Neither of the Kings had dreamed for one moment that, his mission in Cappadocia successfully completed, the Roman Lucius Cornelius Sulla would go anywhere save back to Tarsus; and by the time Tigranes believed what his spies told him—that Sulla was on the Euphrates looking for a crossing—his messages to Mithridates in Sinope had no hope of reaching their recipient before Sulla appeared on the Armenian doorstep. Therefore Tigranes had sent word of Sulla’s advent to his Parthian suzerains in Seleuceia-on-Tigris; their journey, though long, was an easy one.
The King of Armenia met Sulla on the Tigris some miles west of the site of his new capital; when Sulla arrived on the west bank, he faced the camp of Tigranes on the east bank. Compared to the Euphrates, the Tigris was a creek, running shallower and more sluggishly, brownish in color, perhaps half as wide. It rose, of course, on the wrong side of the Anti-Taurus, and received not one tenth of the tributaries the Euphrates did, nor the bulk of the melting snows and permanent springs. Almost a thousand miles to the south in the area around Babylon and Ctesiphon and Seleuceia-on-Tigris, the two rivers ran only forty miles apart; canals had been dug from the Euphrates to the Tigris to help the latter stream find its way to the Persian Sea.
Who goes to whom? asked Sulla of himself, smiling perversely as he put his army into a strongly fortified camp and sat down on the western bank to see who would give in first and take the trip across the river. Tigranes did, not motivated by aggression or fear, but by curiosity. As the days had gone by without Sulla’s showing himself, the King just couldn’t wait any longer. Out came the royal barge, a gilded, flat-bottomed affair guided by poles rather than oars, shielded from the heat of the sun by a gold and purple canopy fringed with bullion, under which, on a dais, stood one of the King’s minor thrones, a magnificent contraption worked in gold, ivory, and gems galore.
The King came down to the wooden jetty in a four-wheeled golden car which hurt the eyes of the watchers on the west bank, it flashed and glittered so, a slave standing behind the King in the car holding a golden, gem-studded parasol above the royal head.
“Now how is he going to manage this?” asked Sulla of his son from their hiding place behind a wall of shields.
“What do you mean, Father?”
“Dignity!” Sulla exclaimed, grinning. “I can’t believe he will soil his feet on that wooden wharf, yet they haven’t spread a carpet for him to walk on.”
The conundrum solved itself. Two brawny slaves shoved the parasol-holder aside as they stepped up into the car with the little wheels; there they linked arms and waited. Delicately the King lowered the royal posterior onto their arms, and was carried to the barge, deposited gently upon the throne. While the languid vessel plied its way across the languid river the King sat immobile, not seeming to see the throng on the western bank. The barge bumped into the sloping earth, as there was no jetty on this side, and the whole process was repeated. The slaves picked the King up and stood off to one side while the throne was carried to a high flat-topped rock, deposited upon it, and the royal parasol-holder clambered up to shade the chair. Only then was the King transported to his resting place, quite a struggle for the slaves.
“Oh, well done!” cried Sulla.
“Well done?” asked Young Sulla, learning avidly.
“He’s got me by the balls, Young Sulla! No matter what I sit on—or even if I stand—he’s going to tower above me.”
“What can you do?”
Well concealed even from the King at his new height, Sulla snapped his fingers for his body-slave. “Help me get this off,” he said curtly, struggling with the straps on his cuirass.
Divested of armor, he removed his leather under-dress as well, changed scarlet tunic for a coarsely woven oatmeal one, belted it with a cord, threw a dun-colored peasant cloak about his shoulders, and put on his wide-brimmed straw peasant’s hat.
“When in the company of the sun,” he said to Young Sulla with a grin, “be a cavern.”
Thus it was that when he emerged from between his guard and strolled down to the spot where Tigranes sat like a statue upon his throne, Sulla looked like one of the local lowly. The King, in fact, discounted him as anyone of importance, and continued to stare, frowning, into the massed ranks of Sulla’s army.
“Greetings, King Tigranes, I am Lucius Cornelius Sulla,” said Sulla in Greek, arriving at the base of the rock where the King’s chair perched. He swept off his hat and looked upward, his pale eyes wide because the King’s parasol was between him and the sun.
The King gaped, first at sight of that hair, then at sight of those eyes. To one used to seeing no eyes save brown— and who considered his Queen’s yellow orbs unique—Sulla’s were horrifying, patches punched out of a doomsday sky.
“This army is yours, Roman?” asked Tigranes.
“It is.”
“What is it doing in my lands?”
“Journeying to see you, King Tigranes.”
“You perceive me. What now?”
“Not a thing!” said Sulla airily, brows climbing, horrible eyes dancing. “I came to see you, King Tigranes, and I have seen you. Once I have told you what I am ordered to tell you, I shall turn my army round and go back to Tarsus.’’
“What are you ordered to tell me, Roman?”
“The Senate and People of Rome require you to stay within your own boundaries, King. Armenia does not concern Rome. But to venture into Cappadocia, Syria, or Cilicia will offend Rome. And Rome is mighty—mistress of all the lands around the Middle Sea, a greater domain by far than Armenia. Rome’s armies are undefeated, and many in number. Therefore, King, stay in your own ward.”
“I am in my own ward,” the King pointed out, thrown off balance by this direct talk. “Rome is the trespasser.”
“Only to carry out my orders, King. I’m simply a messenger,” said Sulla, uncowed. “I trust you’ve listened well.”
“Huh!” said the King, raising one hand. His brawny slaves linked arms and stepped upward, the King sat himself down, and was duly enthroned once more upon his barge. With his back to Sulla. And off poled the boat across the turgid stream, Tigranes unmoving.
“Well, well!” said Sulla to his son, rubbing his hands together gleefully. “An odd lot, these eastern kings, my boy. Mountebanks all. Full of importance, as prickable as a bladder.” He looked about, and called, “Morsimus!”
“Here, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Pack up. We’re going home.”
“Which way?”
“To Zeugma. I doubt we’ll encounter any more trouble from Cyzicenus of Syria than from the conceited heap of rubbish you can see disappearing across the water. Much and all as they dislike the sensation, they are all afraid of Rome. That pleases me.” Sulla snorted. “A pity I couldn’t maneuver him into a situation where he has to look up at me.”
Sulla’s reasons for heading southwest to Zeugma were not entirely because it was the shorter route—and a less mountainous one—to Cilicia Pedia; provisions were low, and the crops of the highlands still green. Whereas in the lowlands of upper Mesopotamia he might hope to find ripe grain to buy. His men were growing very tired of the fruits and vegetables they had been living on since leaving Cappadocia; they craved bread. Therefore they must endure the heat of the Syrian plains.
Sure enough, when he came down from the crags south of Amida onto the plains of Osrhoene he found the harvests in, and bread aplenty as a result. In Edessa he visited Philoromaios the King, and found Osrhoene only too pleased to give this strange Roman whatever he wanted. And to impart some rather alarming news.
“Lucius Cornelius, I am afraid that King Tigranes has gathered his army and is following you,” said King Philoromaios.
“I know,” said Sulla, unruffled.
“But he will attack you! And attack me!”
“Keep your army disbanded, King, and your people out of his way. It’s my presence worries him. Once he’s sure I really am going back to Tarsus, he’ll hie himself back to Tigranocerta.’’
; This calm confidence did much to quieten the King of Osrhoene, who sped Sulla on his way with a bounty of wheat and an object Sulla had despaired of ever seeing—a big bag of golden coins, stamped not with Osrhoene’s features, but with the face of none other than King Tigranes.
Tigranes tracked Sulla all the way to the Euphrates at Zeugma, but too far in his rear to warrant Sulla’s halting and readying for battle; this was clearly a precautionary rather than an aggressive measure. But then after Sulla had got his troops over the river at Zeugma—an easier business by far than at Samosata—he was visited by a party of fifty dignitaries, all clad in garb of a style strange to any Roman— high round little hats studded with pearls and golden beads, neck-choking spiral collars of gold wire descending to their chests, gold-embroidered coats, long stiff gold-embroidered skirts reaching their gold-shod feet.
When he learned the group was an embassage from the King of the Parthians, Sulla was not surprised; only Parthians had so much gold to wear. Exciting! And a vindication for this unprojected, unauthorized trip east of the Euphrates. Tigranes of Armenia was subject to the Parthians, that much he knew; perhaps he could convince the Parthians to muzzle Tigranes, prevent his yielding to the blandishments of Mithridates.
This time he wasn’t going to look up at Tigranes—nor look up at the Parthians, for that matter.
“I will meet with those Parthians who speak Greek—and with King Tigranes—the day after tomorrow, on the banks of the Euphrates at a spot to which the dignitaries will be conducted by my men,” said Sulla to Morsimus. The members of the embassage had not yet set eyes upon him, though he had managed to inspect them; since it had not escaped him that both Mithridates and Tigranes had been amazed by his appearance—and very much intimidated by it—Sulla had resolved that he would burst upon the Parthians also.
Born actor that he was, he set his stage with scrupulous attention to every fine detail. A huge tall dais was constructed out of some polished slabs of white marble he borrowed from the temple of Zeus in Zeugma. Then upon the dais he constructed another dais just large enough to hold a curule chair, a good foot taller than the rest of the platform, and faced with a plummy purple marble which had formed the plinth of the statue of Zeus. Fine marble seats with arms and backs of griffins and lions, sphinxes and eagles, were pillaged from all over town, and these were placed upon the main dais, a group of six to one side, and a single, splendid specimen formed by the backs of two winged lions off to the other side for Tigranes. Upon the purple marble smaller dais he placed his ivory curule chair, a thin and spindly, chaste-looking seat compared to those below it. And over the top of the whole structure he erected an awning made from the gold and purple tapestry which had curtained off the sanctuary behind Zeus in his temple.
Shortly after dawn on the appointed day, a guard of his men escorted six of the Parthian ambassadors to the dais and placed them in the six chairs forming a group; the rest of the embassage remained upon the ground, suitably seated and shaded. Tigranes wanted to mount the purple podium, of course, but was firmly yet courteously placed upon his royal seat at the opposite end of the semicircle the chairs made. The Parthians looked at Tigranes—he looked at them—and everybody looked up at the purple podium.
Then when all were seated came Lucius Cornelius Sulla, clad in his purple-bordered toga praetexta and carrying the plain ivory wand which was his staff of office, one end nestling in his palm, its foot-long stick resting upon his forearm, its other end nestling into the hollow of his elbow. Hair blazing even after he had passed out of the sun, he walked without turning his head to left or to right up the steps to the dais, then up another step to his ivory curule chair, and seated himself, rod-straight, spine unsupported, one foot forward and the other back in the classic pose. A Roman of the Romans.
They were not amused, especially Tigranes, but there was little they could do about it, having been jockeyed into their present positions with such dignity that to start insisting upon being seated at the same height as the curule chair would have done nothing to enhance dignity.
“My lords the representatives of the King of the Parthians, and King Tigranes, I welcome you to this parley,” said Sulla from his paramount position, and taking great delight in unsettling them with his strange light eyes.
“This is not your parley, Roman!” snapped Tigranes. “I summoned my suzerains!”
“I beg your pardon, King, but this is my parley,” said Sulla with a smile. “You have come to my place, at my invitation.” And then, not giving Tigranes time to reply, he turned slightly toward the Parthians and gave them the full benefit of his most feral grin, long canines well bared. “Who among you, my lords of Parthia, is the leader of this delegation?”
Predictably, the elderly man seated in the first of the chairs nodded his head regally. “I am, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. My name is Orobazus, and I am satrap of Seleuceia-on-Tigris. I answer only to the King of Kings, Mithridates of the Parthians, who regrets that time and distance do not permit him to be here today.”
“In his summer palace at Ecbatana, eh?” asked Sulla.
Orobazus blinked. “You are well informed, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I was not aware our movements are so well known in Rome.”
“Lucius Cornelius will do, Lord Orobazus,” said Sulla. He leaned forward a little, still keeping his spine absolutely straight, his pose in the chair a perfect fusion of grace and power, as befitted a Roman conducting an audience of magnitude. “We make history here today, Lord Orobazus. This is the first time that the ambassadors of the Kingdom of the Parthians have met with an ambassador of Rome. That it takes place upon the river which forms the boundary between our two worlds is fitting.”
“Indeed, my lord Lucius Cornelius,” said Orobazus.
“Not ‘my lord,’ just plain Lucius Cornelius,” said Sulla. “In Rome there are no lords and no kings.”
“We had heard it was so, but we find it strange. You do follow the Greek way, then. How is it that Rome has grown so great, when no king heads the government? The Greeks one can understand. They were never very great because they had no High King—they fragmented themselves into a myriad little states and then went to war against each other. Whereas Rome acts as if there was a High King. How can your lack of any kind of king permit such power, Lucius Cornelius?” asked Orobazus.
“Rome is our king , Lord Orobazus , though we give Rome the feminine form, Roma, and speak of Rome as ‘her’ and ‘she.’ The Greeks subordinated themselves to an ideal. You subordinate yourselves to one man, your king. But we Romans subordinate ourselves to Rome, and only to Rome. We bend the knee to no one human, Lord Orobazus, any more than we bend it to the abstraction of an ideal. Rome is our god, our king, our very lives. And though each Roman strives to enhance his own reputation, strives to be great in the eyes of his fellow Romans, in the long run it is all done to enhance Rome, and Rome’s greatness. We worship a place, Lord Orobazus. Not a man. Not an ideal. Men come and go, their terms on earth are fleeting. And ideals shift and sway with every philosophical wind. But a place can be eternal as long as those who live in that place care for it, nurture it, make it even greater. I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, am a great Roman. But at the end of my life, whatever I have done will have gone to swell the might and majesty of my place — Rome. I am here today not on my own behalf, nor on behalf of any other man. I am here today on behalf of my place — Rome! If we strike a treaty, it will be deposited in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the oldest temple in Rome, and there it will remain — not my property, nor even bearing my name. A testament to the might of Rome.”
He spoke well, for his Greek was Attic and beautiful, better by far than the Greek of the Parthians or Tigranes. And they were listening, fascinated, obviously wrestling to understand a concept utterly alien. A place greater than a man? A place greater than the mental product of a man?
“But a place, Lucius Cornelius,” said Orobazus, “is just a collection of objects! If it is a town, a collection of buildings. If it is a sanctuary,
a collection of temples. If it is countryside, a collection of trees and rocks and fields. How can a place generate such feeling, such nobility? You look at a collection of buildings — for I know Rome is a great city — and do what you all do for the sake of those buildings?”
Sulla extended his ivory wand. “This is Rome, Lord Orobazus.” He touched the muscular snow-white forearm behind it. “This is Rome, Lord Orobazus.” He swept aside the folds of his toga to display the carved curved X of his chair’s legs. “This is Rome, Lord Orobazus.” He held out his left arm, weighed down by fold upon fold of toga, and pinched the woolen stuff. “This is Rome, Lord Orobazus.” And then he paused to look into every pair of eyes raised to him on high, and at the end of the pause he said, “I am Rome, Lord Orobazus. So is every single man who calls himself a Roman. Rome is a pageant stretching back a thousand years, to the time when a Trojan refugee named Aeneas set foot upon the shores of Latium and founded a race who founded, six hundred and sixty-two years ago, a place called Rome. And for a while Rome was actually ruled by kings, until the men of Rome rejected the concept that a man could be mightier than the place which bred him. No man must ever consider himself greater than the place which bred him. No Roman man is greater than Rome. Rome is the place which breeds great men. But what they are—what they do—is for her glory. Their contributions to her ongoing pageant. And I tell you, Lord Orobazus, that Rome will last as long as Romans hold Rome dearer than themselves, dearer than their children, dearer than their own reputations and achievements.” He paused again, drew a long breath. “As long as Romans hold Rome dearer than an ideal, or a single man.”
“But the King is the manifestation of everything you say, Lucius Cornelius,” Orobazus objected.
“A king cannot be,” said Sulla. “A king is concerned first with himself, a king believes he is closer to the gods than all other men. Some kings believe they are gods. All personal, Lord Orobazus. Kings use their countries to fuel themselves. Rome uses Romans to fuel herself.”
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 155
