen in any single Roman defeat.

Mithridates withdrew into the country which the Romans now call Lesser Armenia, taking all the provisions he could and spoiling what he could not carry, so as to prevent Lucullus from getting any on his march. At this juncture a certain Roman of senatorial rank, named Attidius, a fugitive from justice, who had been with Mithridates a long time and had enjoyed his friendship, was detected in a conspiracy against him. The king condemned him to death, but not to torture, because he had once been a Roman senator. His fellow-conspirators were subjected to dreadful tortures. The freedmen who were cognizant of the designs of Attidius he dismissed unharmed, because they were under obligations to their patron. When Lucullus was already encamped near Mithridates, the proconsul of Asia sent heralds to proclaim that Rome had accused Lucullus of unnecessarily prolonging the war, and had ordered that the soldiers under him be dismissed, and that the property of those who did not obey this order should be confiscated. When this information was received the army disbanded at once, all but a few, who remained with Lucullus because they were very poor and did not fear the penalty.

So it turned out that the Mithridatic war under Lucullus came to no fixed and definite conclusion. The Romans, torn by revolts in Italy and threatened with famine by pirates on the sea, considered it inopportune to undertake another war of this magnitude until their present troubles were ended. When Mithridates perceived this he again invaded Cappadocia and fortified his own kingdom. The Romans overlooked these transactions while they were clearing the sea. When this was accomplished, and while Pompey, the destroyer of the pirates, was still in Asia, the Mithridatic war was at once resumed and the command of it given to Pompey. Since the campaign at sea was a part of the operations under his command, which was begun before his Mithridatic war, and has not found proper mention elsewhere in my history, it seems well to introduce it here and to run over the events as they occurred. [*](Y.R. 666)

When Mithridates first went to war with the Romans [*](B.C. 88) and subdued the province of Asia (Sulla being then in difficulties respecting Greece), he thought that he should not hold the province long, and accordingly plundered it in all sorts of ways, as I have mentioned above, and sent out pirates on the sea. In the beginning they prowled around with a few small boats worrying the inhabitants like robbers. As the war lengthened they became more numerous and navigated larger ships. Relishing their large gains, they did not desist when Mithridates was defeated, made peace, and retired. Having lost both livelihood and country by reason of the war and fallen into extreme destitution, they harvested the sea instead of the land, at first with pinnaces and hemiolii, then with two-bank and three-bank ships, sailing in squadrons under pirate chiefs, who were like generals of an army. They fell upon unfortified towns. They undermined or battered down the walls of [*](Y.R. 669) others, or captured them by regular siege and plundered 85 [*](B.C. 85) them. They carried off the wealthier citizens to their haven of refuge and held them for ransom. They scorned the name of robbers and called their takings the prize of warfare. They had artisans chained to their tasks and were continually bringing in materials of timber, brass, and iron. Being elated by their gains and determined not to change their mode of life yet, they likened themselves to kings, rulers, and great armies, and thought that if they should all come together in the same place they would be invincible. They built ships and made all kinds of arms. Their chief seat was at a place called the Crags in Cilicia, which they had chosen as their common anchorage and encampment. They had castles and towers and desert islands and retreats everywhere. They chose for their principal rendezvous the coast of Cilicia where it was rough and harborless and rose in high mountain peaks, for which reason they were all called by the common name of Cilicians. Perhaps this evil had its beginning among the men of the Crags of Cilicia, but thither also men of Syrian, Cyprian, Pamphylian, and Pontic origin and those of almost all the Eastern nations had congregated, who, on account of the long continuance of the Mithridatic war, preferred to do wrong rather than to suffer it, and for this purpose chose the sea instead of the land.

Thus, in a very short time, they increased in number to tens of thousands. They dominated now not only the Eastern waters, but the whole Mediterranean to the Pillars of Hercules. They vanquished some of the Roman prætors in naval engagements, and among others the prætor of Sicily on the Sicilian coast itself. No sea could be navigated in safety, and land remained untilled for want of commercial intercourse. The city of Rome felt this evil most keenly, her subjects being distressed and herself suffering grievously from hunger by reason of her very greatness. It appeared to them to be a great and difficult task to destroy so large a force of seafaring men scattered everywhither on land and sea, and so nimble of flight, sallying out from no particular country or any known places, having no habitation or anything of their own, but only what they might chance to light upon. Thus both the greatness and the unexampled nature of this war, which was subject to no laws and had nothing tangible or visible about it, caused perplexity and fear on all sides. Murena had attacked them, but accomplished nothing worth mention, nor had Servilius Isauricus, who succeeded him. And now the pirates contemptuously assailed the coasts of Italy, around Brundusium and Etruria, and seized and carried off some women of noble families who were travelling, and also two prætors with their very insignia of office. [*](Y.R. 687)