133-44 B.C. PONTUS AND ITS NEIGHBOURS; THE FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR

Professor of Ancient History in Yale University, and IL A. Ormf.ro n, M.A., F.S.A.,

I. The country. Social and economic conditions . . . . 21 r The land and its products . . . . „ . .212 Social and economic structure . . . . . . 214.

Bithynia and Cappadoeia * . . . . * ,234 Shortlived expansion in Asia Minor . - * . * 236

'The advance to Greece » . « * - , *24^ The siege of Athens and the Piraeus . * * . . 246 Operations in Central Greece ..**.* 249 The battle of Chaeronea . . , , . . * 250 The battle of Orehomemis . . . * . « * 2 % 3

VII* Reaction against Mjthrk dates, pkkmmwarim of peace . . 254 The arrival of Flaecits * . . . * - * z%$

Fimbria in Ask Minor * * , - . * .257 ^fFhe settlement in Asia Minor * * . . . ,259

A SI A Minor is divided by nature and has been divided by history into two parts. There is the western seaboard which, with its mild climatc, its fair and rich river-valleys and excellent harbours, looking towards the open Aegean whence came the civilizing influences of Hellenism, may fittingly be called Anatolian Greece. In contrast with this, there is the eastern interior, which has for its home waters the landlocked Black Sea, once an Iranian, Scytho-Persian lake, and which looked to the East and lived the life of the neighbouring Oriental monarchies¹. Of this part (which also included Armenia, Commagene, Galatia, Lycaonia and a part of Phrygia) Pontus or Pontic Cappadocia, the nucleus of the Mithridatic empire, and Great or Tauric Cappadocia form the western sector. These Cappadocian lands were once the centre of the eastward-looking Hittite empire; then, after that empire broke up, there came anarchy, until in due course they became part of the Phrygian empire and later a satrapy of Persia. Even after Alexander, these Eastern-Anatolian fragments of the Persian empire remained closely connected with the East, with the Seleucid empire and also with that of Parthia, and absorbed very little Greek life and civilization. -

Cappadocian PontuS, including the mountains of the Paryadres and Paphlagonia, occupies a peculiar position among the lands of Eastern Asia Minor. Though closely connected with the rest and showing the same general geographical features, the northern part of Cappadocia, the mountainous land along the southern shore of the Black Sea and the regions north and west of the deep channel of the ‘red' or ‘salt’ river Halys, is more diversified climatically, more varied but with less violent contrasts than the adjoining Cappadocian plateau, of which the northernmost section was also regarded as belonging to Pontus. The mountain ranges which branch off the Caucasus and run west parallel to the southern shore of the Black Sea are intersected by rivers which Work their ¹ On these connections see R. Dussaud, La Lydie et ses voisins aux Hautes Epoques. ' "

way painfully through the mountains towards the sea. Short and swift in the east they become longer and less torrential the more we advance towards the west. Three of them—the Thermodon, the famous river of the Amazons, the Iris and the Halys—form in their lower courses wide fertile deltas which are the only points in the Pontus where the mountains recede from the shore and where the coast affords safe harbourage from the storms and winds of the inhospitable sea (Pontus Axeinos).

Behind the coast the country is a sequence of river-vallcys, wide or narrow, of broad lakes, of gentle hills, of high mountains with green slopes, often covered with groves of trees, including wild fruit-trees, and rising to bare rocks and peaks. The climate in these mountains and by the shore is much milder than that of the Cappadocian table-land, so hot in summer and so bitterly cold in winter, and the soil is much more fertile. Pontus had the reputation of being a rich land: cattle, sheep and horses, crops and fruits, especially grapes and olives and the famous Pontic nuts and cherries—a name said to be derived from Cerasus, a Greek city on the coast—and an amazing profusion of flowers and aromatic shrubs are enumerated as characteristic products.

Still more important was the fact that the eastern part of Pontus was very rich in metals: first and foremost iron, but also copper and silver. It was the mining district par excellence of the ancient Near East including Egypt; and the almost unanimous tradition of the ancient world ascribed the ‘invention’ of iron and steel to the clever smiths of the Chalybes. It was this wealth in metals which, above all, governed the historical destinies of Pontus. For hundreds of years caravans had carried its metals to Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine, and even to the shores of the Sea of Marmara and of the Dardanelles and to the western coast of Asia Minor. It was, however, not long before the Greeks realized to the full the advantage of using the Black Sea for the export of metals into their home countries. It was the beginning of Greek colonization of its southern shores. Sinope and Trapc-zus, the first a clearing-house for commerce in metals, the second the harbour of the mining districts, were the earliest foundations in this region, and they kept this trade in their hands for centuries. Next was settled Amisus, the Athenian Piraeus of the Black Sea, a rival of Sinope for the trade with the Crimea and the South Russian Greek settlements, and, last of all, Heraclea and the towns which later combined to form the city of Amastris much farther to the west on the Bithynian coast, communities which set themselves to compete with Amisus and Sinope alike.

With the Greek cities came Hellenic life and culture. Were it not for the comparatively detailed descriptions of Strabo we should know little about them before the Roman period, for no one of these cities has been excavated, nor have they been often visited and studied by modern archaeologists. But we may fairly deduce that they resembled other Black Sea colonies, and we can be certain that their presence made the life of the coast Greek. Yet for a long time the hellenized coast remained the fringe of a land that was alien and designed by nature to remain so. From time immemorial the land of Pontus has turned its back to the sea. The mountains rarely slope gently down to the coast, and most of the rivers are either not navigable at all or for a short stretch only of their course. The hellenization of the coast had no significance for the economic development of Pontus as a whole; it was, indeed, dictated by considerations that had almost nothing to do with Pontus, except for the minerals produced in one remote corner of it. Thus the prosperity of these Greek cities is not the index of the prosperity of the hinterland and was not dependent upon it. As the inland valleys and mountains of Pontus meant little or nothing to these Greek cities, so these cities did little or nothing to influence the culture of Pontus.

Thus even after the Greek colonization of the coast, the political, social and economic structure of the interior remained almost exactly what it had been in the Hittite period. It was of the same Anatolian character as that which is plainly to be detected in Seleucid Asia Minor and Pergamum (see vol. vii, p. 176; vol. viii, chap. xix). But nowhere else in Asia Minor was it so well preserved in Hellenistic and early Roman times, and for no other region (except Commagene) have we so full and trustworthy a description of it as we have for Pontus and Cappadocia. For Pontus was the native land of Strabo, and his exceptionally detailed account of it affords evidence which is here in place, since this structure was the backbone of Pontic strength in the period of the Great Mithridates.

It was in Cappadocia proper that this order of things existed in its purest form. The land was ruled by kings and subdivided into ten districts or strategiai each with its own governor. Two governorships alone—Tyana and Cilicia—had urban centres. The capital of Cilicia—Mazaca or Eusebeia (in the Hellenistic period) —-was the national metropolis, the fortified residence (like a military camp) of the king. No cities existed in the rest of Cappadocia¹, Most of the people lived in villages, or in what Strabo

calls komopoleis or polichnia. Even more characteristic were the strongholds mostly built high up on hills and mountains. Some of them were held for the kings and gave security to the royal possessions and slaves and serfs, while others rendered the same services to the friends of the king or the leaders (Jiegemones), feudal barons of the country.

Another typical feature of Cappadocia were the temples. Four leading temples are described with great detail by Strabo; the temple of Ma at Comana, of the Cataonian Apollo, of Zeus Venasios, and of Artemis Perasia. Another temple of Zeus near the mount Ariadne is mentioned by Diodorus (xxxi, 34) as rich and important enough to be pillaged by Orophernes in 158 B.C. (vol. viii, p. 522). Some of the temples, such as that of Apollo, had daughter foundations scattered over the countryside. All had the same character. The fullest description is given by Strabo where he speaks of the temple of Ma at Comana. ‘ In this Antitaurus,’ he says (xxi, 535), ‘there are deep and narrow valleys, in which are situated Comana and the temple of Enyo, whom the people there call “Ma.” It is a considerable city; its inhabitants, however, consist mostly of the divinely-inspired people and the temple-slaves who live in it. Its inhabitants are Cataonians, who, though subjects of the king, in most matters obey the priest. The priest is master of the temple, and also of the temple-slaves, who 011 my sojourn there were more than six thousand in number, men and women together. Also, considerable land belongs to the temple, and the revenue is enjoyed by the priest. He is second in rank in Cappadocia after the king; and in general the priests belonged to the same family as the kings.’

The social and economic structure of the Pontic region² was, apart from some modifications which will be mentioned later (p. 223), almost exactly the same as that of Cappadocia. The king’s residences were scattered all over the country. The capital city of the Mithridatid dynasty was Amasia, whose citadel was held by a garrison under the command of a military governor (j>hrourarchosf‘. No man was allowed to enter the citadel without a special permission of the ■phrourarchos**, who often was an eunuch⁴. In the citadel were the palace of the kings and a large altar, dedicated no doubt to the divine protector of the dynasty—the Iranian Ahura-mazda, slightly hellenized under the name of Zeus Stratios. Rockcut tombs beneath the citadel contained the mortal remains

of the first four Mithridatidae. The rulers who preceded them had dwelt elsewhere, as in the strongholds of Gaziura and Cabeira¹.

Like Cappadocia, Pontus was subdivided into districts or provinces called eparchies as in Parthia, probably with strategoi as governors². As in Cappadocia, fortified strongholds both of the kings and of the nobles were scattered all over the country. Strabo mentions the Kainon Chorion, Ikizari (or Kizari), Sagylion, Kamisa, Pimolisa and Kimiata. The owners of these castles, the feudal barons, were most of them of Iranian origin; one of them known from a Greek inscription is called Pharnabazus, while his vassal bears a Greek or hellenized name—Meriones³. No cities existed in Pontus except the Greek cities of the coast. Those which are mentioned in our sources as Greek cities, not as native quasicities, were created by the Mithridatid dynasty and will be dealt with later. The typical form of settlement was the village. The rich plain near Amasia had the name of Chiliokomon (thousand villages) and we are told that Murena overran in one raid four hundred villages (p. 353).

Temples of exactly the same character as those of Cappadocia play a great part in the life of the country. It is interesting to note that though these were dedicated to gods of various origin (the Cappadocian Ma, the Anatolian Men Pharnaku, the Iranian Anaitis with her two acolytes, and the hellenized Zeus Stratios), they all were organized in the Oriental fashion with a chief priest, with a large number of sacred slaves or serfs of both sexes, some of the women slaves being temple-prostitutes, and with vast stretches of land from which the income went into the treasury of the temple or the chief priest. Near the large komopolis of Ameria was situated the temple of Men, a god important enough to play the leading rdle alongside the Tyche of the king in his royal oath. The temple at the large village of Comana in Pontus was the counterpart of that in Cappadocia. Comana itself was the chief emporium for commerce with Armenia, and the temple, with its 6000 sacred serfs, and the town were noted for their luxury and

² Cf. the inscription Studia Pontica> m, no. 66,1. 37, and Th. Reinach, ib. p. 85. The inscription mentions vTrapxtcu in Paphlagonia, and Reiriach, contrary to his former opinion, was inclined in 1910 to correct the inrapxia? of Strabo xii, 560 (on which the statement in the text is based) into virapx^at-The present writer sees no reason for such a correction. The Pontic iirap%ia.t, were probably subdivided into i»7rap%/at. On Parthia, see M. I. Rostovtzeff and C. B. Welles, A Parchment Contract of loan from Dura~Europus, Yale Classical Studies, 11, 1930, p. 49.

dissipated life, a paradise for soldiers and for merchants. No less famous was the temple of Anaitis near Zela. The excavation of one or more of the Pontic or Cappadocian temples, which has hitherto not been attempted, would throw a much needed light on the organization and culture of these great centres of Anatolian life. Of the variety of races which lived together, the various cults which met in the Pontus are eloquent and our sources speak of twenty-two languages spoken in the region, a fact which indeed is not surprising in view of the many languages which were in use during the Hittite period.

Such in short was the land which was organized into a solid state by the efforts of the dynasty of the Mithridatidae of which the greatest representative was Mithridates VI Eupator, who at last, in 89 B.C., ventured to challenge the power of Rome.

It is beyond doubt that the dynasty of the Mithridatidae, which ruled in Pontus from at least 302 b.c. until the last offspring of it, Darius, son of Pharnaces II, was removed from the throne, belonged to the highest Persian nobility (their claim to be descendants of the Persian king has, of course, no foundation), to a family which was connected with Asia Minor for many generations. The identity of the earliest two representatives of the family, Mithridates and Ariobarzanes, is still a matter of controversy. It seems, however, more or less certain that the Mithridates whose end was reported by the historian Hieronymus³ was one of the lesser city-dynasts of Asia Minor of the late Persian and early Hellenistic period. His city was Cius on the Propontis. Whatever his early history may have been, in the closing years of the fourth century, when he was more than eighty years of age, he supported Antigonus and planned to betray him. Whether he was at that time with Antigonus or in his own city of Cius while his son, also named Mithridates, was with Antigonus, or whether both of them were in Antigonus’ camp we do not know. So much is certain, that the king became suspicious and decided to get rid of his former allies, both father and son. Warning was given of it to the younger Mithridates by his friend, the prince Demetrius, who

was almost of the same age, and Mithridates fled, perhaps together with his father, who was soon killed either on his flight in Paphlagonia, or near his own city.

In the turmoil of the events after Ipsus Mithridates the younger, who established his residence in Paphlagonian Kimiata, one of the Pontic strongholds, gradually succeeded in building up for himself a kingdom which he successfully defended against Seleucus L Whether, however, he or his father is to be regarded as the founder ([ktistes) of the kingdom and dynasty is a matter of controversy. Almost all modern scholars are Inclined to give the credit to the younger Mithridates, but this opinion must be revised in the light of an inscription which, though several times published, has not been taken into account by recent historians of the Pontic kingdom¹.

The problem is closely connected with the question of the Pontic Era. It is known that Mithridates the Great used an era which started with the year 297 B.C., the first year of the Bithy-nian Era². This era was still in use in the Bosporan kingdom in imperial times, and we have a synchronism which admits of no doubt as regards its starting-point. The same era was apparently used by Eupator’s predecessor and father Mithridates Euer-getes, as is shown by an inscription found at Ineboli (Abonutei-chos) and dated by the king Euergetes and the year 161 of an unknown era³. If this era be the Bithynian and Pontic Era, the inscription belongs to the year 137/6 B.C. If we assume the Seleucid Era, the adoption of which by the Mithridatidae is perhaps less difficult to explain than the adoption of the Bithynian Era, then the date corresponds to 151 b.c., a date which fits equally well, since Euergetes was no doubt ruling as early as 149.

The era of Euergetes may then be either the Bithynian or the Seleucid. But, twenty years ago, the important inscription mentioned above was found in the ruins of Chersonesus in the Crimea (see further below, p. 221). It contains the oaths taken by the city of Chersonesus and a king Pharnaces of Pontus and is dated as in

¹ The inscription from Chersonesus, first published and discussed by R. Chr. Loeper, BulL de la Comm. Arch._% xi,v, 1912, pp. 23 sqq.\ cf. E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 646, no. 172 (cfc p. 518 and p. 590, n. 1)5 los. P.E.

² Loeper, Bull, de PInst. Arch. Russe de Constantinople, vui₉ 1903, pp. 159 sqq. (in Russian), is of the opinion that both the Bithynian and the Pontic Era started with the same year, because the rulers of both realms assumed the royal title in this year, a little later than the other Hellenistic kings.

³ Loeper, tb. vm, 1902, pp. 153 sqq.\ Th. Reinach, Num. Chron. v, 1905, pp. 113 sqq.

the year 157 of the era of Pharnaces. This era cannot be the same as that used by Eupator, for if it is the Bithynian, it gives the date 140 B.C., when Pharnaces I was long dead and buried, and Pharnaces II was not yet born; and if it is the Seleucid, it gives the date 155, which is also too late for Pharnaces I, since his brother and successor Mithridates Philopator Philadelphus was ruling in 156⁴. The era of Pharnaces nrust then have some other starting-point, which may be discovered. A treaty between Chersonesus and Pharnaces is most intelligible if it followed closely upon the war which raged from c. 183 to 179 B.C. between Pharnaces and a coalition of Anatolian states. In the peace which ended the war Chersonesus was included, and it seems logical to connect the treaty of the inscription with the peace-treaty, and to place it about the year 179. If that is so, then the era used by Pharnaces will begin in 336 B.C., which is precisely the year in which, according to Diodorus, the elder Mithridates began to rule in Cius. From this it follows that Pharnaces used an era which went back to the rule of the elder Mithridates and thus treated him as the founder of the dynasty⁵. Why Mithridates Euergetes changed to the Seleucid or the Bithynian Era and why Eupator used only the Bithynian we cannot tell. If then we place the ruler of Cius at the head of the dynasty as Mithridates I, it becomes possible to avoid the expedient of inserting a hypothetical Mithridates into the list of the kings in order to make Eupator what our sources declare him to have been, the sixth Mithridates and the eighth king of Pontus⁶. It also becomes possible to explain the number of royal graves at Amasia, the capital of the early kings. There are four of these and a fifth still unfinished. It was Pharnaces I who moved to Sinope and probably was buried there so that the unfinished fifth tomb may well be his; and if so the other four just suffice for the elder and younger Mithridates, Ariobarzanes and Mithridates the father of Pharnaces⁷.

We may then assign to the younger Mithridates the credit, not of founding the dynasty, but of building up the power of Pontus. His endeavours, as those of his immediate successors, were directed towards the same goal as those of his neighbours of Bithynia,

Pergamum and Cappadocia. Amid the political chaos of the times they sought to extend their borders and, above all, to include within them as many Greek cities as possible. From time to time in the course of these endeavours the Pontic kings emerge for a moment into the light of history, and it is possible to detect some of the stages in the growth of the monarchy from its beginning to the accession of Mithridates VI.

It is not known when they succeeded in adding to their king-^ dom the city of Amisus and its rich territory inhabited by people who in Roman times were reputed excellent agriculturists¹. In about 255 B.C.² Amisus was certainly dependent on Mithridates III, since the city supplied the king and his army with grain sent through Heraclea at the time of a Gallic invasion. Since, however, the Pontic kings never thought of making the city their capital, it seems that Amisus retained a good deal of its autonomy and probably was, at least in theory, an allied not a subject city. It is equally unknown when the Pontic kings, while leaving alone for the moment the territory of Sinope, first reached the coast to the west of that city. Since Amastris was given to Ariobarzanes, the son and co-ruler of Mithridates II, by Eumenes its dynast as early as 279^s, the cities to the east of Amastris were no doubt reduced to obedience still earlier (we know that Abonuteichos was Pontic in 137/6 or 151/0 B.C.). Thus from 279 onwards the river Parthenius marked the frontier of Pontus to the west. How far the first four Mithridatid kings extended their power to the east and south we do not know. Armenia Minor was probably a vassal state, and Pontus had control of the rich mining districts of the Chalybes, perhaps even before the conquest of Pharnaces I. It was under the first four kings that a close. connection was established between their dynasty and the Seleucids, when Mithridates III married Laodice, sister of Seleucus II and daughter of Antiochus II,andgave his own daughter Laodice to Antiochus III.

A new epoch begins with the reign of Pharnaces I, the ambitious and talented son of Mithridates III. He appears on the horizon for the first time in 1 83 B.C., when he was trying, after the downfall of the great Seleucid monarchy, to enlarge his kingdom at the expense of his neighbours, the Pergamenes and the Bithynians. In the main the attempt was abortive. However, Pharnaces I succeeded in taking and keeping Sinope and its territory, thus making good the failure of his predecessor in 220 B.C., when the city received the efficient help of Rhodes (vol. vm, p. 625). It

was at Sinope that from 183 onwards was established the main residence of the kings, an event eloquent of the claim of Pontus to belong to the family of completely hellenized monarchies.

In the great war which began with the taking of Sinope Pharnaces aimed at creating a kind of empire such as was later achieved by his grandson Eupator. It is surprising to find mentioned in the treaty which ended the war⁸, alongside the important monarchies and cities, the relatively insignificant town of Chersonesus and Gatalus, the Sarmatian, apparently its ally. We have seen, too, that this inclusion of Chersonese in the treaty was probably closely followed by a special treaty between Pharnaces and Chersonesus. These two facts and the interest which Rome took in Chersonesus can only be explained by assuming that Pharnaces sought to extend his empire into the Crimea and to seize Chersonesus as his starting-point. This attempt explains the general character of the treaty, which aims chiefly at denying to Pharnaces the right to encroach on the liberty and democracy of Chersonesus; it also helps us to understand the fact that both Heraclea (together with Mesembria and Cyzicus) and a Sarmatian king, no doubt allies of Chersonesus, took part in the war. Gatalus, the Sarmatian, was probably used as a check upon the Scythians, allies of Pharnaces⁹, whereas Heraclea, Cyzicus and Mesembria were anxious to maintain freedom of trade in the Black Sea. The failure of Pharnaces was also attested by his retrocession of Tieum or Tius,, the neighbour of Amastris, which he had succeeded in conquering during the war, a conquest which probably gave Heraclea additional cause to take an active part in the war. For a while, no doubt, the progress of Pontus was stopped, though it is very probable that, either in the same war or perhaps later, Pharnaces succeeded in extending his territory on the sea coast towards the east, where he annexed the colonies of Sinope, Cerasus and Cotyora, and transported their populations to a new city named after himself Pharnaceia. In the second half of his reign, however, the king was still feeling the results of his failure. An Athenian decree set up at Delos¹⁰ shows that in 172/1 or 160/59 he was still suffering under a serious financial strain and found it difficult to meet his previous obligations towards Athens.

The reason was probably the heavy cost of the war and of the war-indemnities which the treaty forced him to pay. And yet he was not discouraged, and worked hard to counteract the progress of Rome, if that is the explanation of his marriage late in life with Nysa, the daughter or grand-daughter of Antiochus III, a marriage which is attested by the same decree.

The date of his death is unknown. The current view is that he died about 170/69, when Polybius gives a short characterization of him. But it is far from certain that similar general remarks of Polybius are obituary notices, and it is not impossible that he lived longer¹¹. In his policy, perhaps during the second part of his reign, he was assisted by his brother, who became his successor and, presumably after his death, married their common sister Laodice. We have beautiful coins¹² of both Pharnaces and his brother and successor Mithridates Philopator Philadelphus and his sister-wife Laodice, while the coins of two kings named Mithridates, which, no doubt, are earlier than those of Pharnaces, may be assigned to Mithridates II and Mithridates IIP. A Delian inscription¹³, indeed, suggests that Philopator like Ariobarzanes before him ruled together with his brother, and the same inscription suggests further that Laodice, their sister, had a share in this joint rule. This fact makes it the more difficult to find out the exact date of the death of Pharnaces. The fact, however, that Philopator made a dedication in Rome probably soon after 16 S/7¹⁴, and that he alone is mentioned as helping Attalus against Prusias in 156 B.C. makes it probable that Pharnaces died not very long after 17 2/1 B.C., one of the two possible dates of his marriage with Nysa¹⁵.

Philopator, who ruled on behalf of Euergetes the young son of Pharnaces and Nysa, was probably dead before 149 b.c.₅ for in this year Euergetes helped the Romans against Carthage. Later, in 133 B.C., Euergetes appears again assisting the Romans, this time against Aristonicus (p. 105), As has already been mentioned he appears in an inscription belonging to 137/6 B.C. or to 15 i/o(p. 2 17)¹⁶.

The most important event in the reign of Euergetes was his participation in the war against Aristonicus and what happened after the end of this war. He and Nicomedes king of Bithynia were rivals for the possession of Phrygia (p. 106), and an inscription found near Synnada¹ shows that he was successful in his endeavours and ruled over Phrygia until the end of his life. This suggests that he had both Paphlagonia and Galatia under his control. He was equally successful in occupying Cappadocia and placing on its throne a king who was practically his vassal (Ariarathes Epiphanes, who married the daughter of Euergetes) and in adding to his kingdom the part of Paphlagonia which was still ruled by its own kings. The last of them, Pylaemenes, bequeathed his kingdom to Euergetes. Euergetes was married to a queen whose name is not known to us, but who was probably a princess of the Seleucid house².

Scanty as is the information which we possess on the first Mithridatidae we can recognize the general lines of their policy. Their chief aim was to consolidate and to increase their kingdom, and to this end they used all the available means, no more disturbed about their moral or immoral character than all their crowned and uncrowned contemporaries. One of these means was the use of the resources which Greek civilization offered them. This, along with the increased income which could be derived from the Greek cities, made them strive first and foremost to incorporate their Greek neighbours in their kingdom. What they needed from them was their help in organizing an efficient army and navy, in improving the organization of their revenues and in assisting them to acquire a good reputation in the eyes of the Greek world, for which they cared very much indeed.

How far they intended to hellenize the non-Greek parts of their kingdom it is very difficult to say. No doubt they had not the slightest desire to force urban life xipon Pontus as a whole. Only one city designated by a dynastic name and at all comparable with those which were created in scores by the Seleucids was created by the predecessors of Eupator. It was Laodicea, known to us only from coins and from the survival of the name (modern Ladik)¹⁷. The synoecism of Cerasus and Cotyora and the creation of Pharnaceia by Pharnaces I have nothing to do either with urbanization or with hellenization.

² Her identification with the Laodice of a silver tetrad rachm is very problematic.

So long as no one of these Greek cities has been excavated, we have no means of knowing how the Pontic kings treated the few cities which they incorporated in their realm. A priori it is probable that Amisus, Amastris and the other cities which were annexed before Pharnaces I enjoyed a larger amount of autonomy than Sinope, the capital of the later Mithridatidae, and the new creations Pharnaceia and Laodicea. On the other hand Phar-naceia as well as Amastris was allowed to mint copper earlier than the reign of Eupator¹.

Thus from the Greek point of view, Pontus after two centuries of the rule of the Mithridatid dynasty remained a country of villages and temples not of cities. This does not mean, however, that more or less hellenized urban centres did not develop there. The capital of Pontus before Pharnaces I and the home of Strabo, Amasia, had no doubt a large Greek population. The same is probably true of so important a market and caravan city as Comana. By intermarriage and social intercourse the Greeks must have done much to hellenize the native aristocracy. The best instance of it are the kings themselves, who were proud of their close family connection with the Seleucids and who, all of them, spoke and wrote Greek and showed a great appreciation of Greek literature and art. The same is true of the nobles with native names who were sent out as ambassadors, for example, to Rome. And yet the kingdom never became really hellenized. Until the end of its independent existence it remained as it used to be before the founding of the dynasty. Proud as they were of their Greek training, the Mithridatid kings, especially Pharnaces I and his successors, were still more proud of their Iranian connections. They claimed to be descendants of the Persian kings, and they remained devoted to their native gods, especially to those who, like themselves, were of Iranian origin.

If we look at the coins of the Mithridatid kings we notice one interesting phenomenon. The rare coins of the predecessors of Pharnaces I are almost exact reproductions of the coins of Alexander and of those of the early Seleucids, Greek through and through². With Pharnaces, however, the reverse types of the coins become more individual and Iranian. Pharnaces I indulges in a certain mystic syncretism, which was in the air in this period (see

¹ In the inscription of Abonuteichos mentioned above the city retains her phratries. The strategos in whose honour the inscription was dedicated may be a general of Euergetes or the chief magistrate and governor of the city appointed by the king. The same was the practice of the Pergamene kings (vol. viii, p. 601). ² Volume of Plates, iv, 2, k, I. ' vol. vn, p. 5 s#."). His god, the mysterious youthful god of his coins¹, was a beautiful youth wearing a bashlyk, holding the attributes of Hermes and those of Tyche and feeding a little stag with a branch of ivy or vine. This young god is no doubt related to Zeus: over his head there appears the thunderbolt. At the same time he belongs to the gods of the astral religion as shown by the crescent and star which from this time on become the main symbol or coat of arms of the dynasty. The god has been explained recently² as the Graeco-Oriental Aion, the divine son of Zeus who symbolizes the Saeculum frugiferum, the same mystic being, perhaps, as the similar figure on Roman coins and the divine child of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. However this may be, the god of Pharnaces is more Iranian than Greek (in this like the god of the kings of Commagene—Apollo-Helios-Hermes-Mithras), though it was a Greek artist who fashioned the cult-statue figured on the coins. Zeus, his father, is no doubt Ahura-mazda rather than Zeus, and his essence is nearer to the essence of Mithras and Hvareno (the kingly glory) than to that of Hermes and Tyche. We find the same Greek travesties of Iranian political and religious ideas on the coins of Pharnaces’ successors: Perseus, the mythical ancestor of the Persians, appears on the coins of Philopator, and his horse Pegasus on those of Eupator³. No doubt we must regard the Dionysus of Eupator as an Anatolian not as a Greek god, a symbol, like the Ephesian stag, of his Anatolian empire.

It is worthy of note that nothing in the coins reveals any influence of Iranian art; they were made by Greeks in the purest Greek style. The portraits of the kings before Eupator are wonderful in their brutal realism⁴. We see before us the. astute and cruel rulers of Pontus in all their original ugliness. Eupator dropped this style and preferred to appear as a new Alexander the Great with his hair floating romantically around his head⁵. While the portraits of the coins are real productions of a great art, Greek in their very essence, most of the reverse types of the coins, equally Greek, are trivial and of no artistic importance.

It seems that the Hellenistic period interrupted an evolution which started in North Asia Minor in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. This period produced interesting monuments in a peculiar style which we call Graeco-Persian. To this style belong

many objects found in the Bosporan kingdom¹, the front of the rock-grave of Kalekapu in Paphlagonia², the beautiful Perso-lonian silver vases, one said to have been found in Armenia (one part is now in the Louvre, the other in the Berlin Museum)³, another found in a fifth-century grave at Duvanli in Bulgaria⁴, and, finally, the interesting Graeco-Persian gems⁵. On the other hand the Hellenistic period has not yielded anything similar to it, any object of art which would be an attempt at a synthesis of the Greek and Iranian artistic creative power. The attempt to create a new version of Graeco-Persian art came later, simultaneously in India, Parthia, Mesopotamia and even Commagene, at a time when Pontus had played its part in world history to a close⁶.

Thus the Iranian and the Greek elements in Pontus were never fused in Hellenistic times into one unit: they lived on quietly side by side. Each had its special part in the policy of the Pontic kings. The same phenomenon may be noticed in the life of the Parthian Empire in the Hellenistic period (p. 595).

The leading political idea of Eupator, the creation of a Pontic Graeco-native empire including large parts of Asia Minor, was not first devised by Eupator. No doubt Pharnaces I had the same ideals, which he transmitted to his brother, his son and his grandson. This Pontic empire was not a national State like the Parthian empire: it was an unification of all the Pontic Greeks around one dynasty which was supported by the strength and cohesion of their Oriental subjects. It was an empire with a Greek sea-front and an Oriental hinterland.

III. THE CONQUEST OF THE BLACK SEA COAST An end was put to the brilliant achievements of Euergetes by a court tragedy. He was assassinated by his friends, and a last will and testament (probably forged) appointed his wife to rule in the name of her two sons Mithridates Eupator, who was at that time (121/0 B.C.) eleven years old, and Mithridates Chrestos. It is very probable that Mithridates’ mother helped in the assassination of

¹ See, for examples, volume of Plates iii, 84, d, (cf. the sword sheath recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Bull. Metrop. Museum, 1931, pp. 44 sqq.)_y 90, 92, h_y c, 104.

A. S. F. Gow, J.HJS, XXVIII, 1928, pp. 133 sqq,, pis. IX, X; A. Procop6-Walter, Syria, x, 1929, pp. 85 sqq.

⁶ To this period belongs also the creation of the cult-image of the Roman Mithraea—Mithra Tauroktonos.

C. A. H. IX her husband In order to become the ruler of the kingdom. The murder of Euergetes was welcome to Rome, for he had begun to be too strong and therefore dangerous to the Romans, After his death, under one pretext or another they reduced Pontus to the size which it had before the time of Aristonicus and the successes of Euergetes in Cappadocia and Paphlagonia (p. 106)¹.

There gathered a staff of historians at the court of Eupator who certainly used all devices of late Hellenistic historiography to make the story of their patron a thrilling and romantic one. How much truth there is in their stories of the various plots and conspiracies against the life of Mithridates in his early youth and of his solitary life in the mountains for seven years cannot be found out. But sometime before 115 B.C.² a new coup d'litat ended the rule of Mithridates" mother, and that ambitious woman spent the rest of her life in prison. The two boys were left alone to rule over the kingdom, until Chrestos was removed by his older brother.

The spirited young king suffered the humiliation of receiving from his mother a kingdom considerably reduced in size. On the other hand, the great programme of Pharnaces I and the achievements of Euergetes were there to spur his activity. The political situation was not unfavourable for ambitious plans. There was, it is true, a governor in the recently creatcd province of Asia. But the Senate, being at this time without imperialistic aims and fully occupied with the tribunate of C* Gracchus, the Jugurthine War and the growing danger of invasion from the North, left Asia Minor to disorder and confusion.

We know very little of the chronology of the early wars of Mithridates, His great conquest of the south-eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea cannot be dated with any approach

¹ An inscription of 155 B.C. recently found at Gyrene and published by G» Oliverio (La Stele di Tolemeo Neoteros re di Cirene in Dacumenti Ant* deW Africa italiana VoL 1. fasc. I, 1932), containing the will in the form of * donatio mortis causa’ of Ptolemy the Younger (later Euergetes II), then King of Cyrene and claimant to Cyprus, in favour of the Romans, shows, if compared with the later similar acts of Attalus III, Nicomedes III and Ptolemy Apion of Cyrene, that the testaments of client kings were for a while a device in the foreign policy of the ruling party in the Roman Senate, a kind of disguised imperialism. It is very probable that the Romans expected Euergetes of Pontus to behave in the same way. In this they were mistaken. Euergetes was recalcitrant, and paid for it with his life,

² The date is fixed by the inscription of Delos (Q.G.I.S. 369 j Durrbach, Choix_y 113) in honour of the king and his brother. Cf. Q.GJ.S, 368;Durr~ bach, Choix, 114. The inscription is dated by the name of the dedicant. It is probable that the dedications were made after Mithridates’ official accession, and, if so, the seven years in the mountains must be considerably reduced.

to precision. All that is certain is that it preceded the first war with Rome and probably began before the king’s earliest activity within Asia Minor* The extant notices of these wars are scanty indeed. Had we not an inscription in honour of the Pontic general Diophantus¹, we should not be able to reconstruct from the scattered remarks of Strabo any connected history of even one part of the Crimean wars of Mithridates.

The history of the Bosporan Kingdom in the third and second centuries has been described in the preceding volume (chap. xviii). The new factor in the situation of the Greeks in the Bosporus, in Chersonesus and its territory (the fertile lands on the western shore of the Crimea), and in Olbia, was the appearance in the steppes of South Russia of one tribe of Sarmatians after another. The Scythian Empire in South Russia and in the northern part of the Balkan peninsula, weakened by the Macedonians under Philip, Alexander and Lysimachus and later by the Thracians and the Celts, was gradually retreating to the coast leaving the steppes of South Russia to the Sarmatians and the Danube region, except the Dobrudja, to Sarmatians, Thracians and Celts.

The process was a very slow one. In the third century the Greeks did not feel any unusual pressure from the Scythians, though from time to time Bosporus had to do some fighting while Chersonesus was mainly occupied in defending its territory against the raids of the Taurians². The situation of Olbia was worse, for that city had already begun to feel the evils of the growing anarchy in the steppes of South Russia³. The more heavily the Sarmatians pressed upon the Scythians, the more difficult became the plight of the Greek cities. And yet in the first half of the second century conditions were still tolerable. Bosporus enjoyed at this time a kind of renaissance (vol. vm, p. 581), while Chersonesus was successfully fighting for her liberty against Pharnaces I and perhaps the Scythians, upon whom alliances with the Sarmatians were an efficient check. We hear twice of such alliances: once at the time of the Pharnacian war, and again when the Sarmatian queen Amage (who in the name of her drunken husband herself ruled like many Hellenistic queens) made a daring raid upon the Scythian capital in defence of the Chersonesites.

Towards the second half of the second century the situation of these Greek cities changed for the worse. There arose in the Crimea a comparatively strong and united Scythian State. The little we know of it shows that its founder, the king Scilurus, was a

very able ruler. It appears that he secured himself by means of treaties and concessions and became an ally of the most vigorous Sarmatian tribe, the Roxolani. His hands were therefore free for activity on the coast. How he succeeded in occupying Olbia and reducing her to vassalage we do not know, but the Olbians were probably glad to have a protector against the various oppressors who threatened their very existence. With the help of the Olbians Scilurus organized his Crimean State. He and his sons reduced some tribes of the Taurians to obedience and built fortresses in their territory¹⁸, thus becoming near neighbours of Chersonesus. In the centre of the Crimea Scilurus built a fortified capital Neapolis, in which many Greeks lived, as is shown by their inscriptions in honour of the kings¹⁹. His income he increased in the most efficient way by organizing through the great merchants of Olbia—we know of one Posideos who was in close relations with Rhodes—an important export of grain to western markets like that of Masinissa of Numidia at about the same time. And to protect this export trade he used the naval experience of the Olbians. An Olbian merchant-condottiere suppressed for him the piracy of the Satarchae, a tribe of the northern Crimea¹¹.

It is interesting to observe that exactly the same state of affairs that we find in the Crimea obtained on the western shore of the Black Sea. An inscription of the Greek city of Istros²⁰ and many coins show that the Scythians at the mouth of the Danube followed the same policy as that of Scilurus. They reduced the Greek cities to obedience, and in return for this obedience and a heavy tribute protected them—as efficiently as they could—against the ever-renewed attacks of the Thracians. The tone of the inscription of Istros mentioned above shows that the Greeks were more or less reconciled with the Scythians. The enemies whom the Greeks dreaded were the Thracians, and not without reason. The Scythians never destroyed a Greek city; the Thracians did so repeatedly. Istros fell a victim to them²¹ and later Olbia, which, while still a prosperous city, was destroyed by the Getae (between 67 and 50 B.C.), at a time when there were no Scythians to protect her.

Master of Olbia, Scilurus no doubt wished to extend his empire to the east and south as well and to consolidate and increase his Graeco-Scythian state, a little Parthia in the Crimea, by using the resources of Panticapaeum and the other cities of the Bosporus and of Chersonesus and her dependent cities. By heavier demands for tribute Scilurus found a way of interfering with the internal affairs of the Greek cities and, in case of necessity, of invading their territory and attacking the cities themselves. Nor was this the end of the story. When Scilurus died, a very old man, his many sons followed the same policy. They recognized the authority of one among them, Palacus, and continued their pressure on the Greek cities.

The resources of the Greek cities were exhausted. The last Bosporan king was probably forced to adopt a Scythian prince (Saumacus) and to give him a Greek education, thus preparing for Bosporus a Scytho-Greek new dynasty. The Chersonesites were hard put to it to ward off the attacks of the Taurians and the Scythians. Bosporus and Chersonesus alike were faced by the choice either to submit like Olbia and the cities of the Dobrudja to the slightly hellenized Scythian kings and rely upon them for their safety against the attacks of the Sarmatians and Taurians, or to find help from outside. The Greek cities of the Black Sea shore with which both the Bosporus and Chersonese stood in uninterrupted relations for centuries, Amisus, Sinope and Heraclea, were no longer able to help, for Amisus and Sinope were now subjects of Pontus and Heraclea had enough to do to defend her own independence. Rome was far away and not interested in the Crimea. The only hope was in the kings of the opposite coast, the Bithy-nian or Pontic rulers, who were a little more hellenized than Scilurus and his sons. ,

Chersonesus and Bosporus decided to appeal to Mithridates for protection. Their choice was probably dictated by previous diplomatic relations with the Pontus and by the interest which Pontus always showed in Crimean affairs. However that may be, after exchanges of embassies¹ the king dispatched a citizen of Sinope, Diophantus son of Asclepiodorus, with an army across the sea to help Chersonesus against the Scythians. Diophantus, who cannot be the same as the author of the treatise Pontica, was probably a well-known general of the usual type, a successful condottiere. Two expeditions were needed to break the resistance

¹ Ios. P.E. i², 34.9, cf. 351. lb. no. 349, which mentions the envoy of a Pontic king, may be dated in the reign of Philopator or Eupator. In 351, honours are granted to a Sinopian who may have been an ambassador.

of Palacus and his allies the Sarmatians, and probably others, before the sway of the Pontic kings was extended to Olbia and the Greek cities across the Bosporan straits.

A long decree of the city of Chersonesus in honour of Diophantus, which has been mentioned above, gives us a good account of his two expeditions to the Crimea. The first is dealt with briefly (the events of this expedition were narrated in a previous decree voted after the end of the first expedition), the second in some detail. Many facts mentioned in the decrec appear also in the excerpts of Hypsicrates’ history of Mithridates inserted by Strabo into his description of Scythia and the Crimea. Among these excerpts, however, there are some which mention facts of a later date and one which tells a story which may be connected with the expedition of Diophantus, but is not mentioned in the decree.

The history of the occupation of the Crimea by Diophantus may be summarized as follows. After his arrival at Chersonesus he set out at once to invade the enemy’s country. Palacus, to his great surprise, was well informed about his movements and met him at once in the open field. A brilliant victory opened to the arms of Pontus the way into the Taurian region and the Bosporan kingdom. After having crushed the resistance of the Taurians, and having founded in their country a fortified city perhaps called Eupatorion to match Mithridates’ Eupatoria in Pontus, Diophantus entered Bosporan territory. Whether he reached the city and received the submission of the last Paerisades, who had offered it to him long before, cannot be ascertained. Returning to Chersonesus, Diophantus with his army and the civic militia invaded the country of the Scythians, took the two royal residences of Chabaioi (Chaboi in Strabo) and Neapolis, and reduced the Scythians to submission. After the end of this first'campaign, which may have been carried out in two successive years, Diophantus regarded his work as finished, and embarked for Sinope after duly receiving the grateful thanks of Chersonesus.

However, some time later, probably not in the next year, the Scythians felt strong enough to refuse obedience to the Pontic kings and to start the war again. Between the two expeditions of Diophantus, shortly before the second, may be set the incident related by Strabo (vn, 312) which is not mentioned in the inscription. The episode, however, is not dated and may have happened earlier or later. The Scythians laid siege to a fortress built by Mithridates (Eupatorion, probably not to be identified with the fortress, perhaps of the same name, built by Diophantus in the country of the Taurians) across a bay either from the city of

Chersonesus or from a fortified Chersonesian town Teichos* The siege ended in the repulse of the besiegers²².

Diophantus started his second expedition in the late autumn, and advanced at once into the enemy’s country with the militia of Chersonesus and his own army. Bad weather and probably snow prevented him from crossing the Taurian mountains, whereupon he turned towards the western sea coast in order to rescue from the Scythians the cities dependent on the Chersonesites—Cercinitis, which lay near the modern Eupatoria, a lesser fortified town or towns, whichever is meant by the name Teiche> and Kalos Limen, of which the site is unknown. He took Cercinitis and the Teicke and had laid siege to Kalos Limen; whereupon Palacus appeared in force with a strong army which consisted of his own troops and of an allied corps of the Roxolani. According to Strabo (vu, 306) the Roxolani, or perhaps the whole of the army of Palacus, numbered

50,000 men, the forces of Diophantus six thousand. The battle, as had been foretold by the great goddess of Chersonesus, ended in a Pontic victory, and meanwhile the Chersonesites succeeded in reducing Kalos Limen²³. Diophantus in turn marched against the two Scythian capitals and probably occupied them. From here he went, unattended by his army, to Panticapaeum and settled affairs there. Suddenly the Scythian Saumacus, adopted son of Paerisades, rose in revolt, killed the king and forced Diophantus to flee to Chersonesus. Here he collected the citizen militia, mobilized the fleet and his own army and moved in the early spring against Theodosia and Panticapaeum. The cities were taken, Saumacus surrendered and was sent to Pontus. The acquisition of the Crimea was achieved. After his two splendid expeditions Diophantus disappears from history. The war, however, was not yet ended.

Neoptolemus, the admiral of Mithridates, is found engaged with the barbarians of the other side of the Bosporan straits, presumably Sarmatians and Maeotians. It is reasonable to suppose that this enterprise, which led to two bloody battles, one by sea and one by land, the latter on the ice of the frozen straits, had for its purpose to rescue from the barbarians the Greek cities of the Taman peninsula and to annex them to the kingdom of Pontus²⁴.

Another expedition was organized in order to add Olbia and her territory to the acquisitions of Pontus. So much at least may be deduced from an inscription² which shows that during the wars with the Romans Olbia was in the hands of Mithridates; and a name mentioned incidentally by Strabo (vn, 306)—the tower of Neoptolemus not far from Olbia—suggests that it was Neoptolemus who led the expedition which ended with the annexation of Olbia. Here again we find a fortified stronghold built by the general of Mithridates near a Greek city—a sign that the king did not wholly trust the loyalty of his new subjects. From here no doubt Mithridates extended his help also to the Greek cities of the Dobrudja and came into touch with the Thracian and Celtic tribes. It is very probable that after some fighting with the most warlike tribes of these regions—the Sarmatians and the Bastarnae —a kind of Pontic protectorate was finally established over some at least of the Greek cities of the western shore of the Black Sea³.

As a result of this sequence of expeditions, not one of which was led by the king in person, all the Greek cities of the Crimea and of the northern shore of the Black Sea with their territories became a part of the Pontic kingdom. The capital of Mithridates in this new realm was Panticapaeum. Here was the residence of his viceroy, who was generally one of the sons of the king (first Machares, later Pharnaces), to whom the other Greek cities were subject. How much of their autonomy they retained it is hard to say. It is probable that both Chersonesus and the cities of the Bosporus still coined their own money (silver and copper), with Mithridatic types⁴. Chersonesus and Olbia certainly kept their popular assemblies, their councils and their magistrates. Whether the ‘free’ Greek cities had to pay any tribute or not is not known, but in any event, their political independence was gone.

Outside the city territories conditions remained the same as they used to be. No doubt the Scythians retained their native kings, the Maeotians their chieftains and the Sarmatians their petty kings or princes. Some of them may have been appointed by Mithridates; at all events the Scythian kings complained in Rome about their being evicted from their kingdoms¹. Some paid a tribute, chiefly in kind. The revenue of Mithridates from his new province—2,00 talents in silver and 180,000 medimni of grain— may be regarded as including not only the customs-duties and possibly other taxes of the Greek cities, the tithes of the landowners and the rents of the farmers and ‘royal peasants’ of the crown domains in the Bosporus but also payments by some of the vassal kings. But the chief advantage which Mithridates derived from his conquests was the unlimited possibility of drawing upon the resources in men of his new vassals, who had long been wont in case of need to send to their suzerains allied contingents which were practically mercenary corps. The army of Mithridates came to consist largely of such detachments of Scythians, Sarmatians, Maeotians, Thracians and Celts².

While year after year Mithridates’ generals were conquering for him the northern shore of the Black Sea, other enterprises unnoticed or ignored by the Romans extended his rule over its southern shore. From the time of Pharnaces Lesser Armenia regarded the Pontic kings as her suzerains. When Mithridates claimed to convert this suzerainty into actual sovranty her ruler Antipater, son of Sisis, surrendered without fighting. Lesser Armenia became a kind of stronghold or fortress for keeping the King’s treasures: 75 gaxo-phylakia were built here by Mithridates and they rendered him good service later. How and when Mithridates joined to Lesser Armenia the coast of the eastern Paryadres with the city of Trapezus and the kingdom of Colchis which opened to him the way to Iberia, Atropatene and Great Armenia is not known. The value of these accessions, which apparently were easily won, was not to be despised, for Trapezus was the chief harbour for the export of minerals from that region, while Colchis supplied timber and hemp for the Pontic fleet. This latter region was organized as a satrapy and was ruled sometimes by a member of the royal family.

² Some of the Thracians, however, never became allies of Mithridates and sided with the Romans; see the decree of Chaeronea, M. Holleaux, Rev. E.G. xxxii, 1919, pp. 320 sqq.

At the very end of the second century Mithridates made a journey incognito round Asia Minor ending with Bithynia, which must have shown him the complication and anarchy which prevailed. Pontus was surrounded by many states—Cappadocia, Galatia, Paphlagonia and Bithynia—which occupied towards Rome and her province of Asia the same position as Pontus. Nominally, like Pontus, all these states were independent allies of the Roman People, practically they were Roman vassals. This they all felt, some of them with bitter resentment. By that time the development of these states and their attitude towards Rome and each other were on the eve of assuming more than local importance. It was to be the destiny of the king to bring them into the tide of world history, and his own early activity in this direction found a counterpart in that of the ruler of Bithynia.

Bithynia was gradually built up by the steady efforts of her Graeco-Thracian dynasty. Nicomedes I, Ziaelas, Prusias I corresponded in the history of Bithynia to the first Mithridatids of the Pontus. With Prusias II started the period of Roman intervention to which Prusias submitted in the most abject way. His murderer and successor Nicomedes II Epiphanes, the contemporary of Eupator, played in Bithynia more or less the part of Mithridates Euergetes. His ambition, however, equalled that of Eupator. His kingdom was rich and prosperous, and helleniza-tion made much more progress than in the Pontus. The Bithynian kings were great city-builders: Nicomedeia, Nicaea, Prusa, Apamea, Prusias (formerly Cius) bear witness to this activity. Some of the ancient Greek cities of the coast submitted to them, as Chalcedon and Tieum. But Heraclea Pontica, a stronger city than Amisus, remained free despite many efforts of the Bithynian kings to conquer her, and Cyzicus, in this unlike Sinope, proudly remained to the end of the Bithynian kingdom an independent neighbour.

The situation of Paphlagonia was different. The best part of it was since the foundation of the Pontic kingdom in the hands of the Mithridatid kings. The rest was split between local dynasts, some of them of foreign Galatian origin. For a time in the reign of Pharnaces I Paphlagonia was united in the hands of the king Morzius, whose successor was that Pylaemenes, who bequeathed his kingdom to Mithridates Euergetes (p. 222). After the death

of Euergetes Paphlagonia continued as before in independence and anarchy under many local dynasts.

The neighbouring Galatians had never recovered from the tremendous blow which was given to their pride by Manlius Vulso, after Magnesia (vol. viii, p. 228 sql). They lived the same tribal life as before* divided into three peoples each subdivided into tetrarchies; they had the same feudal society with immensely rich chieftains surrounded by clients, and they retained their warlike temper which made them excellent mercenary soldiers for anyone who wanted to hire them.

The strongest neighbour of Pontus was no doubt Cappadocia. The ruling house named after Ariarathes was of the same Iranian origin as the Pontic dynasty, and was also closely connected with the Seleucids. It probably came to power later in the turmoil of the early third century. After the defeat of Antiochus the Great Ariarathes V Eusebes Philopator (163—130 b.c.) transferred his allegiance to the Romans, and remained faithful and useful to them until his death in the Roman war against Aristonicus (see above, p. 105). His rule had the reputation of being the happiest time for Cappadocia. A friend of Pergamum and of Athens and all that Athens represented, he was the first to start a hellenization of Cappadocia, which however never went very deep¹. His death was followed by a period of protracted anarchy, for his wife Nysa murdered her own five sons in order to keep the rule in her hands. She could not prevent, however, the sixth Ariarathes from taking power into his own hands. For a while a tool in the hands of his father-in-law Mithridates Euergetes, he reigned till 111 b.c* when he was murdered by Gordius, later a creature of Eupator. After his murder his wife Laodice, the sister of Eupator, ruled in the name of her son Ariarathes VII Philometor².

Such were the neighbours of Mithridates. The situation was favourable for his ambition, and after he had made an arrangement with the most powerful of his neighbours, Nicomedes, and quelled

¹ Important for the history of Ariarathes V are two inscriptions—one of Priene giving evidence on the darkest period in the life of Ariarathes when he was expelled from his kingdom by Orophernes (O.GJ.S. 351), another of Athens giving an eloquent testimony to his relations to the city of Athens and to art (O.G.I.S. 3525 /.£?.²n, 13305 A. Wilhelm, yahreshefte> xxiv, 1929, pp. 184 sqq.); cf. Ditt.³ 666 (the statue of the philosopher Carneades dedicated by Attalus and Ariarathes) and the inscription of Tyana, S.E.G, 1, 466 (a Greek gymnasium at Tyana in the time of Epiphanes). ₍

² The coins of these dynasties, like those of Pontus, are our main source of information both for their history and their culture. See Volume of Plates iv, 6.

a conspiracy in his own family—his sister-wife during his absence betrayed him and tried to kill him after his return—he started at once 011 his endeavours to create an Anatolian empire in addition to his Pontic empire, endeavours which lasted more than twenty years and led to a sharp and protracted conflict with Rome.

Paphlagonia was the first victim of the ambition of the two allied kings, who divided its territory between them unhindered by a weak protest from Rome. During the very presence of a Roman senatorial commission in Asia Minor Galatia was next occupied by the two kings and became their vassal. At Rome bribes sufficed to neutralize the stormy protest of Appuleius Saturninus (p. 168). Next came the turn of Cappadocia. At this point the two kings parted. By a coujo-de-main Nicomedes suddenly occupied the country, and persuaded Laodice the mother of Ariarathes VII to marry him, thus becoming the legitimate ruler of Cappadocia. This breach of faith was bitterly resented by Eupator, who thereupon entered the country with a strong army and reinstated Ariarathes VII on his throne at Mazaca.

The entente between Ariarathes and Mithridates, which is attested by the dedication of a bust of Ariarathes in the Delian shrine dedicated to Eupator in xoi/o b.c.¹, did not last for very long. Mithridates urged Ariarathes to recall Gordius the murderer of his father. Ariarathes refused, and created (perhaps not without the help of Marius who was at that time in Asia) a coalition against Mithridates. The two armies met in Cappadocia. Before battle was joined Mithridates treacherously murdered Ariarathes, and the Cappadocian army then broke in flight. A son of Mithridates was set upon the vacant throne. The fiction was that he was another son of Ariarathes V. This boy—Ariarathes Eusebes Philopator—ruled quietly with the assistance of Gordius for about five or six years, until the country revolted and called on the son of the last legitimate king of Cappadocia, who lived in the province of Asia. This young man, however, died very soon and Cappadocia became Pontic again².

Suddenly the newly won power of Mithridates in Asia Minor fell to pieces at a touch. Jealous of Mithridates and afraid for his own safety Nicomedes appealed to the Romans, and the Senate felt that it was time to interfere. Explicit orders were given to the kings to leave Paphlagonia and Cappadocia alone. These orders were obeyed, but with anger and resentment. Paphlagonia received ‘freedom’; the Cappadocians declined this privilege and asked

for a king, whereupon one of their own ruling class, Ariobar-zanes, was elected by the Cappadocian grandees (c. 95 B.C.).

Mithridates, however, had not abandoned his ambitions. He tried a new device. Another neighbour of Cappadocia, Armenia, which under the rule of Tigranes, later surnamed the Great, began a period of short-lived revival, a neighbour entirely independent of Rome and closely connected with Parthia, was ready to help him. Tigranes married Cleopatra, a daughter of Eupator, and in 93 B.C. invaded Cappadocia, expelled Ariobarzanes and appointed Gordius, the alter ego of Mithridates, ruler of Cappadocia. Thereupon Rome intervened again. Sulla, at that time propraetor of Cilicia, was given the task of restoring Ariobarzanes and carried it out with characteristic skill (92 B.C.). On the Euphrates an envoy of Parthia met him, and a conference was held in the presence of the Cappadocian king. It was the first time that spokesmen of the two great rivals of the future met face to face. Mithridates was the chief loser in the game. His Anatolian dreams were once more shattered, and it became clear to him that they could not come true so long as the Senate dictated its will in Asia Minor. Conflict with Rome must come.

In the struggle which followed, Mithridates disposed of resources partly inherited by him from his ancestors, partly created by himself. In the organization of his kingdom he had made little change. His Pontic empire remained on a larger scale what the Pontus of his ancestors had been, a combination of a few Greek cities and of large areas peopled by subjects and vassals. Over his subjects and vassals Mithridates ruled with the help of citizens of his Greek cities. Among these the leading r6ie belonged to the citizens of Amisus, unless their prevalence among those grandees of the court who were honoured in the Mithridatic shrine at Delos¹ is due merely to the dedicator’s possible personal relations with the city of Helianax, but yet it is striking to find so many Amisenes among the dignitaries of Mithridates. If Mithridates did something to impose hellenism, that is, city life upon his native kingdom, we know nothing about it. The fact that so many centres of quasi-urban life were minting copper² during his reign may suggest a certain amount of urban autonomy granted to them by the king, but there may be other explanations of the same fact.

The kingdom of Mithridates was as typical a Hellenistic kingdom as any other. We know very little of the various offices and court titles which were typical of the Hellenistic moiwQhigs

¹ Durrbach, Choix, 133—136. ² Volume of Plates hr, $; j-Oi in general. It is possible that some Hellenistic monarchies kept in this respect nearer to Macedonia, some others nearer to Persia. If that be true, we may class Pontus with the second. The few court titles of the time of Mithridates which survive suggest a more Iranian organization of the court than even the Seleucid organization, closely akin to what we know of Parthia in this respect²⁵. However, we know too little to be able to speak with certainty.

No details are known about the organization of the Mithri-datic army and fleet. It seems to have been the same combination of mercenaries, of soldiers recruited in the homeland of the Mithridatic empire, and of allied detachments sent by the vassals, as was the army of the Seleucids. The royal fleet was probably furnished by the large commercial Creek cities under Pontic suzerainty. Of Mithridates’ revenues no precise estimate can be made; but we know that royal garrisons guarded accumulated treasure in the numerous gazophylakia throughout his Empire, and the vast booty brought home by Pompey in 62 B.C. gives some idea how great these treasures were (p. 396).

In spite of his rebuff at the hands of Sulla in the year 92, the political situation both in Italy and Asia Minor once more offered to Mithridates the opportunity to achieve his long-cherished ambitions. Rome had to face the rupture with her Italian allies (p. 185), and the death of Nicomedes of Bithynia (c. 94 B.C.), followed by dissensions between his sons, had removed from Mithridates’ path his only serious rival among the kings of Asia Minor. The claims of the two sons of Nicomedes II had been decided by the Senate in favour of the elder, Nicomedes III Epiphanes Philopator, shortly before the outbreak of the Social War, whereupon the younger, Socrates, betook himself to Mithridates. While the Romans were fully occupied with the Social War, Pontic troops drove Nicomedes from Bithynia and established Socrates in his place. Simultaneously, in conjunction with Tigranes, Mithridates once more caused Ariobarzanes to be driven from Cappadocia and placed upon the throne his own son, as

Ariarathes IX. The dispossessed kings appealed to Rome, whose hands were already becoming more free to deal with the problems which had arisen in Asia Minor. A commission was appointed to settle affairs in the East and orders sent to C. Cassius¹, governor of Asia* to co-operate in restoring Nicomedes. Similar instructions were sent to Mithridates himself.

It was scarcely to be expected that Mithridates would take the active part which the Romans, by virtue of the nominal alliance, had enjoined. He did, however, carry out orders to the extent of putting Socrates to death. He had no doubt expected greater results from the Social War and was disconcerted by the signs that it would speedily be terminated. But the attitude which he now adopted shows that he had little faith in his own ability to resist Rome, or that his preparations for war were not yet completed. The two kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia were reinstated without opposition from Mithridates or Tigranes* But whatever the motive which induced this passive acquiescence, the Roman commissioners were entirely deceived. The original appointment of their leader, M\ Aquilius, had little to commend it. He had proved himself a brave and capable soldier and had rendered good service to Rome in the Sicilian slave-war, but at the end of the campaign had narrowly escaped a hostile verdict on a charge of peculation (p. 156). Disappointed of the hopes of booty to be derived from a Pontic campaign, the commissioners, in order to make sure of the money promised by the impecunious Nicomedes in return for his restoration, urged him to attack the dominions of Mithridates. A raid carried out by Nicomedes* army on the ports of the Paphlagonian coast controlled by Mithridates as far as the city of Amastris provided the funds for which the commissioners were pressing.

Even so Mithridates, whose forces had retired before the advance of the Bithynian marauders, shrank from an open conflict. An envoy, Pelopidas, was sent to ask that the aggressor should be restrained, or that the Romans should stand aside. Failing to get satisfaction, Mithridates dispatched Ariarathes to seize Cappadocia, but once more Pelopidas appeared before the commissioners requesting that the whole matter should be referred to the Senate, to whom Mithridates himself actually sent a message of protest. Pelopidas, however, was bluntly told that his master must evacuate Cappadocia and leave Nicomedes alone, and preparations were made for a general advance into Mithri-dates’ dominions.

The Romans, who had no more than a legion of their own troops available in Asia Minor, were compelled to rely on the levies of their Asiatic allies, troops of inferior quality and uncertain number¹. While Aquilius remained in reserve in the north, Q. Oppius, the governor of Cilicia, made a flanking movement from the south into Cappadocia, and Cassius advanced by the route from Nicaea to Ancyra. Nicomedes himself with the Bithynian army was sent forward to meet the main Pontic force and penetrated as far as the Amnias, a tributary of the Halys, in Paphlagonia. Here he soon met with disaster at the hands of the king’s generals Archelaus and Neoptolemus, who had been sent forward to contain him with light troops and cavalry from Armenia Minor². The way was thus cleared for the advance of the main Pontic army into Bithynia. Aquilius sought to retreat to the Sangarius, but was brought to battle and defeated, escaping with difficulty to Pergammn.

The two engagements decided the issue of the campaign. Cassius, who had retired southwards to the stronghold of JLeonton-cephalae, and thence had endeavoured to join Oppius at Apamea, found it necessary to fall back on the coast. Helped with provisions by a certain Chaeremon of Nysa³, he contrived at last to make his way to Rhodes. Oppius was less fortunate. He succecded in reaching Laodicea on the Lycus with a force of mercenaries and some cavalry, and prepared to stand a siege. But the inhabitants did not long resist the assaults and solicitations of Mithridates and surrendered the Roman commander. Oppius himself is said to have suffered no harm. Aquilius, who had fled from Per-gamum but had fallen ill at Mytilene on his way to Rhodes, was surrendered with other Romans by the inhabitants to Mithridates, who, after exhibiting his captive everywhere in the province of Asia bound on an ass or chained to a gigantic Bastarnian horseman, finally, by way of rebuking Roman greed, caused molten gold to be poured down his throat.

40.000 for each of the three Roman armies, arc impossible, but beyond correction.

² The forces with which Mithridates entered Paphlagonia are given by Mexnnon (31) as 150,000 men. Although the passage suggests that the

40.000 men and 10,000 horse which formed the advance guard are to be regarded as additional, it is possible that the figure 150,000 which Memnon preserves was the nominal strength of Mithridates’ total forces. Appian’s figures of 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry (exclusive of the 10,000 cavalry from Armenia Minor, the phalanx and the scythed chariots) are impossible. ³ Ditt.³, 741.

After entering Bithynia, Mithridates had entrusted the pursuit of Aquilius to his generals, himself turning southwards to follow Cassius, From southern Phrygia forces were dispatched to reduce the southern part of Asia Minor and arrangements were made for the government of newly acquired territory by satraps¹. After the capture of Laodicea Mithridates marched by way of Magnesia on the Maeander to Ephesus. From the first he had posed as a deliverer. Native troops who had surrendered were set free and provided with means to reach their homes. But while the majority of the cities of Asia, deprived as they were of any means of offering resistance, are said to have welcomed him, nevertheless some resistance was encountered², and it is indeed probable that this was greater than appears in the literary sources. Parts of Paphlagonia were still unsubdued even after Ionia had been overrun³. The town of Magnesia ad Sipylum survived an assault by Archelaus, who was himself wounded in the fighting⁴. But the strongest resistance was offered in the south-west. In Caria Tabae⁵ and Stratoniceia stood by the Romans, the latter undergoing a siege of some duration before it was compelled to surrender⁶. In Lycia and Pamphylia, which are said by Appian⁷ to have been subjugated, a successful resistance was maintained by some of the cities throughout the war. From Telmessus and other Lycian towns reinforcements were being sent to Rhodes at the time of the siege (p. 243). Patara withstood a siege, and the country as a whole was rewarded by Sulla for its loyalty at the end of the war⁸. At a later stage we find the cities of Pamphylia contributing ships to Lucullus’ fleet, and an inscription records the fidelity and losses of the city of Termessus, which commands the pass between Pamphylia and the Milyas⁹.

The behaviour of Ephesus is perhaps typical of the. attitude of the cities of Asia. After the defeat of the Roman forces it had at

¹ On the satraps see Appian, Mithr. 21, 46. One of them, Leonnatus, is mentioned in Ditt.³ 741, and seems to have been appointed to Ephesus before Mithridates himself arrived on the coast. At a later date (Appian, Mithr., 48) we find Philopoemen, the father-in-law of Mithridates, established as episkopos at Ephesus, and hear of ⁶ tyrants’ in other cities, e.g. at Colophon (Plutarch, Lucullus, 3), Tralles (Strabo xiv, 649), Adramyttium (id. xiii, 614). ² So Memnon, 31.

³ Appian, Mithr. 21. The resistance was perhaps organised by a native chieftain, if there is any basis for the statement in Orosius vi, 2 (cf. Eutro-pi us v, 5), pulsis ex ea (i.e. Paphlagonia) Pylaemene et Nicomede regibus.

first remained loyal, offering sanctuary to refugees and serving as the port from which a number were enabled to make their escape to Rhodes. But on the approach of the Pontic army the Ephesians without resistance admitted the enemy within their gates, and once in the power of Mithridates proceeded to give such demonstrations as were possible of devotion to their new master. Once the possibility of Roman protection had vanished, similar demonstrations were made elsewhere, and Mithridates, greeted as the preserver of Asia, the new Dionysus¹, conferred liberal benefits on individual cities², cancelling debts and conferring five years immunity from taxation throughout the province (Justin, xxxviii, 3, 7). _ _

One thing more was needed to convince the province that the rule of Rome was at an end, and it was deliberate policy that urged Mithridates to issue the orders which were to incriminate the Greek cities for ever in the eyes of Rome. Secret instructions were sent to the satraps and to the city governments for a simultaneous massacre of Romans and Italians throughout the province. At Ephesus, Pergamum and other cities refugees were torn from the sanctuaries and butchered, it is said, to the number of 80,000. How far would the Greeks without the strongest compulsion have dared such an action ? The case of Tralles, where the citizens hired a barbarian to do the work for them³, is typical—a sorry attempt to carry out the orders of Mithridates without incriminating themselves too deeply with the Romans. The feelings of the unfortunate citizens must have been shared by many other states in Asia.

In the meantime, the small Roman fleet, which at the beginning of the war had been stationed at Byzantium, had dispersed or surrendered to Mithridates, whose fleet now appeared in overwhelming strength in the Aegean. We have no means of arriving at an exact estimate of its numbers, which are said to have reached the total of 300 decked ships and 100 biremes, exclusive of the substantial additions made by the squadrons of the Cilician pirates (see below, p. 35²)* The attitude of the islanders was much

¹ Diodorus, xxxvii, 2 b\ Cicero, pro Flacco, 25, 60. For the thiasos of Eupatoristae and the Mithridates vase see O.G.I.S. 367 and 370 and Reinach, op. cit. p. 284 and Plate iii.

² Enlargement of the area of asylum at Ephesus (Strabo xiv, 641); repair of the damage caused by earthquake at Apamea (Strabo xix, 579); benefits conferred on Tralles (Cicero, pro Flacco, 25, 59)5 maintenance of Mucia at Smyrna (Cicero, 11 in Verr. n, 21, 51). In the maintenance of the festival founded in honour of Mucius Scaevola one can see a deliberate policy.

the same as that of the cities of the mainland. While the people of Mytilene surrendered Aquilius and other officers, the inhabitants of Cos refused to withdraw the protection of their sanctuary from Roman fugitives¹. On the other hand, they received Mithridates without resistance and surrendered to him the son of Ptolemy Alexander, King of Egypt, who had been sent to the island by his grandmother Cleopatra, together with her treasures and 800 talents of the temple-money deposited in the island by the Jews of Asia². Indeed, with the disappearance of the Roman fleet no serious resistance could be offered, nor, with the exception of the Rhodians, did any of the islanders attempt it.

In the early days of the war Rhodes had provided a refuge for all the Romans who had made good their escape from Asia. Previously the republic had maintained good relations with Mithridates³, but, in spite of the danger to be expected from any resistance to the king, held fast to its traditional friendship with Rome, and trusted in the skill of its seamen and strength of its fortifications to resist until the Romans were in a position once more to offer protection. Since Mithridates is said to have found it necessary to raise a fleet specially for the attack on Rhodes⁴, it is probable that his main armaments had already been dispatched across the Aegean. When his preparations had been completed, he put to sea in overwhelming strength (autumn, 8 8), drove back the Rhodian navy, and effected a landing on the island. The transports bringing his main forces had not yet arrived, and Mithridates was able to make little progress in his assaults on the city. Meanwhile the Rhodians, who had drawn off* the bulk of their fleet from the first engagement, vigorously di$puted the command of the sea, twice gaining successes over the king’s fleet and inflicting heavy losses on the transports,. which had at last sailed from the Carian coast but were scattered by bad weather. The arrival, however, of the remainder gave Mithridates the numerical superiority which he required for an attack on the town. A formal blockade was out of the question, since the winter season was close at hand, and Mithridates attempted to capture the town by assault. After a night attack by land and sea had proved a fiasco, Mithridates brought up against the walls on the sea side an immense flying bridge, known as the sambuca, which was carried on two warships lashed together and could be hoisted

² Josephus, Ant. Jud. xiv (vn, 2), 112 sqq. On the whole episode se$ Reinach, op. czt. p. 183.

by an arrangement of pulleys from the masthead so as to overtop the city wall (see vol. viii, p. 66). As the sambuca was brought into position, a general assault with rams and scaling ladders was to be delivered from the sea. Fortunately, however, for the Rhodians and not, it was said, without the assistance of Isis, the site of whose temple had been chosen as the place of assault, the sambuca collapsed under its own weight, and with the failure of this last assault Mithridates retired from his undertaking before winter set in.

Before the attack on Rhodes the main fleets of Mithridates had already crossed the Aegean and carried the war into Greece²⁷. The situation was not unfavourable for the intervention of a new Antiochus. The governor of Macedonia, C. Sentius, had for some time (since 91 b.c.) been occupied with Thracian incursions²⁸, which on one occasion had penetrated as far as Dodona. There is nothing improbable in the view²⁹ that the attacks of the barbarians, with whom he could easily maintain communication from his Bosporan dominions, had been instigated by Mithridates himself. His agents were active also in Greece, and soon after the conquest of Asia a deputation arrived from Athens, which was ripe at this time for a popular uprising against the aristocratic form of government favoured by Rome, with one of them, a certain Aristion³⁰, a Peripatetic philosopher of servile origin, at its head. Aristion was received with every mark of favour and in his despatches did his utmost to persuade the Athenians both of the greatness of Mithridates’ power and of the political and financial advantages which would accrue to them, if they embraced the cause of the king. On his return to Athens, where he was received with an extravagant welcome, Aristion, with the wildest tales of Mithridates’ successes and lavish promises of benefits to come, completely won over the Athenian people and had himself elected hoplite general, nominating his colleagues³¹. His opponents, the aristocratic party in Athens, were murdered and their property

confiscated, many of those who sought to escape from Attica being brought back and put to death.

The military value of the Athenians themselves to Mithridates was of course negligible. Their attempt to seize the island of Delos under Apellicon, a creature of Aristion’s, ended in complete disaster, but Mithridates had now in the Piraeus a port of entry into Greece and a base from which the whole country could be overrun. Accordingly the fleets of Mithridates set sail from Asia under Archelaus. On the voyage the Cyclades were occupied without difficulty and the Romans were once more expelled from Delos or put to death. On his arrival in Athens Archelaus provided Aristion with a bodyguard to hold the town for Mithridates while he himself secured southern Greece. To the north a Pontic squadron under Metrophanes³² had occupied Euboea, and was attacking the fortress of Demetrias and the territory of the Magnetes.

It seemed as if the whole of Greece would fall into Mithridates’ power before the relieving army under Sulla could leave Italy. Fortunately for the Romans, however, Sentius was able to detach a small force under his legate Q, Bruttius Sura, who drove back Metrophanes from the Thessalian coast and with the ships at his disposal regained the island of Sciathos, which had been used by the invaders as a storehouse for their plunder. Bruttius then advanced into Boeotia, all of which Archelaus had won for Mithridates with the exception of Thespiae, to which he laid siege. Three engagements are said to have been fought in the neighbourhood of Chaeronea, as the result of which the Pontic advance was definitely checked and Archelaus was compelled to fall back on his base in Attica³³.

At this point the advance-guard of Sulla’s army arrived in Boeotia under his quaestor L. Lucullus, from whom Bruttius

received orders to rejoin Sentius in Macedonia, now threatened by the advance of a new Pontic army through Thrace. The value of Bruttius’ work had been enormous. By his Boeotian campaign northern Greece had been saved from Archelaus, so that Sulla, who had landed with five legions and a small force of cavalry and of auxiliaries, was able to raise reinforcements and provisions in Aetolia and Thessaly, while the cities of Boeotia at once returned to their allegiance. Sulla concentrated his energies at once on the reduction of Athens and the Piraeus, into which after a successful engagement¹ he drove Archelaus and Aristion.

Nevertheless, apart altogether from his relations with the Roman government (see p. 265), which rendered the receipt of reinforcements and supplies from home impossible, Sulla’s position was extremely hazardous. With the near presence of the enemy and in view of the exactions which Sulla was compelled to levy in order to supply his own troops, dangerous outbreaks might easily occur among the Greek states. While Archelaus held command of the sea, his garrison in the Piraeus could be supplied and reinforced as necessary, and Sulla’s communications through Boeotia were threatened by Neoptolemus based on Euboea and the fortress of Chalcis. To meet this danger Sulla was compelled to detach a force under Munatius to Boeotia, while another division under L. Hortensius, which had sailed from Italy after the main body, was diverted northwards to Thessaly to operate against the Pontic army advancing by land. Funds were raised for the payment of. the Roman troops by the seizure of the treasures belonging to the Greek shrines, Epidaurus, Olympia and Delphi being the principal sufferers², and later in the year, the Rhodians being unable to put to sea, Lucullus was sent out to raise a fleet.

Sulla’s first task was the reduction of the fortresses in Attica, where the Piraeus was held by Archelaus himself, Aristion commanding in Athens³. Realizing the necessity for speed, Sulla detached part of his army to invest Athens, while he himself attempted to carry the Piraeus by assault. The strength of the fortifications was such that no impression could be made by this form of attack and Sulla withdrew to Eleusis and Megara to prepare for a formal investment. The problem facing him differed in the case ofthe two fortresses. Whereas Athens, no longer connected with the sea by the Long Walls, was in itself of less account strategically and could be reduced by blockade, the Piraeus, until

such time as Sulla could raise a fleet capable of offering battle to the king’s fleet, could be attacked only on the land side and might be provisioned and reinforced by the enemy at will. Moreover, in the event of Sulla being forced to retire northwards to meet the army commanded by the king's son Ariaratihes¹, Archelaus would advance from the Piraeus against the rear of the Roman army.

With a part of the Roman army blockading Athens, the force attacking the Piraeus was from the outset outnumbered by the garrison². Nevertheless Sulla, having prepared his engines of assault, the material for which was derived largely from Thebes, once more advanced against the Piraeus, The second assault, which took place in the late summer of 87, was conducted with an even greater vigour. As his engines collapsed or were destroyed by the enemy, timber for repairs was ruthlessly cut in the groves of the Academy and Lyceum., the remains of the Long Walls being used for raising mounds against the fortifications. His agents within the Piraeus, moreover, kept Sulla informed of the intentions of the enemy, so that on two occasions sorties of the garrison were beaten back with heavy loss. Archelaus, however, twice reinforced by sea, still maintained his superiority in numbers, and continually increased the strength of his fortifications where danger threatened, or by small sallies destroyed the Roman works.

The pressure was maintained until the beginning of winter, when Sulla withdrew part of his army to his base at Eleusis, maintaining, however, the blockade of Athens. Although his cavalry were raiding up to Eleusis itself, Archelaus was unable to penetrate the cordon round the capital, where there was already imminent danger of famine. Accordingly, although the attacks on the Piraeus were renewed before the spring³, the weakened state of the garrison of Athens offered hope of a speedy reduction of the town, which would enable Sulla to concentrate all his energies on the Piraeus. The Piraeus, therefore, was temporarily

² This is stated definitely by Appian, Aiithr. 31. Kromayer’s view (Jlntlke Schlachtfelder, 11, p. 391) that at the beginning of the siege Archelaus’ forces must have been smaller than those of Sulla is not here accepted. His retirement to the Piraeus was a part of the general strategic scheme.

³ The sequence of events is given by Appian, Mithr. 34 sq. Archelaus’ attempt to provision Athens took place on the same day as the defeat of Neoptolemus near Chalcis by Munatxus (in which Reinach [op. at. p. 160] rightly sees an attempt on the part of the Chalcis garrison to create a diversion which would diminish the pressure on Athens). This was shortly followed by a night attack on the Piraeus, after which the assaults, discontinued during the winter, were regularly renewed.

masked on the land side³⁴, while the assaults on Athens became more intense. A deputation from the commandant, whose conduct during the siege was making him more and more odious to the inhabitants, was rejected, and a final effort on the part of Archelaus to relieve the town was beaten back. Sulla now received information that Aristion had neglected to secure the approaches to the Heptachalcum, between the Sacred and the Piraeic Gates, where the defences were weakest, and at this point ordered the final assault to be delivered. The starving defenders, reduced, it is said, to feed on human flesh, could offer little resistance, and the town, which fell on March rst, 86, was given over to massacre and pillage, although in memory of their past achievements the city of the Athenians was spared from utter destruction. The tyrant himself made his escape to the Acropolis, first burning the Odeum in order that the beams might not be used for siege-engines. After resisting for some weeks, he was forced by lack of water to surrender to C. Curio, who had been left behind by Sulla to carry on the siege, when he himself marched north.

Sulla was now free to return to his attacks on the Piraeus. Although Archelaus fought every inch, one by one the defences succumbed to the violence of the Roman assaults, now rendered more intense by the imminence of the danger from the north. At last the garrison was confined to the peninsula of Munychia, which, protected on the sea side by a fleet, was impregnable. But Sulla’s work was done. The Piraeus, laid in ruins, could no longer serve the enemy as a base, and Archelaus withdrew the remainder of his forces to his ships, finally effecting a junction with the northern army in Thessaly.

The heroic defence of the Piraeus had been stultified by the dilatory advance of the army under Ariarathes, who seems to have taken the view that the purpose of his mission was to create a kingdom for himself in Thrace and wasted valuable time in endeavouring to organize the conquered territory. We hear of little resistance being offered in Thrace itself, but with the approach of winter the difficulties of feeding the army were great and, until Amphipolis fell, threatened to endanger its safety. In Macedonia some resistance was encountered from the Roman ttoops in the province and from the inhabitants³⁵, and a further delay was caused by the illness and death of the king’s son at the Tisaean promontory in Magnesia shortly before the capitulation of Athens.

After joining the northern army, Archelaus took over the command of the united forces from Taxiles, the successor of Ariarathes, and advanced southwards by Thermopylae. In the meantime Sulla had marched northwards. His advance was criticized on the ground that the Boeotian plains would provide a favourable terrain for the enemy’s cavalry; but Sulla rightly realized the difficulty of feeding his troops in Attica, and, moreover, was anxious for the safety of the division under Hortensius, whose retreat from Thessaly was cut off by the Pontic occupation of Phocis, where Taxiles was now attacking Elatea¹. Hortensius, however, extricated himself by a skilful march, apparently by the Asopus gorge and along the north-eastern slopes of Parnassus by Tithorea, joining Sulla at Patronis on the southern edge of the plain of Elatea. Their united forces then occupied the hill of Philoboeotus, a detached eminence rising from the plain². Their strength is given as 15,000 infantry and 1500 cavalry. Opposed to them was an army perhaps three times as numerous³.

The march northwards to join Hortensius had brought Sulla on to ground on which he had no intention of giving battle. The hill of Philoboeotus was easily defensible in itself and the approaches were further strengthened by trenches thrown up on the Cephisus, the course of which is said to have been thereby diverted. But the open plain of southern Phocis would enable Archelaus to make full use of his superiority in numbers and especially of his cavalry. For two days therefore Sulla remained on Philoboeotus and refused battle. His position, however, was a dangerous one, since enemy raiding parties were plundering as far south as Lebadea, and it was essential for him to maintain his communications with the south by way of the valley of the

¹ Pausanias i, 2.0, 6, places the attack on Elatea before the capture of Athens, but obviously means the surrender of the Acropolis under Aristion, which clearly took place about the time of the battle of Chaeronea (cf. x,

² Plutarch’s description of Philoboeotus (Sulla, 16) makes Leake’s identification of it with Parori, a spur of Parnassus above the pass from Phocis to Boeotia, impossible. Kromayer’s topography, including his identification of Philoboeotus with Kravassara, is here followed throughout.

10,000 cavalry and 90 chariots on its arrival in Greece. Appian (.Mithr. 41, cf. 45), who says that it had been made up by reinforcements to its original figure, gives 120,000 in all, Sulla’s troops being less than one-third. Livy, jEpit. 82, reckons the Pontic dead at 100,000. Memnon (32) gives the Pontic total at Chaeronea as over 60,000, which agrees with Appian’s estimate of the relative strength of the two armies.

Cephisus and by Chaeronea. After leaving Phocis the river flows through a narrow pass between the eastern spurs of Parnassus (the modern Parori) on the right bank and Mt Hedylium (modern Belesi) on the left. The northern end of the pass is commanded by the acropolis of Parapotamii, a rocky hill above the left bank of the river connected with Mt Hedylium by a low saddle. When therefore the enemy advanced towards the pass with the intention of occupying Parapotamii Sulla hurriedly forestalled them and seized the position. A second attempt on the part of Archelaus to cut Sulla’s communications by seizing Chaeronea was similarly anticipated by Sulla, who sent a legion to garrison the town. Archelaus’ move on Chaeronea was a strategical error of the first importance. Since the valley of the Cephisus was closed to him by Sulla’s occupation of Parapotamii, it is clear that he reached northern Boeotia by an alternative, though difficult, route to the east of Hedylium¹, which brought him down to the low ground between that hill and Mt Acontium, where we find his main body encamped. Sulla at once marched southwards from Parapotamii and established himself at the southern entrance to the pass, under Mt Hedylium and opposite the main body of the enemy. Archelaus accordingly was faced with the alternative of fighting a general action on ground unsuited to his cavalry and chariots, or of retiring by the difficult route to the coast. He had, however, sent a strong force to occupy the high ground of Mt Thurium above Chaeronea which could threaten the town itself and the flank of the Romans. Sulla, therefore, leaving his lieutenant L. Murena with a legion and two cohorts encamped opposite Archelaus, himself took up a position by Chaeronea, and sent a detachment to take in reverse the position on Mt Thurium.

This manoeuvre enabled Sulla to force the general action which he desired. The ene3 ^ «■« • ~ — •* ’

troops on the way. When Archelaus sent out his chariots and cavalry to cover the retreat, Sulla swiftly advanced his right to reduce the interval between the two armies and close the gap between his own force and Murena’s division. To meet any outflanking movement by the enemy’s cavalry, strong detachments unde;r Hortensius and Galba were posted in reserve.

The main battle opened with a charge of sixty of the enemy’s chariots* which proved ineffective except in so far as it enabled the Pontic phalanx to come into action. Though formed, it is said, mainly of liberated slaves from the Asiatic cities, the phalanx put

up a stout resistance, which enabled Archelaus to carry out the expected flanking movement with his cavalry against the Roman left. To meet this danger, Hortensius, as had been arranged, came down with his reserve of five cohorts, but by the skilful tactics of Archelaus found himself cut off from Murena and in imminent danger of being surrounded. Sulla at once gathered his cavalry and crossed hastily from the right wing to succour his left, but on seeing his approach Archelaus disengaged his cavalry and began to transfer them to the other wing against the now weakened Roman right. This was the critical moment of the battle. With either wing broken the Roman army would have been surrounded and destroyed. Ordering Hortensius with four cohorts to support Murena, now engaged in repelling an attack by a corps d' elite under Taxiles, Sulla himself with his cavalry, one cohort of Hortensius’ force and two fresh cohorts hitherto in reserve¹, returned with all possible speed to his original position and was in time to throw his whole right forward and fling the enemy, who had not yet re-formed after Archelaus’ manoeuvre, back across the Cephisus towards Mt Acontiurru At the same time the troops of Murena and Hortensius had repulsed Taxiles on the left and were ready to join in a general advance.

The defeat of the enemy now became a rout. As the Romans advanced, they were pressed against the rocks of Mt Acontium or crushed in the narrow space between Acontium and Hedylium. Archelaus in vain endeavoured to rally his troops in front of the camp and closed the gates against the flying multitude. When the gates at length were opened, the Romans burst in with the fugitives, and of the king’s army some 10,000 alone made their escape with Archelaus to Chalcis. It was a hard-won battle which attests Sulla’s skill and does not need his embellishment that the Roman losses amounted to fourteen men, two of whom returned before night. The Roman victory was made complete by the destruction of the Pontic foraging parties as they returned, ignorant of what had happened, to the camp.

Sulla sought by a forced march with his light troops to intercept Archelaus at the Euripus but failing to do so withdrew to Athens, where the Acropolis had surrendered about the same time as the battle of Chaeronea took place². The Thebans were heavily punished for their past misconduct, being compelled to surrender half their land, which was made over to the gods whose

¹ So Plutarch, Sulla, 19; Appian, Mithr. 43. Probably a reserve to the right wing and commanded by Galba.

treasuries Sulla had robbed at the beginning of the war³⁶. ^ In Athens the partisans of Aristion were put to death, but Aristion himself for the present was kept alive. No further penalties, however, were inflicted on the Athenians, who, with the partisans of Rome once more established in power, were allowed to retain their liberty³⁷.

For the time being the Greek mainland was cleared of the enemy, but Euboea and the fortress of Chalcis remained in the hands of Archelaus, whose command of the sea was unimpaired. From Chalcis his fleet carried out a series of raids on the Greek coast as far as the island of Zacynthos, and penetrating into the Adriatic had destroyed a number of the transports carrying the advance-guard of Flaccus, who had been appointed by the Roman government to take over the command from Sulla and was already on his way (summer, 86). Chaeronea, therefore, had brought no more than a temporary respite to Sulla. With the prospect of a fresh Pontic army arriving in central Greece by sea, there could as yet be no thought of carrying the war by land to Asia Minor. A march northwards against the army of Flaccus would enable the enemy to recover central Greece without a blow if Sulla’s plans miscarried and if Mithridates could expedite the arrival of the new army. Sulla, accordingly, took up a position at Melitaea in Phthiotis on the western slopes of Mt Othrys, from which the main route from Thessaly to Lamia could be watched, and from which he could return quickly to Boeotia in the event of any movement by Archelaus. All the strategical advantages therefore were once more in the hands of Archelaus. Reinforced during the summer of 86 by Dorylaus with an army which is said to have numbered 8o,ooo³⁸, Archelaus crossed from Chalcis and while detachments of his army ravaged Boeotia,' took up a position in the plain of Orchomenus, where his cavalry and chariots could have free play. Once more the Boeotians went over to the enemy.

The new development brought Sulla back at once to Boeotia, where he took up his position opposite Archelaus. Outnumbered as he was and operating on ground which was entirely in favour

of the enemy, Sulla sought to protect his flanks by cutting trenches ten feet wide to circumscribe the action of the enemy cavalry and force them towards the marshes of Copais. While the Romans were thus engaged, Archelaus delivered a general attack. His cavalry, posted on the two wings, surprised the working parties and threw back the detachments which were covering them. The Roman left seemed about to give way, when Sulla, riding forward, leapt from his horse and by his personal example rallied his men. The arrival of two cohorts from the right enabled them to drive back the enemy and regain the line of their entrenchments, on which the enemy delivered a second and still more furious attack³⁹.

In the centre Archelaus had posted his chariots, supported as at Chaeronea by the phalanx, with a detachment of heavy-armed troops and renegade Italians in reserve. To meet the charge of the chariots Sulla had drawn up his centre in three ranks with wide intervals between the flanks of detachments. As the chariots charged they became involved in the stakes planted by the second rank, behind which the front rank of the Romans withdrew, and at the same time they were assaulted by the Roman cavalry and lightarmed, issuing by the intervals in the Roman line. Terrified by the shouts and weapons of the enemy the chariot horses bolted back on to the phalanx and involved it also in their panic. When Archelaus endeavoured to stop the rout by withdrawing his cavalry from the wings, Sulla charged it with his horse and drove the whole army headlong to its camp. The enemy had left some

15,000 dead on the field and were thoroughly demoralized. On the following day therefore Sulla proceeded to enclose their camp with a ditch. An attempt of the enemy to interrupt the work was thrown back and in the resulting confusion the Roman troops carried the camp by storm. The invasion of Greece was at an ead, The remnants of the Pontic army were driven into the marshes of

Copais. Archelaus himself after hiding two days in the swamps at length reached the coast and escaped in a small boat to Chalcis, where he sought to rally any detachments of the king’s troops that remained in Greece.

Although he was not yet in a position to carry the war into Asia Minor, the news of Sulla’s victories produced, as was to be expected, a remarkable change ofheart among the cities of Asia. The appointment of governors and tyrants (see above, p. 241, n. 1) was scarcely calculated to maintain the first enthusiasm of the Greek cities for Mithridates, and the exactions and levies which were necessitated by the sending of a second army to Greece after Chaeronea increased their discontent. The first serious outbreak arose among the Galatians, whose leading men had been treacherously seized and murdered by the king at a banquet, on the ground of a plot against his life. The survivors raised rebellion throughout Galatia, expelling the king’s satrap and his garrisons¹.

We next hear of trouble in the island of Chios, against which Mithridates is said to have borne a grudge since the time when a Chian ship had fouled his own in the operations off Rhodes. The Roman party in Chios was strong, and after confiscating the property of those who had fled, Mithridates, who suspected the Chians of being in communication with Sulla, gave orders for a detachment of the fleet of Dorylaus to occupy the island on its way to Greece². The. town walls were occupied by night, the citizens disarmed and hostages furnished to the king’s officer Zenobius. A fine of 2000 talents was next imposed, but, accused by Zenobius of giving short weight, the defenceless inhabitants were carried off to Mithridates who ordered them to be transported to Colchis³. On the voyage, however, they were rescued by the people of Heraclea⁴. The fate of Chios was a warning to the rest of the treatment which they also might expect. When Zenobius presented himself before Ephesus, the inhabitants

¹ This gives us some indication of date. Reinach, op. cit. p. 182, places the episode before Chaeronea. In Appian, Mithr. 46, the officer charged with this task was Zenobius* a-Tpanav aryeov es t^v 'Ei~KKaha. Memnon, 33, says it was Dorylaus. Obviously Zenobius was detached from Dorylaus’ forces on their way to reinforce Archelaus after Chaeronea.

refused to admit his troops, and after deliberation arrested the king’s officer and put him to death. A decree records the revolt of the city, its claim to have preserved throughout its good will towards Rome and the nature of the measures now taken for defence against the ‘King of Cappadocia’¹. The example of Ephesus was followed by a number of cities, among which are mentioned Tralles, Smyrna and Colophon. Some were recovered and brutally punished², but to prevent the revolt spreading, Mithridates, while nominally granting freedom to the Greek cities, increased the number of his partisans by the cancellation of debts, the freeing of slaves and extensions of citizenship. Even so conspiracies, real or imaginary, against his life drove Mithridates to organize a reign of terror against those suspected of good will towards Rome. On the information of his spies some eighty citizens of Pergamum were executed, and a conservative estimate puts the number of his victims in the province at 1600³.

After the battle of Orchomenus further punishment had been inflicted by Sulla on Boeotia, and three of the coastal towns destroyed to prevent them being used by the enemy still in Euboea. He then marched northwards to Thessaly, to await the arrival of the army of Flaccus, and took up his quarters for the winter. Being still without news of Lucullus, he further set himself to build the fleet that was necessary for his projected invasion of Asia. In the meantime Flaccus had crossed from Italy with two legions, the advance-guard of which was now arriving in Thessaly (p. 2.66 j$\). Flaccus, greedy and incompetent, was unpopular with his troops, many of whom began to go over to Sulla. Further desertions, however, were prevented by his legatus Fimbria, but in the circumstances it did not seem wisdom to try conclusions with Sulla, but rather to march direct to the Bosporus. Considerable hardships were endured in the course of a winter march through Thrace, and resistance was encountered from the Pontic garrisons which still remained. But on the capture of Philippi, the king’s troops evacuated their remaining stronghold of Abdera and withdrew from Europe. On the march, Fimbria had granted the division under his command unlimited license to plunder, and when the inhabitants appealed to Flaccus, encouraged his men to disobey the orders for restitution. At Byzantium further divisions broke out between the general and his legatus. In view of their previous conduct Flaccus had ordered the troops to encamp outside the city. Fimbria seized the opportunity of Flaccus’ absence to

incite the legions to enter the city and billet themselves on the inhabitants, many of whom were killed in the disturbance. Later, when his division had already crossed into Asia, Fimbria, who after a fresh quarrel with Flaccus was threatening to throw up his command, found himself superseded by the appointment of a certain Thermus. He accordingly left for Byzantium, ostensibly on his way to Rome, but raised the troops against Thermus, drove out Flaccus on his return, and pursuing him to Chalcedon and Nicomedeia had him put to death. In spite of its disapproval the Senate was compelled to confirm him in the command which he had thus assumed¹.

On the news of Orchomenus Mithridates had turned his thoughts towards peace and issued instructions to Archelaus to arrive at an accommodation with Sulla. He still had hopes of retaining his acquisitions in Asia, since Sulla was unable to move from Greece and, the army of Flaccus not yet having arrived in Asia, there were prospects of playing one commander off against the other. Archelaus contrived to open negotiations with Sulla through an agent, and a conference was arranged to take place at Aulis². The conference was opened by Archelaus, who proposed that on the basis of the status quo Mithridates should conclude an alliance with Sulla and provide him with the shipping, funds and troops required to carry on the war with his enemies in Rome. The insult was met, as we should expect, by a counter-invitation to Archelaus to surrender the fleet which he still commanded and join the side of the Romans.

The principals then proceeded to business, and a preliminary agreement was drafted in the following terms: the fleet commanded by Archelaus to be surrendered to Sulla³; prisoners, deserters and escaped slaves to be restored; Mithridates to retire from all conquered territory, including Paphlagonia, and pay an indemnity of 2000 talents. In return Mithridates was once more to become the friend and ally of Rome. Although at the outset Archelaus had protested at the suggestion that he should betray his master, it is obvious that he was fearful about his reception by

¹ The account in Dio, frag. 104, has been followed. Memnon, 34, places the murder of Flaccus after both divisions had crossed into Bithynia.

³ So Appian, Mithr. 55, and Licinianus, p. 26 f. ; Plutarch, Sulla, 22, 70 shipsj Memnon, 35 (who gives only the terms finally agreed at Dardanus), 80 ships. Livy, Epit. 82: Archelaus cum classe regia Sullae se tradidit. Reinach, op. cit. p. 197 , regards the withdrawal of his garrisons by Archelaus and the surrender of the warships under his command as part of a secret agreement between Sulla and Archelaus.

Mithridates and anxious to secure Sulla’s goodwill. The fleet under his immediate command was immobilized or was actually surrendered, and the garrisons were withdrawn from the points which he still held. While the terms of the draft agreement were being conveyed to Mithridates* Archelaus remained as a distinguished guest at Sulla’s headquarters, receiving the utmost consideration when he fell ill at Larissa, and being gratified with the death of Aristion, still a prisoner in Sulla’s hands, against whom he nourished a grievance for his incompetent handling of the defence of Athens* Now or later, Archelaus also received large estates in Euboea and the title of friend and ally of the Roman People. While awaiting the king’s reply Sulla spent the summer of 85 in operations against the northern tribes who had been troubling Macedon¹.

During the early months of the year 8 5 the position of Mithridates was growing rapidly worse. Fimbria was conducting a highly successful, if brutal, campaign against the king and the Greek cities alike. Heavy contributions were laid on all, the money being shared among his troops, while towns which offered the least resistance were ruthlessly plundered, amongst them Nicomedeia and, at a later stage, Cyzicus, into which he had been received as a friend, and Ilium, whose people had given offence by sending to Sulla for assistance². Mithridates had endeavoured to oppose Fimbria’s advance from Bithynia on the Rhyndacus, where a large army was collected under his son Mithridates* recalled for the purpose from Pontus and assisted by Taxiles and the ablest of the king’s generals. In the face of a greatly superior army, the Roman troops forced the passage of the river, and attacking the camp of the enemy at dawn, surprised them in their tents and destroyed the greater part of the army³. The younger Mithridates himself escaped with a part of his cavalry to join the king at Pergamum. But Fimbria, following up

¹ Appian, Mithr, 55. Plutarch, Sulla _y 2.3, puts these operations after the return of the ambassadors and during Archelaus⁹ mission to Mithridates. On the strength of Licinianus, p. 27 f_v Reinach (ofi. cit. p. 198) would place a campaign undertaken by Hortensius in the north immediately after the conference, and a second expedition undertaken by Sulla himself during Archelaus’ mission to Mithridates. But the diplomatic situation was such that Sulla could hardly have absented himself at this stage.

his victory, drove the king in flight to Pitane on the coast. He then beset the town on the land side, and sent an urgent message to Lucullus, who had at last arrived with something of a fleet and was cruising off the coast, to complete the blockade by sea. The language of the despatch, as given by Plutarch, was scarcely palatable to one of Sulla’s partisans, nor was Fimbria’s character likely to inspire confidence that he would abide by any agreement made with a political opponent. Lucullus refused to co-operate, and the great prize was lost¹.

Lucullus, it will be remembered, had been sent out by Sulla in the winter of 8 7—6 to raise a fleet among the maritime states of the East still loyal to Rome. With six vessels he had made his way through the enemy fleets to Crete and Cyrene. When the little squadron set sail for Egypt, most of it was lost to Mithridates’ friends the pirates, and it was with difficulty that Lucullus himself made his way to Alexandria. Here he received a royal welcome from the Egyptian king together with a polite refusal to take part in the quarrel between Rome and Mithridates. He was, however, escorted in safety to Cyprus, where he was able to gather a few war vessels from the Cypriotes themselves, Phoenicia and Pamphylia. A year had elapsed since he had left Sulla. After spending part of the winter in Cyprus, Lucullus slipped through the enemy vessels which were waiting for him, and, as Sulla had ordered, joined his small squadron to that of the Rhodians in the spring of 85. The united fleet then proceeded to raise revolts among the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor. Cos and Cnidos were recovered, and the king’s partisans driven out of Colophon and Chios. After refusing Fimbria’s appeal at Pitane, Lucullus, sailing on northwards, defeated a Pontic squadron off the promontory of Lectum in the Troad, and in conjunction with the Rhodians overcame the fleet commanded by Neoptolemus off Tenedos. Regaining communication with Sulla, who had now advanced to Cypsela, Lucullus entered the Hellespont and waited at Abydos to transport the Roman army to Asia Minor².

When the ambassadors from the king returned to Sulla, Mithridates professed himself ready to accept the terms offered, with the exception of the clauses ordering the surrender of a part of his fleet and the evacuation of Paphlagonia. At the same time he hinted that better terms could be obtained from Fimbria. Sulla refused to abate the least of his demands and sent Archelaus to reason with the king. With the successes of Fimbria in Asia and

of Lucullus at sea Mithridates’ position was desperate. Rejoining Sulla at Philippi, Archelaus brought word that Mithridates now requested a conference. At Dardanus in the Troad Mithridates in person accepted the terms dictated by Sulla, and after being reconciled to Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes, withdrew by sea to Pontus (August, 85 B.C.).

It is clear that considerable dissatisfaction was expressed by the army at the easy terms which had been granted to Mithridates, but Sulla excused himself on the ground that Fimbria and the king might have made common cause against him, and proceeded at once to deal with his rival. Fimbria had withdrawn southwards, and after carrying out a plundering raid through Phrygia was lying at Thyatira. When Sulla called upon him to surrender and began to enclose his camp, many of the Fimbrian troops deserted, others openly fraternized with Sulla’s men, even to the extent of lending a hand in the works of circumvallation. Fimbria, having attempted unsuccessfully both to procure the assassination of Sulla and to bring him to an interview, fled in despair to Pergamum⁴⁰, where he committed suicide. His two legions were added by Sulla to his own army, only a few of the more desperate making their way to Mithridates.

There remained the settlement of affairs in Asia Minor. The states which had stood by Rome were suitably rewarded, Rhodes in particular receiving back a portion of the Peraea, which she lost after the Third Macedonian War (vol. vm, p. 289). Having sent Curio to restore Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes to their kingdoms, Sulla reduced such towns as still resisted in Asia, ordering the restoration to their masters of slaves set free by Mithridates, and punishing any further resistance or disobedience with slaughter, plundering and destruction of fortifications. Everywhere the partisans of the king were singled out for punishment. With the approach of the winter (85—4), Sulla provided for the comfort of the troops and the further punishment of the provincials by billeting his men on the inhabitants, special orders being issued for the entertainment of the soldiers and for their pay. Each legionary was to receive from his host the sum of 16 drachmae a day, centurions 50 drachmae together with two suits of clothing. Finally an indemnity of 20,000 talents, the estimated cost of the war and of the five years’ arrears of taxes, was imposed, for which purpose the province was divided into districts, each responsible for a fixed proportion of the debt⁴¹. The system seems to have remained the basis for the later financial organization of Asia, but that the right of farming the taxes in the province was withdrawn from the Equites seems improbable², well as it would have accorded with Sulla’s political feelings towards that class.

To raise the sums demanded was beyond the resources of the province. Recourse as usual was had to lenders, and within a few years financiers and tax-farmers brought the country to despair. Not even the justice and fairness of Lucullus could make the burden tolerable. Shortly before his return to Rome in 80 b.c. Mitylene, which had incurred the especial displeasure of the Romans, ventured on a revolt that was not repressed without hard fighting. The coasts at the same time were being plundered by the pirates let loose during the war, with whom Sulla had no opportunity to deal. Leaving Murena with the two Fimbrian legions to administer the province, Sulla sailed from Ephesus in the year 84, and after a few months spent in Greece, embarked his army for Italy. Besides the spoils and treasures which were reserved for his triumph he brought with him something of more permanent value—the treatises of Aristotle, which after long concealment were now to be published to the world by scholars such as Tyrannio and Andronicus of Rhodes³.

The crisis at Orchomenus had shown Sulla to be a soldier’s general, but he was more than that. In strategy he was at once cool and daring, in tactics he was the first great master in the art of handling the more flexible weapon which the legions had become; in diplomacy he showed his hand had not lost its cunning. The_ rapid re-organization of Asia was, at the least, a great administrative feat and the Peace of Dardanus, if it was not a final settlement, gave Rome as well as Mithridates breathing-space. Having sacrificed his friends and imperilled his own career to meet the needs of Rome abroad, he was now to return to take vengeance and to reconstruct the Roman State.

Ath. Mitt. Mitteihmgen des deutschen arch. Inst. (Athenische Abteilung). Atti Acc. Torino Atti della r. Aeeademia di scienze di Torino.

C.R. Ac. Inscr. Comptes rendus de F Academic des Inscriptions H Belles-Lettres. Dessau Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae.

J.H.S.

J.I. d’A.N.

J-P.

J.R.A.S.

J.R.S.

Klio

M6m. Ac. Inscr. Mem. Acc. Lincei Mem. Acc. Torino Mnem.

Mus. B.

N. J. f. Wiss.

N.J. Kl. Alt.

N.J.P.

N.S.A.

Num. Chr.

Num. Z.

O.G.I.S.

O.L.Z.

Phil.

Phil Woch.

P.W.

Rend. Line.

Rev. Arch.

Rev. Beige Rev. Bib.

Rev. Celt.

Rev. E. A.

Rev. E.G.

Rev. E.J.

Rev. E.L.

Rev. H.

Rev. N.

Rev. Phil.

Rh. Mus.

Riv. Fil.

Riv. stor. ant.

Rom, Mitt.

S.B.

S.E.G.

S.G.D.L St. Fil.

Trans. A.P.A. Wien Anz.

Wien S.B.

Wien. St.

Z. d. Sav.-Stift. Z.N.

M£moires de VAcademic des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres. Memorie della r. Accademia nazionale dei Lincei.

Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll’s Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Alter-tumswissenschaft.

Revue de philologie, de literature et d’histoire anciennes. Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie.

Transactions of the American Philological Association. Anzeiger d. Akad. d. Wissenschaften in Wien.

The main literary sources are Appian’s Mithridatica, Flo r us, Justin, Plutarch’s Lives of LuculIuSy Pompey_y and Bulla₉ Strabo, and Velleius Paterculus. A complete survey and analysis of all the texts and of questions relating to the source-material is given in the monograph of Tli. Reinach, Mithridate Eupator\ quoted below.

For the campaigns narrated in sections v—v111 of the chapter the following parages are specifically relevant:

Cicero, 11 in Ferr. n, 21, <; x; 65, 159: de imp. Cn. Po/npei, 3, 7; 5, 1 r: pro Flaeco 14, 32; 25, 60: pro Rab. Post. 10, 27.

Memnon, fragments of History of Heraeka, 30—35. (F. 11. (», in, pp. *;.{ 1 Orosius, vi, 2.

Posidonius, frag. 39 ( • Nicolaus Dam.* fr. 79): frag, 41 (*■//>. Athenaeum v\ 1 1 */'/.). Strabo, ix, 396, 398; xxi, 579, 6^4; xni, <594, 614, 62 1; xiv, u.\

All the inscriptions bearing upon the history of Pontus; which were known down to 1890 will be found in Reinach, op. cit. pp, 456 sqq. For these and (or more recent discoveries consult also the Recueil ties Inscriptions grecques et latines tlu Pont et de PArminiem. Studia Pontic a, in, 19 to (see below).

See also H. Gr<%oire, Rapport sur tin voyage d* exploration dans le Pont ft en Cap«* padoce, B.C.H. xxxvi, X909, p. x: G. de Jorphanion, Inscriptions de Cappadore et du Pont, Melanges de la Facultd Orientals de Beyrouth, vn, 1917-2 I* p. t and p* 395: S.ILG, iv, r93°, 7^Z7“33^: A. Sou ter, Two new Ctippadocian Greek Inscriptions (Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Ramsay)* 1923, p. 399. Inscriptions of Sinope will be found in D. M. Robinson, Ancient tiimpe* quoted below. For inscriptions from South Russia bearing on the history of Pontun see

See also C.I.L. m, 238—40, 6979—80, 12220, 14402; Th. Reinach in Rev. Arch. (S^me ser.) hi, 1916, p. 329, and xii, 1920, p. 185; A. Salac, inB.C.H. xliv, 1920, p. 354; D. M. Robinson, in A.J.Ph* xmi, 1922, p. 71; *Apx- AeXr. xi, 1927— 28, TrapapT. p. 27, No. 12 (Chios), and M. Segre in II Mon do Classico> 11, 1932, p. 129.

See E. Babelon et Th. Reinach, Recueil GMral des Monnaies grecques d’Asie Mineure, 1, i, ed. 2,1925; and cf. E. S. G. Robinson, in C£r. xx (4^th ser.), 1920, p. 1, and x (5^th ser.), 1930, p. 1. Also K. Regling in Klio, xxn, 1928, p. 292.

Anderson, J. G. C., Cumont, E., Cumont, F. and Gregoire, H. Studia Pontica, 1* 1903; 11, 1906; hi, 1 (Inscriptions), 1910; 2 (in preparation).

Beioch, K. J. Griechische Geschichte. Vol. iv. Ed. 2. Berlin-Leipzig, 1925—27, pp. 214 sqq. _

Delagarde, A. Berthier. *0# Chersonesus. Bull, de la Comm. Imp. Arch, xxi, 1907, p. 177. (See also * Memoirs of the Odessa Society for History and Antiquities_s xiv, p. 266.)

Chantre, E. Recherches Archiologtques dans FAsie Occi den tale. (Mission en Cap-padoce.) Paris, 1898.

Grinevitch, K. * Exhibition of the Results of the Excavations in the Heracleotic Peninsula. Sevastopol, 1929.

- *Chersonesky Sbornik. (Materials for the Archaeology of the Tauric Chersonese.) Sevastopol, 1, 1926; 11, 1927. de Jerphanion, G. Milanges d’archdologie anatolienne. (Monuments prehelleniques, greco-romains, byzantins et musulmans de Pont, de Cappadoce, de Galatie.) Melanges de FUniv. Saint-Joseph. Beyrouth (Liban), xm, 1928.

Loeper, R. Chr. *A Greek Inscription from Ineboli. Bull, de l’lnst. Arch. Russe a Constantinople, vni, 1903, p. 153.

Meyer, Ernst. Die Grenzen der hellenistischen Staaten in Kleinasien. Zurich-^ Leipzig, 1925. ^

Niese, B. Straboniana. vi. Die Erwerbung der Kiisten des Pontus durch Mithridates FI. Rh. Mus. xm, 1887, p. 559. von der Osten, H. H. Explorations in Hittite Asia Minor. (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Communications, No. 2.) 1927.

Patsch, C. Beitriige xur Volkerkunst von Sudosteuropa_> v. Aus 500 Jahren vorrom.

Pechonkin, N. M. * Archaeological Excavations on the site of Strabo³ s Old Chersonese. Bull, de la Comm. Imp. Arch, xm, 1911, p. 108.

RostovtzefF, M. *Syriscus, the Historian of ike Tauric Chersonese, Journ* of the Min. of PubL Educ, 19x5, April, p. 151.

Stahelin, F. Geschichte der Kleinasiatlschen Galater. Ed. 2. Leipzig, 1907. von Stern, E. Bernerkungen zu Strains Geographic der Taurischen Chersonesos. Hermes, lii, 1917, p. 1. (See also his contributions* in Memoirs of the Odessa Society for History and Antiquities, xix, 1896, Minutes, no. 296, p. 92; ib. xxvni, 1907, Minutes, no. 383, p. 89; also liittler's Zeitsckrift fur A he Geschichte, 1, 2, p. 63.)

Articles in P.W., Amaseia, Amisos (Hirschfeld); Ariamnes (j udeich); Ariarathes (Niese); Bithynia (Ed. Meyer), cols. 510-24; Galatia (Blirchnerand Brandis); Galli (Niese); and Kappadokien (Ruge).

In addition to these books and articles, the following should also be consulted .for the First Mithridatic War;

—— Die Entwickehmg der rmischen Flottc vom Seer&ttherkrieg Jes Pompeius Sis znr Schlacht von Actium. Phil, lvi, 1897. p. 470.

Of the birth of the Pontic kingdom there existed in ancient historical literature a complete and reliable account, that of Hieronymus of Cardia. His statements, however, in the hands of later writers, became hopelessly confused, and as a result we are still trying to find the way of restoring the account of Hieronymus in its original version.

Polybius xxxiii, 12. This argument holds good unless we assume not only that Pharnaces and Mithridates Philopator ruled together, but that Polybius omitted the name of Pharnaces and that Philopator enjoyed only a very short: reign after the brother’s death.

They are not mentioned in the treaty, but compare the story of Amage the Sarmatian in Polyaenus vm, 56.

I.G. xi, 4, 1056; O.G.I.S. 771; Durrbach, Choix, 73; A. Wilhelm, Jahreshefte, xxiv, 1929, pp. 174 sqq.\ R. Laqucur, Epigr. Unters. z. d. griech. Folksleschliissen, pp. 55 sqq.

It is worth mentioning that before the discovery of the inscription and of the coins of Philopator some scholars were inclined to identify Philopator and Euergetes.

.Volume of Plates, iv, 4, j. Compare the similar coins of Amastris and Amisus, ib. iv, k, I.

The royal residence Chabot or Chabon, and Palakion (Strabo vxi_s 3x2) are to be regarded as fortresses.

S.E.G. 11, 446, and the later decree for Aristagoras, Ditt.⁴⁴ 708. Much later

The topography of this siege is hopelessly confused in Strabo and is hotly debated by modem scholars. In the opinion of the present writer the most probable theory is that of Berthier Delagarde, who identified the city mentioned by Strabo with the ruins on the little peninsula which was called Parthenion by the ancients, where to-day the Chersonesian lighthouse stands. A further suggestion by the same scholar, that these ruins are identical with the * old Chersonesus ’ of Strabo, is supported by the quite recent discovery of large and well-preserved ruins under the level or the sea opposite the lighthouse. Strong walls surround this city; the agora is well recognizable. Against the inroads from outside, the promontory on which this city stood was defended by a double wall which ran from the sea to the bay, ruins of which were discovered some years ago. No detailed account of the discovery has been printed yet. A preliminary report may be found in an article by Prof Grinevich in the newspaper Moskva Vecher, Oct. 22, I93°> ^no* ^47*

⁸ The date of these operations is unknown, and they may be much later than the conquest of the Crimea. The protectorate is suggested by Mithridatic types on the coinage of the Greek cities of the western shore of the Black Sea and by their behaviour during the wars of Mithridates with Rome. See Volume of Plates iv, 4,/, g, h, i. ⁴ lb. 4,j-o.

Cf. M. I. Rostovtzeff and C. B. Welles, A parchment contract etc., Yale Classical Studies, 11, 1930, pp. 35, 53 n., 71.

The chief ancient sources for sections v—vxu are Plutarch’s Sulla, 11—26 (which draws on Sulla’s own memoirs), Appian, Mithridatica, 1—63, Mcmnon, fragments of History of Heraclea, xv, and fragments of Licinianus.

name. By other writers he is called Aristion and this name occurs on coins struck in Athens at this time. Since Posidonius’ account closes with the

Delos fiasco it has been supposed that Athenion was suppressed as the result and Aristion established in his place by Archelaus. See the full discussion of the question in W. S. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, p. 447.

Appian, Mithr. 29. Plutarch (Sulla, 11) assigns the conquest of Euboea to Archelaus; no doubt Metrophanes was his subordinate. Compare the similar case of Dorylaus and Zenobius in the affair of Chios (below, p. 254).

Plutarch, Sulla, 11. Appian, Mithr. 29, after describing the reconquest of Sciathos, states that Bruttius, receiving reinforcements to the number of 1000 from Macedon, advanced into Boeotia, where he fought a three days’ battle with Archelaus. When, however, Archelaus was joined by the Lacedaemonians and Achaeans Bruttius withdrew to the Piraeus, from which he was forced to retire when Archelaus brought up his fleet. This is clearly absurd. Plutarch’s statement is that after the engagements at Chaeronea Bruttius drove Archelaus back to the sea. We have little guidance as to the precise chronology of Bruttius’ campaign, which seems to have taken place in the autumn and winter of 88—7 b.c.

Livy, Epit. 81; Strabo ix, 398. For the arrangements in Athens, made probably at the end of the war, see Ferguson, op. cit. p. 456.

So Appian, Mithr. 49, and Plutarch, Sulla, 20; the text of Licinianus seems to give Dorylaus 65,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry and 70 chariots. Orosius vi, 1, 6, and Eutropius v, 6, 3 give 70,000. We have no figures from Memnon but if his original total of 150,000 (see above, p. 240, n. 2) is correct, Dorylaus’ force cannot have exceeded 20,000.

The accounts in Plutarch, Sulla, 2 x, and Appian, Mithr. 49, refer mainly to the fighting on the wings (especially the left), which as at Chaeronea was the most critical. Frontinus (Strat, 11, 3, 17) cannot, as has been supposed, refer to Chaeronea. He gives us valuable information regarding Archelaus’ formation, namely that his cavalry was disposed on either wing with the chariots and phalanx in the centre. From Plutarch we learn that it was the Roman working parties and the covering troops (i.e. those on the flanks, cf. Frontinus: Sulla fossas. . . utroque latere duxit; Plutarch: i/caTepcaOev) which were surprised at the first onset, Appian stating that this happened Sta £eo<? tcov L7r7Tcov. The enemy’s losses were chiefly in cavalry, i.e. were lost in the fighting on the wings. Since reinforcements were brought from the right, it would seem that it was the Roman left which gave way at the beginning of the battle.

Appian, Mithr. 60; Plutarch, Sulla, 25, places his death in the camp at Thyatira.

The number xliv in Cassiodorus, Chron., is uncertain both on palaeo-graphical and other grounds. For the regioms see V. Chapot, Province romaine proconsulate d'Asie, pp. 89 sqq.

^! See T. Rice Holmes, The Roman Republic, 1, p. 395) where the question is fully discussed.