Chapter 8
Prelude to war
Bithynia had been a buffer state between Rome and Pontus. Its removal put the two states into jarring collision, and in a way that Mithridates must have considered unfavourable to his interests. He had until now possessed a virtual naval monopoly in the Black Sea and his western flank had been secured against Rome by the mountain ranges which included Paphlagonia and Phrygia. But Roman Bithynia would have ports such as Cyzicus and Lampsacus on the Black Sea. Even assuming that Heraclea was allowed to retain its precarious independence, Roman control of Chalcedon would, at best, block Mithridates fleet from the wider Mediterranean.
Even worse, a future Murena would not have to march up the valley of the River Halys to reach Sinope, as the city was immediately accessible by the coastal plain from Bithynia. This may have mattered less, were it not that Rome fully understood and reciprocated the hostility and warlike intentions of Mithridates. Despite a legal challenge to the will from a putative heir, they accepted the legacy of Bithynia and dispatched both consuls east to perform the act of financial rape that passed for Roman governance in Asia Minor. Aurelius Cotta was to take Bithynia, but, even more alarmingly, Licinius Lucullus, Sulla’s former henchman, had, after desperate intrigue, been given Cilicia as his consular province. According to Lucullus’ biographer, Plutarch, this was explicitly because he wanted to be well situated for the coming war with Pontus and the glory and spoils that a victorious campaign would bring. Few doubted that conflict was inevitable. The instructions which the consuls took with them from the senate amounted, if not to orders to start the war, then at least to mobilize for when Mithridates started it. In short, the dispatch of both consuls to Asia Minor, and the eagerness with which the consuls contrived to get themselves dispatched there, shows that few in Rome expected Mithridates to take the Roman annexation of Bithynia calmly.
Mithridates was now fifty-seven years old. He could, perhaps, by a policy of careful diplomacy and judicious bribes and surrenders have eked out another decade of independence for his kingdom. However, it was only a matter of time before some Roman demagogue reminded the Roman people of the 80,000 Romans and Italians still unavenged, and of the fact that the treaty of Dardanus remained unratified. Better, then, to take the bull by the horns and challenge Rome now while Pontus was strong, rich and confident and Rome was still weak from its recent wars. Consequently Mithridates went to war. He did it properly, performing another mountaintop fire sacrifice to Zeus and driving a chariot pulled by splendid white horses into the sea as an offering to Poseidon. Then he mustered his army and delivered a speech which the historian Justin has immortalized, though how accurately none can now tell.1
Even if the case is hopeless, Justin has Mithridates declaiming, a true man will draw his sword against robbers, if only to achieve some measure of revenge. Yet Pontus could not only revenge itself against Rome, but follow the examples of the Gauls and Hannibal and bring the city to its knees. Nor was it a question of whether to go to war with Rome – merely a question of whether the time was currently right; Rome being Rome, war was inevitable at some point, as past Roman conduct had proven. ‘Their founders, as they themselves claimed, were suckled by the teats of a wolf, so the whole race has the disposition of wolves, insatiable in their lust for blood and tyranny, desperately hungry for wealth’.
Rome had enslaved even its native land of Italy and was even now making war on its own peoples. As proof, the king pointed to his entourage, which included Romans of noble descent who had taken refuge with him from the violence of their own city. (These were the men sent by Sertorius, one of whom bore the renowned name of Marius. This Marius was Sertorius’ candidate for governor of Asia if Mithridates succeeded in ‘liberating’ the province. It has also been suggested that enough disaffected Fimbrians and other deserters had joined the Pontic side to produce an Italian-style legion.) Mithridates pointed to the strength of Pontus, its conquests on the Black Sea, and his own lineage as a descendant of Xerxes and Cyrus, and promised his men that he would lead them personally to victory.2
The chronology of what happened next is uncertain.3 The most probable scenario has Mithridates retaking control of Paphlagonia at the end of 74 BC, before the Roman consuls arrived in Asia Minor in the following year. This aggressive move by Mithridates would have given the consuls a clear idea of what they were in for; in fact, the young and energetic Julius Caesar had already interrupted his studies at Rhodes and taken over organizing the defence of Bithynia on his own authority. The manner in which the consuls went on to a full war footing from the moment of their arrival certainly suggests that Mithridates had already made his intentions clear. Furthermore, the Pontic invasion force that descended on Bithynia in the spring of 73 BC spring took only nine days to arrive, which suggests that it either moved by forced marches, or from nearby Paphlagonia.
Mithridates seemed to be following the same path as he had taken when he swept down from the mountains in 87 BC in the wake of the defeated Nicomedes and Aquillius, but the situation in 73 BC was significantly different. Lucullus, to the south, would probably be able to pull together a fully-fledged Roman army of four legions. Admittedly, the core of that army would be the Fimbrians. Surly, disaffected, and openly longing for their discharge papers, they were, nevertheless, veteran Roman legionaries, tough and deadly once they could be persuaded to fight. Cotta, in Bithynia, was the easier target, as he had few Roman troops under his command and was a somewhat inept commander himself, as Mithridates’ spies in the Roman camp had undoubtedly informed their king. Furthermore, Mithridates was uncertain exactly how the Romans to his south were deployed, but he knew exactly how to get at Cotta. Therefore he sent his general Diophantes south with orders to hold the passes along the Halys, whilst he aimed to crush Cotta before Lucullus could swing into action.4 With Cotta gone, perhaps Asia would rise again, allowing a vastly strengthened Mithridates to swing south with his full force, defeat Lucullus, and claim suzerainty once more over the full area of Asia Minor.
Chalcedon
The Roman operation was in many ways the mirror image of what Mithridates had in mind. Like Diophantes, Cotta was to try to stop the main enemy push, whilst the stronger part of their forces under Lucullus pushed into the enemy heartland, and then swung back to defeat the by-now hopefully demoralized and weakened main army. Lucullus, however, had first to whip the Fimbrians into shape, train up his raw levies and gather together the legions which had previously been deployed against the pirates in Cilicia. It is not surprising then that Mithridates’ version of the plan, carried out by well-trained and prepared troops, came into operation first and forced Lucullus to change course.
Most of Bithynia welcomed Mithridates back with open arms. This was unsurprising since the province was still outraged by its first experience of Roman rule. Even in the cities of the province of Asia there was unrest, even though these cities had also experienced the weight of Roman vengeance. Heraclea tried hard to maintain neutrality, but Mithridates arranged the killing of Roman tax collectors and his popularity soared. The city government was forced to hand over ships and money to help with the Pontic war effort and to admit a Pontic garrison within its walls.
Cotta retreated to Chalcedon, where he had the Roman fleet at his back, and sent urgent messages to Lucullus to the effect that the invasion of southern Pontus could wait until the Pontic invasion of Bithynia had been dealt with. These messages became even more strident when Cotta unwisely allowed Nudus, his naval prefect, to take the field against Mithridates. Nudus located his men in fortified positions outside the city, but, like Murena before him, was utterly taken aback by the speed and professionalism with which the Pontic army swept over his defences.
The Roman force fell back to the city, but it was an untidy retreat with the rearguard already overwhelmed. After the Pontic archers had made the most of the tight-packed targets struggling to get into the city gates, the Pontic infantry charged. The city’s defenders had no choice but to drop the portcullis to prevent Mithridates’ men from getting inside. This left a large portion of the Roman force trapped outside the walls. Nudus and some of his officers were pulled over the ramparts by rope, but from there they could only watch as the rest of their force, some 3,000 men, was cut down.
Mithridates energetically followed up his success with a combined land and sea assault on the harbour. An advance guard of Bastarnae (this Danubian tribe, was called by Appian ‘the bravest people of all’), managed to break the long chain of bronze that guarded the harbour entrance, and the Pontic fleet sailed in. The Romans lost four warships before their resistance collapsed. Then the defenders on the walls of Chalcedon could only watch in horror as their enemies calmly took control of sixty warships, the entire Roman naval strength east of Athens, and towed the ships away for later recommissioning as part of the Pontic navy. In the entire battle, Mithridates lost twenty men, those being from the Bastarnae assault force.
With Cotta bereft of his army and his fleet, his local support melted away. Nicaea, Lampsacus, Nicomedia and Apameia, all major cities in the region, either fell to Mithridates or opened their gates to him. Only the nearby city of Cyzicus held to the Roman cause, perhaps embittered towards Mithridates because some 3,000 of their citizens had died fighting at Chalcedon. Cotta’s only hope was Lucullus, but the question was whether Lucullus would come. Mithridates former general, Archelaus, was now firmly and literally in the Roman camp, either because the suspicions of Mithridates had driven him there, or because those suspicions were justified in the first place. Archelaus argued that Diophantes and his army guarding the southern passes could easily be defeated, and thereafter, Pontus would be defenceless. This was a tempting option, not least because a Roman army in the heretofore unplundered Pontic heartland could get very rich before Mithridates returned from Bithynia to defend his kingdom. Nevertheless Lucullus put saving Cotta first.
Finding the enemy
For once, Mithridates’ excellent intelligence network seems to have failed him. He ordered Diophantes to send out probing raids to try to find Lucullus, and sent another general, Eumachus, plundering across Phrygia and Psidia to see what reaction this would draw. After initial success, Eumachus did indeed encounter serious opposition –s but not from the Romans. Mithridates’ vindictive purge of the Galatian leadership during the first Mithridatic war had sufficiently thinned the field for a single Galatian, Deiotarus, to become king of the hitherto disunited country. Deiotarus knew that one of the best ways to unite his people under his rule was to lead them against a foreign enemy, and no other foreigner was as well-hated by the Galatians as Mithridates. Accordingly, he attacked Eumachus and duly sent the somewhat battered general back to Bithynia to report that, despite the absence of Lucullus, Phrygia was emphatically in enemy hands.
Eventually Lucullus was located and scouts reported him to be moving north up the valley of the River Sangarius to confront Mithridates. Consequently, Diophantes was released from garrison duty to take his men raiding the new Roman conquests in Cilicia and Isauria, and a large force was sent under Marius, the Sertorian ‘governor’ of the province of Asia, to confront the Romans. The two sides met in the Bithynian lowlands between Nicaea and Prusias, at a place called Otryae, for the most puzzling confrontation of the war.
It appears that Lucullus had been expecting to meet a small detachment guarding the Pontic rear and probing for his whereabouts. He was nonplussed when he found that the enemy force was almost as large as his own contingent of 30,000 men, and confident enough to offer battle. This challenge, unless he was to lose all credibility with his unruly legions, Lucullus had to accept. The battle lines were drawn up and there followed an odd delay. Perhaps Lucullus was reluctant to engage in case his army received a severe mauling even before it had encountered the main Mithridatic force. And it has been credibly suggested that the Sertorians were confidently waiting for the Fimbrians to come over to their side. They had, after all, been sent out whilst leaders of the faction of Sertorius had been ruling Rome, and should still be sympathetic to that cause. However, for the moment, it appeared that the Fimbrians were giving Lucullus the benefit of the doubt and they stayed firm in their loyalty to their general.
Thereafter, proceedings were interrupted by a strange event. In the words of Plutarch ‘without warning the skies opened, and a large glowing object fell to the ground between the two armies. It was the size of a substantial barrel and glowed like molten silver’.5Uncertain what to make of this strange and undoubtedly-supernatural prodigy, the two armies withdrew from contact and did not re-engage thereafter.
This reticence was partly due to the fact that Lucullus, astonished by the size of the detachment that Mithridates had sent against him, decided to make serious enquiries about the size of the Pontic force. When he established that it numbered just less than 300,000, the Roman general determined on a new strategy. Even the resources of Pontus would be stretched to keep that many fed and Mithridates had to transport the food to them. The way to defeat so large an army was memorably described by Lucullus as ‘stamping on its stomach’. In fact the Pontic army numbered about 140,000 infantry and about another 20,000 cavalry. But a cavalryman is effectively a man and a horse, giving the combined pair a tremendous appetite, and though the rest of the 300,000 were camp followers, these had to eat too.6
Apart from supplies and whatever nefarious plans the Romans were cooking up against him, Mithridates had other worries. It was becoming clear that, despite the Pontic success at Chalcedon, the occupation of Asia Minor was not going to be the triumphal procession of 87 BC. Young Julius Caesar was keeping much of the western coast loyal to Rome, and the Asian cities, with their brutal experience of Roman resilience and vindictiveness, would not commit to the Pontic side again unless victory seemed certain.
The siege of Cyzicus
To encourage the others, Mithridates looked for a recalcitrant city to make an example of, and chose nearby Cyzicus. There were strategic as well as political reasons for this. It was becoming probable that the fate of Asia Minor would largely be determined by a single confrontation, rather as the Romans had broken the power of the Seleucids in 190 BC at the Battle of Magnesia. The Pontic king would undoubtedly have paid careful attention to what was required to prevent the Romans enjoying a similar victory on the forthcoming occasion. Pontus had a good army that hugely outnumbered Lucullus, and their cavalry was vastly superior. In the Bithynian lowlands, there would be none of the cramped conditions experienced at Chaeronea, and if Lucullus did as Sulla had done and dug in, Mithridates would simply leave the battlefield and go elsewhere. In short, Mithridates was prepared to play a waiting game if need be. It had probably also occurred to him that Lucullus, too, would stand off from a crucial battle until lack of supplies hadworn down the Pontic army, and he was determined that this lack of supplies would not happen. Mithridates’ current supply base was at Lampsacus, where the harbour was good enough to shelter his fleet, but was totally unequipped to handle the tons of war materiel required by his huge army. In fact, by detailed questioning of prisoners, Lucullus had satisfied himself that the entire Pontic army was virtually living from hand-to-mouth, with just four days of reserves.
Area of the Cyzicus campaign, showing the position of Cyzicus in relation to access to the Black Sea and Pontic coastline to the north and east
Cyzicus had an eminently-suitable harbour for the grain ships which would supply the Pontic army, and the city’s capture and salutary punishment would signal to the rest of the region that Mithridates meant business. Furthermore Cyzicus was already weakened by the loss of thousands of its soldiers outside Chalcedon. In short, it was ideally suited to become Mithridates’ next conquest.
If Cyzicus was politically and strategically the correct choice, the drawback was geographical.7 Cyzicus was difficult for the Pontic army to reach, let alone besiege. For all practical purposes, the city was on an island. This island was called Arctonnesus; shaped roughly like a broad spearpoint about to plunge into the mainland of Bithynia. Cyzicus occupied the triangle right at the tip of the spearpoint. From this tip the only contact with the mainland was a narrow causeway.8
On the approach of Lucullus, Mithridates withdrew his army by night and set off for Cyzicus. On arriving at the city the following morning, Mithridates opened hostilities with psychological warfare. The Cyzicans were treated to the sight of boatload after boatload of ships transporting the soldiers of Mithridates from the mainland in their tens of thousands. These immediately set about taking control of the harbour and walling the city off from the outside. In clear view of the besieged, Pontic engineers under the direction of Niconides of Thessaly, Mithridates’ chief engineer, began assembling a 150-foot wooden tower, battering rams, catapults and other siege weaponry, including giant crossbows. The intention was to make the Cyzicans feel that Mithridates was concentrating all his strength on their small, friendless city.
The psychological pressure was stepped up even further when another large force moved onto the slopes of Adrastia, a mountain overlooking the city. Pontic heralds gleefully informed the Cyzicans that Tigranes of Armenia had sent tens of thousands of extra troops to join the siege. The Cyzicans readily believed this, for they knew that access to the heights was by way of a narrow valley which Mithridates would certainly have guarded.
Mithridates had indeed done so, but was betrayed by the Romans in his camp. Some of these, despairing of the cause of Sertorius in Spain, were preparing to turn their coats once more and defect back to the Roman side. After secret negotiations with Lucullus, they advised Mithridates that the Fimbrian legions were preparing to desert, and needed only a secure position from which to do so. Trustingly, Mithridates withdrew his guard from the pass, and allowed Lucullus to establish his troops on the mountain – a position from where they had clear access to the Bithynian hinterland, from which Mithridates was now blocked. The besieger was now himself besieged, and the Cyzicans, regarding what seemed a hopeless situation, were unaware that their rescuers were now camped in plain view on the hillside before them.
For Mithridates, the situation was grave, but not critical. True, he was effectively blocked from the mainland, but he still had his fleet and, at a pinch, he could evacuate much of his army by this means. And if he could get into Cyzicus and use the docks there, he could evacuate his forces in their entirety, leaving Lucullus to watch over a gutted and empty city. Thus the capture of Cyzicus, which had earlier seemed advisable, was now imperative. Furthermore, because the weather was deteriorating with the onset of the first storms of winter, sustaining a long siege would have been tricky, even if the Pontic army had somehow contrived to find itself supplies with which to do so.
The psychological pressure was then stepped up by the launch of Mithridates’ naval siege weapon, an improvement of the model which had been deployed unsuccessfully at Rhodes. This device was intended to start the hostilities. Before it was deployed, a convoy of ships sailed slowly under the city walls. Aboard were 3,000 Cyzican prisoners, either captured at Chalcedon or those who had failed to take shelter in time within the city. The prisoners had been told that their only chance of survival lay in persuading their fellow-citizens to surrender. In a piteous scene the hostages raised their hands in supplication to friends and relatives within the city and pleaded to be saved. They were given the resolute reply from the city’s general that they were in the hands of the enemy and should bear with courage whatever fate awaited them. That fate is unknown, but was probably grim. The unsentimental Mithridates was hardly going to waste scarce supplies on hostages whose purpose had failed.
The reason for this literally unyielding Cyzican response is probably that the citizens had finally made contact with Lucullus. Because the causeway to the city was held by Mithridates, Lucullus sewed his letters inside two inflated animal skins. Choosing one of his best swimmers, he got the man to straddle the skins so that his weight pulled them partly underwater. In the dimness of the night the resultant shape gliding through the water looked more like some marine animal than a man, and the swimmer had brought Lucullus’ message across the seven-mile strait.
The Cyzicans had by then received word from Archelaus that a relief force was coming and hastily interrogated a shepherd boy, who had escaped from the Pontic hostage-takers, as to whether he had heard anything of Lucullus’ whereabouts. The boy looked from his questioners to the Roman camp plainly visible outside the walls, and assumed this was some kind of joke. Even when the confusion had been cleared up, the Cyzicans had hardly dared to believe the boy, so Lucullus’ confirmation of the situation was extremely welcome.
The Pontic assault began badly. The naval assault ship ran itself up to the walls, dropped its bridge, and a group of soldiers ran straight onto the ramparts of Cyzicus. The speed of the attack took everyone by surprise, including the rest of the Pontic assault force. The Pontic soldiers –all four of them - frantically urged their comrades onto the walls, but the Cyzicans got their act together first. The unfortunate Pontic vanguard was unceremoniously tipped into the sea, and the naval assault craft was forced to back away beneath a waterfall of burning oil. After this somewhat farcical start, the attack began in earnest. Mithridates repeatedly switched the pressure from the landward to the seaward side so that the defenders were constantly rushing from one section of walls to the other.
The defenders had not been caught by surprise when Mithridates turned up, and now their preparations paid off. Burning oil splashed over the ships and stones were dropped with pinpoint precision on the heads of battering rams. Other rams were caught in nooses and the heads were yanked out of the machines operating them, while the impact of the remaining rams was blunted by wool-packed baskets lowered in front of their area of operation. Fire-fighting teams stood by within the walls with buckets of water mixed with vinegar, ready to pounce upon any flaming missiles which Mithridates launched over the walls. As further protection against incendiary attack, large screens of loose, damp cloth projected above the walls to literally dampen the impact of burning projectiles. After an afternoon of intense but unproductive activity, Mithridates called off the assault as the weather was worsening.9
It continued to worsen through the night, and developed into a full-blown storm. This was bad news for the infernal engines constructed for Mithridates by Niconides, as the wind pushed them from directions they were never intended to be pushed, and many were flipped over or blown down and totally destroyed. The people of Ilium later reported that Athena appeared to many of them that night in a dream. Breathless, and with her garments torn, the goddess reported that she was just back from helping the people of Cyzicus in their struggle. Either the gods or skilled propaganda continued to help the Cyzican cause thereafter. It was customary for the citizens of the city to sacrifice a black heifer to Prosperina, and as the siege had rendered heifers unobtainable, the Cyzicans were preparing to sacrifice a substitute made of dough. But lo! A black heifer of perfect dimensions bolted from the meadow where the sacred cows were grazing and swam across the strait. Untired by its exertions, it showed aquatic abilities hitherto unseen in the bovine species by diving under the chain blocking the harbour and heading for the docks. Returning to terrestrial mode, this prodigy navigated perfectly through the city and found its own way to the temple, where it trotted up to the altar and took its place under the knife.
Mithridates’ advisors pointed out that this ‘divine’ phenomenon gave him a perfect excuse for abandoning what increasingly seemed a profitless undertaking. Mithridates was unimpressed by the wonder cow and obstinately continued to press the siege. Nevertheless, whilst the bulk of the Roman forces were engaged in storming an outlying Pontic fort, Mithridates took advantage of their distraction to send away his cavalry. The horses were short of food and useless in siege warfare, and were in any case the core of the Pontic army about which a new force could be built if disaster befell the present one. After this, Mithridates occupied Mount Dindymus, which rose near the city walls. He had a mound constructed which connected this elevation with Cyzicus, and used it as a missile platform for his remaining towers. At the same time, Pontic engineers set about the long job of undermining the city walls. The Romans under Lucullus were not idle, and the historian Eutropius remarks that they fought ‘many battles’ with Mithridates’ men in the course of the siege, so the Pontic army was probably in action on two fronts at once.10
Winter set in, and with it the plague - probably dysentery, which often laid low ancient armies that stayed in one place for too long. With Lucullus blocking the supply lines from the mainland, and winter storms making deliveries by sea few and infrequent, hunger was a serious problem. There were rumours of cannibalism in the army and men became sick from eating almost any vegetable matter they could put in their stomachs.
Then came the news that the cavalry force had suffered a disaster during its withdrawal, ambushed by the Romans in falling snow and bitter cold as it crossed the River Rhyndacus. Some 15,000 men were reported lost, along with a substantial amount of baggage. The Cyzicans took advantage of the weakened and demoralized state of the Pontic army and sallied out, burning many of the beseigers’ engines before their assault was contained. Nothing was going right for Mithridates. It was time to take the hint offered so plainly by Prosperina all those weeks before. With grim reluctance he set about preparing his withdrawal.
In military terms, the endeavour Mithridates was contemplating was at the masterclass level. He had to disengage a large, demoralized force from two fronts simultaneously in the face of active and spirited opposition and brutal winter weather. However, it was probably that same vile weather that allowed the army, even lacking its cavalry, to break Lucullus’ stranglehold and struggle toward Lampsacus, with the Roman army gleefully in pursuit. Starved, half-frozen and demoralized, the Pontic army suffered huge casualties as it limped toward safety. River crossings were a particular problem. There were two of them, at the Granicus and the Aesepus, and both rivers were swollen with icy rain. At the bottleneck of the narrow fords the Romans massacred thousands of the Pontic army as the remainder struggled to cross. At Granicus alone, 20,000 were slain and tens of thousands more perished of cold and hunger during the march. With the Romans closing fast, the sick and wounded had to be abandoned to their fate. They were found by an advance guard of Cyzican soldiery, and these, probably remembering the killing of their own hostage citizens, had no compunction in killing every one of the helpless men.
Mithridates himself had departed by ship and he now sent his entire fleet to evacuate the army from Lampsacus. So few were the survivors of the once mighty force that had besieged Cyzicus that there was room for the people of Lampsacus to embark as well, and so escape Roman vengeance. Ten thousand men and fifty ships stayed with Marius with orders to garrison Lampsacus, guard the Hellespont and cause as many problems for the Romans in the region as possible. This garrison might have counted itself fortunate, as the vengeful gods were not yet done with the hapless Pontic army. The fleet was hit by a storm en route to Nicomedia and many of those who thought they had found safety after being evacuated were drowned. Of the 300,000 who had set out for Bithynia that spring, only about 20,000 effective troops remained. The siege of Cyzicus could be considered an unmitigated disaster.
Mithridates after Cyzicus
Perhaps the most formidable aspect of Mithridates’ character was his indomitable energy and resolution in the face of defeat. Far from giving in to despair, the king gathered his forces and took stock. Above all, he needed time. Mithridates still held all of Pontus and most of Bithynia, both of which were rich in resources. Another well-equipped army could be raised if the Romans could be kept out of Pontus long enough. The obvious course was to plunder as much as possible of Bithynia before the Romans got hold of it and to use the mineral and human wealth of Pontus and the Black Sea kingdoms to build another army.
Meanwhile, the Pontic forces remained supreme at sea and Mithridates intended to use this advantage to harass and slow the Romans. As another obstacle to the Roman advance, forts and cities around the kingdom were strengthened to withstand the coming storm, starting with those to the west. If Lucullus wanted Pontus, Mithridates intended to make him fight every step of the way.
The measures Mithridates was taking were not intended to simply delay the inevitable. The Pontic king knew his enemy, and he knew that Roman soldiers were also Roman voters. Perhaps he could make the war sufficiently unpopular at home to force a Roman withdrawal, or perhaps the progressive collapse of the Roman political system would see the Roman army needed elsewhere, ideally for a nice internecine civil war. Either way, Mithridates had nothing to lose. There was no question of surrender being either offered or accepted. Both sides knew this was a fight to the death.
Whilst Mithridates re-armed, Lucullus entered Cyzicus to a hysterical welcome from its citizens, who instituted the Lucullan games in honour of the occasion (these were held regularly for centuries afterwards). After Cyzicus, the Roman turned his attention to the war at sea. Every bit as much as did Mithridates, Lucullus appreciated the importance of sea power. He was, after all, the man who had risked his hide getting a fleet together for his general when Sulla belatedly realized the impossibility of finishing off the Pontic force in Greece without a navy. It would appear that even before the Romans settled down before Cyzicus, Lucullus had dispatched his agents across the islands of the Ionian Sea to commission warships. Consequently, Mithridates found that his fleet had to contend not just with the lethal vagaries of the eastern Mediterranean in winter, but also with a nascent Roman fleet.
Mithridates had forty ships which he had sent to support Sertorius in Spain. After the Roman victory there, these ships were on their way home. Marius had another fifty ships, and the remainder, probably just under 100 ships, were with the king.11 Mithridates kept these at hand for the planned evacuation of himself and the remainder of his army from Nicomedia to Pontus itself. Such an evacuation was foreseen as the Pontic position in Bithynia was expected to become increasingly untenable.
The war which had looked as though it would climax with one decisive battle had instead degenerated into a messy series of disjointed conflicts, yet these nevertheless had a single underlying strategic theme. Lucullus wanted to drive into the Pontic heartland before Mithridates could organize a defence, and Mithridates was intent on making conditions for such a drive as difficult as possible.
Marius and his admirals on the Hellespont, Alexander and Dionysius, were not only protecting Pontus from naval attack but were also starting to cooperate with the pirates in interfering with Lucullus’ supply lines across the Aegean. This was the first and greatest roadblock placed by Mithridates in the way of the Roman advance, and this Lucullus and his new fleet set about removing.
The Romans caught Marius and his ships off a small barren island in the Ionian Sea near Lemnos. Despite a Roman effort to lure Marius into a deep-water battle by sending their ships against him in ones and twos, the Pontics beached their ships and prepared to resist on land. The Romans kept the Pontic troops engaged without fully committing themselves, while sailing a large proportion of their force to the other side of the island. When these made their appearance, the Pontics were forced aboard their ships, but were now trapped between the ships of Lucullus offshore and the army onshore. They took heavy casualties before they broke, and thereafter there was nowhere for them to run. Marius and his admirals hid themselves in a cave, where Dionysius anticipated his capture by drinking poison. Lucullus had the other Pontic admiral shipped to Rome to await his eventual triumph. Since a Roman senator, even one of an opposing faction, was no proper ornament to a triumphal parade, Marius was killed on the spot. Lucullus returned to the mainland to prepare the next stage of the Roman invasion.
This was the signal for Mithridates to evacuate Bithynia. Though he had twice marched an army into the country, the king chose to leave by ship. The fleet was standing by anyway, in case the Romans cut off land communications, and it is possible that Mithridates decided that since the ships were there, he might as well use them. The earlier casualties inflicted on his army had evidently not convinced Mithridates that the winter sea was unsafe, so now he was to learn the lesson from personal experience.
The storm that hit his ships on the way to Pontus not only sank several Pontic transports, it threatened Mithridates’ flagship itself. With the storm-lashed vessel waterlogged and foundering, it became essential to get the king to safety. Yet ‘safety’ was a relative term – the rescue ship was not Pontic, but owned by a pirate called Seleucus. In vain, Mithridates’ advisors pointed out that pirates were, by definition, motivated by profit. Once the pirate ship had Mithridates on board there was nothing to stop Seleucus from proceeding straight to Lucullus and a huge reward. Mithridates was no coward, and he had great – usually justified – confidence in himself as a leader of men. Consequently, he felt more confidence in his ability to handle the pirates than in his flagship’s ability to handle the storm. In the prevailing weather, transferring the royal person to the pirate ship (probably a sleek little galley of the type called a ‘liburnian’, after the part of the Dalmatian coast where these ships originated) was itself no-risk free manoeuvre; but for once one of Mithridates’ gambles paid off. The pirates were true to their word and took the king to the safety of Sinope. When Mithridates’ battered fleet showed up, the pirates cooperatively took the flagship in tow and brought it safe home to Pontus. There any relief at a safe landfall and homecoming was wiped out by the news that the part of the Pontic fleet returning from Spain had been brought to battle and wiped out at Tenedos, near Rhodes.
Now Mithridates was to find who his friends were. He sent an ambassador with a huge war chest of gold to recruit the Scythians. Instead of undertaking this risky mission, the ambassador, a man called Diocles, defected to Lucullus. In return he probably received a generous cut of that same gold. Diocles was not alone in his treachery. For another example of how the Pontic elite began to consider an accommodation with Rome, the later geographer of the region, Strabo, admits that his own maternal grandfather defected at this time, handing over to Lucullus the fifteen forts of which he had command. If courtiers could not be trusted, family were just as unfaithful. Tigranes, the son-in-law of Mithridates, sheepishly admitted that it was not in Armenia’s interests to go to war with the Romans. Even more wounding, Mithridates’ own son, Menchares, remained deaf to his father’s messengers. Menchares had apparently decided that though Pontus was a lost cause, he could still set himself up very nicely as a small independent kingdom in the Bosporus. Indeed, it later became apparent that he was already negotiating with Lucullus to achieve this objective.
Bereft of fleet, army and allies, Mithridates and his kingdom stood alone against the vengeance of Rome.