by Will Durant
West and north of Pisidia was the province of “Asia,” divided into Phrygia, Caria, Lydia, and Mysia. Here, where the civilization of Ionia still flourished after a thousand years, Philostratus counted 500 towns, with a total population far greater than the region supports today. The countryside was fertile, the crafts had grown in skill from age to age, and the ports profited from the development of rich markets in Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul. Phrygia was mountainous, but it boasted large cities like Apamea Celaenae—ranked by Strabo as second only to Ephesus in “Asia”—and Laodicea, fortunate in its philanthropic philosophers and millionaires. Cnidus was yet important enough to make an alliance with Rome; but Halicarnassus had declined from Herodotus to Dionysius—an excellent literary critic, an uncritical historian. Miletus was no longer in its prime, though still an active port; the oracle of Apollo in the temple at near-by Didyma continued to answer questions with puzzles; and the storytellers of the region were weaving those amorous picaresque “Milesian tales” that would soon develop into the Greek novel. Priene was a minor town, but its citizens vied honorably in making it fair with fine buildings. Here, in the first century B.C., a woman, Phile, was elected to the highest municipal office; the influence of wealth and Rome was raising the status of woman in Hellenic lands. Magnesia on the Maeander had what many rated as the most nearly perfect temple in Asia—dedicated to Artemis (129 B.C.), and designed by Hermogenes, the supreme architect of the age. At Mycale the koinon, or Commons, still met annually as a general council and religious union for Ionia.
Of the islands lying off the Carian coast Cos prospered with its silk industry and its medical school, rich with traditions of Hippocrates, and Rhodes (i.e., the Rose) was even in her decline the most beautiful city of the Greek world. When, after the Civil War, Augustus sought to relieve the distress of the eastern cities by allowing the cancellation of all debts, Rhodes refused to avail herself of the expedient and met all her obligations faithfully. As a result she rapidly regained her place as banker to the Aegean trade and became again a halfway port for vessels plying between Asia and Egypt. The city was celebrated for its fallen Colossus, its handsome buildings, its famous statuary, its clean and orderly streets, its competent aristocratic government, its celebrated schools of rhetoric and philosophy. Here Apollonius Molo taught Caesar and Cicero those arts of style which through them influenced all later Latin prose.
The most famous Rhodian of this period was Poseidonius, the last great synthetic mind of antiquity. Born at Syrian Apamea (135 B.C.), he first earned fame as a long-distance runner. After studying under Panaetius in Athens he made Rhodes his home, served her as magistrate and ambassador, traveled into many provinces, returned to Rhodes, and drew such men as Pompey and Cicero to his lectures on the Stoic philosophy. At 83 he went to live in Rome and died there a year later. His lost Universal History—covering Rome and its possessions from 144 to 82 B.C.—was ranked by ancient scholars as equal to the work of Polybius. His report of his travels in Gaul and his treatise On the Ocean were basic sources for Strabo. His calculation of the sun’s distance from the earth—52,000,000 miles—was closer than that of any other ancient student to our modern reckoning. He went to Cádiz to study the tides, and explained them by the joint action of the sun and the moon. He underestimated the distance across the Atlantic and predicted that one sailing from Spain would come to India after 8000 miles. Despite his wide acquaintance with natural science, he accepted many of the spiritualistic ideas of his time—daimones, divination, astrology, telepathy, and the power of the soul to rise to a mystic union with God, whom he defined as the Life-Force of the world. Cicero too generously ranked him as the greatest of the Stoics; we might also consider him a forerunner of the Neo-Platonists, a bridge from Zeno to Plotinus.
Following the coast of Asia northward from Caria, the traveler entered Lydia and its greatest city, Ephesus. It flourished under the Romans as never before. Though Pergamum was the formal capital of “Asia,” Ephesus became the seat of the Roman proconsul and his staff; it was also the main port of the province and the meeting place of the provincial assembly. Its polyglot population of 225,000 ranged from philanthropic sophists to a noisy and superstitious rabble. The streets were well paved and lighted and had miles of shady porticoes. There were the usual public buildings, some unearthed as late as 1894: a “museum” or scientific center, a medical school, a library with a strangely baroque façade, and a theater that seated 56,000 persons; here Demetrius the image-maker would arouse the populace against Saint Paul. The center (and chief bank) of the city was the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by 128 columns each the gift of a king. The eunuch priests were attended by virgin priestesses and a swarm of slaves; the rites were a mixture of Oriental and Greek; the barbarous statue that represented the goddess had two rows of supernumerary breasts, symbolizing fertility. The Festival of Artemis made all May a month of rejoicing, feasting, and games.
Smyrna, despite its fishermen, had a better atmosphere. Apollonius of Tyana, who traveled far and wide, called it “the most beautiful city under the sun.”59 It was proud of its long, straight streets, its double-tiered colonnades, its library, and its university. One of its most famous sons, Aelius Aristides (A.D. 117-187), described it in terms that reveal the splendor of these Roman-Hellenistic cities.
Go from east to west, and you will pass from temple to temple and from hill to hill along a street fairer than its name (the Golden Way). Stand on the acropolis: the sea flows beneath you, the suburbs lie about you, the city through three lovely views fills the goblet of your soul. . . . Everything to the very shore is a shining mass of gymnasia, markets, theaters . . . baths—so many that you hardly know where to bathe . . . fountains and public walks, and running water in every home. The abundance of her spectacles, contests, and exhibitions is beyond telling, and the variety of her handicrafts. Of all cities this is best suited for those who like to live at ease and be philosophers without guile.60
Aelius was one of many rhetors and sophists whose fame drew students to Smyrna from all Hellas. His teacher Polemo was so great (says Philostratus) “that he talked with cities as his inferiors, with emperors as not his superiors, and with the gods as his equals.”61 When he lectured in Athens Herodes Atticus, his greatest rival in opulent eloquence, attended as an admiring pupil. In payment for the privilege Herodes sent him 150,000 drachmas ($90,000); when Polemo failed to thank him a friend suggested that he felt underpaid; Herodes sent 100,000 more, which Polemo quietly accepted as his due. Polemo used his fortune to embellish his adopted city; he took part in its government, harmonized its factions, and served it as ambassador. Tradition says that finding his arthritis unbearable he shut himself up in the tomb of his ancestors at Laodicea and died of voluntary starvation at the age of fifty-six.62
Sardis, Croesus’ ancient capital, was still “a great city” in Strabo’s time. Cicero was impressed by the splendor and refinement of Mytilene, and in the third century Longus described it in terms suggestive of Venice.63 Pergamum shone with the great altar and costly buildings raised by the Attalid kings out of a treasury fattened by the labor of slaves in state forests, fields, mines, and factories. Attalus III anticipated Roman expansion and social revolution by bequeathing his realm to Rome in 133 B.C. Aristonicus, son of King Eumenes II by a concubine, denounced the bequest as forced, called the slaves and the free poor to revolt, defeated a Roman army (132), captured many cities, and planned a socialist state with the help of Blossius, teacher of the Gracchi. The neighboring kings of Bithynia and Pontus, and the business classes of the occupied cities, joined Rome in suppressing the rebellion, and Aristonicus died in a Roman dungeon. This uprising, and the Mithridatic Wars, interrupted the cultural life of Pergamum for half a century, and Antony despoiled its famous library to reimburse Alexandria for the volumes burned during Caesar’s stay. Pergamum must have recovered by Vespasian’s time, for the elder Pliny judged it the most brilliant city in Asia. It enjoyed a new flurry of building under the Antonines, and deve
loped in its Asclepieum a medical school from which Galen went forth to cure the world.
Farther north Alexandria Troas was made a Roman colony by Augustus in memory of Rome’s supposed Trojan origin—which gave Rome a convenient claim to all these parts. On a near-by hill (Hissarlik) old Troy was rebuilt as new Ilium, and became a goal for tourists to whom guides pointed out the exact spot of every exploit in the Iliad, and the cave where Paris had judged Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. On the Propontis Cyzicus built ships and sent out a ubiquitous merchant fleet rivaled only by that of Rhodes. Here Hadrian built a Temple of Persephone which was one of the glories of Asia. Its columns, says Dio Cassius, were six feet in diameter and seventy-five feet high, yet each was a single block of stone.64 Rising from a hill, it towered so high that Aelius counted the harbor’s lighthouse superfluous.
From the Red to the Black Sea a hundred cities flourished under the Roman peace.
VII. THE GREAT MITHRIDATES
Along the northern shores of Asia Minor sprawled Bithynia and Pontus, mountainous in the interior, but rich in timber and minerals. Here a mixture of Thracians, Greeks, and Iranians overlay an antique Hittite stock. A line of Greco-Thracian kings ruled Bithynia, built a capital at Nicomedia (Is-nikmid), and major cities at Prusa and Nicaea (Is-nik). About 302 B.C. a Persian noble, piously called Mithridates, carved a kingdom for himself out of Cappadocia and Pontus, and founded a dynasty of virile Hellenizing monarchs, with capitals at Comana Pontica and Sinope. Their rule spread until it impinged upon Roman economic and political interests. The resulting Mithridatic Wars are fitly named from the redoubtable king who united western Asia and European Greece in a revolt which, if it had succeeded, would have changed the face of history.
Mithridates VI had inherited the throne of Pontus as a boy of eleven. His mother and his guardians, seeking to supplant him, tried to kill him. He fled from the palace, disguised himself, and for seven years lived in the woods as a hunter, dressed in skins. About 115 B.C.. a coup d’état deposed his mother and restored him to power. Surrounded by the conspiracies characteristic of Oriental courts, he took the precaution of drinking a little poison every day, until he had developed immunity to most of the varieties available to his intimates. In the course of his experiments he discovered many antidotes. From these his interest spread to medicine, on which he compiled data of such value that Pompey had them translated into Latin. His wild and exacting life had given him strength of body as well as of will; he grew to so large a frame that he sent his suit of armor to Delphi to amuse the worshipers. He was an expert horseman and warrior, could (we are assured) run fast enough to overtake a deer, drove a sixteen-horse chariot, and rode 120 miles in a day.65 He prided himself on being able to outeat and outdrink any man, and he attended to a numerous harem. Roman historians tell us that he was cruel and treacherous and slew his mother, his brother, three sons, and three daughters;66 but Rome has not transmitted his side of this tale. He was a man of some culture, could speak twenty-two languages, and never used an interpreter;67 he studied Greek literature, was fond of Greek music, enriched Greek temples, and had Greek scholars, poets, and philosophers at his court; he collected works of art and issued coins of surpassing excellence. But he shared in the sensuality and coarseness of his half-barbarian environment and accepted the superstitions of his time. He defended himself against Rome not with the far-seeing maneuvers of a great general or statesman, but with the impromptu courage of an animal at bay.
Such a man could not be content with the reduced kingdom relinquished by his mother. With the help of Greek officers and mercenaries he conquered Armenia and the Caucasus, passed over the Kuban River and the Strait of Kerch into the Crimea, and brought under his sway all the Greek cities on the east, north, and west coast of the Black Sea. As the collapse of Greek military power had left these communities almost defenseless against the barbarians of their hinterland, they received the Greek phalanxes of Mithridates as saviors. The subject cities included Sinope (Sinob), Trapezus (Trebizond), Panticapaeum (Kerch), and Byzantium; but Bithynian control of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) left the Mediterranean commerce of Pontus at the mercy of hostile kings. When Nicomedes II of Bithynia died (94 B.C.), his two sons contested the succession. One of them sought the aid of Rome, the other, Socrates, appealed to the Pontic king. Mithridates took advantage of the factional strife in Italy to invade Bithynia and enthrone Socrates. Rome, unwilling to see the Bosporus in hostile hands, ordered Mithridates and Socrates out of Bithynia. Mithridates complied, Socrates refused. The Roman governor of Asia deposed him and crowned Nicomedes III. The new ruler, encouraged by the Roman proconsul Manius Aquilius, invaded Pontus, and the First Mithridatic War began (88-84 B.C.).
Mithridates felt that his sole chance of survival lay in arousing the Hellenic East to revolt against its Italian overlords. He announced himself as the liberator of Hellas and sent troops to free the Greek cities of Asia, if necessary by force. Opposed by the business classes of the towns, he courted the democratic parties with promises of semisocialistic reforms. Meanwhile his navy of 400 ships destroyed the Roman Black Sea fleet, and his army of 290,000 men overwhelmed the forces of Nicomedes and Aquilius. To express his scorn of Roman avarice,68 the victorious king poured molten gold down the throat of the captured Aquilius—fresh from his triumph over the revolted slaves of Sicily. The Greek cities of Asia Minor, shorn of Roman defense, opened their gates to the armies of Mithridates and declared their allegiance to his cause. At his suggestion, on an appointed day, they slew all Italians—80,000 men, women, and children—whom they found within their walls (88 B.C.). Says Appian:
The Ephesians tore away the fugitives who had taken refuge in the Temple of Artemis and were clasping the images of the goddess, and slew them. The Pergamenes shot with arrows the Romans who had sought sanctuary in the Temple of Aesculapius. The people of Adramyttium followed into the sea those who sought to escape by swimming, and killed them and drowned their children. The inhabitants of Caunus (in Caria) pursued the Italians who had taken refuge about the statue of Vesta, killed the children before their mothers’ eyes, then the mothers, then the men. ... By which it was made plain that it was as much hatred of the Romans as fear of Mithridates that impelled these atrocities.69
Doubtless the poorer classes, who had borne the brunt of Roman domination, took the lead in this mad massacre; the propertied classes, long protected by Rome, must have trembled at so wild an uprising of revenge. Mithridates sought to appease the well to do by exempting the Greek cities from taxes for five years and giving them complete home rule. At the same time, however, he “proclaimed the canceling of debts,” says Appian,70 “freed the slaves, confiscated many estates, and redistributed the land.” Leading men in the communities formed a conspiracy against him; he discovered it and had 1600 of them killed. The lower classes, aided by philosophers and university professors,71 seized power in many Greek cities, even in Athens and Sparta, and declared war against both Rome and wealth. The Greeks of Delos, in an ecstasy of freedom, slaughtered 20,000 Italians in one day. The fleet of Mithridates captured the Cyclades, and his armies took possession of Euboea, Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace. The defection of rich “Asia” stopped the flow of tribute to the Roman treasury and of interest to Roman investors, and plunged Italy into a financial crisis that had something to do with the revolutionary movement of Saturninus and Cinna. Italy itself was divided, for the Samnites and Lucanians sent offers of alliance to the Pontic king.
Faced with war and revolution everywhere, the Senate sold the accumulated gold and silver of Rome’s temples to finance Sulla’s troops. We must not tell again how Sulla captured Athens, defeated the rebel armies, saved the Empire for Rome, and gave Mithridates a lenient peace. The King withdrew to his Pontic capital and quietly organized another army and fleet. Murena, the Roman legate in Asia, decided to attack him before he grew stronger. When, in this Second Mithridatic War (83-81), Murena was defeated, Sulla reprimanded him for violating the treaty and ordered hostilities
ended. Six years later Nicomedes III bequeathed Bithynia to Rome. Mithridates realized that his own kingdom would soon be swallowed up if the Roman power, already controlling the Bosporus, should reach the borders of Paphlagonia and Pontus. In the Third Mithridatic War (75-63) he made a last effort, fought for twelve years against Lucullus and Pompey, was betrayed by his allies and aides, and fled to the Crimea. There the old warrior, now in his sixty-ninth year, tried to organize an army to cross the Balkans and invade Italy from the north. His son Pharnaces revolted against his authority, his army refused the venture, and the deserted king tried to kill himself. The poison that he took failed to work because he had inured his system to it, and his hands were too weak to press home the blade from whose point he invited death. His friends and protégés, commissioned by his son to kill him, ended his life with their swords and spears.
VIII. PROSE
It speaks well for Roman rule that the cities of Asia Minor recovered so rapidly from the intermittent fever of these wars. Nicomedia became the capital of the province of Bithynia-Pontus and later the imperial seat of Diocletian; Nicaea would be immortalized by the most important council in the history of the Christian Church. The two cities so rivaled one another in building that Trajan had to send the younger Pliny to draw them back from bankruptcy. Nicomedia made her offering to literature in Flavius Arrianus, whom we have seen recording the discourses of Epictetus. Governor of Cappadocia for six years, archon of Athens for one, Arrian yet found time to write many histories, of which only the Anabasis of Alexander remains, with an appendix of Indica. It was written in clear and simple Greek, for Arrian took Xenophon as his exemplar in style as well as life. “This work,” he says, with the bold vanity of the ancients, “is, and has been from my youth up, equivalent to native land, and family, and public office for me; and therefore I do not deem myself unworthy to rank among the greatest authors in the Greek language.”72
