The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

by Bauer, Susan Wise

  This young man, Wendi,215 inherited an empire which still had no imperial trappings: nothing to hold it together apart from the memory of previous unpopular and repressive rules which inclined the people to be on his side, as the anti-Ch’in king. Wendi’s hold on power for over twenty years, until his natural death (he reigned from 179 to 156), displayed a great deal of tact; like his father, he capitalized on this negative bond and kept his hands out of local business as much as possible.

  75.1 Han China

  Like his father, he also faced the possibility of invasion. Nomads from even farther to the north—not part of the Xiongnu confederation, and called by the Chinese the Yuezhi—had begun to move down towards the Xiongnu territory. They were driven, like the Celtic tribes, by a complex intersection of hunger, overpopulation, and ambition, and their goal was to come south into China itself.

  But the Xiongnu drove them away, deflecting them off to the west: “The Xiongnu had defeated the king of the Yuezhi,” Sima Qian relates, “and had made his skull into a drinking vessel.”12 (Which suggests, if not identity, certainly a cultural relationship with the nomadic Scythians a little farther to the west, who had the same charming custom.) This move west had a domino-like effect: around 160 BC, they ran head-on into Bactria, overran it, and settled along its north, all the way to the Oxus river. It was one of the first lasting contacts between peoples from the far east and those closer to the Mediterranean. For the Han Dynasty, it was also a danger avoided. The Xiongnu had mustered itself against the barbarians, and Wendi was prevented from the necessity of recruiting a large army to fight back.

  When he died around 157, he managed to pass his crown, without incident, on to his son, who in turn passed it along to his son: the emperor Wudi, who began his rule around 140. Wudi, who counts as either the sixth or seventh emperor of the Han Dynasty (depending on how many of the infants you include), began his fifty-three-year reign by campaigning up to push the encroaching Xiongnu back a little bit. This was the end of the tradition of pacification that Gao Zu had begun. The Han throne was now strong enough to survive a war.

  Pushing back the Xiongnu was the least of Wudi’s accomplishments. He had decades of relatively peaceful Han authority behind him, and the Ch’in oppression was far enough into the past so that, finally, the emperor could put his hands down into the dirt of his country long enough to shape it into something more like an empire. He reintroduced taxes; he took control of the trade of iron, salt, and alcohol as government monopolies; he cut back down to size local officials who had taken advantage of the Han hands-off policies to enrich themselves.13 He began to rebuild a bureaucracy, introducing for the first time the requirement that officials take, and pass, a qualifying examination.14

  Not long after taking the throne—probably right around 139 BC—he also sent an ambassador named Zhang Qian to find out what lay beyond his western border. We do not know exactly what impelled him to do this, but some trickle of commerce and exploration from the west must have made it all the way past the Han border. Sima Qian records the curiosity that this produced on both sides: “All the barbarians of the distant west craned their necks to the east and longed to catch a glimpse of China,” he writes.15

  Zhang Qian’s trip did not go particularly well at first; he was captured by the Xiongnu and taken to the chanyu. Rather than killing him, though, they kept him a captive and even gave him a wife: and after he had lived there ten years, he “was less closely watched than at first” and managed to escape. After that he travelled through the west, visiting Bactria and Parthia, and seeing firsthand the movement of the Yuezhi nomads along the northern parts of the world. When he returned in 126, to great acclaim, he was able to report on both kingdoms.

  Bactria, he told the emperor, was a land of settled farmers, but had no king: “only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities.”16 In fact, surviving coins suggest that the last Bactrian king of Greek descent was a man named Heliocles, whose reign must have been brought to an end, around 130 BC, by the invading Yuezhi. Zhang Qian was arriving in Bactria just as the invading nomads were overrunning the country.

  Most likely the ruling class had gone south into India, at the arrival of the nomads: Zhang Qian also reports that the Bactrians told him about a land they called Shen-tu, which lay “several thousand li southeast,” where the people “cultivate the land.” “The region is said to be hot and damp,” he says, winding up the identification with “the inhabitants ride elephants when they go into battle, and the kingdom is situated on a great river.” The flight of Bactrian Greeks across the mountains into India had broken the Bactrian kingdom into two: the original Greek Bactrians, now overrun by Yuezhi, and an “Indo-Greek” kingdom farther south.

  In a matter of decades, these “Indo-Greeks” became much more Indian than Greek. Their most famous king was Menander I, who came to power around 150 BC. His coins show him in Greek armor and are inscribed in Greek, but he is remembered in a Buddhist sacred text called the Milinda Panha for his conversion to Buddhism. “None was equal to Milinda in all India,” the text begins, “mighty in wealth and prosperity, and the number of his armed hosts knew no end.” Despite this, he had unending questions about the nature of his own authority and the world in which he fought for dominance. One day, after reviewing his “innumerable host” of “elephants, cavalry, bowmen, and soldiers on foot,” he asked to speak with a scholar who might help him resolve his difficulties, and in the conversation that followed was introduced to the principles of Buddhism.17

  According to the Milinda Panha, this ultimately led to the king’s abdication, after which he became a pilgrim: “Afterwards, taking delight in the wisdom of the Elder,” it concludes, “he handed over his kingdom to his son, and, abandoning the household life for the houseless state, grew great in insight.”18 This is possible, but unlikely; Menander is remembered not only for his conversion but for the extension of the Indo-Greek border almost all the way to Pataliputra, a campaign which must have involved years and years of fighting. A later Buddhist scripture, the Gargi-Samhita, confirms this: it says that the “Yavanas,” the Greeks, reached the “thick mud-fortifications at Pataliputra, all the provinces…in disorder.”

  Whether or not Menander then retired from warfare, his conquests pushed back a Hindu kingdom and extended a Buddhist one, which preserved his greatness in the Buddhist texts. When he died, in 130, his remains were enclosed into the sacred monuments known as stupas: “Sacred heaps,” as the Milinda Panha calls them, “beneath whose solid dome the bones of the great dead lie.”

  75.2 The Parthians

  Zhang Qian’s report also extended farther west, into Parthia, where a king was still very much on the throne. Antiochus Epiphanes had been forced to fight off Parthian attacks, and the three Seleucid kings who came after him had been faced with the same hostile invasions. The Parthians were, essentially, not very different in their origins than the Xiongnu; they were nomadic horsemen, hardy and good in battle, and they had begun to encroach further and further on the Seleucid border, pushing it closer to Syria. By the rule of the third king after Antiochus Epiphanes—Demetrius II, also called Nicator—they had run across the middle of the old Assyrian heartland between the Tigris and Euphrates. This land was firmly enough under Parthian control for the Parthians to build themselves defensive walls. These Parthian Walls were constructed from the large pieces of stone they found lying around, and used; the monuments of Ashurnasirpal were broken up and pressed into duty to guard his old domain from recapture by the Seleucids.

  In 139, the Parthian king Mithridates I actually captured Demetrius Nicator in battle, and hauled him back to Parthia. Demetrius Nicator was treated well, held in comfortable confinement, but he spent ten years as a Parthian prisoner, which was horrendously embarrassing for the king of the once-great Seleucids. Josephus claims that he died, still in captivity: “Demetrius was sent to Mithridates,” he writes, “and the king of Parthia had Demetrius in great honor, till Demetrius ended his life by sickne
ss.”19 Other accounts say that he escaped and died later, to be succeeded first by one son (who was murdered after less than a year) and then another.

  Meanwhile the Parthians campaigned closer and closer to Babylon, and built themselves a camp at Ctesiphon, which they could use to penetrate even deeper into Seleucid land. This growing Parthian power was reflected in Zhang Qian’s report to his king. The Parthians, he said, were an impressive and, to his eye, highly organized civilization: “They have walled cities,” he related, “several hundred cities of various sizes.” Parthian farmers grew rice, wheat, and grapes for wine; their merchants travelled far to trade with distant countries. And by this point, their empire stretched all the way out to a land which Zhang Qian called T’iao-chih, where it was “hot and damp,” where there were “great birds which lay eggs as large as pots,” where “the people are very numerous and are ruled by many petty chiefs,” but where all the chiefs pay attention to the king of Parthia, who gives them orders “and regards them as his vassals.”20 The description is of the Mesopotamian valley. The Seleucids had been pushed all the way out of the land between the rivers; they were no longer an empire to concern the Romans.

  That place had been taken by the Parthians themselves. Wudi’s long and distinguished reign overlapped with that of the greatest Parthian king of all: Mithridates II, the Great. He came to the throne of Parthia in 123, and before long was alarming the Roman authorities in Asia Minor; one Lucius Cornelius Sulla, whose biography Plutarch records, was sent to keep an eye on “the restless movements of Mithridates, who was gradually procuring himself[a] vast new acquired power and dominion.”21 Sulla travelled as far as the Euphrates and there met an ambassador that Mithridates had sent to meet him: “As yet,” Plutarch says, “there had been no correspondence between the two nations” Sulla was “the first Roman to whom the Parthians made address for alliance and friendship.”

  Mithridates also sent merchants and envoys east. “When the Han envoys first visited the kingdom of An-hsi [Parthia],” says Sima Qian, “…the king of An-hsi dispatched envoys of his own to accompany them, and after the latter had visited China and reported on its great breadth and might, the king sent some of the eggs of the great birds which live in the region…to the Han court as gifts.”

  Envoys from the east were travelling west at the same time. After Zhang Qian’s explorations, more men were dispatched from the Han court along his path: “After Zhang Qian achieved honor and position by opening up communications with the lands of the west,” says Sima Qian, “all the officials and soldiers who had accompanied him vied with one another in submitting reports to the emperor…requesting to become envoys.”22

  These journeys west involved some fighting, as Han armies put down resistance from various local tribes in the lands through which the new trade route ran. But by 110, the trade route from west to east was thoroughly established. Outposts along the road, staffed by Chinese garrisons, protected traders from bandits. The Parthians bought Chinese goods, particularly silks and lacquer, which they did not make themselves. The Chinese emperor bought Parthian horses, which he admired for their speed and beauty. More and more foreign visitors came to the Han court, where the emperor would parade them along the coast to show them the size and wealth of the Han kingdom. And in Parthia itself, Mithridates II, who appears both in Plutarch and in Sima Qian, stood as a bridge between the two great and growing empires of the west and east.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Breaking the System

  Between 157 and 121 BC

  Romans destroy Carthage,

  put down a slave revolt,

  and deal a death blow to the Republic

  BACK IN ROME, trade had resumed with Carthage. The North African city was a good source for gold and silver, wine and figs; and so the two cities kept an uneasy but useful peace.1

  But Carthage was in peril. The treaty that closed the Second Punic War had deprived Carthage of most of its army and navy, which made the city vulnerable to other attackers. The most feared of these were the Africans of Numidia, a kingdom which lay on the North African coast below Carthage. The king of Numidia, Masinissa, was a Roman ally; he had sent soldiers to fight with Scipio Africanus against Carthage, and Rome had helped him enlarge his own North African kingdom. (He had also tattled on the Carthaginians when they entertained messengers from Perseus of Macedonia, back when Perseus was trying to whip up support to drive the Romans out.) Since the end of the Second Punic War, Masinissa had been carrying on armed attacks against bits of Carthaginian territory and claiming them for himself: “An easy matter for a man who had no scruples,” Livy remarks, since the Carthaginians were forbidden by Roman treaty to use weapons against any ally of Rome.2

  In 157, a Roman delegation, led by the elderly statesman Marcus Cato, travelled down to North Africa in order to tell the Numidians to leave Carthage alone. But Cato, who had always been one of the most vehement anti-Carthaginians in the Senate, was horrified at what he found at Carthage. It was not “low and in an ill condition,” as the Romans had assumed, but (in Plutarch’s words) “well manned, full of riches and all sorts of arms and ammunition.” He returned to Rome posthaste and warned the Senate that “they themselves would fall into danger, unless they should find means to check this rapid new growth of Rome’s ancient irreconcilable enemy.”3

  Not all the Senators were convinced that Roman troops needed to march on Carthage at once; Cato, nearly eighty, sounded as though he were simply rehearsing past fears. When he was opposed, he resorted to annoying the senators by ending every single speech he made, no matter what the topic, with, “And to conclude, I think that Carthage ought to be utterly destroyed.”4

  So exhorted, the Senate made continual demands on Carthage to prove its loyalty. Finally, Rome demanded that the Carthaginians desert their city and rebuild it at least ten miles away from the coast. The Carthaginians refused, indignantly. In 149, Roman ships sailed for the North African coast under the command of Scipio Aemilius, grandson of the great Scipio Africanus, and a three-year siege began. It was purely a punitive measure, sometimes labelled the “Third Punic War.”5 As soon as the siege began, Cato died of old age; his epitaph, in the mouth of many Romans was that “Cato stirred up the third and last war against the Carthaginians.”6

  Carthage was not the only problem on the senatorial agenda. Over in Greece, Sparta was causing trouble.

  Sparta was no longer the dominant city in the Achaean League, its old association, and the other cities of the League had been running roughshod over it. Unhappy with a League decision, Sparta announced its intention to appeal directly to Rome (now tacitly recognized as the real power on the Greek peninsula). The other League cities immediately passed a regulation saying that only the League as a whole could appeal to Rome.

  The Spartans reacted to this as Spartans had reacted for centuries: they armed themselves and threatened to fight. Indignant letters went off to Rome from both sides of the debate. A Roman ambassador who was up in Macedonia settling another problem sent a message down, ordering them to knock it off until Roman officials could arrive and help them sort the matter out. But it was too late. By 148, swords had already been drawn.

  The following year, Roman diplomats showed up to mediate the dispute. They held their deliberations in the city of Corinth, and came to a decision favoring the Spartans, which was not the cleverest of arrangements; the Corinthians, moved to fury, stormed out and mauled anyone who looked like a Spartan. The Roman officials, caught in the riot, got beaten up themselves.

  The indignant Romans returned to Rome and put the worst possible spin on the incident: “They declared,” Polybius says, “that they had a narrow escape of actually losing their lives…. they represented the violence which had been offered them as not the result of a sudden outbreak, but of a deliberate intention on the part of the Achaeans to inflict a signal insult upon them.”7

  In response, a Roman fleet sailed for Greece, where a force of twenty-six thousand men and thirty-fiv
e hundred cavalry, under the command of the consul Mummius, pitched camp at the Isthmus of Corinth. Some of the Achaean League cities tried to fight back, under the command of a Corinthian general, but the Greek army soon broke; the Corinthian commander fled, and then poisoned himself; the defeated Achaean League soldiers ran to Corinth and hid in the city. Mummius set the city on fire, and Romans overran it.

  Rome had finally swallowed Greece.

  As far as Polybius is concerned, the Greek cities brought this disaster on themselves: “The Carthaginians at any rate left something for posterity to say on their behalf,” he writes, “but the mistakes of the Greeks were so glaring that they made it impossible for those who wished to support them to do so.” He might have said the same about Macedonia, which continued to play host to men who claimed to belong to the Macedonian royal line until the Romans annexed it and turned it into a province, taking away even the small freedoms that the republics had been permitted.