The Grass Crown (91 page)

At the very beginning of May the Bithynian army crossed into Pontus and reached the Amnias, a tributary of the Halys flowing inland but parallel to the coast around Sinope. The strategy Pylaemenes had adopted consisted of a march from the junction of the Amnias and the Halys northward to the sea, where he intended to divide his forces to attack Sinope and Amisus simultaneously. Unfortunately the army of Bithynia encountered a huge Pontic army under the brothers Archelaus and Neoptolemus on the Amnias before it could reach the wider valley of the Halys, and went down to a crushing defeat. Camp, baggage, troops, arms, everything was lost. Except old King Nicomedes. He had taken a party of barons and slaves he could trust and left his army to its inevitable fate, pointing his own unerring nose toward Rome.

Movements of Mithridates in 88 B.C.

At almost the same moment in time as the Bithynian army met the brothers Archelaus and Neoptolemus, Manius Aquillius and his legion came over a ridge and looked down upon Lake Tatta in the distant south. But the vista had no power to charm Aquillius. Below him on the plain he saw an army vaster than the lake, equipment glittering, ranks betraying to an expert eye all the sign’s of superb discipline and confidence. No barbarian horde of Germans, this! One hundred thousand Pontic infantry and cavalry waiting for him to fall into their jaws. With the lightning rapidity only a Roman general truly understood, Aquillius turned his meager little force around and made a run for it. As he neared the Sangarius River not far from Pessinus—all that gold and he couldn’t tarry to take it!—the Pontic army caught up with his rear and began to swallow him whole. Like King Nicomedes, Aquillius abandoned his army to its inevitable fate and fled with his senior officers and two fellow commissioners across the Mysian mountains.

King Mithridates himself went after Gaius Cassius, but his insecurity got the better of him; he began to dither, with the result that Cassius heard about the defeats of the Bithynians and Aquillius before Mithridates reached him. The governor of Asia Province picked up his army and retreated southward and eastward to the big trade route crossroads town of Apameia, where he went to earth behind its strong fortifications. South and west of Cassius again, Quintus Oppius also heard the news of defeat and elected to stand at Laodiceia, right in the path of Mithridates as he came down the Maeander.

Thus the Pontic army personally commanded by the King came across Quintus Oppius before it located Cassius. Himself wanting to withstand a siege, Oppius soon discovered that the Laodiceians were not of the same mind. The townspeople opened the gates to the King of Pontus strewing flower petals in his tracks, and handed Quintus Oppius over to him as a special gift. The Cilician troops were bidden go home by the same route as they had come, but the King detained their governor, who was tethered to a post in the agora of Laodiceia. Roaring with laughter, the King himself urged the populace to pelt Quintus Oppius with filth, rotten eggs, decaying vegetables, anything soft and noisome. No stones, no pieces of wood. For the King had remembered that Pelopidas had described Quintus Oppius as an honorable man. After two days Oppius was released more or less unharmed, and sent back under a Pontic escort to Tarsus. On foot, a very long walk.

When Gaius Cassius learned of the fate which had befallen Quintus Oppius, he abandoned his militia in Apameia and fled on a sorry horse toward the coast at Miletus, keeping the Maeander River between himself and Mithridates, and traveling completely alone. He succeeded in avoiding the Pontic net around Laodiceia, but his identity was discovered in the town of Nysa and he was haled before its ethnarch, one Chaeremon. Gasping from fear turned to delight, Cassius found Chaeremon to be an ardent adherent of Rome and anxious to do anything he could to help. Bemoaning the fact that he dared not tarry, Cassius snatched a good meal and mounted a fresh horse, then rode at the gallop to Miletus, where he located a fast ship willing to take him to Rhodes. Safely arrived in Rhodes, he faced the most appalling task of all—the composition of a letter to the Senate and People of Rome that would manage to convince them of the seriousness of the Asian situation without highlighting his own frailties. Naturally enough this Herculean task was not completed in a day—or even in a month. Terrified of betraying his guilt, Gaius Cassius Longinus procrastinated.

By the end of June all Bithynia and Asia Province had fallen to King Mithridates, save for a few scattered intrepid communities which trusted to their fortifications, their inaccessibility, and the might of Rome. A quarter of a million soldiers of Pontus sat themselves down in lush green pastures from Nicomedia to Mylasa. Since the bulk of them were northern barbarians—Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Roxolani, and Caucasians—only their healthy fear of King Mithridates prevented them from running amok.

The various Ionian, Aeolian, and Dorian Greek cities and seaports of Asia Province made absolutely sure they treated this eastern potentate with all the obsequious prostrations his sort desired. Hatred of forty years of Roman occupation now became an immense asset to King Mithridates, who encouraged anti-Roman sentiment by proclaiming that no taxes, tithes, or duties would be levied that year, nor for the five years to follow. Those who owed money to Roman or Italian lenders were absolved of their debts. As a result, Asia Province was inspired to hope that life under Pontus would be better than life under Rome.

The King came down the Maeander and headed north along the coast for one of his favorite cities, Ephesus. Here he took up temporary residence and dispensed justice, further endearing himself to the local people of Asia Province by proclaiming that any detachments of militia surrendering to him would not only be forgiven and freed, but also given money to go home. Those who hated Rome the most—or at least the most loudly—were elevated to the senior ranks of citizens in every town, city, district. Lists of people known to be Roman sympathizers or employees grew rapidly; the informers were thriving.

Beneath all the rejoicing and the fawning attentions, however, lay the terror of those who understood only too well the complete cruelty and capriciousness of eastern kings, how superficial was any apparent kindness. High in favor one moment, head separated from body the next. And no one could tell when the balance would tip.

At the end of June in Ephesus the King of Pontus issued three orders: all were secret, but the third one was most secret of all.

How much he enjoyed everything about those orders! Who was to go where, who was to do what—oh, the merry dances his dolls would caper! Let other, lesser beings define and refine the details—to him alone must the credit go for masterminding the vast and interlocking design. What a design! Humming and whistling, he bustled around the palace driving several hundred co-opted scribes to the writing of those orders, the sealing of them, a huge labor done in the space of one day. And when the last packet for the last courier was sealed, he shepherded the scribes into the palace courtyard and had his bodyguard cut their throats. Dead men kept the best secrets!

The first order was sent to Archelaus, not in great favor with Mithridates at the moment; he had tried to take the city of Magnesia-under-Sipylus by frontal assault, was soundly trounced, and himself wounded. However, Archelaus was still his best general, so to him was the first order sent. One packet only. It instructed him to take command of all the Pontic fleets and sail out of the Euxine into the Aegean at the end of Gamelion, a month hence; Gamelion was Roman Quinctilis.

The second order was also a single packet. It was sent to the King’s son Young Ariarathes (a different son from that Ariarathes who was King of Cappadocia), and instructed him to lead a Pontic army one hundred thousand strong across the Hellespont and into eastern Macedonia at the end of Gamelion, a month hence.

The third order was distributed through several hundred packets sent to every town, city, district or community from Nicomedia in Bithynia to Cnidus in Caria to Apameia in Phrygia, and was addressed in each case to the chief magistrate. It decreed that every single Roman, Latin, and Italian citizen in Asia Minor—men, women, children—must be put to death together with their slaves at the end of Gamelion, a month hence.

The third one was his favorite order, the one which caused the King to hug himself and chuckle with glee, to give an occasional skip as he walked about Ephesus smiling from ear to ear. After the end of Gamelion there would be no Roman presence in Asia Minor. And when he was finished with Rome and the Romans, every last one from the Pillars of Hercules to the First Cataract on the Nilus would be dead. Rome would be no more.

At the beginning of Gamelion, hugging his secrets, the King of Pontus left Ephesus and journeyed north to Pergamum, where a special treat was in store for him.

The two other commissioners and all Manius Aquillius’s officers elected to flee to Pergamum, but Manius Aquillius himself went to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, intending there to take ship for Rhodes, where a message had informed him Gaius Cassius was lying low. But no sooner did he land on Lesbos than Manius Aquillius became ill with an enteric fever, and could not travel further. When the Lesbians heard of the fall of Asia Province (of which they were officially a part), they thoughtfully shipped the Roman proconsul to King Mithridates as a special token of their regard.

Arrived in the little port of Atarneus, opposite Mytilene, Manius Aquillius was chained to the saddlebow of a huge Bastarnian horseman and dragged all the way to Pergamum, at which city the King was now waiting eagerly for his treat. Constantly stumbling and falling, pelted with filth, jeered at, derided, reviled, Aquillius actually lived to complete the journey, sick though he was. But when Mithridates inspected him in Pergamum he saw at once that if this treatment were to be continued, Aquillius would die. And that would spoil some particularly delicious plans Mithridates had devised for Manius Aquillius!

So the Roman proconsul was tied into the saddle of an ass looking backward over its rump and driven mercilessly up and down the entire area around Pergamum to show the citizens of this erstwhile Roman capital how the King of Pontus felt about a Roman proconsul, and how little he feared retribution.

Finally, caked in filth and reduced to the merest shadow of a man, Manius Aquillius was led before the author of his torments. Sitting in state upon a golden throne mounted on a costly dais in the middle of the Pergamum agora, the King gazed down upon the man who had refused to send the army of Bithynia away, refused to let Mithridates defend his realm, refused to allow Mithridates to go over his head and complain directly to the Senate and People of Rome.

It was in that moment when he looked upon the bent and putrid form of Manius Aquillius that King Mithridates of Pontus lost the last vestige of his fear of Rome. What had he been frightened of? Why had he backed down before this ludicrous manifest weakling? He, Mithridates of Pontus, was far mightier than Rome! Four little armies, less than twenty thousand men! It was Manius Aquillius who personified Rome—not Gaius Marius, not Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The King’s concept of Rome had been a myth perpetuated by two utterly atypical Roman men! The real Rome stood here at his feet.

“Proconsul!” cried the King sharply.

Aquillius looked up, but had not the energy to speak.

“Proconsul of Rome, I have decided to give you the gold you coveted from me.”

Up onto the dais his guards drove Manius Aquillius and forced him down onto a low stool placed some distance to the front and left of the King. His arms from shoulders to hands were bound tightly against his body with broad straps, then one guard took hold of the straps on his right side and another took hold of the straps on his left side, giving him no opportunity to move.

There came a smith bearing a red-hot crucible in a pair of tongs. It was of a size to contain several cups of molten metal, and smoke rose from it, and an acrid, scorching smell.

A third guard went round behind Aquillius, took a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head back; the guard then took his nose between the fingers of the other hand, and pinched his nostrils cruelly shut. The reflex to breathe could not be disobeyed; Manius Aquillius opened his mouth and gasped. Instantly a beautiful turgid glittering river of liquid gold was poured down his air-hungry throat, more and more as he screamed and threshed and tried vainly to rise from his stool, until at last he died, mouth and chin and chest a frozen cascade of solidified gold.

“Cut him open and get every last drop of it back,” said King Mithridates, and watched intently while all the gold was meticulously scraped from the inside and the outside of Manius Aquillius.

“Throw his carcass to the dogs,” said King Mithridates, got up from his throne, came down to the level of the dais and stepped unconcernedly across the twisted and mangled remains of Manius Aquillius, proconsul of Rome.

Everything was going splendidly! No one knew that better than King Mithridates as he strolled the wind-cooled terraces of Pergamum atop its mountain and waited for the end of the month of Gamelion, which was Roman Quinctilis. Word had come from Aristion in Athens that he too had been successful.

Nothing will stop us now, O Mighty Mithridates, for Athens will show Greece the way. I started my campaign by speaking about the old pre-eminence and wealth of Athens, for it is my opinion that a people past its prime looks back to the days of glory with exquisitely keen nostalgia, and is therefore easy to seduce with promises of a return to those days of glory. Thus did I speak in the Agora for six months, slowly grinding down my opposition and gathering adherents. I even persuaded my audience that Carthage had allied itself with you against Rome, and my audience believed me! So much for the old saw that Athenians are the best educated men in the world. Not one of them knew that Carthage was obliterated by Rome nearly fifty years ago. Amazing.

I write because I have the pleasure to tell you that I have just been elected military leader of Athens—the time as I write is halfway through normal Poseideon. I was also given the power to choose my own colleagues. Naturally I have chosen men who firmly believe that the salvation of our Greek world is in your hands, Great King, and who cannot wait for the day when you crush Rome beneath your lion-booted heel.