Lucullus

  One could argue that Lucullus did the best that he could at Tigranocerta, and indeed that he deserves high praise for his victory. But there was one unfortunate consequence of his success: Mithridates was now the senior partner in the anti-Roman coalition. Tigranocerta seems to have revivified his spirits. It is possible that now he was, perversely, on equal terms with Tigranes – both men had suffered major defeats at the hands of Lucullus, and his son-in-law Tigranes could no longer maintain a certain hauteur as being his saviour and protector. Tigranes had lost his magnificent city, and his despondency was understandably profound. At this juncture, Mithridates was able to take heart and guide plans of renewed vigour against the Romans. Mithridates was also never a man to be content with just a little when he could aspire to have everything. He may well have seen a way at this juncture to dominance over not only an expanded Pontic kingdom, but also Armenia. Mithridates may have had his eye on greater power than he had ever known – and Lucullus was now left with two rabbits to hunt instead of one.

  The surviving narrative of Dio Cassius (Book XXXVI) picks up just as Mithridates assumes command of the renewed prosecution of the Armenian war. Dio notes that there was an atmosphere of new beginnings, as if the war was only now commencing. Dio indicates that after the defeat at Tigranocerta, Tigranes’ camp immediately made overtures to the Parthian Empire for potential help and alliance against Rome. The initiative was difficult, given that the Parthians were not exactly friends of the Armenians – there had been territorial disputes and border disagreements that threatened to escalate to open war – but the Armenian argument now was essentially that the two sides faced a common enemy.54

  Parthia

  Lucullus was aware that Parthia was a potential player in the war, especially as the Romans moved ever eastward. He sent his own emissaries on the difficult mission of securing either assistance to the Romans or neutrality. The Parthian response was a classic example of diplomatic caution. Appian says that the Parthians made arrangements with both sides, but that privately they were interested in staying out of the conflict. Indeed, the Parthian attitude may have been similar to what Tigranes would have felt had his marriage relative Mithridates not decided to take refuge in his kingdom. We have no knowledge of what the Parthian opinion of Tigranes was, but it is possible that he was no particular friend of theirs, at least not a friend for whom they were willing to risk a war with Rome. Plutarch specifies that the Parthians actually offered Lucullus an alliance, but that the Romans discovered that the Parthians were also telling the Armenians what they wanted to hear – specifically, in fact, that they would be interested in helping Tigranes if he would guarantee that they could take over Mesopotamia in the wake of victory. If we can believe Plutarch, Lucullus thought, for a moment at least, that it might actually be possible to defeat not one, nor two, but three kings in quick succession. Parthia would be a major thorn in the side of Rome for years to come, and the events of the next stage of the Armenian conflict led to an interesting set of circumstances in which to ponder alternate histories. For the moment, it seems that Lucullus was thoroughly unimpressed by the Parthians’ willingness to play both sides against the other, and that he was likely asking his general staff to at least consider the possibility of war against the next great empire in the neighbourhood.

  Dio observes, as we have noted, that the Parthians had territorial disputes with Tigranes, which the king was ostensibly willing to resolve. The Armenians also told King Arsaces (also known as Phraates) of Parthia that if the Romans were to defeat Tigranes and Mithridates, then Arsaces would be next – a reasonable enough summation, though a question complicated by the willingness of the Romans to continue the eastern wars indefinitely.55 Dio further observes that at first the Parthians had no reason to suspect the Romans of any hostile intent, and were willing to consider an alliance and friendship – but then became suspicious that one of Lucullus’ emissaries was really in Parthia to spy on the kingdom and to plan for future action against Arsaces.56 And so he refused to give any assistance to Lucullus, but he did maintain his neutrality. Dio notes that the king’s point in this was to see both Lucullus and Tigranes in a state of potential risk and hazard. The Parthians could remain safe and secure, while the Romans and the Armenians would expend men and material in their mutual destruction (or at least weakening). The Armenian struggle offered one of the first major opportunities for the Romans to negotiate with the Parthians; the great kingdom in the East would soon enough be the principal threat and source of strategic balance in Asia for Roman interests. Of the other great men of Lucullus’ day, Crassus would lose his life in the pursuit of military glory against the Parthians, while Caesar would be assassinated on the cusp of his own planned departure in a great expedition against them. Mark Antony would face a disastrous campaign against Parthia that would do much to wreck his reputation at Rome. Parthia would be a significant counterbalance to Rome for years; it would be for Augustus to ‘settle’ the Parthian question essentially by agreeing not to prosecute a war against the empire. Propaganda, of course, could always be served by the return of the standards that Lucullus’ contemporary Crassus had lost in his disastrous engagement at Carrhae.57 For the present, no Roman could definitively decide what Parthia was thinking. There was certainly no clear avenue of advantage to Phraates’ siding with Rome against Armenia – or vice versa. Lucullus was certainly under no illusions about Parthian trustworthiness.

  One interesting surviving source for the dealings with the Parthians is the letter of Mithridates to Arsaces that is reported in Sallust’s histories.58 The purported speech – which may owe something to the example of the Greek historian Thucydides – is a masterpiece of rhetorical innuendo and counterpoint. The Romans are presented as bloodthirsty, insatiable conquerors. First they are said to have attacked Philip V of Macedonia, then Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire. Mithridates paints himself as a victim of Roman greed and avarice; he was wealthy and not willing to submit to slavery, and so he was a target of Roman aggression. He highlights his successful attack on Cotta at Chalcedon, and notes that the siege of Cyzicus went badly precisely because he was not assisted by any of the locals in the matter of supplies. For Mithridates, the Romans are interested principally in the overthrow of all monarchies. Arsaces would be next, and if he were to ally with Mithridates and Tigranes, the war could be won far from the homes and hearths of Parthia. The survival of Sallust’s attributed speech offers a valuable insight into one aspect of the ongoing diplomatic games that were a key part of the progress of the Armenian conflict.59

  It is telling that Appian records that Mithridates conscripted another exceptionally large force, of which he selected 70,000 of the best infantry and about half as many cavalry. Clearly, in the aftermath of Tigranocerta, the King of Pontus decided that huge armies of incompetent draftees would not work against Lucullus’ disciplined and highly trained force. The rest of the recruits were simply dismissed – Mithridates wanted to build a cohesive and reliable army. He also handed the men over to his own officers, as he no doubt had little confidence in his son-in-law’s general staff. The elite army was divided into cohorts in imitation of the Roman system. Mithridates had undoubtedly developed respect for Roman military practice in the course of the long progress of the Asian wars.

  Many of those kings who had been inclined to support Tigranes and Mithridates now lined up in favour of Lucullus. Plutarch makes clear that the reason for this was mostly Lucullus’ generous and kind treatment of foreigners. We are told that Zarbienus, the king of the Gordyeni, had applied for an alliance with the Romans, but had been discovered by Tigranes – who had the king, his wives and his children all killed. When Lucullus entered the kingdom of the Gordyeni, he ordered a solemn requiem and lavish funeral rites for the murdered king, and declared that he was a friend and ally of Rome – he burned various trappings of Tigranes on the pyre as an immolation in Zarbienus’ honour. He ordered an impressive monument to be built in the king’s memory, and insisted that the p
ayment for the memorial honour should come at no expense to the local population.60 Gestures of this sort endeared Lucullus to the native contingents who might otherwise have been persuaded to join Tigranes. No doubt the Armenian king’s own insolent behaviour did not help his cause. In the battle to win over the hearts and minds of the diverse peoples of the region, Lucullus was achieving handsome dividends. But all the while, his home-front enemies – the publicani and their supporters – were all the more emboldened to strike out against him. Every day the war remained unresolved was a gift to their cause.61

  Meanwhile, Lucullus’ subordinate commander Sornatius had been left behind in Pontus. He was now ordered to bring his army to Lucullus, so that with a sufficiently larger force a decisive move could be made against the fugitive kings – such a force was needed for any operations deeper into Armenia. Unfortunately, the Roman defenders of Pontus were apparently quite happy to be doing very little of a military nature, living a decadent life of luxury and in no mood to proceed to Lucullus and risk the hazard of a new war. When the Lucullan forces heard of the reluctance of their fellows to join them, they too began to ask why they should have to engage in another perilous enterprise. The Romans in Pontus were of course not aware of Mithridates’ plans to strike fast and hard against the invaders of his former kingdom, should circumstances prove favourable for such an assault, which soon enough they would.

  Plutarch attributes the decision to abandon any designs against Parthia to the near mutiny of the soldiers. Lucullus would spend the winter of 69–68 BC in preparation for the still elusive ‘final’ settlement of the war, and it was increasingly clear that there would be no realistic chance of adding Parthia to his list of conquests. There was something of the spirit of Alexander’s age afoot here; just as the Macedonian conqueror’s men had finally had enough of their seemingly endless eastward march, so here there was a definite limit to what the Roman soldiery was willing to endure.62 The argument that the two kings needed to be dealt with was easy enough to make and defend. Pursuing dreams of glory against a third empire was another matter entirely.

  As for the Parthians, for the moment they had nothing to gain from involvement in the Roman-Armenian War. There would be time aplenty for entanglement with the western empire that seemed increasingly to encroach on their sphere of influence. Negotiations, at any rate, were time-consuming – and time was something Lucullus did not have in abundance.

  We should note here that Dio preserves the detail that Lucullus was thought by some to have essentially let Tigranes escape at leisure, in the hope of prolonging the already seemingly endless war still further.63 And indeed, political machinations in Rome were well underway to deal with the question on some minds of when exactly Lucullus intended to return home. The province of Asia was handed over to the praetors, and later, Lucullus was relieved. A fragment of Sallust seems to indicate the commonplace judgment that Lucullus was outstanding in all respects, except in the matter of his great desire to extend his command.64

  And yet the kings were still at large, and the pretext for the continuation of war was more than just, one might well assert. Arguably, the most valid charge that could be placed at Lucullus’ door was that he was dilatory in his prosecution of the war. His slow progress, however, was balanced by ample proof of the ability to strike quickly and decisively – and by and large, his men had been safe and sound in their distant, dangerous enterprise. There may have been more than five dead at Tigranocerta, but nobody could claim that Lucullus was not cautious and careful with his men’s safety. And every day in a war of the sort that confronted Lucullus in Asia was an opportunity for his men to complain and to harbour resentment; every day offered another occasion for the general to experience the anxiety of holding ultimate responsibility for what happened and the outcome of decisions major and minor. And all the while, Lucullus had to deal with local potentates. In the aftermath of Tigranocerta, for instance, Dio records that Lucullus met with Antiochus, the king of Commagene in Syria, and Alchaudonius, a chieftain of the Arabs.65

  Xerxes in a Toga

  In several important regards, Lucullus would lose the long and bitter battle for an enduringly positive reputation. It is possible that no man would have been capable to meet the challenge. The question ultimately hinges on whether or not Lucullus could have brought the war to a hastier conclusion. So long as Tigranes and Mithridates had eastward territory in which to run, the answer may well be no. But Lucullus’ enemies – and in the viper’s nest of the late Republic, he had his fair share and more – were determined to paint a picture of a man who was intent on wealth and plunder, on conquest for the sake of renewed warfare. The famous appraisal cited by scholars is that of the Tiberian era historian Velleius Paterculus, who in his histories relates that Lucullus did indeed accomplish much of note and worth in Asia, but with the inability to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion, not for want of capability, but for want of inclination – to end the war would mean to end his chance to acquire still more treasure. And so Pompey would be appointed to replace him in the matter of Asian military affairs, and it would be Pompey who could aspire to the mantle of the Roman Alexander.66 Velleius’ judgment has found many modern supporters; the ancient historian notes that Pompey had criticized Lucullus for his greed, and Lucullus disapproved of Pompey for his insatiable lust for military power – and in the conclusion of Velleius, both men were right. And so Pompey is said to have referred to Lucullus as Xerxes togatus, ‘Xerxes in a toga’. Lucullus, after all, was said to have let the sea in on the land by digging channels through mountains and to have built great piles at sea, much as Xerxes had attempted to bridge the Hellespont and to have constructed a canal through the isthmus at Mount Athos.67

  Velleius’ summation is simple: summus alioqui vir – he was otherwise the greatest/loftiest of men, but his weakness was luxury.68 We may well wonder if the politically charged judgment of Pompey had won the day in the matter of Lucullus’ reputation. The record as preserved in our sources does not justify such a claim, at least by the time Lucullus found himself deep in Tigranes’ territory, in the spring of 68 BC.69 And yet today, Lucullus remains most renowned for exactly the sort of charge that Pompey and others levelled against him, a charge that only seemed to increase in validity the longer Lucullus stayed in the East (a region that for ‘traditionalist’ Romans was itself a byword for luxury and decadence).

  Artaxata, 68 BC

  The year 68 BC was one of victories and frustrations for Lucullus. Armenia had many villages and locales that were easily taken; if Tigranes wanted to deprive the Romans of supplies, his strategy would fail. The kings offered no real resistance to Rome. They were undoubtedly preoccupied with rebuilding the main body of their army, and with preparing for another decisive engagement, and both Armenians and Romans realized that such a battle would likely be waged near Tigranes’ ultimate capital, the city of Artaxata.

  Artaxata is south of modern Artashat in Ararat Province in Armenia. Artashat is on the Araks River, a little over 18½ miles south-east of the capital Yerevan. The modern Artashat is a relatively recent foundation that dates from Soviet times (1945), and is some 5 miles north-west of the ancient site. Allegedly, the ancient city was developed on the recommendation, advice and supervision of none other than Hannibal, who had fled to King Artaxas of Armenia and served as a counsellor to the monarch.70 The Roman army had marched something in the vicinity of 930 miles, so it is small wonder that some men were eager to see the sight of home.

  It is clear from our sources that Lucullus intended to strike at Tigranes’ capital, while Mithridates’ strategy was to avoid any direct engagement, wearing down the Romans by unrelenting harassment deep in enemy territory. Both men were correct in their appraisal of the situation. Artaxata was the ‘old’ capital of Armenia; it appears that Tigranocerta was to be the new jewel of the king’s empire – now he had fallen back on the original centre of his imperial realm, and here his wives and the bulk of his treasure awaited siege and defenc
e. There was no question that Tigranes would need to defend his city. Mithridates’ strategy of attrition may have been wise and correct, but it would only work if the Romans could be kept busy now with a prolonged siege of the Armenian capital.

  Plutarch notes that in the summer of 68 BC, Lucullus was disappointed to find that the crops were still unripe on account of the relatively cool climate of far eastern Turkey and western Armenia.71 Some scholars have blamed him for his lack of knowledge and realization about the climactic conditions, but in his defence we may note that weather reports were not easily forthcoming, and the Romans had limited knowledge about this distant corner of their known world. The villages that Lucullus plundered for food and supplies made up for some of the problem. All indications, however, pointed to a need to bring the war to a conclusion as soon as possible – Lucullus had every reason to believe that his men would not easily tolerate spending the winter of 68–67 BC in Armenia, and that his own political survival at Rome depended on him making a return sooner rather than later to his own capital. Appian reports that Tigranes’ forces harassed Roman foragers. The Armenians were beaten off, and eventually the Romans were even willing to dare to expand their foraging operations into the territory Mithridates held.72 Plutarch reports that there were some two or three occasions when the Armenians were routed in these minor operations. Lucullus was eventually ravaging enemy territory in open view, but the demoralized Armenians decided not to engage in further skirmishes.