Mithridates VI was born in Sinope fifty years after it became the capital of Pontus. The eldest son of the king, Mithridates was expected to one day reign over Pontus, but his path to power would not be easy. Like any self-respecting Hellenic king, his father was assassinated by poison in 120, leaving a power vacuum in the kingdom. With Mithridates still a minor, his mother, Queen Laodice, stepped in and took over as regent. But contrary to all parental morality, Laodice clearly favored her younger son. The teenage Mithridates dodged an assassination attempt by his mother and ran away from the palace. According to legend, Mithridates embarked on a seven-year-long training montage—hunting, swimming, reading, studying the people, learning fifty languages—until he had become the embodiment of the ideal prince. At the end of the heroic montage, Mithridates returned to Sinope in 113 and evicted his wicked mother and brother, both of whom soon died of “natural causes.”3
Upon his ascension to the throne, Mithridates built up a mercenary army to further project Pontic authority. In the 110s, he answered a call for help from Greek cities in the Crimea, on the other side of the Black Sea, who were under attack from raiding Thracians. Mithridates expelled the Thracians and won the justifiable submission of the Crimean communities. Now joined under his benevolent protection, Mithridates controlled the entire circuit of Black Sea trade—with Russia to the north, Persia to the east, Greece and Italy to the west, and the entire Mediterranean to the south. Mithridates controlled access to wealth, resources, and manpower that would make his Black Sea empire one of the strongest powers Rome ever encountered.4
Early in his career, Mithridates allied with his neighbor King Nicomedes III of Bithynia to divvy up territory in Anatolia. Roman ambassadors ordered them to desist, but with Roman attention tied up with Jugurtha and the Cimbri, there was little the Romans could do. Eventually, Mithridates and Nicomedes had a falling out over control of Cappadocia, which bordered both kingdoms and served as the overland trade link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In 101, Mithridates personally slit the throat of the king of Cappadocia and placed his own son on the throne. This was the settlement Mithridates wanted ratified when his ambassadors were abused in Rome by Saturninus.5
With Mithridates now commanding an international reputation, Gaius Marius made a point to meet the Pontic king on his circuit of the east in 98. After a conference, Marius told Mithridates, “Either strive to be stronger than Rome, or do her bidding without a word.” Some say Marius already had his eye on a future war with Mithridates, but for the moment Pontus was just another random eastern kingdom. There was no reason for Marius to suspect what would become obvious a decade later: that Mithridates VI was not just Mithridates VI—he was Mithridates the Great.6
A few years later, Mithridates’s ambitions provoked the Senate to intervene in Cappadocia when they ordered Sulla to place the client king Ariobarzanes on the throne. But despite this minor setback, Mithridates recovered. Not only did he secure a marriage alliance with the powerful King Tigranes I of Armenia, but his old rival Nicomedes III died in 94 leaving a mere boy on the Bithynian throne. With the Romans mired in the Social War, Mithridates induced Tigranes to invade Cappadocia while he invaded Bithynia. Both the puppet king Ariobarzanes and the boy king Nicomedes IV fled to Rome.7
THE REFUGEE KINGS of Cappadocia and Bithynia arrived in Rome just as the Social War was breaking out. The Senate had more important things to worry about than who controlled a few dusty goat paths in Anatolia, so they ignored the entreaties of the two young kings. To gin up interest in their plight, the kings promised lavish indemnities in exchange for help, so the Senate relented and sent an embassy to escort Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes back across the Aegean. The man they selected for the job was Manius Aquillius, Marius’s former lieutenant and victor of the Second Servile War.8
When the Romans arrived, Mithridates and Tigranes withdrew back to their own kingdoms rather than tangle with the Romans. Reinstalling the two kings, Aquillius leaned heavily on them to make good on the lavish promises they had made back in Rome. The kings sputtered about poverty, but Aquillius told them all wealth they ever needed was in Pontus for the taking. A charitable reading of Aquillius pushing the kings to invade Pontus is that he believed Mithridates an empty shirt. So far any time the Roman gaze turned to him, the Pontic king averted his eyes and retreated to his den. But it has also been suggested that as a close friend and ally of Marius, Aquillius was deliberately provoking Mithridates so Marius could lead the eastern command he coveted. Of course, it’s also possible Aquillius was just being stupid.9
In the spring of 89, Nicomedes IV invaded Pontus. But Mithridates was not an empty shirt, and the Pontic army sent the Bithynians limping home in a broken heap. Mithridates complained to Aquillius about the encroachment, but got no response. So the king concluded that Rome planned to use its client kingdoms to squeeze Pontus off the map. But Mithridates had no intention of being squeezed off the map. After years of careful groundwork, the king of Pontus was ready to reveal the full potential of his Black Sea empire.10
To get Aquillius’s attention, Mithridates sent armies into Cappadocia and once again chased Ariobarzanes out of the country. Then he fortified the frontier with Bithynia and sent an embassy to Aquillius in Pergamum. These ambassadors read aloud a list of all Mithridates’s foreign alliances, and gave a full accounting of the resources at his disposal—from the size of his treasury, to the number of men he could conscript, to the number of ships in his fleet. The ambassadors then said that if Rome was not careful they risked losing their dominions in Asia. It was not a declaration of war. But it was an invitation for a declaration of war.11
With only a single legion of true Roman soldiers at his disposal, Aquillius had to rely on local conscripts to guard the border with Pontus. But what these conscripts lacked in skill, they made up in abundance. Within a few months, Aquillius could call on four armies of 40,000 soldiers each. One army was led by Nicomedes IV, and the other three by subordinate Roman praetors. But though Aquillius soon had 150,000–200,000 men guarding every pass in and out of Bithynia, that did not mean he was a match for Mithridates. With his legitimacy based on military strength from the beginning, Mithridates’s core Pontic army was trained, disciplined, and experienced. Around this core, Mithridates could call in new conscripts of his own from across the known world. In this first campaign, Mithridates marched against Aquillius with 150,000 men. At their height, the Pontic armies would bulge to 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry.12
When Mithridates advanced on Bithynia, he crushed Aquillius’s conscripts “guarding” the passes. All four armies disintegrated and the Roman officers evacuated the mainland to the island city of Rhodes. Aquillius himself retreated to Pergamum and evacuated to the island of Lesbos. As if this land invasion was not enough, Mithridates also sent a war fleet through the Bosporus. The Romans had hired a Greek navy to block the straights, but they too disintegrated upon contact with the enemy. Now Pontic forces controlled both the land and the sea. If Aquillius had really come to provoke Mithridates into a war, he had done a fine job.13
Mithridates proceeded to envelope the entire province of Asia. Being an enlightened model of an ideal king, Mithridates knew exactly how to introduce himself. He announced that he was here to liberate the people of Asia from the yoke of the Roman oppression. A generation of publicani abuse in Asia gave Mithridates the perfect propaganda tool: he declared a five-year tax holiday and canceled all outstanding debts owed to Italians. Then, when Mithridates promised leniency to the people of Lesbos in exchange for handing over Aquillius, the people complied. Now a prisoner, Aquillius became a frequent target of humiliating jokes in Mithridates’s court.14
WHILE AQUILLIUS LOST control of Asia, his patron Marius stewed back in Rome. After being shunted aside during the Social War, Marius had gone home and watched with increasing bitterness as the next generation of rising stars took over. Pompey Strabo was building a powerful base in Picenum and Cisalpine Gaul. Down in the south, Metellus
Pius—son of Marius’s late rival Numidicus—would soon be consul. And then there was Sulla, whose success ate at Marius most of all. Sulla’s exploits in Campania and Samnium were added to the list of heroic deeds on Sulla’s resume that went all the way back to his capture of Jugurtha in 105. As the Social War wound down, Sulla’s star burned hotter than any man’s in Italy.15
Casting a dejected eye on the situation in Italy, Marius looked further afield for a chance to quench the thirst for glory, and spied the deteriorating situation in Asia. But if Marius really thought he could secure an eastern command, he was deluding himself. He was almost seventy years old. The Romans did not send seventy-year-olds to run their wars. To prove he could handle the job, Marius came down to the Campus Martius daily to exercise and display his physical prowess. He cut a comic, and somewhat pathetic, figure going through his regimen. Crowds gathered to watch, some cheering him on but most “moved to pity at the sight of his greed and ambition, because, though he had risen from poverty to the greatest wealth and from obscurity to the highest place he knew not how to set bounds to his good fortune.” On top of his age, Marius had already been maneuvered out of commands during the Social War, so why on earth he thought anyone would let him take five legions to Asia is a mystery. Marius was never in serious consideration for the job. The men who were in serious contention were off waging the Social War, not doing jumping jacks in the Forum.16
The consular elections in 89 were delayed until the end of the year due to the ongoing war. By then Rome probably knew about Mithridates’s capture of Cappadocia and provocative letter to Aquillius. A consulship now meant a chance to run a great war in the east, and candidates came hard for the job, “every one striving to be general in the war against Mithridates, lured on by the greatness of the rewards and riches to be reaped in that war.” When the elections finally came at the end of December, there was intense jockeying for the command. Sulla and his close friend Quintus Pompeius Rufus (whose son had recently married Sulla’s daughter) ran as a team, with Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus trying to push his way in between them.17
But Vopiscus was trying to cut in line. He had never served as praetor and was thus ineligible. With the elections approaching, the old optimate faction in the Senate sought to block Vopiscus, who was a notoriously unstable populare. To deny Vopiscus the consulship, they turned to newly enrolled tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus. Sulpicius seemed like the perfect guy for the job: “a man of eloquence and energy, who had earned situation by his wealth, his influence, his friendships, and by the vigor of his native ability and his courage, and had previously won great influence with the people by honorable means.” Sulpicius had grown up at the feet of the Metellan optimates and was one of the young students present for the dialogue at Crassus’s villa in September 91. Sulpicius vetoed Vopiscus’s request for a dispensation. But since the word of a tribune wasn’t what it used to be, it took a few rounds of street clashes before Vopiscus conceded defeat.18
Sulla and Pompeius won the consulship and Sulla received the eastern command—one of the signs he took to mean that fortune favored his every undertaking. Far from allowing his pride to reject the idea that his accomplishments were the result of luck, Sulla embraced Fortuna as his personal deity: “Being well endowed by nature for Fortune rather than for war, he seems to attribute more to Fortune than to his own excellence, and to make himself entirely the creature of this deity.” Shortly after his election he received another fortunate break—securing a new marriage to Metella, the widow of Scaurus. With this marriage, Sulla took the reins of the old Metellan faction and began to re-form it in his own image.19
BUT AFTER PAVING the way for the election of Sulla and Pompeius, the tribune Sulpicius turned on his optimate friends. The old Metellan faction seemed to be entering permanent eclipse. Crassus had died in 91. Scaurus died in 89. And of course, the cohort of six Metellan cousins had now come and gone, leaving behind only their uneven sons to carry the mantle. Despite the recent marriage of Sulla and Metella that might revive the family’s fortunes, Sulpicius decided to throw in his lot with Marius. Where once Sulpicius had followed the optimate path to power, he now embraced the populares.20
For this betrayal, Sulpicius is roundly denounced in the sources “so that the question was not whom else he surpassed in wickedness, but in what he surpassed his own wickedness. For the combination of cruelty, effrontery, and rapacity in him was regardless of shame and of all evil.” Cicero later wailed, “For why should I speak of Publius Sulpicius? Whose dignity, and sweetness, and emphatic conciseness in speaking was so great that he was able by his oratory to lead even wise men into error, and virtuous men into pernicious sentiments.” But it would not be until the early months of 88 that Sulpicius’s betrayal revealed itself.21
Sulpicius’s turn against the optimate was not entirely unpredictable. He was known to be an “admirer and an imitator of Saturninus, except that he charged him with timidity and hesitation in his political measures.” Any man who believed Saturninus timid must have had a ferocious spirit. But in Sulpicius’s final analysis, it was not courage that Saturninus lacked, but organization. The Gracchi, Saturninus, and Drusus had all relied on random mobs raised in an emergency to fight their battles. So Sulpicius’s great contribution to Roman politics was the invention of the professional street gang. Surrounding himself with three hundred armed men of Equestrian rank whom he called the Anti-Senate, Sulpicius also kept thousands of mercenary swordsmen on retainer. If Sulpicius gave the word they would be ready to fight.22
But beyond his alliance with Marius, Sulpicius saw that his real path to power went through the Italians. In early 88, he proposed a law to recall the men exiled by the anti-Italian Varian Commission. And with the question of civitas for the Italians settled, Sulpicius announced his intention to give them full suffragium to go with it. Rather than bury the Italians in new tribes that voted last, or lump them into the four urban tribes, Sulpicius planned to disperse them equally throughout the 31 rural tribes. If Sulpicius carried this measure, the Italians could command majorities in the Assembly. Sulpicius would not just win a new host of grateful clients, he would control the Assembly itself.23
Both the Senate and the plebs urbana were threatened by Sulpicius’s proposal. Old noble patrons, working merchants, and common artisans alike could see the Roman voice in government was about to be diminished and wanted the Italians kept separate, “so that they might not, by being mingled with the old citizens, vote them down in the elections by force of numbers.” Having surrendered the issue of citizenship, the Romans built a new line at suffrage. Sulpicius’s proposal led to clashes in the streets between angry plebs urbana and the Anti-Senate.24
With these riots breaking out, Sulla was at his camp at Nola. As soon as he heard the news, he hurried back to Rome. When he reached the Forum, Sulla and his colleague Pompeius staged a dramatic intervention. Tribunician vetoes not being what they once were, they decided to see how Sulpicius liked a taste of full consular authority. Standing on the rostra of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, Sulla and Pompeius used their religious authority to declare a feriae, a holiday that triggered the cessation of all public business. Sulpicius did not care for this taste of this consular authority, but instead of meekly submitting, his Anti-Senate pulled out hidden weapons. With the crowds hostile and the threats getting specific, Sulla and Pompeius retreated from the rostra. The consuls got away but Pompeius’s son was not so lucky. An outspoken defender of his father, the younger Pompeius went too far, and Sulpicius’s gang killed him on the spot.25
Sulla found the closest safe haven near at hand: Marius’s house at the foot of the Palatine Hill. What was said between the two men is unknown, but Marius must have told Sulla the only way he was getting out of this alive was to rescind the feriae and allow the vote on Sulpicius’s laws to proceed. Left with no other choice, Sulla agreed. It would be the last time they were in the same room together.26
Emerging from his consultation with Marius, Sul
la remounted the rostra and withdrew the holiday decree, allowing public business to return to normal. Then he departed the Forum. Cleared of these distractions, Sulpicius convened the Assembly and carried his bills on Italian suffrage. Then he tossed in the surprise kicker, something no one was expecting. He convinced the Assembly to withdraw Sulla’s appointment to the eastern command and transfer it to Marius. Already on his way back to the army, Sulla had no idea he had just lost his job.27
THE SIX LEGIONS Sulla led during the Social War were still camped outside Nola. This army had been fighting under Sulla for a year, and he had earned their devoted loyalty. Sulla always had an easygoing rapport with common soldiers. Though he had the unmistakable air of an arrogant aristocrat, he never shirked his duty or let his men down. And now that he had been elected consul, he was about to lead them east to pacify some wayward king on the far side of the Aegean. Fighting a civil war in your own backyard is neither fun nor profitable, but conquering a rich eastern kingdom sounded mighty fine indeed. So as the soldiers sat around Nola waiting for Sulla to come back, they dreamed of the campaign to come.28
When Sulla returned a few days later he likely did not ride with his usual resplendent vigor. He was still consul, and still slated to run the eastern war, but he had been embarrassed in the head-to-head confrontation with Sulpicius and Marius. He had been forced by violence to humiliate himself and withdraw his own decree. Sulla’s agitation turned to fury when a messenger arrived bearing the incredible news: The Assembly had stripped Sulla of the eastern command. Gaius Marius would now lead the expedition.29
The shock of the revelation cannot be understated. Old Marius’s pathetic pursuit of the command was well known. His calisthenics out on the Campus Martius were a joke, not a prelude to getting the job. Especially not after Sulla had won the consulship and drawn the Mithridatic command. But after years of enduring Sulla’s arrogant vanity, Marius was finally ready to get his revenge. His plan was to bury Sulla under a wave of humiliations from which Sulla could not recover. Following either the letter of the law or the unwritten codes of mos maiorum would be the end of Sulla; if he wanted to survive he was going to have to break both.
The Storm Before the Storm Page 22
