The World of Mithridates
When Mithridates VI of Pontus was born in 120 BC, his homeland of Asia Minor was at the centre of the world. To the south and east, beyond the mountains of Armenia, lay Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This was the fabled cradle of civilization, home of cities such as Ur and Assur, where man had first learned the arts of building and writing – and organized warfare.
Just west of Mesopotamia lay Syria and Palestine, home of the Semitic peoples who had taught writing to the Greeks. Damascus, today the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was already four millennia into its six thousand years of history. The Jewish people had their kingdom centred around Jerusalem, whilst Syria was the heartland of the failing but powerful Bellenic empire of Alexander the Great’s successors, the Seleucids. Even in Mithridates’ time these eastern cultures were ancient – the Assyrian and Babylonian empires had risen and fallen, as had the Achaemenid empire of Cyrus the Persian, whose realm had encompassed all of Asia Minor and had even threatened Greece until the Persian myriads were defeated at Marathon and Salamis.
Further south and west again, Egypt, like Syria, was under Hellenic rule. After the death of Alexander, Egypt had been claimed by his general Ptolemy, and his dynasty ruled there still. Just as the Nile met the Mediterranean, the Greek and Egyptian worlds met at Alexandria, at this time the world’s unrivalled centre of culture and learning, home of two of the great wonders of the ancient world – the lighthouse at the city’s harbour of Pharos and the Great Library.
The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that his homeland owed much to the culture of Egypt. Though younger than the great civilizations of the east, Greece had already given much to the world in theatre, art, architecture, and above all in the restless inquiring spirit of its peoples. Just as the Greeks had pushed forward the boundaries of learning in philosophy, mathematics, and literature, they had also pushed back the borders of the known world. They had founded colonies across the Mediterranean, from Marseilles in the west to the eastern shores of the Black Sea in Colchis, the fabled land to which Jason and his Argonauts had travelled in their search for the golden fleece (and the Greeks had also planted their colonies on the shores of Pontus itself). Beyond the Greek cities to the north and west, extending as far as the Crimea were the lands of the nomad horse warriors known as the Scythians. Further north yet was the land of the Sarmatians; aristocratic warriors in heavy armour, cavalry perhaps superior to any in the world at that time –– superb horsemen, tough and well–equipped, the Sarmatians were the perfect foil to the armoured infantrymen favoured by the Hellenistic states.
The wild lands bordering the Black Sea to the east of Macedon were home to the people of Thrace. The Thracians were an ancient people, skilled in metalwork and horse training, yet their home on the western plains was constantly troubled by invaders and the dissensions of their feuding tribes.
And far to the west, beyond Greece, on the borders of the civilized world (or as others argued, just beyond them), was the nascent power of Rome. Rome was a new and terrifying phenomenon, with its almost unbeatable legions, its crude and unsophisticated grasp of diplomacy, and the vagaries of its politics, which depended on whom the fickle masses of that city voted into power each year. Rome had already defeated Macedon, the homeland of Alexander the Great, and now the Hellenic kingdoms in Syria and Asia Minor watched Rome’s growing power with fully–justified foreboding.
The Shadow of Rome
Yet when the Greek world had first become aware of Rome over a century before, it had been with the awareness of a predator seeing a large and tempting quarry wander into view. At that time Rome had just gained the upper hand in a long drawn–out series of wars with the mountain peoples of south central Italy. Not that the hillmen had yet admitted defeat – their stubborn refusal to submit to Rome would still provide a welcome distraction for Rome’s armies in Mithridates’ day. However, by 290 BC the Romans had at least temporarily beaten their foes into sullen submission, leaving Rome the dominant state in Italy.
It might occur to a general with an ambitiously expansionist viewpoint that an army which defeated Rome could easily mop up the rest of Italy, use Italy’s massive reserves of manpower to absorb Sicily, and from there sweep east once more and conquer the rest of the world. That, roughly, was the master plan of Pyrrhus of Epirus, another of the successors of Alexander the Great, and generally agreed to be the best general of his day. Claiming that he was supporting the Greek cities of southern Italy against Roman aggression, Pyrrhus and his army of 25,000 men invaded the peninsula during the 280s BC and tried repeatedly to master Rome.
It was the first clash of the Greek and Roman worlds, and from the Roman perspective this passage of arms ended as a winning draw. Pyrrhus was unable to wear down the stubborn resistance of Rome, despite repeatedly beating its citizens in the series of bloody battles which have given the modern world the expression ‘a pyrrhic victory’, meaning a win which costs more than it is worth. The battles left both armies exhausted, but the Romans, fighting on their native soil, had greater stamina in terms of money and manpower. Belatedly, Pyrrhus concluded that he had bitten off more than he could chew. He withdrew, possibly to marshal his forces for a further attempt. However, Pyrrhus died before he could resume his assault, and his failure handed the Romans hegemony of the Italian peninsula.
Graeco–Roman relations remained in a state of armed non–aggression for the remainder of the third century BC. This is not to say that the world was at peace – far from it. The empire of Alexander the Great had fractured into the kingdoms of Macedonia, which also dominated Greece, the Seleucids, with their rambling, semi–shambolic empire that stretched from the Mediterranean coast almost to the Himalayas, and the Ptolemies who dominated Egypt. These states, each large enough to be considered empires in their own right, engaged in continual and largely–pointless warfare which produced little change apart from mercenaries becoming wealthy and border peasants perpetually confused as to which empire they were currently part of.
Rome too had been engaged in non–stop warfare. However, by the time Rome had finished, a large number of North Africans, Gauls and Spaniards, Corsicans and Sicilians were left in no doubt at all as to which empire was in charge. Many of Rome’s new possessions were acquired at the cost of Carthage, Rome’s great rival in the west. By 202 BC Carthage had been reduced to a shadow of its former glory, and Hannibal, the general who had almost brought Rome to its knees with his epic invasion across the Alps, had fled to the Hellenic kingdoms of Asia.
Roman eyes followed Hannibal east. It would be wrong to claim that Pyrrhus’ master plan was dusted down and rewritten for Roman protagonists, but it is also certain that the Roman senate considered that it had unfinished business with the heirs of Alexander.
Rome itself was changing. By and large the Greeks had heretofore regarded the Romans as uncivilized, simply because the Romans had no art of their own, no literature, and indeed, barely any pretension to literacy. That the greatest Roman historians were currently alive was only because they were the first ones that Rome had ever had. However, Rome was beginning to acquire culture admittedly this culture had been looted wholesale from other cities, but it was culture nevertheless. Matters such as the theatre were beginning to stir interest, and once Rome got over its bemusement at the first Greek philosophers to arrive in the city, intellectual inquiry became socially acceptable among the warrior elite that ruled Rome under the name of ‘the Senate’. Over the next two generations Greek culture was to make the same sort of headway in Rome as Roman legions were making in Greece –’Conquering her rough conqueror’ as one poet put it. By the 140s BC even Cato the Elder, a misanthropic anti–Hellenic reactionary, saw nothing incongruous in erecting Rome’s first basilica – a Greek–style building for use in public affairs. Even Roman religion began to merge with the Greek version, until only the names of the gods and goddesses differed. But sharing much of the same culture did not make the Romans more Greek – they called contemporary Greeks ‘ Graeculi ‘ (‘Greeklings’ or ‘little Greeks’) – diminished descendants of their great forebears. And as for the peoples who shared Asia Minor with the Greeks, well, they were Asiatics – decadent, cowardly, servile, and generally beneath contempt. It never seemed to occur to the Romans, in all the decades that followed, that their contempt and lack of understanding were just as heartily reciprocated by the peoples of Asia Minor.
Philip V of Macedon, the Hellenistic ruler nearest to Rome, had long been uncomfortable with Roman interference on the western shores of the Greek peninsula. Consequently, although Greek and Carthaginian usually got along like cat and dog, Philip had allied himself with Hannibal in the war against Rome. True, Philip’s actual contribution to the war effort had been negligible, but Rome had reasons for being unforgiving. After sixteen desperate years of warfare against Hannibal, Rome needed slaves to work her depopulated fields, money for her depleted treasury, and money also to pay for the increasingly luxurious tastes of her upper classes. Like any shrewd business concern, Rome chose to leverage her prime asset to clear her liabilities. And Rome’s prime asset was a very, very good army, honed to perfection by a decade and a half of fighting Hannibal, the greatest tactician until Napoleon.
Furthermore, Philip was then allied with the Seleucid king Antiochus III, and the pair were picking off those small Greek city states which attempted to maintain a degree of independence. For the imperial power which Rome now rightly considered herself to be, these small states were potential stepping stones into mainland Greece, so the senate was none too pleased to see the Hellenic empires consolidating the region under their control. Rome hastened to ally herself with such of these small states as remained. Sooner or later, the senate reasoned (sooner, as it happened), Philip’s territorial ambitions in Greece would bring him into collision with their new allies, and thus Philip would provoke war with Rome itself.
Philip did not go down without a fight – he fought with skill and tenacity, but still was driven out of Greece. In 197 BC his phalanx and his determination to resist were broken in the Battle of Cynoscephalae. Philip paid over a thousand talents of bullion, and sullenly yielded hegemony of Greece. The Romans, conscious of Macedon’s value as a bulwark against the wild tribes further north, let his kingdom of Macedonia be – for the present.
The Greek cities had largely supported the Romans against Philip in return for their ‘freedom’. They remained passive, leaving the Romans with secure lines of communication as they went on to challenge the greatest of the Hellenistic realms – the Seleucids. Antiochus III had been warned by the Romans that he should confine his activities to the east of the Aegean Sea, a warning which the Seleucid king blithely ignored. Taking advantage of Philip’s discomfiture at the hands of the Roman legions, Antiochus blatantly interfered in the affairs of Thrace, right next door to Macedon on the coast of the Black Sea.
Rome may have defeated Macedon close to home, but Antiochus appears to have been convinced that the upstart power would receive a brutal reality check if it was foolish enough to challenge the Seleucids on their own ground. This conviction was soon put to the test as Rome was not slow to pick up the gauntlet. An army arrived, led by Lucius Scipio, who in turn was accompanied by his brother, the famous Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Hannibal. The decisive confrontation between two sides occurred in 190 BC at the Battle of Magnesia. Partly through the help of the army of Pergamum, Roman allies in Asia Minor, the Romans were victorious. This was a decisive moment in the history of the eastern Mediterranean, for though the Romans had no intention of occupying Seleucid territory (though gold and slaves would still do nicely, both as tribute and booty), Seleucid power was irrevocably weakened by defeat. Antiochus was forced to restrict his sphere of influence again, this time to the Syrian side of the Taurus Mountains, leaving Rome the dominant power in Asia Minor.
The Seleucid empire, always a somewhat ramshackle affair, now began the generations–long process of slowly falling apart at the seams. When Antiochus IV attempted to restore his dynasty’s fortunes in 168 BC with an invasion of Egypt, he and his army were stopped by a single Roman envoy. The envoy bluntly ordered the king and his army to turn back. When Antiochus asked for time to consider his options, the Roman used his stick of office to draw a line in the sand around the king. He informed Antiochus that he was not to step over that line until he had decided on his course of action. That course of action, when Antiochus eventually got over his indignation, turned out to be the cancellation of the invasion, and a retreat back to Asia with whatever shreds of dignity could be retrieved from the situation. It was a chilling demonstration, both of the power of the Romans and of their arrogant ignorance of how to behave in civilized society.
If the Seleucids were content to allow their empire to moulder slowly away, the Macedonians chose to go out with a bang. Their agents were constantly fomenting problems for the Romans in Greece, whilst in any case, the Romans found themselves driven to distraction by the petty feuds and small wars with which the Greek cities celebrated their new freedom. In 167 BC the Romans deposed the Macedonian king, and when even that proved insufficient to control his irrepressible nation, they finally occupied Macedon and made it a province in 147 BC.
At the same time the Romans bluntly informed the Greeks of the limits of their freedom by making an example of the city of Corinth. For taking Macedon’s part in the recent troubles, the Romans attacked the city, sacked it, enslaved every man, woman and child in the place, and burned its buildings to the ground so comprehensively that this great Greek city was deserted for over a century. The civilized world was appalled. Whilst it was accepted that the Romans had an unhealthily zealous approach to warfare, and the diplomatic finesse of country bumpkins, the utter destruction of one of the pearls of Greek culture (and over a minor military disagreement!) was an act of horrifying barbarity. The destruction of Corinth, the humiliation of Antiochus and the subjugation of Macedonia signalled clearly that the age of the Hellenic empires was nearing its end.
The Successors of Seleucia
As with a forest when a mighty tree collapses, young saplings spring up in the clearing and begin to compete for their place in the sun. East of the Euphrates a race of warrior tribesmen claimed descent from the Achaemenid Persians who had once ruled all of the region and who had twice invaded the Greek mainland. They took their name from the province of Parthava, their homeland just southwest of the Caspian Sea, and called themselves Parthians. They fought with a mixture of light, highly–mobile bowmen and heavily armoured cavalry. Like the Romans who attempted to defeat them in later years, the Seleucid phalanx found that this mixed ability to strike from a distance with missile weapons before getting up close and personal with lancers made the Parthians formidable foes on their home ground.
The Seleucid yoke was thrown off even before the coming of the Romans, but after Magnesia there was little to limit the Parthian state’s expansion. Parthia sat astride the ‘Silk Road’; a trade route that reached across the Mediterranean and central Asia to China and even to the spice islands beyond. It has been speculated that the chaos in Syria and Judaea diverted the flow of trade from the orient so that it now ran northwest through Armenia to the Black Sea ports, and this was one of the sources of the unexpected prosperity of both Armenia and Pontus in this period. (And the survival of the trade route explains how the Roman elite could obtain luxuries such as silk underwear, which their recent conquests now allowed them to afford.)
Trade did not harm the Parthians either. It helped to fund an army which defeated the Seleucid army of Demetrias II in 139 BC, and took the king himself prisoner. The leader of the Parthians at this time was Mithridates I. The name ‘Mithridates’ means ‘given by Mithras’, Mithras being an Indo–European god who, somewhat ironically, became a favourite of the Roman legions in later years.
This Mithridates was no relation of Mithridates of Pontus, nor indeed of the various other royal Mithridati who were about at this time. Fortunately, even the kings themselves realized that to avert an identity crisis caused by too many like–named monarchs some further identifying tag was required. Consequently each king chose for himself a fine, upstanding quality with which he wanted to be associated. The Parthian Mithridates called himself Mithridates Philhellene in order to soothe the fears of the Greeks who had a valuable economic role in the cities which he conquered. Under Mithridates Philhellene, Parthia conquered Babylonia in 144 BC, and the ancient empire of the Medes and Persians within the following decade.
The Seleucid king, Demetrias II, was eventually released by the Parthians in 129 BC, and to show that there were no hard feelings, he married the Parthian king’s daughter – a match that symbolized to those few who still needed convincing that Parthia was now a fully–fledged regional superpower.
Between Parthia and Asia Minor lay the mountain kingdom of Armenia. Originally a part of the empire of Alexander the Great, Armenia enjoyed a brief independence before it was conquered by the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The kingdom, which legend claimed had long been ruled by the Orontid dynasty, was then governed directly by satraps. Access to the kingdom for Parthian armies was restricted to the defensible choke points of the city of Sophene and the crossings of the upper Euphrates. Armenia was more accessible from the west, so the satraps maintained their loyalty for as long as Selucia remained a threat. With the weakening of Seleucid rule after Magnesia, the Armenian satraps unilaterally declared independence, secure in the knowledge that their superb cavalry was a match for the horsemen of Parthia, who were in any case more at home on the lowland plains. Armenia at this point was formed from two small kingdoms, respectively west and east of the Euphrates. The western kingdom was known as Lesser Armenia and the former satrap took the name of King Zariadris. The eastern kingdom was called Greater Armenia and came to be ruled by Zariadris’ son Artaxias. It was Artaxias who rebuilt the ancient city at Yerevan and called it Artaxata, after the custom of rulers to name after themselves cities they founded or totally rebuilt.
Like the Parthians, the Armenians determined to make the most of the fluid political situation, and adopted an expansionist stance, snapping up weaker border states, and expanding northward and westward along the eastern shore of the Black Sea. However, once the Parthian King Mithridates II (also known as Arsaces IX), had finished mopping up resistance in Mesopotamia, he led his forces against Armenia. He defeated the current king, Artavasdes I, and took as a hostage his young son Tigranes, the man who was later to be known to history as Tigranes the Great. The Parthians seem to have been content to rule mainly by proxy, and Armenia remained a quasi–independent state, ready to expand once more as soon as the time seemed right.
Asia Minor
This then, was the world that the father of Mithridates knew. In the middle of that world was the great mass of Asia Minor, thrusting over the northern Mediterranean to divide it from the Black Sea. Surrounded by water on three sides, Asia Minor was a world in itself, containing widely varied geographical features, micro–climates, and diverse peoples; from the sophisticated and Hellenized kingdoms in the west, to the mountainous princedoms abutting Armenia in the east. Diverse as it was (the sources tell us that twenty–two languages were spoken in Pontus alone), Asia Minor had been settled and civilized, home of the Hittite civilization, long before the Greeks fought before the walls of Troy. Indeed, it was here, the ancient sources tell us, that the first iron swords were forged.
Both history and geography had combined to prevent Asia Minor from becoming a single political or ethnic unit. The major feature of the land mass is a huge upland plateau that dominates the interior. Here the winters are harsh and the rivers are few. Water is found in brackish pools, and most peasant farmers content themselves with a pastoral existence with herds of sheep, goats, and occasional cattle. During the opening years of the third century, a tribe of Gauls had forced their way into the region. They had fought a bruising series of campaigns against the armies of various states but these had stubbornly refused to be parted from their desirable lands. Therefore, after pinballing from one kingdom to another, the Gauls finally ensconced themselves on the upland plateau, from where none of the neighbours considered it worthwhile to force them off. These peoples were known as the Galatians, the same people to whom St Paul was to write his biblical epistle two centuries later.
At this time, the Galatians were divided into groups called tetrarchies, though there were often more than four leaders of the nation, which was itself divided into three tribes. Whilst they maintained a lively series of internecine wars among themselves (as was generally the case), the Galatians were incapable of being more than a general nuisance to the neighbours. However, when they did manage to pull together for more than a few months the Galatians could become a menace serious enough to require a major military response. Fortunately the poverty of their upland home meant that Galatians were always ready to accept employment as mercenaries, even if the job entailed keeping their fellow countrymen on the right side of the border.
South and east of Galatia, perched on the edge of the Anatolian plateau, was the kingdom of Cappadocia. Cappadocia was a relatively poor land, cut off from the northern Mediterranean by the mountains of Cilicia, and with the powerful and predatory kingdom of Armenia to the east. Before the plains in the west dried out into the barren fastnesses of Lycaonia, the land supported the herds of horses which were the basis of Cappadocia’s famed cavalry. There were no real cities in Cappadocia as the Greeks would understand the term. Instead there were villages of peasants often sheltering near a reassuring hilltop fortress held by the local dynast. As elsewhere in Asia Minor, much of the country was temple land, for the religions of the region were both ancient and powerful, and the priests held land and did service to their king just as did his other barons. Ruled by a failing dynasty, it seemed inevitable that Cappadocia would soon fall into the clutches of a neighbouring kingdom, and few states were better placed to do that clutching than Pontus to the north, just over the River Halys. On the other hand, Rome was determined that the status quo in Asia Minor should remain just so, and kept a jealously protective eye on the vulnerable state.
South of Cappadocia, the mountains stretch right to the sea. In a long sweep from Caria to Tarsus the land is almost impassable. Where the mountains open into valleys, these valleys are cut off from each other, and are only occasionally linked by the sea. This area, too anarchic to be considered a kingdom, and too diverse to be called a nation, was known as Cilicia. Here, the people naturally formed themselves into close–knit feudal societies, difficult to reach from outside, and even harder to govern, though several local minor kingdoms gave it a sporting try. Lately, a new phenomenon had been observed, with harbours being fortified and fortresses built on rocky headlands. The builders were not an army, though they might have been mistaken for a navy – their fleet was as large and as well–equipped as any in the Mediterranean at that time. These were pirates. Not the sort of pirates which ambushed lonely merchantmen far from the main trade routes, but the sort of pirates who took entire cities by storm and dominated the seas as far west as Spain. Cilicia, with its rough coastline and impassable hinterland, was just the sort of retreat the pirates needed, especially as the advance of Rome had made their bases in Crete too vulnerable for comfort.
Piracy had been a menace in the Mediterranean since the discovery of sailing, and usually it was the job of the dominant naval power to keep that menace in check. Until recently that task had fallen to the island merchant traders of Rhodes. Hanging like a teardrop south of the landmass of Asia Minor, the island of Rhodes had a long history as a naval power, and had even built its famous Colossus to celebrate the Seleucid failure to add the island to their empire, despite a fierce invasion and siege. (The Colossus overlooked the harbour, and did not, as popular legend has it, bestride the entrance.) The growing power of Rome had made itself felt in Rhodes as well. The island city–state was constantly riven by strife between pro– and anti–Roman factions, and what was sometimes a loyal ally of Rome could suddenly swing to a hostile neutral, depending on which faction had the upper hand. The Romans regarded this Rhodian fickleness with deep suspicion. They had crippled Rhodes’ trading base by making Delos a free port, and from there Rome annually shipped slaves by the tens of thousands to Italy, something which the peoples of the region deeply resented.
Furthermore, the Romans had decided that the Rhodians were not to be trusted with their fleet, and had ordered its numbers sharply reduced. So brutally was the fleet pruned that it was more in danger from pirates than able to suppress them. This meant that piracy flourished unchecked, for the Romans were famously reluctant to take to the water, and congenitally incapable of staying afloat when they did so. (The first war with Carthage was fought mainly at sea, and the Romans lost far more men through drowning than they did to enemy action.) From the Pontic viewpoint, Rhodes merited careful attention, as the island was still a naval power, and it held a considerable chunk of mainland southwest Asia Minor in Caria and Lycia. Cilicia too was of considerable interest, both because the Pontic kings and the pirates had long maintained cordial relations with each other, and because the Romans, unable to take on the pirates at sea, had a legion in Cilicia which was trying rather fruitlessly to root out pirate bases on the coast.
In the central northwest, between the religious centre of Ephesus and the ruins of Troy, was the kingdom of Pergamum. With its capital on the fertile plains of the river Caicus, Pergamum was rich, settled and stable. Under the rule of the Hellenized Attalid kings, Pergamum had developed libraries, gymnasiums and all the trappings of Greek culture. It was here that it was discovered that by carefully curing the inner part of a sheepskin, a writing surface could be created that was as light as papyrus, yet more flexible, but could still hold writing without damage or fading. This material was once called pergaminum, a name which has today mutated to ‘parchment’. Pergamum had long seen the value of allying itself with Rome, and in return for protection and support against Pergamum’s rivals Rome was allowed the pleasure of constantly interfering in Pergamum’s affairs. (Nor indeed were the rulers of Pergamum, and of neighbouring kingdoms, slow to invite that interference by sending envoys rushing to Rome to justify or protest their conduct in the constant border wars, incursions, and downright invasions which enlivened life in the region.)
It may have been this interference which inspired the last of the Attalids, Attalus II to make the state of Rome heir to his kingdom. Since Rome had been laying down the law by embassy and decree for decades, Attalus may have (mistakenly) thought it would benefit his kingdom to be ruled directly by Rome, as Rome’s interest would then be clearly aligned with that of his former subjects. On the other hand, Attalus would have been keenly aware that death by successor was the usual form of mortality among Hellenistic monarchs, whose courts had brought palace intrigue to a refined and deadly art form. Attalus might have (correctly) assumed that by making Rome his heir it was in no–one’s interest to see him die. In fact, his death in 132 BC was so sincerely regretted by the feudal baronies of the Pergamene interior that they rose in revolt against Roman rule and, under their leader Aristonicus, briefly threatened to expel the Romans from Asia.
Rome responded with her famous technique of ‘divide and conquer’. Secure in the support of the Greek cities of the coast, they invited Pergamum’s neighbours to join in taking on Aristonicus in the interior. The subsequent spoils of war saw Cappadocia picking up Lycaonia, and Pontus getting a chunk of Phrygia and part of Paphlagonia (of which more later). Though somewhat reduced in size, Rome’s bridgehead in Asia Minor was secured.
Bithynia was Pontus’ neighbour to the west. It had started as one of the many tiny kingdoms into which Asia Minor had splintered with the weakening of Seleucid control. Under the competent and energetic control of King Prusias the First it had become a well–appointed domain, with fertile lowlands in the Propontis, and a handy buffer zone between itself and Pontus in the form of the mountainous region of Paphlagonia, which it held jointly with its neighbour. Adept diplomacy, by which the Bithynians had sided first with Macedon and then, just at the right moment for the switch, with Rome, had gained Bithynia an ever–increasing territory. Her kings were not shy in using force to grab more still whenever they could, at one time even employing the great Hannibal for this purpose whilst he was on the run from the Romans.
Like Pergamum, Bithynia was a very Hellenized kingdom, though family relations between the two were fraught, with the Bithynians constantly attempting to seize desirable bits of their neighbour’s kingdom, even as they fended off the attempts of the Galatians to grab bits of theirs.
Yet, despite the constant warfare, usurpations and civil wars, Asia Minor was a generally prosperous and civilized place. Most campaigns were fought with mercenaries who were careful not to badly damage the assets of what might be next year’s employer, and it was understood that cities which rolled over without a fight could be allowed to carry on business as usual under new ownership. When people actually took their warfare seriously, this often involved the absorption or attempted succession of a Greek city from a kingdom of which they wanted no part. Like the Greeks of mainland Greece, the Greeks of Asia Minor were proud of their heritage of the polis, the small, independent city–state, and such was their eagerness to live in this condition that they persisted in credulously allying themselves with whomever promised them ‘freedom’, no matter how harsh the disillusionment which inevitably followed.
As well as Greek city-states which might or might not be independent at any given moment, there were numerous principalities such as Commagene, Priene, and Sarmagene (the ‘-ene’ ending indicates a former Seleucid administrative area). The larger of these maintained a precarious independence, others changed hands depending on the vagaries of war, royal marriages and diplomacy.
Overall, the situation was not unlike that in Europe in the early sixteenth century. There were established powers which could be sure of retaining their national identity no matter what, new nation–states in the process of being forged, and a mass of free cities, transient leagues and tiny kingdoms and principalities struggling to avoid being swallowed or becoming pawns of their larger neighbours. There was no certainty that a single power would rise to become suzerain of the entire region, and if one power did come to rule them all, there was no certainty that power would be Rome.