The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (8 page)

WAR OF THE ALLIES

Death toll:
300,000
¹

Rank:
96

Type:
ethnic civil war

Broad dividing line:
Romans vs. Italians

Time frame:
91–88 BCE

Location:
Italy

Traditional translation of the name:
Social War (
bellum sociale
)

Who usually gets the most blame:
Romans

Another damn:
rebellion against Rome

T
HE PEOPLES OF CENTRAL ITALY HAD FOUGHT AS ALLIES OF THE ROMANS IN
t
heir wars of conquest, supplying as much as half of the manpower in their armies, but all of the power and the glory of the conquests went to the City of Rome. Allied officers serving in Roman armies were subject to draconian Roman punishments without the right of appeal that Roman citizens had. Roman magistrates passing through allied towns exercised dictatorial authority, and only citizens of Rome had any say in Roman policy or protection from Roman power. So the Italian allies petitioned to be recognized as citizens. They found an ally in Marcus Livius Drusus, a Roman tribune who argued their case in city politics, but every time the vote came up, the Senate shot it down. When Drusus was assassinated as part of the cutthroat politics of the city, the Italian allies abandoned the cooperative approach and went to plan B. Eight tribes, notably the Samnites and Marsi, set up a rival republic (“Italia”) with its capital in the town of Corfinium, east of Rome.

Rome immediately mobilized its army to put a stop to this. With enemies in all directions, the two Roman consuls in 90 BCE split the 150,000-man army and headed off separately. Publius Rutilius Lupus went north, Lucius Julius Caesar south. In the north, Rutilius bungled several battles and was eventually killed, but his adviser, the veteran general and alpha Roman of the era, Gaius Marius, took over and led this army to victory over the Marsi. In the south, the Roman army took a beating but managed to hold the Italians to a draw.
*

For the first time since Hannibal’s day, Rome had enemies within reach of the city gates. Realizing that winning the war would be harder than they had anticipated, Rome granted concessions to any allies who remained or resumed being loyal. The next year, both consuls took their armies north together and scored a conspicuous victory over the rebellious Italians.

Eventually, the war was extinguished when Rome granted the rebellious allies the right to vote for the Roman government. The catch was that the votes had to be cast in person in the city of Rome itself. At first glance, this was not quite the compromise that Rome claimed because most allied citizens couldn’t be bothered to trek all the way to Rome on election day. Early on, most of their votes were never cast; however, candidates eventually learned it was worth the cost to have their supporters carted in from distant communities for the election season, and in time it became quite a rowdy holiday.
²

THIRD MITHRIDATIC WAR

Death toll:
400,000 at least
¹

Rank:
81

Type:
hegemonial war

Broad dividing line:
Rome vs. Pontus

Time frame:
73–63 BCE

Location:
Asia Minor (modern Turkey)

Who usually gets the most blame:
Mithridates

Another damn:
Roman conquest

A
FTER THE CARTHAGINIANS, THE KINGDOM OF PONTUS, WHICH ENCIRCLED
much of the Black Sea and had its capital at Sinope on the north coast of Asia Minor, put up the most stubborn resistance to Roman expansion.

Prelude: The First Mithridatic War (89–85 BCE)

While the Romans were busy with the revolt of the allies in Italy, King Mithridates of Pontus took advantage of the distraction to encroach on the Roman sphere of influence in the east. After he overran Rome’s allied kingdoms of Bithynia (to the west) and Cappadocia (to the south), their refugee kings convinced the Romans to come to their rescue. As soon as the Romans declared war, however, the Pontic army occupied the Roman province of Asia (the western edge of present-day Turkey). Mithridates ordered all Italians living in these lands—80,000 merchants, sailors, travelers, family members, even Italian-born slaves—killed and their property seized.

Mithridates crossed over to Greece for another easy conquest until Rome solved its problem with the Italian allies and retaliated. Lucius Cornelius Sulla—now a Roman consul—arrived and beat the Pontics in several battles, killing over 150,000 of them;
²
however, the terms of peace he imposed on Mithridates were light because Sulla wanted to get home quickly and shore up his power base in Rome.

To pay for new armies, the warring sides looted the holiest shrines in Greece. Mithridates plundered the island of Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, while Rome plundered the Oracle at Delphi and Olympia, site of the Olympic Games. Each army hauled away cartloads of precious art to be auctioned for hard cash.
³

Second Mithridatic War (83–82 BCE)

The Second Mithridatic War was a border skirmish and hardly worth mentioning except that you would probably be confused if the story jumped from the first to the third war without an explanation. Mithridates started rebuilding his army in order to put down some local rebellions, but the local Roman commander thought this new manpower was going to be directed against Rome. After the first clashes, however, they settled the problem diplomatically.

Third—and Deadliest—Mithridatic War (73–63 BCE)

By now, most kings in the Mediterranean had come to terms with the fact that Rome was in charge. They cleared every major policy decision with their Roman ambassador first. Monarchs without sons sometimes went further and simply left their kingdoms to Rome in their wills, but when the king of Bithynia bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, Mithridates declared the will a Roman forgery and occupied Bithynia again. He expected that the Romans would be too busy chasing Spartacus to stop him.

The Roman Senate dispatched Lucius Licinius Lucullus to fix the Pontic problem, but when he arrived, he found the local Roman forces to be an undisciplined rabble in no condition for a hard campaign. He took some time whipping them into shape, but this left another Roman commander in the area, Marcus Aurelius Cotta, on his own to be defeated at Chalcedon and besieged at Cyzicus by Mithridates. With an army that was still barely trained, Lucullus marched out and scared the Pontics into abandoning the siege.

In the subsequent campaign, Lucullus systematically destroyed the Pontic army and overran Asia Minor. Mithridates fled east to his son-in-law, King Tigranes of Armenia, who refused Roman extradition requests. In 69 BCE, Lucullus fought his way into Armenia by way of upper Mesopotamia with a campaign that killed about 100,000 Armenians. The fortune looted from the Armenian capital Tigranocerta made Lucullus the richest man in Rome, and his extravagant lifestyle became legendary after he returned home and began spending it.

Mithridates now fled to his lands on the north shore of the Black Sea, where his son, Machares, ruled, but Machares did not want to antagonize Rome and refused to take up arms. Never a sentimentalist, Mithridates killed Machares and took personal control of his territory. He rebuilt his army by recruiting Scythian horsemen from the Ukrainian steppe.

In Asia Minor, Lucullus made enemies among his fellow countrymen as he consolidated control of Rome’s conquests. To relieve the crushing poverty of these war-torn lands, he unilaterally abolished some of the heaviest debts that the colonials owed Roman moneylenders and tax farmers, independent contractors who squeezed the local populations on behalf of the Roman government. This angered many powerful financiers. His soldiers also disliked Lucullus for being stingy with his loot, so they refused to go any further during his latest campaign. This opened the door for a Pontic counteroffensive to reclaim a lot of the lost territory. Lucullus’s enemies in Rome took this opportunity to have him recalled and replaced by Pompey (66 BCE), who then grabbed all of the glory by administering the last blow to the dying Kingdom of Pontus.

As the world closed in around him, Mithridates poisoned his daughters and wives to keep them from being captured and humiliated. He then tried to kill himself by poison, but this failed because he had spent a lifetime developing an immunity to the poisons commonly used by assassins. Finally, one of his generals finished the job with a sword.