“My king was not unprepared to defend himself from these attacks,” continued Pelopidas. But he “held back from war, so that you might be eye-witnesses to these events.” Pelopidas concluded his speech simply, alluding to Rome’s tendency to betray its allies. “Mithradates, Rome’s friend and ally, calls upon you to defend us against the aggression of Nicomedes, or at least restrain him.”
Nicomedes’ ambassadors countered Pelopidas’s plea. Mithradates had plotted against Nicomedes to place Socrates the Good on the throne by force of arms, they claimed. The late and lamented Socrates, once a peaceful prince, had fallen under Mithradates’ evil influence. In fact, they declared, “All of Mithradates’ plots are really aimed at you Romans!”
“All his actions are examples of Mithradates’ arrogance and hostility, and his disobedience of your orders. Just look at his preparations for war! Mithradates stands in complete readiness for the great war he is planning.” The Bithynians cataloged the vast armies under Mithradates’ command. The Pontic army includes “a great force of allies, Thracians, Scythians, and all the other neighboring peoples, now that Mithradates has taken over the Crimea and northern Black Sea. Mithradates has even formed a marriage alliance with Armenia, and he is sending envoys to Egypt and Syria!” His navy already has three hundred warships, and he has even hired expert sailors from Phoenicia and Egypt. “Mithradates is not just gathering these forces to fight Nicomedes,” they warned. “These preparations are aimed at Rome!”
Nicomedes’ envoys outlined Mithradates’ strategy. “He pretends to have an argument with Bithynia, but his real target is you! If you are wise,” intoned the ambassadors, “you won’t wait until he declares war on you. Look at his deeds, not his words. Bithynia is your true friend and ally; don’t sacrifice us to this hypocrite who feigns friendship.” Mithradates is not just our enemy, they thundered, Mithradates threatens Rome itself!
Pretending to be objective, the Romans allowed Pelopidas a rebuttal. “Well, if Nicomedes wants to complain about past events, we bow to Rome’s judgment,” drawled Pelopidas. “What we are concerned about are the wrongs that have just occurred, right before your eyes: the ravaging of Mithradates’ territory, the interruption of trade in the Black Sea, the carrying away of vast plunder from Pontus.” Pelopidas repeated his simple—and reasonable—request: “Again, we call upon you Romans! Either prevent such outrages or help Mithradates regain his losses from Bithynia. At the very least, stand aside and allow Mithradates to defend himself!”
The generals were already committed to Nicomedes IV. But Pelopidas’s eloquent speech “put them to shame,” reminding them that Pontus’s old alliance with Rome was still in force, and that Aquillius’s own father had given Phyrgia to Mithradates’ father, and pointedly contrasting Roman violent disruption with Mithradates’ protection of free trade. Indeed, Mithradates had complied and withdrawn his armies; he had done Rome no harm. The Senate had not commissioned Aquillius to make war on Mithradates. The generals were “at a loss for some time about what answer to make.”
Finally, after a long consultation, they came up with this “artful response”: “We would not wish Mithradates to suffer harm at the hands of Nicomedes. Nor can we allow Mithradates to make war on Nicomedes. It is not in Rome’s best interest for Bithynia to be weakened.”
Pelopidas reported back to Mithradates in Sinope. The Romans’ brusque denial of justice, in such a public manner, gave Mithradates no other option.30 He immediately called for his stepson Ariathes IX, invested him with a large army, and sent him to take Cappadocia. Ariathes drove Ariobarzanes back to Rome and regained Cappadocia’s throne.
Then Mithradates dispatched Pelopidas back to the Roman camp on a very important mission. Appian reported the speeches at these meetings, too, with details that convey the gist of Pelopidas’s orations and demonstrate Mithradates’ genius for diplomacy and propaganda. The speeches show how cleverly Mithradates must have built his case against the Romans in Anatolia, revealing Aquillius as the aggressor driven by pure greed, thereby justifying Mithradates’ defensive reaction.
“O Romans, how patiently King Mithradates has borne the wrongs done to him,” began Pelopidas. His heavy gold and agate ring with the portrait of his king glinted as he gestured. “Not only did you deprive Pontus of Phrygia and Cappadocia. You stood by and watched while Nicomedes invaded Mithradates’ sovereign territory. We appealed to your friendship, but instead you treated Nicomedes as the victim and Mithradates as the accused.”
The next portion reflects Mithradates’ excellent understanding of Roman constitutional law. “You will be held accountable to the Roman Republic for what has just taken place in Cappadocia!” Pelopidas warned Aquillius not to start such a major war without an official senatorial decree. If you do, “you generals will be called to defend your actions in Rome when Mithradates lodges a formal complaint against you before the Senate.”
Then the ambassador described exactly what the Romans would be up against, should they make war on the most powerful ruler in the East. “Bear this in mind, Romans. My king Mithradates rules his ancestral domain of Pontus. He also rules many neighboring lands: the Colchians, a very warlike people; all the Greeks around the Black Sea; and all the barbarian tribes beyond. Mithradates has allies ready to obey his every command: Scythians, Taurians, Bastarnae, Thracians, Sarmatians, and all those tribes in the regions of the Don, the Danube, and the Sea of Asov! King Tigranes of Armenia is Mithradates’ son-in-law and he counts King Arsaces of Parthia as his ally. My king already has a large number of ships, and many more are being built as we speak. We possess war materiel of every kind in abundance.”
Pelopidas predicted that the rulers of Egypt and Syria would rush to Mithradates’ aid. Then he raised a chilling image sure to alarm the Senate: “Your newly acquired provinces in Asia, in Greece, in Africa, and in Italy itself will come to our side. Your Italian colonies are waging a relentless war against you right now, because they cannot endure your greed. You can’t even subdue your colonies in Italy, yet you attack Mithradates and set Nicomedes on him! You treat us like an enemy, yet you still pretend to be our friend!”
Mithradates had instructed his ambassador to conclude by presenting the Roman generals with an insult wrapped in a threat wrapped in an ultimatum. If they accepted his request for justice, Mithradates would win; if they fell for the bait, he was prepared for war. “Come now, choose!” exclaimed Pelopidas. “Restrain Nicomedes from harming Pontus, your old ally. If you do this, King Mithradates promises to help you put down that troublesome rebellion in Italy. Either throw off the deceitful mask of friendship—or let us go together to Rome and settle the dispute there.”
The Roman generals reacted as Mithradates expected. Aquillius ordered Mithradates to stay out of Bithynia and announced that they would restore Ariobarzanes to Cappadocia’s by now rather rickety throne. Roman centurions then forcibly escorted Pelopidas to the border of Pontus, for fear that he would be able to rally the Bithynian countryside to Mithradates’ cause. This detail suggests that popular hostility to Rome and support for Mithradates must have been palpable.
“Without waiting to hear what the People of Rome and the Senate would decide about such a great war,” writes Appian, Aquillius immediately prepared to invade Pontus. Mithradates had goaded him into starting a major war with a Friend of Rome without senatorial approval. Aquillius’s decision was a sharp break from traditional Roman foreign policy at the end of the Republic. Powerful, rogue commanders could now make war for their own gain, as the Senate’s power waned.31
Aquillius ordered ships to block the entrance to the Black Sea. According to Appian’s figures, the invasion force totaled 176,000 men (12,000 were Roman legionnaires). The three commanders took up positions in early 89 BC. Aquillius’s 40,000 massed on the border of Pontus south of the Olgassy Mountains. Cassius’s 40,000 marched to the frontier of Bithynia and Galatia, Oppius’s 40,000 held the route through Cappadocia. Aquillius instructed Nicomedes IV that his 56,000 Bithynia
ns would lead the invasion of Pontus.32
Mithradates was more than ready for them.
7
Victory
AQUILLIUS ordered Nicomedes IV to lead his army into Pontus, ravaging the countryside as they advanced. They were unaware that Mithradates could call on an overwhelming force, far beyond what the Romans could have anticipated. According to Appian, Mithradates commanded 250,000 soldiers and 50,000 cavalry (including all the reserves and commitments that Mithradates could count on from allies around the Black Sea and Armenia). According to Memnon, Mithradates had 190,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry.1
Mithradates, in his mid-forties, had little combat experience. For this first crucial battle of his career, Appian says that Mithradates personally took charge of the troops massed at Sinope, placing Dorylaus at the head of the Greek phalanx. The fabulous wealth of Pontus was on display in the ranks of hoplites with beautifully wrought bronze helmets and breastplates, gilded spears, and shields flashing with jewels. There were bowmen, slingers, and peltasts (fighters armed with light swords and javelins), noble Persian-Cappadocian knights, and Scythian and Sarmatian archers mounted on tough steppe ponies adorned with golden trappings. His ally Tigranes had contributed 10,000 Armenian cavalry riding large Parthian steeds. Mithradates’ 300 warships and 100 pirate biremes displayed magnificent prows and luxurious decor. No expense was spared: the pageantry impressed his own soldiers and sailors as well as the populace, and it intimidated the enemy.2
As supreme commander, Mithradates took a strong hand in planning strategy. He found a vantage point from which to direct the action and dispatch more troops as needed. Among his experienced field generals were the brothers Archelaus (who had skirmished with Sulla) and Neoptolemus, who had helped subdue Scythia.
In a rare gesture of trust, Mithradates appointed his son Arcathius, a young man of twenty, to lead the prized Armenian cavalry. Hellenistic kings were usually loath to allow blood relatives to command forces that could be turned against them. Historians ask, Why would Mithradates, whose paranoia was notorious, give this important command to his son? I think the answer lies in Mithradates’ admiration for Alexander. Philip of Macedon had famously placed his eighteen-year-old son Alexander in charge of the cavalry at the important battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Alexander’s audacious maneuvers had turned out to be the key to Philip’s great victory. Now in 89 BC, while Mithradates assumed the commanding role of a Xerxes or Darius the master strategist, observing the battle from a high vantage point, he cast his son in the role of young Alexander.
At the Amnias River, Mithradates’ generals brought out only a small force, 40,000 light infantry and Arcathius’s 10,000 Armenian cavalry, greatly outnumbered by the Bithynian-Roman coalition.3 But hidden behind the ranks of men and horses, a deadly surprise awaited the invaders: Mithradates’ 130 war chariots equipped with whirling scythes.
Chariots, known to Greek traditionalists from the epic poems of Homer, had enjoyed renewed popularity after the Romans conquered Greece. But these days chariots were used only for racing or parades, not war. In the circus in Rome, fancy chariots were drawn by prancing show horses, even by ostriches and tigers. War chariots with rotating, sickle-shaped blades projecting from the axles were an archaic weapon of the distant past, perfected by Mithradates’ ancestor Cyrus the Great.
An aficionado of chariot warfare as well as of racing, Mithradates was aware that these Persian terror machines hadn’t dominated a battlefield since Alexander fought Darius III in the fourth century BC. Mithradates would have studied the battle at Gaugamela, in 331 BC, when Alexander defeated Darius. In that case, Alexander’s troops had been well prepared for Darius’s death machines. The Macedonians simply opened their lines to let the scythed chariots pass by and then attacked them from the rear.4
Alexander’s surprise tactic had essentially ended the era of chariot warfare. On this day in 89 BC, however—more than two hundred years later—Mithradates was counting on his contemporaries’ having forgotten Alexander’s evasive maneuver.
THE MITHRADATIC WARS BEGIN, 89 BC
As Nicomedes’ great army approached across the plain, Mithradates’ general Neoptolemus sent his men out to seize a rocky hill. The battle began. Bithynian skirmishers swarmed the hill, and Neoptolemus quickly advanced with more men, yelling for Arcathius to bring up his cavalry. Arcathius’s Armenian horsemen charged into Nicomedes’ phalanx, a risky decision that could have resulted in heavy casualties. The move seems to mimic young Alexander’s feat at Chaeronea. Was he attempting to replicate Alexander’s coup, using cavalry as a shock weapon to charge head-on instead of harassing the enemy’s flanks? The tactic worked: Arcathius’s cavalry charge bought more time for Neoptolemus’s phalanx to engage the startled enemy.
As Arcathius chased the enemy cavalry off the field, bloody fighting erupted behind him. Would Nicomedes’ superior numbers prevail? Neoptolemus’s men were falling back. Archelaus rushed to his brother’s rescue, leading a wedge of soldiers in from the right, forcing the Bithynians to turn and fight off the fresh troops. Cleverly, Archelaus yielded ground to them little by little, drawing the Bithynians away from his brother’s men, giving them the chance to rally.
Nicomedes’ Bithynian phalanx was now bunched up, the men standing back-to-back, straining to defend themselves on two fronts of the brother-generals’ assaults. Peering through the dust swirling over the fight, Craterus, Mithradates’ chariot master, grinned. The beleaguered phalanx presented his ideal target. Receiving the gleeful signal from his commander in chief, Craterus unleashed his chariots. The drivers whipped their powerful horses into a full-speed gallop. Suddenly 130 war chariots surged out and bore down like guided missiles on Nicomedes’ men. The vicious blades, spinning at a velocity three times the speed of the wheels, churned through the densely packed enemy. The shock was overwhelming, the carnage terrible.
At the time of this battle, the natural philosopher Lucretius (100–55 BC) was a boy in Italy. Lucretius later wrote a hair-raising description of a scythed chariot attack. His introductory phrase, “They say,” suggests that this scene was based on the memories of survivors or witnesses.5
They say the scythed chariots, ravenous for slaughter, sheared off limbs so suddenly that legs and arms fell writhing on the ground before a man even felt any pain. In the ardor of battle, one soldier continued to fight, not realizing that his left arm and shield had been carried off in the wheel. Meanwhile his companion attempted to rise on one leg, while his other lay twitching its toes in a pool of blood.
FIG. 7.1. Scythed chariot attack. Andre Castaigne, 1899.
Nicomedes’ soldiers, wrote Appian, were “aghast to see their mangled comrades sliced in two and still breathing, hanging on the scythes. . . . Overcome by the hideousness of the slaughter, the ranks scattered in confusion.” Nicomedes narrowly escaped: he and his Roman entourage fled to Aquillius’s camp on the border, the same direction taken by his cavalry. Abandoned by their king, some of Nicomedes’ soldiers still fought valiantly, wading through the bodies of dismembered comrades. But they were soon surrounded and overcome.6
Half of Nicomedes’ forces were dead. The survivors surrendered that night. Mithradates’ jubilant army overran the abandoned camp and captured the entire train of supplies. The Pontic generals were delighted to discover that the terror-stricken Nicomedes had left behind his war chest, filled with silver and gold—treasure drained, as they knew, from Anatolia. Thousands of prisoners were marched to Sinope.
Mithradates came out to receive the prisoners. Glowing with victory, the king addressed them. One can imagine Mithradates boasting that a modest number of righteous soldiers fighting on the side of Truth and Light, and led by superior Greek generals, had overcome a much larger invading army. He could point out that most of his vast troops had not even engaged in the fight. The losers may have fought courageously, but they had been misled by the forces of Darkness. Gesturing at the wagons of abandoned supplies he’d captured from Nicomedes, Mithradates made a sur
prising announcement. All the captives were free to go. His men divided up the supplies, handing out Nicomedes’ provisions, food, clothing, and coins to each enemy soldier for his journey home.
FIG. 7.2. Mithridates VI Eupator, silver tetradrachm, Ephesus mint, 88/87 BC. The reverse shows Pegasus and the Pontic star and crescent. 1967.152.392, bequest of A. M. Newell, courtesy of the American Numismatic Society.
This benevolent act, and others like it, broadcast by word of mouth, gave Mithradates a reputation for clemency toward his enemies. Philanthropia, mercy toward captured foes, was a Greek ideal embraced by Hellenistic monarchs. Like them, Mithradates admired Alexander’s reputation for being as “gentle after victory as he is terrible in battle.”7 Is this when Mithradates began referring to himself as Eupator, the “Good Father”?
Many survivors of the disastrous Roman-Bithynian invasion of Pontus were mercenaries and draftees from Galatia and Phrygia. With no incentive to return to Bithynia or help the losers Nicomedes and Aquillius, they joined the Pontic army. Bithynia and Paphlagonia fell to Mithradates’ control. News of his spectacular victory and his magnanimous freeing of prisoners of war spread over the land, convincing many cities to take up his cause, eager to welcome Mithradates “as god and savior.” Ancient writers tell how the populace of many Anatolian cities dressed in white garments and flocked to greet Mithradates, requesting his help against the Romans and acclaiming him with divine titles.8
MEANWHILE IN THE ROMAN CAMPS
Nicomedes had scurried away to Aquillius’s encampment, where he had to explain to his masters how he lost so many men, all his supplies, and his war chest. Appian says that Aquillius and the Roman generals were horrified by the fiasco. Too late they realized that they had heedlessly “kindled a great strife without good judgment.” But even more alarming, they had lost a war they had begun without any public decree from the People of Rome. They were now nothing but rogue enemy combatants trapped in hostile territory, with no backing from the Senate.
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy Page 18