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  Plutarch reports that Mithridates thought to conceal the extent of the disaster from the main body of his force, only to be caught in the sin of omission when Hadrianus marched by the Pontic camp in full battle array, complete with the spoils and plunder of the victory. The king’s reputation certainly suffered from being caught in so bald-faced a lie. There was a general sense in the king’s army that retreat was in order, and quickly. There was confusion and disorder – not to say resentment – when the king’s attendants seemed to be the first in line to depart. The fact that some of the royal servants were caught trying to prevent the common soldiers from making their escape resulted in violence and killings at the camp exits, with the men in charge of the baggage the main casualties. A general was also slain, and a priest was trampled in the confusion at the gates. The king himself barely made his own exit, aided in the end by the timely intervention of a eunuch who provided a horse to the fugitive monarch.

  Appian’s version of the king’s flight from his camp offers certain different details of narrative and emphasis.40 In his account, survivors of the Hadrianus rout returned to camp and magnified the degree of the disaster, Mithridates hearing of the whole affair before Lucullus. Panic set in, and the king admitted to his closest counsellors that he thought it was time to depart. The royal advisors then immediately thought only of themselves; plans were made by each in turn to get out of the camp with as much as baggage as could be conveyed. The soldiers reacted to the servants, and the king to the general tumult. In the ensuing chaos, Mithridates was actually knocked from his horse, and had to remount and take flight to the nearby mountains with a few close followers.

  What is reasonably clear from the surviving evidence of Plutarch and Appian is that Mithridates had suffered a catastrophic loss with respect to his cavalry forces. For the moment, he was quite incapable of launching any significant attacks against his Roman adversaries.

  The King in Retreat

  It did not take long for Lucullus to learn that the king was making his retreat, and he at once ordered an attack on the camp and pursuit of the monarch. Lucullus was clear in his instructions: the soldiers were to abstain from plunder, though they were to kill the king’s men without quarter or hesitation. Appian reports that the sight of so much wealth in the Pontic camp was a greater incentive to the soldiers than the orders of their commanders, while Plutarch bluntly states that the greed and avarice of the Roman soldiers deprived Lucullus of his chance to capture or kill the king. If we can believe both sources, the Romans were literally on the verge of capturing the monarch, when a royal pack mule loaded with treasure managed to interpose itself between king and pursuers. The lure of the rich treasure the animal carried was enough to save the king to see another day. The Roman soldiers could not even be trusted to ensure the survival of a relatively minor individual, so great was their burning lust for plunder; Lucullus had ordered that one Callistratus should be brought to him alive – he was in charge of the royal papers – but the soldiers killed him when they realized he had 500 pieces of gold in his clothing.41

  Plutarch notes in summation that Lucullus did allow the soldiers to plunder the king’s camp; in all likelihood it would have been exceedingly difficult if not impossible to try to prevent them. Mithridates had escaped, and that was the main problem, some might think. Of course Lucullus had also won a tremendous victory, though his critics might say that it was as much the result of luck as careful planning and patient management of the prosecution of the war. Lucullus’ persistent problem in the campaign would be that every victory he achieved was another excuse for his domestic enemies to note that the real quarry had yet again eluded capture – and Mithridates showed no interest in a negotiated settlement at this point. For the moment, time was very much on his side, and he knew it.

  If the Romans were in search of treasure, treasure there was aplenty – and also a great number of Greeks who had been held prisoner by the king. The king, for his part, escaped with some 2,000 cavalry (according to Appian). He immediately made plans for the fall of his kingdom – his despair must have been as profound as at any time in his life thus far. He went so far as to give orders to the eunuch Bacchus to make his way to the royal palace and see to the deaths of the king’s sisters, wives and concubines.42 Plutarch dwells on the lurid details of the deaths of the king’s Greek wife Monime the Milesian, while Appian simply notes that the women perished by stabbing, poison and hanging. The mass slaughter of the king’s women in the palace at Pharnaces was too much for many of Mithridates’ commanders, who defected to Lucullus at once. Lucullus for his part is said by Appian to have captured Amastris, Heraclea and some other of the king’s cities, but there is little in the way of detail in Appian (or Plutarch) of these minor campaigns, and it is possible that some simply surrendered to the Romans without much of a fight, if any.43

  Plutarch notes that when Lucullus learned of the deaths of the king’s female relatives, he was seriously troubled and pained at heart; he was, after all, of a gentle and humane disposition.44 It is another of the many details for which Plutarch’s laudatory biographies are known. The contrast in the portrait of the defeat of the king is between the avaricious, greedy soldiers and their calm and collected commander, a man who is able to mourn the unnecessary loss of life of innocents, and who in the midst of war is able to recall his humanity. Plutarch notes that one of the king’s sisters, Nyssa, was fortunate enough to survive precisely because she was captured by Lucullus.

  Yet again, the Romans had achieved an impressive result, and once again, the king was in retreat. But as so many would-be conquerors in this region of the world came to learn, Asia is very large indeed, and the flight of the king also meant that the war would be prolonged for an uncertain additional duration – an ever more serious problem for Lucullus, especially given that events in Rome did not come to a halt while the Roman army was engaged in Asian military operations. The war in Spain was over; the slave insurrection in Italy was over – it was now only in Asia that a serious ground war was in progress, and of indefinite resolution. Yet again, it was a season of victories, of ultimately frustratingly fruitless result, some might think. Lucullus subdued the Chaldaeans and the Tibareni, and occupied Lesser Armenia. But the king was in none of those places.45 We have no record of any serious difficulties in Lucullus’ operations to subjugate these inland areas; all of them seem to have fallen without much in the way of resistance. Indeed, Lucullus’ soldiers’ work in subduing one Mithridatic fortress after another became the stuff of poetic legend, the Augustan poet Horace alluding to this period of tremendous victory and attainment of plunder by the soldiers of Lucullus.46 Nobody seemed to be in any great hurry to die for Mithridates, though frustratingly, nobody seemed to be much interested in helping to secure the king as Lucullus’ prisoner.

  Tigranes II of Armenia

  Lucullus attempted to pursue Mithridates, even in the aftermath of the mule fiasco, but the king had escaped to Tigranes, the Armenian king. Tigranes was now in a position that no doubt he did not appreciate. He was a relatively minor king, all things considered, and was in no mood for an immediate war with Rome over the fate of Mithridates. Appian notes that Tigranes would not actually admit Mithridates into his presence, but instead sent him off to stay on a royal estate, a virtual prisoner, one might think. No doubt there were significant discussions in the Armenian palace as to what to do about the Pontic problem. Plutarch provides more information.47 Not only did Tigranes keep Mithridates away from his presence, but the region in which the king was de facto confined was a marshy, malarial tract of land. If Tigranes was worried at looking shameful in the matter of handing over Mithridates, he was not concerned about how he appeared in terms of his reception of his father-in-law. He appeared to be following the letter of the law of hospitality: he did not refuse Mithridates a roof, and he certainly did not surrender him to the Romans. However, there was no question that the King of Pontus had reached the nadir of his fortunes heretofore, and that he held little if
any real influence over Tigranes.48

  The Spring of 71

  It was the spring of 71 BC, the year that witnessed good news from Asia, but also the settlement of the Third Servile or Spartacus War. In Spain, Sertorius had been assassinated in 72 or 73 BC by Marcus Perperna Vento, who would soon meet his own end by order of Pompey.49 A veritable nightmare for Lucullus had indeed come true. Pompey was no longer occupied with affairs in Spain, and he had even been able to take some of the credit for the final resolution of the tedious Servile War. The year 71, in short, was good for Rome – but for Lucullus, the perils of delay were becoming more and more serious, and the hazards of staying too long in Asia were beginning to take on increasingly definable features. Throughout this, one finds evidence that his own men were a part of the tension and difficulty that the commander faced. Whether or not Lucullus was particularly skilled in dealing with the rank and file soldiers, his men would appear to have been a legitimate challenge for the tolerance and savoir faire of any general.

  Amisus

  Lucullus’ work, however, was far from over, and not only because the king was still out of reach. Not every city and town in Asia was equally easy to take; indeed Amisus was still holding out against Lucullus’ subordinate, Murena. Lucullus finished the task, though not without sadness and regret. Plutarch relates that the salvation of Amisus had been the mechanical defensive devices of the Greek Callimachus, who was a master at siege warfare. At exactly the time when Callimachus was inclined to let his defenders rest, Lucullus launched a fateful attack and was able to breach the walls of the city. Callimachus made his escape in part by setting fire to the doomed town. Lucullus sought at once to extinguish the flames and to spare the locale, but no one was in any mood to listen – the inhabitants of Amisus were understandably more concerned about making their escape, and the Roman soldiers were intent once again on plunder (especially after the long and frustrating siege). Lucullus thought that by allowing his men to ransack the city, he might be able to save it, the perverse logic being that the Romans would be hesitant to burn what they could steal. But the army was more mob than disciplined soldiery, and by the time Lucullus himself entered Amisus at daybreak, the city was in ruins. Plutarch reports that the commander then noted that Sulla had been blessed because he was able to save Athens;50 for him, the gods had ordained the fate of Lucius Mummius Achaicus, who had overseen the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC.51

  Tragic destruction gave way to redemption of some sort. Plutarch notes that a timely rain shower seemed to be the providential gift of heaven, and that Lucullus himself spent a significant amount of money on restoring Amisus. The Greeks who had been so long in hiding and prison under Mithridates were settled there, and those natives of the city who had fled were induced to return. The city was given more land and a richer provisioning than before. By all accounts, it seems that Lucullus had once again acquitted himself well in the disposition of affairs in time of war as in time of peace.52

  Plutarch preserves yet another story that attests to the character of Lucullus. Tyrannio the grammarian was one of the ‘captives’ of Amisus. The commander Murena – the failed commander, some might argue – asked to have him as a war prize. This was granted, and Tyrannio was formally assigned as a slave to Murena, who then gave the man his liberty. A noble gesture, one might think – but to Lucullus, a most inappropriate action, since the man had been born free and should have had his freedom recognized from the start, and not as the result of a seemingly magnanimous gesture after Murena had enslaved him.

  One reason cited by both Plutarch and Appian for Lucullus’ generous treatment of Amisus was that he learned that the city had been a colony of Athens (this no doubt inspired his remark about how Sulla was blessed in being able to preserve the great Greek city). Amisus had a democratic system of government as if it were a miniature Athens; it was an oasis of Athenian culture even under Mithridratic rule (or at least the story went). Amisus had been subject to the Persians, and then liberated by Alexander the Great. Once again, Lucullus could follow in the footsteps of the Macedonian conqueror and free a Greek city from Eastern bondage. It is another anecdote to buttress the reputation of Lucullus the phihellene, of Lucullus the admirer and respectful student of Greek culture.

  Sinope

  Plutarch and Appian provide details of the successful taking of Sinope in (70 BC.53 Orosius has a customarily brief account (VI.3.2–3). Here there was significant resistance; the inhabitants were doing well in defending their coastal city on water as well as land. Finally, the Sinopians burned their heavy ships and escaped on lighter vessels. Lucullus granted the city its freedom, allegedly in response to a dream in which Autolycus, the companion of Heracles in his war against the Amazons, seemed to be calling out to him. Autolycus had been driven to Sinope by a storm, and there was a statue of the Herculean hero in the locale that was said to give oracles to the inhabitants. The Sinopians did not have time to take the statue with them, and on the day after his dream, Lucullus saw some men carrying a heavy burden wrapped in linen – needless to say, the religiously scrupulous Lucullus was careful to show some honour and respect both to statue and city. Plutarch notes that Sulla had indicated in his memoirs that nothing was so reliable as that which was foretold in dreams, and that on this occasion, Lucullus remembered the sentiment and wisdom of his mentor.

  Plutarch adds the detail that the real resistance in Sinope had not come from the Sinopians themselves, but rather from the Cilicians who were in the city. Some 8,000 of these are said to have been slain when Lucullus finally entered the city. We should remember, too, that the exact chronology of events is not definitively determinable; Plutarch places the conquest of Sinope after the realization that war would be necessary against Tigranes.

  The historian Memnon offers a brief account of the Sinope operation.54 He notes that Lucullus vigorously pursued the siege, and that Mithridates’ son Machares sent envoys asking for an alliance. Lucullus demanded that Machares not supply the city. In response, the would-be ally even sent materials to the Romans that had been earmarked for the king’s men. This was the end of the hopes for Cleochares and his associates in Sinope; they allowed their soldiers to loot the city, even as they loaded ships with their treasure and abandoned Sinope to the flames from unneeded ships that were burned to deprive the Romans of their use.55

  Financial Reforms

  Plutarch is clear that Lucullus was a civilizing influence and indeed saviour not only over the lands once under Mithridates’ sway, but also in the Roman province of Asia. If the biographer can be trusted – and there is no reason to doubt his word on this – the whole region was oppressed by financial and worse ills under occupation. Men were made virtual slaves by the system of tax collection and money lending, and the torture of debtors was common practice. Simply put, Lucullus found a brutal system of economic subjugation, and he freed the region from the vile practices that had marked the king’s rule over this vast expanse of land. Part of the problem for Lucullus, however, was that every good deed that benefited the local population was almost guaranteed to stir up trouble and controversy among the tax collectors and those who made their livelihood from the de facto extortion of money from the locals. These men were not about to surrender their financial prerogatives without a fight, and soon enough they protested to Rome – and there were plenty of officials in Rome who were sympathetic to the complaints (and who were hardly interested in hearing about the plight of the distant inhabitants in Asia).

  Lucullus, however, earned a reputation as being a model provincial administrator, a man absolutely immune to corruption and the lure of luxury. He was also obliged to work with alacrity and resolute skill on the maintenance of the financial health of the territories under his control. Ideally, the war was to pay for itself, and the local regions were to provide what was necessary for the successful prosecution of the war. The lesson of Pompey’s experience in Spain, and his need to appeal for more support from Rome and the consul Lucullus, must have been v
ery much in Lucius’ mind at this time. But in his dealings with the tax collectors, Lucullus seemed determined to preserve the difference between providing support and being drowned in debt. He saw no reason to impose crippling demands for money and resources on a population that would only respond with resentment and aid that was begrudgingly given.

  The Publicani

  Lucullus was clearly willing to incur the enmity of the publicani and their friends and supporters in Rome.56 Some have thought that this willingness was tied to his sense that the war was essentially over, and that Mithridates would soon be in his custody. The truth may lie in the simpler, nobler reason that Lucullus saw no reason to place undue burdens on the locals. His rationale for this thinking need not have been purely a humane one – though we should not let cynicism keep us from accepting this possibility. A practical man would realize that the benefit to Rome of keeping the conquered populations of Asia content was greater than the extra revenue that was enriching the class of tax collectors and their patrons. We do well to remember that Lucullus had significant experience in financial matters in his service under Sulla; he knew about the economic realities of the region, and the limits of forbearance of the local population. Our sources make clear that he ran foul of the professional tax-collecting class and their supporters in Rome. There is little to condemn Lucullus for in these dealings. No doubt he understood the inherent risks of his position, but his sense of honour, we may think, was such that he would not moderate his position.57 No one, it seems, has ever tried to defend the publicani and their supporters in Rome for the extent of their avarice and their prosecution and harassment of those who would challenge their financial empire. They were extortionists, plain and simple – and Lucullus would have none of it.