Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (24 page)

Mithridates wished to enlarge his kingdom, and began by successfully taking over Armenia Minor and the eastern coast of the Black Sea (Colchis), and then the Crimea and the territories on the northern coast; these acquisitions greatly increased the resources available to him, and put him in a strong position for war. Next, he turned his attention to his father’s former possessions in Asia Minor. He allied himself with Nicomedes III, king of Bithynia, and together the two kings took Paphlagonia and Galatia (108–7); but they fell out over Cappadocia, which was briefly occupied by Nicomedes before Mithridates brought about the murder of the rightful king Ariarthes and replaced him with his own son (
c
. 101). Nicomedes made representations to the senate at Rome, which ordered both kings to keep out of Paphlagonia and Cappadocia. Mithridates attempted to get round this by marrying his daughter Cleopatra to Tigranes I ‘the Great’, the king of Armenia; Tigranes then occupied Cappadocia in Mithridates’ interest, whereupon in 92 Lucius Cornelius Sulla, as governor of Cilicia, ejected him and restored Ariarthes’ rightful successor, Ariobarzanes.

Meanwhile, Nicomedes III had died in 94 and had been succeeded by his son Nicomedes IV. In 90 Nicomedes IV was driven out of his kingdom by Mithridates, but was restored the following year by a Roman commission under Manius Aquillius (the consul of 101), who then forced him to invade Pontus. This action precipitated the First Mithridatic War (88–85
BC
). Taking advantage of the fact that the Romans were otherwise preoccupied with the Social War (91–87
BC
) in Italy, Mithridates seized Bithynia and Cappadocia, and then invaded the Roman province of Asia. Aquillius was captured, publicly humiliated, and executed by having molten gold poured down his throat—to punish the Romans for their greed. In Asia, Mithridates ordered the massacre of an alleged 80,000 Roman and Italian men, women, and children on a prearranged day (the so-called ‘Asiatic vespers’, 88); this consolidated his hold on the province (since the perpetrators of the atrocity could hardly change sides afterwards). Continuing westwards, Mithridates failed to capture Rhodes, but in Greece most cities, including Athens, declared themselves for the king—a striking indication of the unpopularity of Roman rule at this time.

In 88 Sulla, now consul, was given the command against Mithridates; this was then transferred to his rival Gaius Marius, whereupon Sulla occupied Rome, killed or exiled his Marian opponents, and had the command transferred back to himself. In 87 he arrived in Greece with five legions and laid siege to Athens. The city fell the following spring, after which Sulla defeated Mithridates in two major battles, at Chaeronea and Orchomenus. In his absence, however, the Marians had taken Rome (though Marius himself had died shortly after entering upon his seventh consulship in 86), and so Sulla was anxious to return to Italy at the earliest
opportunity. He therefore agreed a treaty, the Treaty of Dardanus (85), with Mithridates. The king surrendered Asia to the Romans, gave up seventy ships, and paid an indemnity; and Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes were restored to their respective thrones in Bithynia and Cappadocia. In return, Mithridates was formally recognized as king of Pontus, and was also allowed to retain his northern Black Sea possessions. Never had such a dangerous enemy of Rome been let off so lightly. Sulla settled Asia (84) and then returned to Italy (83), leaving Lucius Licinius Murena in charge of Asia.

Mithridates’ northern possessions soon began to revolt, and so he prepared a large force against them. Then Murena, either because he was genuinely concerned that Mithridates would use this force against Cappadocia, or because he simply wanted the glory of a military victory, invaded Pontus. He maintained that this was not a violation of the Treaty of Dardanus because the treaty had not yet been signed. But he was heavily defeated by Mithridates, and was ordered by Sulla, who in the meantime had retaken Rome and made himself dictator, to withdraw to Asia. This episode is known as the Second Mithridatic War (83–81
BC
). Notwithstanding his shameful failure, Murena was granted a triumph on his return to Rome. He did not, however, go on to hold the consulship.

Sulla died in 78. Mithridates tried and failed to persuade the senate in Rome to ratify the treaty; clearly they were intending to renew the war at their own convenience. The king’s response was once again to send his son-in-law Tigranes of Armenia to occupy Cappadocia in his interest. He also conducted negotiations, perhaps in the winter of 76–75, with Quintus Sertorius, the Marian leader who was holding Spain against the central (largely Sullan) government: Mithridates offered him ships and money in return for recognition of his territorial claims. Sertorius sent him a commission to instruct him in Roman methods of warfare, and recognized all his territorial claims except that over Asia (Asia being a Roman province). At this point, in late 75 or early 74, Nicomedes died, bequeathing the kingdom of Bithynia to Rome. Mithridates responded by invading both Bithynia and Cappadocia, thus precipitating the Third Mithridatic War (73–63
BC
).

Rome sent out both of the consuls of 74, Lucius Licinius Lucullus to Asia and Marcus Aurelius Cotta to Bithynia—an indication of the seriousness with which the situation was viewed. Hostilities began the following year. Mithridates defeated Cotta in a naval battle off Chalcedon, invaded Asia, and besieged Cyzicus (73); but Lucullus broke the siege and destroyed Mithridates’ army, and then pursued the king to Amisus in Pontus (72). Over the next two years, he captured Amisus (71) and Sinope (70), forcing Mithridates to abandon Pontus and take refuge with
Tigranes in Armenia. By the end of 70, Lucullus held Pontus and Armenia Minor. During that year, he also took the opportunity to reorganize the finances of the province of Asia, which had been treated with great severity by Sulla, and passed measures for the reduction of debts. These actions earned him the hostility of the
equites
at Rome, whose rapacious tax-farming and moneylending activities had been the chief cause of Rome’s unpopularity. In revenge, they sought to undermine Lucullus by claiming that he was deliberately prolonging the war. The next year Lucullus, without the permission of the senate, advanced through Cappadocia into Armenia, inflicted a devastating defeat on Tigranes (some sources say 100,000 of the enemy were killed), and captured the latter’s new capital at Tigranocerta.

During 68, Lucullus advanced further into Armenia. But as the year wore on, discontent among his troops grew (stoked up by a member of his staff, his brother-in-law Publius Claudius Pulcher, to become famous a decade later as the tribune Clodius). The soldiers objected to the severity of Lucullus’ discipline, his reluctance to allow them to plunder cities, and the distance he was taking them into unfamiliar lands. Late in the year they mutinied, refusing to march on to the old capital of Armenia, Artaxata. When this situation became known at Rome, the
equites
pressed for the appointment of a new commander. They had already succeeded in having Asia withdrawn from Lucullus’ command in 69; now Cilicia too was withdrawn. Then in 67, the tide of the war changed. Mithridates returned to Pontus and inflicted a crushing defeat on Lucullus’ legate, Gaius Valerius Triarius, at Zela. Lucullus, when he finally arrived on the scene, was unable to engage Mithridates in a battle. It was at this point that his remaining commands, Bithynia and Pontus, were taken away from him, by a law of the tribune Aulus Gabinius, and assigned instead to the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio (the man who as praetor in 70 had presided over the trial of Verres). Glabrio turned out to be unequal to the task, however, and would not stir beyond Bithynia. Mithridates, meanwhile, recovered most of Pontus, while Tigranes retook Cappadocia.

It is at this point that the spotlight moves to Pompey, the greatest general of the age. He was born in the same year as Cicero, 106
BC
. He served under his father Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, the consul of 89, in the Social War, and secured Sicily and Africa for Sulla following the latter’s return to Italy in 83. Although he was not yet a member of the senate, his demand for a triumph was grudgingly agreed to by Sulla (81). After Sulla’s death, Pompey and Quintus Lutatius Catulus (the consul of 78) together suppressed the rising of Catulus’ consular colleague, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (78–77). When this had been done, Pompey was ordered by Catulus to disband his army, but refused; so the senate sent
him to put down the Marian forces which were holding out in Spain under Sertorius. Success there was slow in coming, but victory was eventually achieved after the assassination of Sertorius by his subordinate Marcus Perperna Veiento in 72. While on his way back to Rome in 71, Pompey was able to mop up the remnants of Spartacus’ slave revolt (73–71), which had been crushed by Marcus Licinius Crassus; Pompey’s claiming of the credit for completing this war soured relations permanently between the two men. When he arrived back in Rome he held a second triumph, and, although still an
eques
, persuaded the senate to agree to his standing for the consulship of 70. He and Crassus then held the consulship together in that year—in Pompey’s case seven years before the legal minimum age, and without having held any previous magisterial office (in contravention of Sulla’s laws). During their consulship, the two men restored the powers of the tribunes of the plebs, severely curtailed by Sulla, and revived the office of censor. Also during this year the
lex Aurelia
was carried. This abolished the senatorial juries prescribed by Sulla, instead making juries effectively two-thirds equestrian and one-third senatorial (this is a live issue in Cicero’s
Verrines
).

After his year of office, Pompey did not go out to govern a province, but waited in Rome for another extraordinary command to come up. In 67 Aulus Gabinius proposed a bill to create a three-year command against the pirates in the Mediterranean; the proposed powers were unprecedented, and covered the whole Mediterranean and its coasts to a distance inland of 50 miles. The bill made no mention of Pompey, but it was obvious that the command was intended for him. The senate, led by the senior and highly respected Catulus (whom Pompey had offended in 77 when he refused to disband his army) and Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, the consul of 69, argued vigorously against the proposal; only Caesar spoke in favour. Nevertheless, the bill was forced through amid great popular enthusiasm, and became the
lex Gabinia
. Pompey was given the command.

The campaign proved a brilliant, and unexpectedly rapid, success: in just three months, during the summer of 67, piracy throughout the Mediterranean was entirely eradicated. Politically, it now became much harder to argue that Pompey should not be entrusted with further commands. In the summer of 66, another tribune, Gaius Manilius, proposed that Pompey be put in command of Cilicia, Bithynia, and Pontus, and of the war against Mithridates. It was an attractive proposal: not only was he obviously the best man for the task (seeing that Lucullus had lost the support of his troops and had in any case been replaced), but he was already in the area where he would be needed. Caesar supported the proposal. Catulus and Hortensius, who were friends of Lucullus, naturally
opposed it; but this time they had less support in the senate, and had no realistic chance of preventing the appointment.

This was the year in which Cicero was praetor, and Manilius duly invited him to address the people on the subject of the bill. Cicero had not previously spoken before an assembly of the Roman people: at Rome, all his speeches had been delivered in the lawcourts. No doubt his decision to confine himself to forensic oratory up to this point had been to some extent simply a matter of personal preference. But that decision had also enabled him to avoid committing himself politically. Deliberative speeches generally involved taking one side against another, and hence potentially alienating larger groups of people than would normally be the case in a trial or a lawsuit (in a trial, if an advocate acted for the defence, he did not necessarily alienate anyone at all). For example, if a speaker sought the favour of the people by taking a ‘popular’ line in a deliberative speech, elements in the senate might afterwards try to block his election to higher political office; but if he took too conservative a line, he might fail to win the support of the people. Similarly, if he supported the senate, he might alienate the
equites
, and vice versa. In the case of Gabinius’ bill the previous year, the senate and the people had been violently opposed, and Cicero had wisely expressed no opinion. But with Manilius’ bill there was little likelihood that he would do himself serious political damage by supporting Pompey. Most people were in favour of the bill. The Roman people (both from the city of Rome itself and from Italy) supported it because Asia was the empire’s most important source of revenue, and trade and the import of grain depended on the eastern Mediterranean remaining peaceful and under Roman control. So they would be likely to vote for the bill whatever Cicero (or anyone else) might say on the subject. The
equites
supported it because they wanted to continue their ruthless exploitation of Asia through tax-farming and moneylending, and could not do so if the province was not in Roman hands. The majority of the senate probably supported it as well, not unnaturally regarding Mithridates as a more serious threat than Pompey; Cicero gives us the names of four distinguished ex-consuls of the 70s who supported it (§68). Of those against the bill, on the other hand, Catulus and Hortensius are the only names we have. No doubt there were other, less vociferous, opponents of Pompey whom Cicero does not mention; but it does not appear that they were in the majority.

Cicero therefore accepted Manilius’ invitation, knowing that he would be advocating a popular bill. In particular, the equestrian tax-farmers had asked him to speak in favour of it (§ 4), and it was very much in his interests to keep them on his side (apart from the electoral support which the equestrian order could give him, they now supplied two-thirds of
every jury—a factor which might well count in his favour when he appeared in court). The gratitude of Pompey himself might also, of course, prove useful to him. He therefore delivered, and afterwards published,
De imperio Cn. Pompei
. In the speech he gratified the supporters of the bill, and public opinion, by showering praise on Pompey: ‘my subject is the outstanding and unique merit of Gnaeus Pompeius’ (§3; cf.
Orat
. 102, written twenty years later, ‘when discussing the Manilian law, my task was to glorify Pompeius’). But he also went out of his way to compliment Lucullus (§§5, 10, 20–1, 26), who was in fact a close friend of his (Plut.
Luc
. 41.3, 42.4), and to treat Hortensius and particularly Catulus with marked respect. Thus he was able to reap the maximum political benefit from the speech while minimizing the damage it would do him from the bill’s opponents.