Lucullus

  The Sixth of October 69 BC

  It was 6 October 69 B.C. – a day that was destined to enter the annals of the great victories of the Roman military machine. The exact date was noted in the sources, in part because on that same day in 105 BC, the Romans had lost a major engagement against Germanic tribesman at Arausio (the modern Orange).32 Some of Lucullus’ officers noted to him the unlucky status of the day – always a matter of serious concern to superstitious, nervous and anxious Romans. For once, Lucullus was bold in the face of omen and portent. He simply noted that he would convert 6 October into a day of good fortune and luck for the Romans – he intended to defeat Tigranes. Arthur Keaveney notes that no extant source offers a reason as to why Lucullus chose to give battle on this day. It is possible that he was deliberately recalling the Roman defeat that had marred the reputation of the day; it is also possible that the difficult business of the siege, and the overwhelming size of the king’s force that would have taxed his sentinel abilities and surprise manoeuvrability were decisive factors in his taking immediate action.33 The loss of Quintus Servilius Caepio, at any rate, would be avenged.

  Appian’s account of what happened is short and dramatically effective.34 Lucullus is said to have taken a hill in the rear of Tigranes’ force, and to have used his cavalry to coax the enemy into attacking them. Once successful in the provocation, the cavalry would continue to retreat, all in the hope of tempting the enemy to break ranks and follow in disorganized pursuit. This is exactly what the king’s undisciplined force did. When Lucullus saw the Armenians chase after his men and dissolve their formations, he announced to those near him that they had won the battle. The Romans immediately attacked the king’s baggage train, causing a chain reaction as these fled and fell upon the infantry, and then the infantry upon the cavalry in turn. A complete rout ensued. Part of Tigranes’ problem was the fact that so much of his army consisted of draftees and conscripts from his subject territories; the confusion of the rout would have been increased appreciably by the difficulties of communication.

  Plutarch offers a longer version of the events of the dramatic day. At first, we are told, the manoeuvres of the Roman army led some – not least the king – to imagine that Lucullus was retreating. Taxiles once again showed his wisdom in appraising the situation, and warned the king that such a stroke of good fortune was not to be believed. The king was quickly disabused of such notions, and he arranged his force with his own royal command to be in the centre, the left entrusted to the king of the Adiabeni and the right to the king of the Medes. On the right, the bulk of the armoured cavalry were arranged as a protective screen. The disposition of forces was a more or less textbook arrangement.

  Lucullus, for his part, drew his sword and noted to his men that the enemy’s reliance on archery and missile weapons could only be countered by a rapid advance across both the nearby river and the open plain beyond. The precise identification of the river is uncertain since we do not know for sure where Tigranocerta once stood. After crossing the river, Lucullus caught sight of the armoured cavalry of the enemy, and ordered his own Thracian and Gallic cavalry to engage the king’s equestrian force. Plutarch notes that the armoured horsemen were equipped with long spears, against which the short swords of the Roman allies would be more effective. Lucullus himself took two cohorts to seize the aforementioned hill, then ordered an attack on the enemy’s armoured horse, giving specific instructions to strike at the exposed legs and thighs of the horsemen.

  But there would be no need for such an attack: for the enemy horse took flight and fell upon the infantry, and the infantry in turn on their rear, such that there was a confusion and great slaughter with nary a wound or the shedding of blood.35 The Battle of Tigranocerta would seem to have been a marvellous example of disorganization and poor planning on the one side, and careful attention to disciplined order and awareness of the critical moments of a campaign on the other. A superior smaller force had once again dislodged and routed an army that was impressive only in size and number. For the rout, once again the casualty numbers are disputed; Plutarch would have us believe that as many as 100,000 were slain, while Phlegon is once again more sober, with just 5,000 dead. Philip Matyszak notes that the numbers are not necessarily incompatible: many of Tigranes’ men may simple have deserted, and were marked down as lost.36 Again, whatever the truth in terms of numbers, the Romans had won a dramatic victory, with a lopsided count in terms of dead and wounded.

  Frontinus cites Lucullus’ conduct of the Battle of Tigranocerta as an example of excellent appraisal of when to take best advantage of a given situation, noting that the Romans did not have above 15,000 men in arms, and yet they were able to achieve a decisive victory, since Lucullus knew that a large, unwieldy army must be struck just when it was most unprepared for battle.37

  We do not know, then, the exact course of events on the fateful day – the day that Lucullus would turn into a red letter day for Rome. But all of our evidence concurs on how Lucullus managed to win his victory by a timely application of cavalry power at exactly the right spot to secure panic in the ranks of the king’s forces. And it is certainly possible that Tigranes panicked and fled too quickly. A more collected and calm commander might have stayed to try to salvage the day. However, we have the benefit of hindsight in this regard.38

  Was Tigranocerta truly the greatest victory the sun had ever seen, as Plutarch would have us believe? It was certainly the most dramatic achievement of Lucullus’ eastern career, and the most glorious day heretofore in the Roman engagement with Mithridates’ new protector. It would not be enough, however, to win the day for Lucullus and his optimate cause.

  Chemical Warfare

  An important epilogue note may be added here. Tigranocerta is notable in the history of military engagements for what may qualify as one of the first instances of the use of a sort of chemical weaponry in recorded history. The walls of Tigranocerta were defended by impressive towers, but the more terrifying weapon that faced the Roman besiegers was naphtha.39 Our source for the Armenian use of naphtha is Dio (or at least Xiphilinus’ eleventh-century epitome thereof);40 he notes that the success of the weapon against the Romans fortified the courage and confidence of Tigranes as he moved the main body of his force against Lucullus. Naphtha was also mentioned in Sallust’s histories, in a detail about how the substance was used by the Persians to ignite fires; the context may well have been Lucullus’ exposure to the fiery peril.41 Dio also speaks of the use of arrows that may well have been dipped in naphtha. Tigranocerta therefore may well have posed the most serious risk to Lucullus’ force in the annals of Roman siege warfare in the Mithridatic campaigns, and in no small part due to chemical weapons. But neither these novel weapons nor the king’s tremendous advantage in numbers and quantity of equipment would secure his victory.

  The Aftermath

  Tigranes’ subordinate, Mancaeus, beheld the disastrous routing of his king’s army from the walls of Tigranocerta. He had a significant force of Greek mercenaries in the city, and he at once suspected that they would turn traitor and go over to the Roman side, with concomitant betrayal of the city to Lucullus. The mercenaries immediately realized that they would be suspected of treachery and were in danger for their lives, so they took steps to defend themselves. Sure enough, Mancaeus ordered his forces to attack them, and in the ensuing engagement within the city, the mercenaries acquitted themselves more than adequately and won the day. They duly admitted the Romans to the city. Our source, Appian, does not record whether or not the Greeks had always intended to side with Lucullus, but whatever the case, the city was handed over with surprising ease in the wake of the great victory on the battlefield.42 Nobody in Tigranocerta was in any hurry to die for Tigranes. Lucullus was now in possession of not only the capital of Tigranes’ burgeoning empire, but also an immense amount of wealth and treasure. The fall of Tigranocerta was a blow of incalculable significance to the king’s war plans. Unfortunately for Lucullus, it would not translate into sufficient
success to silence the increasingly vocal opposition to his work in the East.

  Plutarch is more explicit about the behaviour of the Greek mercenaries in Tigranocerta. He notes that they rose up in the wake of Lucullus’ victory and made clear that they were ready to hand over the city to the Romans.43 Dio Cassius asserts that most of the population of Tigranocerta was Cilician, and that these foreigners revolted against the Armenians and opened the city to Lucullus. In consequence, the Romans plundered everything except what belonged to the Cilicians.44 Tigranocerta was essentially to fade from the map of history; there would never be any serious attempt by Roman or foreigner to rebuild it to a place of any significance. It is perhaps not entirely surprising that the city was so easily handed over, as the inhabitants had no good reason to endure a siege for a king whose defeat had been so total, and for whom they had no motivation to risk hardship and loss of life. Lucullus would enjoy the opportunity to plunder one of the richest prizes he could have hoped for on the map of his opponents’ holdings. Tigranocerta was wealthy and economically healthy; its capture was a devastating loss for Tigranes, and it is a testimony to the resilience of Mithridates in particular that the Armenian king was able to be roused to continued military action in the wake of the defeat.

  Plutarch notes that Tigranes fled in horror from the scene of his great defeat. His despair was so profound that he even handed over his royal diadem to his son, and urged his would-be successor to save himself by another escape route.45 The prince, however, handed over the crown to a slave, and the slave was captured by Lucullus’ men – so the Romans could literally say that they had captured the royal crown of Armenia.46 Plutarch claims that the king lost 100,000 infantry and most of his cavalry, while Lucullus suffered about 100 casualties, with only five dead – an astonishingly lopsided victory, the numbers of which may be exaggerated. There is no reason, however, to distrust the summation that Lucullus won an enormous victory, and that 6 October had indeed been converted into one of the luckier and more fortunate days in the Roman calendar. Lucullus did permit his men to plunder the city, though he prudently took the royal treasury into his own custody. Plutarch is ever concerned to note that Lucullus was a man of literature, culture and the arts; he records that Lucullus took advantage of the fact that the city had so many artists, with the result that the victory celebrations and triumphal affairs were of an especially fine quality.

  Tigranes’ reputation had suffered grievously, and he would lose territory beyond his treasure city. The Armenian king would lose significant quantities of both money and land as a result of the decisive defeat on that dread October day. Most of the king’s holdings south of the Taurus mountain range would swiftly be lost. Tigranocerta was one of those battles that mattered – but it would not matter enough to secure Lucullus’ ultimate victory.

  Plutarch offers a concluding comment on the Battle of Tigranocerta that cites lost sources of commentary. The unanimous evidence the biographer references attests to Lucullus’ deserved fame for the enterprise. The general was credited with how he showed the ability and discernment to destroy Mithridates by careful and slow delay, and Tigranes by swift and sudden action.47 The fact that the Romans were so ridiculously outnumbered was also noted to the commander’s fame, favour and glory. We are told that in the aftermath of the battle, the Romans laughed at each other, noting that they really had no need of arms and weapons against such an army of slaves. This particular detail may refer both to the large number of conscripts in the king’s army, and to the recently concluded Servile War in Italy. The battle had been preceded by mockery of the seemingly insignificant Roman forces by the Armenians; it was followed by self-deprecation on the Roman side, as they enjoyed their own joke at the expense of Tigranes’ ruined and disconsolate army.

  Diplomatic Dexterity

  As a manager of peaceful settlements of conquered cities, once again Lucullus showed himself a master. Not only the Greeks, but also all the barbarians who had been forced to resettle in Tigranes’ showpiece city were not only sent home, but were sent with funding for the journey. Plutarch makes clear that all the essentially reborn cities hailed Lucullus as their founder and saviour. The reputation of the Roman conqueror continued to grow in fame and glory. The biographer is careful to note that Lucullus was not interested in military renown, but in a reputation for honest dealings and responsible behaviour. Client kings were the desired goal of the day; there would be no Roman province of Armenia, but instead a network of kings who were loyal to Rome because of respect for Lucullus. Every gesture was calculated to help to achieve this end. If the wife of a king could be saved from assault, her husband would be all the more inclined to support the Roman position. And so it happened.

  The Hope of Surrender

  But Lucullus could not expect that Tigranes – let alone Mithridates – would simply now enter into negotiations to end the war. Both kings had everything to lose from an immediate surrender; they could have no serious expectation of surviving such a gesture with their heads intact. There was also the advantage of the season of the year. Winter was coming, and the Romans were quite deep in foreign territory. A fruitless hunt in search of the fugitive monarchs could easily put a blemish on Lucullus’ record. His time in Asia had already been long; his men were no doubt ready to go home, and in no mood for continued operations in Armenia, especially after the capture of a city so rich in plunder and wealth. And yet the lesson of the First Mithridatic War no doubt haunted Lucullus as he now faced the prospect of not one but two renegade kings on the loose, and the war could not be considered definitively and conclusively settled until both men were killed or captured. How exactly to go about achieving that reasonable enough goal was the problem that confronted Lucullus on the evening of his astonishing victory.

  Plutarch gives some insight into Mithridates’ thoughts and character in the critical period before Tigranocerta. He notes that the king was in no particular hurry to show up at Tigranes’ capital. He assumed that Lucullus would do what Lucullus had seemingly always done up to this point – exercise supreme caution and move slowly. No doubt he was shocked to learn that the Roman commander was also capable of dramatic military gestures. Plutarch says that on his way to Tigranocerta, he encountered Armenians in flight, and immediately realized what must have happened in his absence. He finally managed to meet Tigranes, and was responsible for shoring up the courage of the defeated monarch. Plutarch tellingly reveals that Tigranes was insolent in his behaviour to his father-in-law (did he upbraid him for not showing up to the scene of the battle in a timely fashion?), but that Mithridates did not return jibe for jibe and insult for insult; rather he shared his own royal insignia with his son-in-law, and began to encourage him to face the next stage of the ongoing struggle against Lucullus.48

  Orosius has very little to say about the course of operations at Tigranocerta. He notes simply that Lucullus crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris, and then fought a successful battle against both monarchs at Tigranocerta, a battle in which he overcame his two opponents despite an appreciable imbalance in size of force. The casualty figure for the enemy is fixed at 20,000 dead, Tigranes is said to have escaped with barely 150 cavalry, and the detail about the surrender of his diadem and insignia of royal power is noted. Orosius associates the victory at Tigranocerta with the coming to Lucullus of almost all of the East in the position of suppliants, as legate after legate arrives seeking peace.49 Eutropius does not give casualty figures, but does detail the size of Tigranes’ force, and notes that Lucullus’ victory at Tigranocerta was so great that Lucullus destroyed a great part of the Armenian population in one battle.50

  It is clear that Lucullus’ overall strategy remained diplomatic more than military. He wanted to create a network of pro-Roman client states, not to establish a permanent Roman presence in the form of provincial government apparatus and the potential for endless wars with new neighbours. And Tigranes – let alone Mithridates – had not done very much to earn the loyalty of the local potentates. L
ucullus’ reasonable, humane behaviour had an appeal all its own, and his overtures mostly met with success. The strategy was both reasonable and respectable – but it also opened Lucullus to the charge that he was seeking to ingratiate wealthy microstates to his own cause and enrichment. His enemies and rivals in Rome could easily offer a negative interpretation for his cordial, even warm relationships with eastern kings. And the heads of now both Mithridates and Tigranes remained frustratingly out of reach. The war could not end until the problem of both kings was resolved.51 In the meantime, the charges being levelled against Lucullus became more and more bizarre: there were even accusations that he had invaded Armenia not for the sake of finding Mithridates, but to raid a sacred temple precinct for his own financial gain.52 Lucullus was likely aware of the risks to his reputation that were occasioned by the continued ability of the enemy kings to slip through his fingers. But his options may well have been quite limited. While 69 BC would be the year of a great victory, and there would be another victory (though not as dramatic) in 68, Lucullus would be home in 67, the ultimate victory having eluded him.53

  Renewed Preparations

  In the immediate aftermath of Tigranocerta, whatever despair had enveloped Tigranes soon gave way to the realization that new plans were necessary, and quickly. And so the king opened negotiations with the Parthian Empire, asking them to help in his quest to destroy Lucullus’ force. A new army would need to be drafted, but this time, Appian reports, Mithridates was to command the force. Appian notes that Tigranes thought that his disasters must have taught him something; we are not certain of the details of the negotiations and discussions between the two kings, but there is almost an air that Tigranes had been disgraced at Tigranocerta, and so he was now in lower repute than the Pontic king who had been defeated first. And, no doubt, there was the memory of how Mithridates and Taxiles had urged exactly the course of action that had been disregarded. In any case, one political development in the shadow of the battle was that Mithridates’ star was again in something of the ascendant; he was now once more the commander of an army in the field. It no doubt helped the king’s reputation that he had avoided actually being present for the disaster at Tigranocerta. In some ways his timely arrival must have seemed like a note of salvation from on high at a time of deep malaise and depression in the Armenian camp. Mithridates, to his credit, seems to have been aware that the time for tears must be brief, because plans were needed, and expeditiously, in order to win the war in the aftermath of the loss of the battle. The presence of two kings on the same side, too, allowed Mithridates and Tigranes to pursue a two-pronged strategy. Indeed, Lucullus would end up chasing Tigranes into northern Armenia, even as Mithridates prepared to invade his old kingdom by moving into eastern Pontus.