INTRODUCTION TO THE ORATION CONCERNING THE COMMAND OF GNAEUS POMPEIUS. 1. MITHRIDATES VI, surnamed Eupator, succeeded his father on the throne of Pontus in B.C. 120, being then about eleven years of age. His power is but very inadequately expressed by the district in Asia Minor from which he took his title. In the south he inherited also from his father the kingdom of Phrygia, and northwards he reckoned among his subjects the tribes of the Cimmerian Bosporus as far as the Borysthenes, deriving no small portion of his soldiers from the hardy inhabitants of the Caucasus. Restless and ambitious in temperament, he was a general of consummate skill himself, and had secured a staff of experienced Greek and even Roman officers to lead his barbarian troops. 2. The earlier part of his reign was spent in extending and consolidating his power in the East, but he had from his boyhood conceived a grudge against the Romans, who had deprived him of his kingdom of Phrygia, which they themselves had given to his father. He first came into open collision with them in B.C. 93, when a dispute between himself and Nicomedes king of Bithynia, as supporting rival pretenders to the throne of Cappadocia, was referred to Rome for arbitration. The senate decided in favour of neither claimant, but allowed the Cappadocians to choose a ruler for themselves, and Ariobarzanes was elected king. In the same year he was driven from his throne by Tigranes king of Armenia, Mithridates' son-in-law, but was reinstated by Sulla, at that time praetor in Cilicia. 3. At the outbreak of the Social War, in B.C. 90, Mithridates again expelled Ariobarzanes, and was again obliged to allow him to return; but soon afterwards, having received overtures of alliance from the insurgent Italians, and being at once encouraged by the disasters of the Roman troops in Italy, and irritated by perpetual attacks which the allies of Rome were making on his own borders, he resolved on open war. With this view he once more expelled Ariobarzanes, and being supported almost everywhere by the natives of the province, who were exasperated by Roman oppression, he defeated the Roman forces under Manius Aquilius, and very shortly overran the whole of Asia Minor. As a final act of vengeance he caused all the Romans resident in Asia to be massacred, to the number, according to the more moderate accounts, of 80,000 citizens. 4. These events caused a panic at Rome, and Sulla was sent with five legions to take the command against Mithridates. He was however detained for a time by intestine disturbances, and when he landed in Greece at the beginning of B.C. 87, Mithridates had already occupied Thrace and Macedonia, and sending Archelaus into Greece had even taken Athens. With the scanty troops at his command Sulla spent two years in recovering Athens, and driving the forces of Mithridates out of Greece. Meanwhile L. Valerius Flaccus was appointed by Cinna to supersede him, but Sulla refused to give up the command. Not daring to contest the point in Greece, Flaccus resolved to carry on the war with Mithridates in Asia, but being very unpopular with his soldiers, he was murdered at Nicomedeia in Bithynia, at the instigation of C. Flavius Fimbria, his second in command.' Fimbria then led his army against the forces of Mithridates, which he defeated at every point, the king himself narrowly escaping capture, by the connivance of L. Lucullus. At this juncture Sulla appeared upon the scene, and having opened negociations with Mithridates, concluded a peace with him in B.C. 84, on condition that he evacuated all the province of Asia, restored Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes to the thrones of Bithynia and Cappadocia, surrendered his fleet of seventy ships, and paid 2000 talents (nearly £500,000) as compensation for the expenses of the war. 5. In the following year L. Licinius Murena, who had been left in Asia in command of two legions, invaded Pontus in spite of strict orders to the contrary, and was defeated with great loss by Mithridates on the Halys. As Murena persisted in his attack, the king appealed to Rome, and early in B.C. 81 Murena was recalled, and peace restored with Mithridates. In spite of the discredit attaching throughout to the campaign, Murena claimed a triumph, which was allowed him by the indulgence of his patron, who was now dictator. 6. It was evident that this peace had in it no elements of stability; and though for some years Mithridates occupied himself in strengthening his power at home, he seems to have been always on the watch for a favourable opportunity of seeking his revenge. In B.C. 75 he concluded an alliance with Sertorius, who was then successfully resisting the Roman generals in Spain, but his disasters commenced too soon to allow of his rendering any effectual assistance to the king. In B.C. 74 Nicomedes king of Bithynia died, and bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans. Mithridates alleged the existence of a legitimate son of Nicomedes, and on the plea of supporting the young heir in his claims, began a war which could only end in victory or ruin. He took possession of Bithynia, and when the two consuls, M. Aurelius Cotta, and L. Licinius Lucullus, were both sent against him, he defeated the former both by sea and land at Chalcedon, and blockaded him in Cyzicus. The siege was raised by Lucullus, and the army of Mithridates entirely destroyed. This prosperous beginning Lucullus followed up by three years of unbroken success, and at the end of B.C. 71 all the country from the Halys to the Euphrates was subdued, and Mithridates was a fugitive in Armenia. At the same time Lucullus did even more to establish the Roman authority in the East by checking the extortion of the officials, and by initiating a series of reforms in the administration of his province. 7. The following year was not marked by any military operations, but in B.C. 69, Tigranes having refused to surrender Mithridates, Lucullus marched into Armenia, and gained a decisive victory over the Armenians at Tigranocerta. In B.C. 68, after a second victory over Tigranes, Lucullus met with his first check, in the refusal of his army to continue the pursuit. The mutinous spirit further developed itself in the following year, when Mithridates appeared again upon the scene, and defeated L. Triarius, a legatus of Lucullus, at Zela on the Iris. Upon this the soldiers agreed to defend Pontus itself against Mithridates, but positively refused to undertake any further operations. About the same time Lucullus learned that M'. Acilius Glabrio, one of the consuls of the year, had been sent out by the popular party to succeed him; and though Glabrio practically declined to take up his command, yet the slight upon Lucullus naturally weakened his authority, and Mithridates was allowed to recover his power, not only in Pontus, but over Bithynia and Cappadocia. The result was that all the brilliant achievements of Lucullus were neutralized, and at the end of an eight years' war, marked by five years of almost unparalleled success, he found himself, for want of cordial support, exactly where he was at its beginning. 8. Such a state of things could not be looked on as satisfactory at Rome, and the public attention was presently bent on finding a new general to conduct the war. Glabrio was evidently inadequate to the position; the exploits of Lucullus were overshadowed by his recent reverses; and moreover his measures of reform had made him unpopular with those who looked on the provinces as a field for plunder and extortion. 9. In this emergency a bill was introduced by C. Manilius, a tribune of the commons, for conferring the supreme command of all the eastern provinces on Cn. Pompeius, confessedly the greatest general of the day. As Cicero points out in the midst of his speech, his life from very boyhood had been spent in arms. Born in B.C. 106, he served his first campaign under his father against the Italians in B.C. 89. In B.C. 83 he espoused the cause of Sulla, and having raised three legions by his personal influence, he defeated M. Brutus in Picenum, and was hailed by Sulla as Imperator at the age of twenty-three. In B.C. 81, though still only a simple eques, he was allowed a triumph for his successes over Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and Hiarbas in Numidia. In B.C. 77 his reputation was so fully established, that, though he had held as yet no curule office, the senate sent him as proconsul into Spain, to share with Q. Metellus Pius the command against Sertorius. In this war his success was less marked: he gained no material advantages over his opponent, and the contest was only decided in his favour in consequence of the murder of Sertorius in B.C. 72. 10. In the following year he returned to Italy, and having quenched the embers of the Servile war, which had virtually been extinguished by M. Crassus, he triumphed for the second time, still as an eques, on Dec. 31. 11. On the next day he entered on his consulship, to which he had been elected with M. Crassus, though seven years below the legal age, and though he had previously held no other curule office. His consulship was marked by a general repeal of Sulla's institutions. He restored the privileges of the tribunes, including the right of initiating legislation. He took from the senate the exclusive right of furnishing the iudices in the quaestiones perpetuae, and by a law of L. Aurelius Cotta entrusted the judicial functions to the senators, equites, and tribuni aerarii in equal proportions. This last measure was doubtless facilitated by the exposures of senatorial corruption made on the trial of C. Verres. He also restored the censorship, which was administered with unusual firmness in this year by L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus. In the course of their proceedings, during the recognitio equitum, Pompey himself appeared before them, and made his claim to be discharged from further service. On being asked by Gellius whether he had gone through all the requisite campaigns, he replied, 'Yes, all of them, and every one as general of the army in which I served.' 12. At the end of his consulship, instead of accepting the government of a province, Pompey remained quietly for two years in Rome, apparently waiting for some further occasion of extraordinary distinction. 13. This presented itself in B.C. 67, in the panic caused by the Cilician pirates. Encouraged probably by Mithridates, and unmolested by the provincials, they had developed an organized system, under which Roman commerce was paralysed, the city threatened with famine through the stoppage of the corn supplies, and the shores and roads of Italy itself made insecure. L. Murena and P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus had tried ineffectually to restrain them, and A. Gabinius at last proposed that 'one of the consulars' should be invested for the purpose with absolute au 1 Πάσας ἐστράτευμαι καὶ πάσας ὑπ' ἐμαυτῷ αὐτοκράτορι, Plut. Pomp. C. 22. |