Next, however, came a more fateful step. Mithridates had to decide whether to take the attack to Rome herself. Superpowers were not taken on lightly, but war with the Republic was a challenge for which Mithridates had been preparing all his reign. Like any ambitious despot, he had worked hard to beef up his offensive capabilities, and his army was shiny new – literally so, since its weapons were embossed with gold and its armour with bright jewels. But if Mithridates liked to make a splash, he also enjoyed playing at cloak and dagger: travelling undercover through Asia, he had seen enough to convince him of the provincials’ hatred of Rome. This, more than anything, was what persuaded him to take the plunge. Crossing into the province of Asia, he found the garrisons protecting it scanty and ill-prepared, and the Greek cities eager to hail him as a saviour. In a matter of weeks Roman power in the province had totally collapsed, and Mithridates found himself standing on the shore of the Aegean Sea.
As a matricidal barbarian he was hardly the kind of champion the Greeks would normally have taken to their hearts. But better a matricidal barbarian than the publicani – the longing for freedom was so desperate, and the loathing of Rome so visceral, that the provincials were willing to go to any lengths to dispose of their oppressors. In the summer of 88, when Rome’s chains had already been thrown off, they were to demonstrate this in a horrific explosion of violence. Aiming to bind the Greek cities to him irrevocably, Mithridates wrote to them, ordering the massacre of every Roman and Italian left in Asia. The Greeks followed his instructions with savage relish. The atrocity was all the more terrible for the secrecy with which it had been prepared and the perfect co-ordination of the attacks. Victims were rounded up and slaughtered by hired assassins, hacked to pieces as they clung to sacred statues, or shot as they attempted to escape into the sea. Their bodies were left to rot unburied outside city walls. Eighty thousand men, women and children were said to have been killed on that single, deadly night.10
As a blow to the Roman economy, this was calculated and devastating; but as a blow to Roman prestige it was far worse. Mithridates had already shown himself a master of propaganda, resurrecting the Sibyl’s prophecies and throwing in some new ones of his own in order to make them appear more relevant to himself. The common theme was the appearance of a great king from the East, an instrument of divine retribution sent to humble the arrogant and grasping superpower. The mass slaughter of businessmen was only one way in which Mithridates chose to dramatise this. Even more calculated for effect was the execution of Manius Aquillius, the Roman commissioner who had provoked Mithridates into war in the first place. Falling ill at just the wrong moment, the unfortunate Aquillius was captured and dragged back to Pergamum, shackled all the way to a seven-foot barbarian. After tying him to an ass and parading him through jeering crowds, Mithridates next ordered some treasure melted down. When all had been prepared, Aquillius’ head was jerked back, his mouth forced open, and the molten metal poured down his throat. ‘War-mongers against every nation, people and king under the sun, the Romans have only one abiding motive – greed, deep-seated, for empire and riches.’11 This had been the verdict of Mithridates on the Republic and now, in the person of her legate in Asia, he exacted symbolic justice. Manius Aquillius choked to death on gold.
A Trumpet in the Sky
When a ship loaded with the pickings of empire sailed for Italy, it would most likely aim for the bare cone of Vesuvius. Sailors would scan the horizon, searching for the familiar, flat-topped silhouette of the volcano, and when they made it out raise a prayer of thanks to the gods for having brought them safely through the perils of their voyage. Ahead of them was journey’s end. Across the glittering azure of the bay the sailors would see towns dotted along the coastline, picturesque touches of Greece on the Italian shore, planted there by colonists centuries earlier – for business, in the Bay of Naples, had always been international. Not that these old ports received much shipping now. Naples herself, for instance, basking in the sun, made a living from a very different trade. Only two days’ ride from Rome, her ancient streets had recently begun to fill with tourists, all of them keen to taste the Greek lifestyle – whether by debating philosophy, complaining to doctors, or falling in love with a witty, well-read whore. Meanwhile, out to sea, the giant freight ships loomed and passed on by.
Nowadays, their port of call was a few miles up the coast. At Puteoli, Roman businessmen had long since flattened all traces of Greek heritage. Huge, concrete moles harboured shipping from all over the Mediterranean, loaded with grain to feed Rome’s monstrous appetite and slaves to fuel her enterprises, but also rarities garnered from her far-off domains: sculptures and spices, paintings and strange plants. Only the wealthiest could afford such luxuries, of course, but there was a growing market for them in the villas that now dotted the coastline either side of Puteoli, and were themselves the ultimate in consumer trophies. Like the super-rich anywhere, the Roman aristocracy wanted to keep their favourite holiday destination exclusive, and to this end had begun to buy it up.
The property boom in the region had been fuelled throughout the nineties by resourceful entrepreneurs – and in particular by an oyster-breeder named Sergius Orata. Looking to capitalise on the insatiable Roman appetite for shellfish, Orata had developed the local oyster beds on a hitherto undreamed-of scale. He had built channels and dams to regulate the flow of the sea, and lofty canopies over the mouth of the neighbouring Lucrine Lake, which he then promoted as home to the tastiest oysters in the world. Contemporaries were so impressed by Orata’s wizardry that they claimed he could have bred shellfish on his roof had he tried. But it was a further piece of technical innovation that really made Orata’s name: having cornered the market in oysters, he then invented the heated swimming pool.
Such at least seems the likeliest meaning of a cryptic Latin phrase, balneae pensiles – literally, hanging baths.* We are told that this invention required the suspension of seas of warm water and was marvellously relaxing, properties which helped Orata to market it as successfully as oysters. Soon enough, no property could be called complete unless it had first had a ‘hanging bath’ installed. Of course, it was Orata himself who did the installing – buying up villas, building the swimming pools, then selling the properties on.