Mithridates VI Eupator: Victim Or Aggressor?
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Mithridates VI Eupator: Victim or Aggressor? Brian C. McGing Once he gets down to the events leading immediately to the First Mithridatic War, Appianos, often regarded as a not very good historian, presents a con- sistently coherent interpretation of events.1 After initially acquiescing in the restoration of Ariobarzanes to Kappadokia, Mithridates expels him again, and Nikomedes from Bithynia. Manius Aquillius restores them, and when Niko- medes is forced by the Romans into a plundering raid of Pontos, he meets no opposition as Mithridates wanted “many and just complaints for war” (Mith. 11). Pelopidas, aware that the Roman officers wanted to start a war, pretended otherwise, to acquire “more, and more fitting, reasons for the coming war” (Mith. 13). He tells the Romans that Mithridates was not weak or unprepared to defend himself. The Bithynians agree. Mithridates, they maintained, had been plotting against Nikomedes for a long time; he expelled Nikomedes, whom you Romans confirmed on the throne, a move designed more against you than against us; he pays no heed to your orders, such as your ban on Asian kings entering Europe (his annexation of the Chersonese demonstrates that). Furthermore just look at his massive preparations, they urge: Thrace, Scythia, Armenia as allies, the Ptolemies and Seleukids being courted too, and a huge fleet. Against whom is this all designed? Not against us, but against you Romans. He is angry with you about Phrygia and Kappadokia, and he is afraid of your growing power. Such was the Bithynian case. After yet another Pontic invasion of Kappadokia, Pelopidas presents the Roman envoys with a summary of Mithridates’ complaints, coupled with a threatening inventory of Pontic military strength, and an offer to send the whole dispute to Rome for arbitration. But the Romans have made up their mind about what they are going to do, and Pelopidas is summarily dismissed. Appianos does not state it directly, but although the Roman ambassadors had said only that they would be restoring Ariobarzanes to Kappadokia, the positioning of the Roman allied forces (Mith. 17) makes it quite clear that they intended far more than this. Appianos had no doubt that the war was now about to begin. After the war, Mithridates claims the Roman generals started it and he just acted in self-defence, out of necessity rather than design (Mith. 56), but Sulla will have none of it: you brought on the war, he says, by preventing the restoration of Nikomedes; you had been planning war for a long time hoping to rule the world: events in Kappadokia, Phrygia and Bithynia were 775200_mithridates_3k.indd5200_mithridates_3k.indd 220303 112-04-20092-04-2009 114:14:124:14:12 204 Brian C. McGing just excuses to cover your real intentions. The clearest evidence is your huge military preparations, when you were at war with no one, and above all the timing: you knew we were too preoccupied with the Social War to oppose you (Mith. 57). Appianos’ account may be coherent, but is it right? Standard analyses of events leading to the First Mithridatic War, while questioning particular aspects of Appianos’ interpretation of what happened, tended until recently to accept it (more or less).2 Serious shortcomings, however, in Appianos’ ver- sion have been convincingly highlighted, particularly in relation to his scape- goating of the Roman commissioners in Asia Minor.3 For present purposes, however, my perspective is a Pontic one. The question I want to address is whether the picture of Mithridates, scheming hard to cast himself in the role of the aggrieved, but in fact with a long-standing desire for war with Rome, might be right, or is merely the interpretation of our sources looking back and confusing what happened with what was planned. Roman policy and actions, of course, come into play, but it would be possible for Appianos to misunderstand the Roman role in events, and still be correct about the ambi- tions of Mithridates. Karl Strobel has argued at length that Mithridates was fundamentally a compliant Hellenistic king, who respected the structures of the Hellenistic world, and was bent on avoiding open conflict with Rome; the real aggressor was Bithynia.4 In this article I will be challenging that po- sition, and reasserting the older view of an ambitious Mithridates, who does move consciously, if carefully, to a show-down with Rome. I will be limiting my comments to the first war. There may have been particular circumstances leading to the third war, but both Appianos (Mith. 70) and Sallust (Hist. 4.69 Maur.) state that Mithridates regarded it as no more than a continuation of the first war, for which Rome was responsible. So the vital question is, who started it all? It should be conceded at the outset that to argue that the ancient sources worked backwards from their general assessment of Mithridates to specifics, is a good starting-point for questioning their reliability. When you look back- wards from the end of the story it is easy to see in Mithridates, as I have, “one of the most aggressive and determined opponents the Senate and People of Rome ever faced”.5 I believe that is a correct judgement, but also very general, and possibly misleading, if it is taken to mean that right from the beginning of his reign Mithridates was bent on world conquest. While I did not intend it that way, the ancient sources probably did. They observed the conquests and violence of the first war and bitter determination of the king in the third war, and some deduced from this that he was a sort of eastern Hannibal, imbued with a deep hatred for all things Roman, and equipped with plans for war, right from his accession (App. Mith. 102, 109; Plut. Pomp. 41; Dio Cass. 37.11.1; Florus 1.40.15). They then filled in the details of their accounts retrospectively in line with this view. That could be how it worked – and the Hannibal part of the story certainly looks like retrospective myth-making – but the possibil- 775200_mithridates_3k.indd5200_mithridates_3k.indd 220404 112-04-20092-04-2009 114:14:124:14:12 Mithridates VI Eupator: Victim or Aggressor? 205 ity remains that they got the aggressive Mithridates right, even if they over- dramatised the picture. The Mithridatic family background may provide a context for the out- look of Mithridates Eupator. Although they belonged to what was clearly a Persian family, it was generally agreed since the time of Meyer that claims to descent from Achaemenid royalty were propaganda, devised, particularly in the time of Eupator, to give the family added lustre and nobility.6 Bosworth and Wheately, however, have made a strong case that the family was directly related to Dareios himself.7 This should serve to remind us of the importance of the Iranian roots for Pontos and its most famous king, although that is not to say that Greekness and Alexander imitation were not a vital ingredient of Mithridates’ identity.8 The Persian character of the kingdom is highlighted, for instance, by the temple of the Persian deities at Zela, which controlled extensive territory under the authority of the priest and where, Strabon tells us, the people of Pontos made their most sacred vows (Strab. 11.8.4, 12.3.37). Persian names are found scattered throughout the kingdom, and of course, Mithridates Eupator made sure to give all his sons good Persian names.9 He used eunuchs and had a harem (or at least practised multiple marriage), called his governors satraps, called himself, an inscription from Nymphaion seems to show, “great king of kings”, sacrificed to Ahuramazda (evidently) on mountaintops like the Persian kings at Pasargadai.10 It is surely highly indicative of the Persian cultural character of the kingdom that he, and his predecessors, sought validation among their subjects through their family’s claim to Persian descent. It may also explain the readiness of the Seleukid monarchs to marry into the Pontic royal family, a deal whose advantage to the Seleukids is by no means self-evident: it is easy to understand what Pon- tos got out of marriage alliances with the mightiest of Alexander’s successor kingdoms, but not so obvious what the Seleukids thought they were getting. The answer of Sherwin-White and Kuhrt is attractive:11 Pontic marriages of- fered them something of “the grandeur, hierarchy and courtly royal ideol- ogy of the Achaemenids”. The Mithridatids got Hellenistic recognition, the Seleukids Iranian respectability. This Persian element in the identity of Mithridates Eupator is important for its potential influence on his royal outlook. He was the descendant of mighty Achaemenid kings, for whom one of the characteristics of royal greatness was conquest. But Mithridates was no fool. He learnt from his grandfather, Pharnakes, that imperial expansion in Asia Minor was problematic, and he moved with care, although that in itself does not mean he lacked the sort of imperial ambitions that I am suggesting his Achaemenid family background might have given him.12 What exactly Mithridates was thinking, for instance, when he invaded Greece during the first war, we are not told. There may well have been “a touch of improvisation about the operations”,13 but the question of what he thought he was doing in Greece in the first place is rarely asked. With Rome still not responding to his conquest of Asia Minor, the opportu- 775200_mithridates_3k.indd5200_mithridates_3k.indd 220505 112-04-20092-04-2009 114:14:124:14:12 206 Brian C. McGing nity for further success offered itself. But why was Greece attractive? I have suggested that it might have been a mixture of aggressive defence – protect- ing Asia by fighting away from it – and the lure of his philhellenic image: the saviour of the Asiatic Greeks also saving the mainland Greeks.