Mithridates the Great (3 page)

The Successors of Seleucia

As with a forest when a mighty tree collapses, young saplings spring up in the clearing and begin to compete for their place in the sun. East of the Euphrates a race of warrior tribesmen claimed descent from the Achaemenid Persians who had once ruled all of the region and who had twice invaded the
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reek mainland. They took their name from the province of Parthava, their homeland just southwest of the Caspian Sea, and called themselves Parthians. They fought with a mixture of light, highly–mobile bowmen and heavily armoured cavalry. Like the Romans who attempted to defeat them in later
years, the Seleucid phalanx found that this mixed ability to strike from a distance with missile weapons before getting up close and personal with lancers made the Parthians formidable foes on their home ground.

The Seleucid yoke was thrown off even before the coming of the Romans, but after Magnesia there was little to limit the Parthian state’s expansion. Parthia sat astride the ‘Silk Road’; a trade route that reached across the Mediterranean and central Asia to China and even to the spice islands beyond. It has been speculated that the chaos in Syria and Judaea diverted the flow of trade from the orient so that it now ran northwest through Armenia to the Black Sea ports, and this was one of the sources of the unexpected prosperity of both Armenia and Pontus in this period. (And the survival of the trade route explains how the Roman elite could obtain luxuries such as silk underwear, which their recent conquests now allowed them to afford.)

Trade did not harm the Parthians either. It helped to fund an army which defeated the Seleucid army of Demetrias II in 139 BC, and took the king himself prisoner. The leader of the Parthians at this time was Mithridates I. The name ‘Mithridates’ means ‘given by Mithras’, Mithras being an Indo–European god who, somewhat ironically, became a favourite of the Roman legions in later years.

This Mithridates was no relation of Mithridates of Pontus, nor indeed of the various other royal Mithridati who were about at this time. Fortunately, even the kings themselves realized that to avert an identity crisis caused by too many like–named monarchs some further identifying tag was required.
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onsequently each king chose for himself a fine, upstanding quality with which he wanted to be associated. The Parthian Mithridates called himself Mithridates Philhellene in order to soothe the fears of the
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reeks who had a valuable economic role in the cities which he conquered. Under Mithridates Philhellene, Parthia conquered Babylonia in 144 BC, and the ancient empire of the Medes and Persians within the following decade.

The Seleucid king, Demetrias II, was eventually released by the Parthians in 129 BC, and to show that there were no hard feelings, he married the Parthian king’s daughter – a match that symbolized to those few who still needed convincing that Parthia was now a fully–fledged regional superpower.

Between Parthia and Asia Minor lay the mountain kingdom of Armenia. Originally a part of the empire of Alexander the Great, Armenia enjoyed a brief independence before it was conquered by the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The kingdom, which legend claimed had long been ruled by the Orontid dynasty, was then governed directly by satraps. Access to the kingdom for
Parthian armies was restricted to the defensible choke points of the city of Sophene and the crossings of the upper Euphrates. Armenia was more accessible from the west, so the satraps maintained their loyalty for as long as Selucia remained a threat. With the weakening of Seleucid rule after Magnesia, the Armenian satraps unilaterally declared independence, secure in the knowledge that their superb cavalry was a match for the horsemen of Parthia, who were in any case more at home on the lowland plains. Armenia at this point was formed from two small kingdoms, respectively west and east of the Euphrates. The western kingdom was known as Lesser Armenia and the former satrap took the name of King Zariadris. The eastern kingdom was called Greater Armenia and came to be ruled by Zariadris’ son Artaxias. It was Artaxias who rebuilt the ancient city at Yerevan and called it Artaxata, after the custom of rulers to name after themselves cities they founded or totally rebuilt.

Like the Parthians, the Armenians determined to make the most of the fluid political situation, and adopted an expansionist stance, snapping up weaker border states, and expanding northward and westward along the eastern shore of the Black Sea. However, once the Parthian King Mithridates II (also known as Arsaces IX
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, had finished mopping up resistance in Mesopotamia, he led his forces against Armenia. He defeated the current king, Artavasdes I, and took as a hostage his young son Tigranes, the man who was later to be known to history as Tigranes the Great. The Parthians seem to have been content to rule mainly by proxy, and Armenia remained a quasi–independent state, ready to expand once more as soon as the time seemed right.

Asia Minor

This then, was the world that the father of Mithridates knew. In the middle of that world was the great mass of Asia Minor, thrusting over the northern Mediterranean to divide it from the Black Sea.
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urrounded by water on three sides, Asia Minor was a world in itself, containing widely varied geographical features, micro–climates, and diverse peoples; from the sophisticated and Hellenized kingdoms in the west, to the mountainous princedoms abutting Armenia in the east. Diverse as it was (the sources tell us that twenty–two languages were spoken in Pontus alone), Asia Minor had been settled and civilized, home of the Hittite civilization, long before the Greeks fought before the walls of Troy. Indeed, it was here, the ancient sources tell us, that the first iron swords were forged.

Both history and geography had combined to prevent Asia Minor from becoming a single political or ethnic unit. The major feature of the land mass
is a huge upland plateau that dominates the interior. Here the winters are harsh and the rivers are few. Water is found in brackish pools, and most peasant farmers content themselves with a pastoral existence with herds of sheep, goats, and occasional cattle. During the opening years of the third century, a tribe of Gauls had forced their way into the region. They had fought a bruising series of campaigns against the armies of various states but these had stubbornly refused to be parted from their desirable lands. Therefore, after pinballing from one kingdom to another, the Gauls finally ensconced themselves on the upland plateau, from where none of the neighbours considered it worthwhile to force them off. These peoples were known as the Galatians, the same people to whom St Paul was to write his biblical epistle two centuries later.

At this time, the Galatians were divided into groups called tetrarchies, though there were often more than four leaders of the nation, which was itself divided into three tribes. Whilst they maintained a lively series of internecine wars among themselves (as was generally the case), the Galatians were incapable of being more than a general nuisance to the neighbours. However, when they did manage to pull together for more than a few months the Galatians could become a menace serious enough to require a major military response. Fortunately the poverty of their upland home meant that Galatians were always ready to accept employment as mercenaries, even if the job entailed keeping their fellow countrymen on the right side of the border.

South and east of Galatia, perched on the edge of the Anatolian plateau, was the kingdom of Cappadocia. Cappadocia was a relatively poor land, cut off from the northern Mediterranean by the mountains of Cilicia, and with the powerful and predatory kingdom of Armenia to the east. Before the plains in the west dried out into the barren fastnesses of Lycaonia, the land supported the herds of horses which were the basis of Cappadocia’s famed cavalry. There were no real cities in Cappadocia as the Greeks would understand the term. Instead there were villages of peasants often sheltering near a reassuring hilltop fortress held by the local dynast. As elsewhere in Asia Minor, much of the country was temple land, for the religions of the region were both ancient and powerful, and the priests held land and did service to their king just as did his other barons. Ruled by a failing dynasty, it seemed inevitable that Cappadocia would soon fall into the clutches of a neighbouring kingdom, and few states were better placed to do that clutching than Pontus to the north, just over the River Halys. On the other hand, Rome was determined that the status quo in Asia Minor should remain just so, and kept a jealously protective eye on the vulnerable state.

South of Cappadocia, the mountains stretch right to the sea. In a long sweep from
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aria to Tarsus the land is almost impassable. Where the mountains open into valleys, these valleys are cut off from each other, and are only occasionally linked by the sea. This area, too anarchic to be considered a kingdom, and too diverse to be called a nation, was known as Cilicia. Here, the people naturally formed themselves into close–knit feudal societies, difficult to reach from outside, and even harder to govern, though several local minor kingdoms gave it a sporting try. Lately, a new phenomenon had been observed, with harbours being fortified and fortresses built on rocky headlands. The builders were not an army, though they might have been mistaken for a navy – their fleet was as large and as well–equipped as any in the Mediterranean at that time. These were pirates. Not the sort of pirates which ambushed lonely merchantmen far from the main trade routes, but the sort of pirates who took entire cities by storm and dominated the seas as far west as Spain. Cilicia, with its rough coastline and impassable hinterland, was just the sort of retreat the pirates needed, especially as the advance of Rome had made their bases in Crete too vulnerable for comfort.

Piracy had been a menace in the Mediterranean since the discovery of sailing, and usually it was the job of the dominant naval power to keep that menace in check. Until recently that task had fallen to the island merchant traders of Rhodes. Hanging like a teardrop south of the landmass of Asia Minor, the island of Rhodes had a long history as a naval power, and had even built its famous Colossus to celebrate the Seleucid failure to add the island to their empire, despite a fierce invasion and siege. (The Colossus overlooked the harbour, and did not, as popular legend has it, bestride the entrance.) The growing power of Rome had made itself felt in Rhodes as well. The island city–state was constantly riven by strife between pro– and anti–Roman factions, and what was sometimes a loyal ally of Rome could suddenly swing to a hostile neutral, depending on which faction had the upper hand. The Romans regarded this Rhodian fickleness with deep suspicion. They had crippled Rhodes’ trading base by making Delos a free port, and from there Rome annually shipped slaves by the tens of thousands to Italy, something which the peoples of the region deeply resented.

Furthermore, the Romans had decided that the Rhodians were not to be trusted with their fleet, and had ordered its numbers sharply reduced. So brutally was the fleet pruned that it was more in danger from pirates than able to suppress them. This meant that piracy flourished unchecked, for the Romans were famously reluctant to take to the water, and congenitally
incapable of staying afloat when they did so. (The first war with Carthage was fought mainly at sea, and the Romans lost far more men through drowning than they did to enemy action.) From the Pontic viewpoint, Rhodes merited careful attention, as the island was still a naval power, and it held a considerable chunk of mainland southwest Asia Minor in Caria and Lycia. Cilicia too was of considerable interest, both because the Pontic kings and the pirates had long maintained cordial relations with each other, and because the Romans, unable to take on the pirates at sea, had a legion in Cilicia which was trying rather fruitlessly to root out pirate bases on the coast.

In the central northwest, between the religious centre of Ephesus and the ruins of Troy, was the kingdom of Pergamum. With its capital on the fertile plains of the river Caicus, Pergamum was rich, settled and stable. Under the rule of the Hellenized Attalid kings, Pergamum had developed libraries, gymnasiums and all the trappings of Greek culture. It was here that it was discovered that by carefully curing the inner part of a sheepskin, a writing surface could be created that was as light as papyrus, yet more flexible, but could still hold writing without damage or fading. This material was once called
pergaminum
, a name which has today mutated to ‘parchment’. Pergamum had long seen the value of allying itself with Rome, and in return for protection and support against Pergamum’s rivals Rome was allowed the pleasure of constantly interfering in Pergamum’s affairs. (Nor indeed were the rulers of Pergamum, and of neighbouring kingdoms, slow to invite that interference by sending envoys rushing to Rome to justify or protest their conduct in the constant border wars, incursions, and downright invasions which enlivened life in the region.)

It may have been this interference which inspired the last of the Attalids, Attalus II to make the state of Rome heir to his kingdom. Since Rome had been laying down the law by embassy and decree for decades, Attalus may have (mistakenly) thought it would benefit his kingdom to be ruled directly by Rome, as Rome’s interest would then be clearly aligned with that of his former subjects. On the other hand, Attalus would have been keenly aware that death by successor was the usual form of mortality among Hellenistic monarchs, whose courts had brought palace intrigue to a refined and deadly art form. Attalus might have (correctly) assumed that by making Rome his heir it was in no–one’s interest to see him die. In fact, his death in 132 BC was so sincerely regretted by the feudal baronies of the Pergamene interior that they rose in revolt against Roman rule and, under their leader Aristonicus, briefly threatened to expel the Romans from Asia.

Rome responded with her famous technique of ‘divide and conquer’. Secure in the support of the Greek cities of the coast, they invited Pergamum’s neighbours to join in taking on Aristonicus in the interior. The subsequent spoils of war saw Cappadocia picking up Lycaonia, and Pontus getting a chunk of Phrygia and part of Paphlagonia (of which more later). Though somewhat reduced in size, Rome’s bridgehead in Asia Minor was secured.