Traditionally, Pontus pursued a pro-Roman policy, but the young king intended to challenge the new imperialists from the west. Calculating that the Republic would hardly notice, he began by creating an empire up the eastern coast of the Black Sea as far as Colchis, the legendary birthplace of Medea and once the home of the Golden Fleece.
In 104, he and the neighboring king of Bithynia invaded and annexed Galatia and Paphlagonia. They then marched into Cappadocia but quarreled over who should control it. Mithridates sent an embassy to Rome to bribe senators to tolerate his interventions and to take his side on the issue of Cappadocia. In 99 or 98, Marius, who was in the region on his eastern travels as a privatus, warned Mithridates to take care. “Either be greater than the Romans,” he advised, “or else obey them.”
The Senate found the whole business tediously complicated and ordered both kings to withdraw, which they did. Sulla, who was the propraetor of Cilicia at the time, installed a new king of Cappadocia, chosen by the local nobility.
In 90, with Rome preoccupied by its war with the Italian allies, Mithridates went on the offensive again. This time he occupied Bithynia and (for a second time) Paphlagonia. The Senate sent out a commission to deal with this turbulent despot, led by a certain Manius Aquillius. Backed by a small military force, the commissioners ordered Mithridates to return to Pontus forthwith. Again, he obeyed. The Romans were not offering a free service and asked their protégés for payment. To raise the necessary cash, they recommended an invasion of Pontus. Bithynia reluctantly complied.
This was too much for Mithridates. He had always taken care to avoid a direct military confrontation with Rome, but now he felt that he had no choice but to resist. In short order, he defeated three armies sent against him. Aquillius was captured and put to death; as punishment for his greed, gold was melted and poured down his throat.
The king had reached a point of no return, and felt obliged to go to a further extreme. He marched on the Roman province of Asia, promising freedom for the Greek city-states and canceling debts. He accepted an invitation from Athens to liberate Greece. But what was he to do with the many thousands of Roman and Italian businessmen in the cities of Asia? If they were left alone, they would be a potential fifth column, but it was impractical to gather them together and expel them.
Mithridates made the most dangerous decision of his long career. He sent a round-robin letter to Asia’s local authorities, in which he instructed them, in exactly thirty days from the date of writing, to kill all people of Italian birth—men, women, and children—and, in the ancient world the ultimate insult, to leave them unburied. Almost everyone obeyed with enthusiasm, although at least one municipality used hired killers. There were terrible scenes. Once the slaughter began, many victims ran to temples for sanctuary. In Ephesus, fugitives in the world-famous Temple of Artemis (the Greek equivalent of Diana) were torn from statues of the goddess, and in Pergamum those who had fled to the temple of the god of healing, Asklepios, were shot with arrows. In total, about eighty thousand people lost their lives.
The king knew that Rome would never forgive him, or anyone complicit in the extermination. The citizens of Asia were now bound to follow the fortunes of Pontus. From the Senate’s point of view, there was a painful lesson to be learned: the zeal with which the population took to mass murder exposed the widespread hatred of Roman corruption and cruelty.
THE SENATE PLAYED a dirty trick when it offered the full Roman franchise, in effect, to all the allied communities south of the river Po. The many thousands of new citizens were enrolled in only a few of the thirty-five tribes, instead of being distributed among them all; this meant that, despite their large numbers, they would never be able to win a majority for their views. (It should be remembered that each tribe cast only a single collective vote.)
In 88, the conservative-minded Sulla was consul, a reward for his distinguished record in the Italian war. He was allocated the province of Asia—in other words, the potentially very lucrative command against Mithridates. So far, so straightforward.
A tribune of the same year, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, was one of the finest public speakers of the day. Cicero in his youth witnessed him perform. “Sulpicius of all the orators I have ever heard was the most theatrical,” he claimed. “His voice was strong but pleasing and noble.” Now in his mid-thirties, Sulpicius had been a brilliant and influential optimate, but as soon as he was elected tribune he switched loyalties and joined the populares. This probably had something to do with his close friendship with the assassinated Drusus. He was a warm supporter of the Italian allies and set himself the difficult task of passing a law that distributed Rome’s new citizens fairly across all the thirty-five tribes.
Sulpicius could count on opposition in the Senate and among the People, so he struck a deal with Marius, who was still bitter that he had been excluded from public life and, at seventy, eager for one final military adventure. Marius was a popular figure among ordinary voters and could also muster backing for Sulpicius from the equites. In return, the tribune would repeal the law giving Sulla the eastern command and transfer it to Marius.
An outraged Sulla called a halt to public business (a iustitium). In reply, Sulpicius brought his mob onto the streets. Fighting broke out in the Forum, and an attempt was made on the consuls’ lives. Sulla was able to make his escape but was forced, humiliatingly, to take refuge in Marius’s house near the Forum. His pursuers ran past the building and Marius let him out by a back door. Sulla stayed in the city long enough to call off the iustitium and then slipped away to join the six legions he was to lead against the king of Pontus.
Sulpicius passed his legislation, and some of Sulla’s supporters were killed. As soon as the consul learned that he had lost the command he convened a meeting of the army. The soldiers were looking forward to a profitable war and feared that Marius might recruit other men in their place. Sulla reported the violence to which he, a consul of Rome, had been subjected. He asked the men to obey orders, without specifying exactly what these were likely to be. They could read between the lines, though, and when Sulla commanded them to march on Rome they did as they were told. Their officers, however, could not stomach leading an army against their own country and fled the camp.
Another of Rome’s great turning points had been reached. Politicians had now graduated from roughing up their opponents, and from time to time killing them, to out-and-out civil war. Appian writes bluntly: “The murders and civil disturbances had so far been internal and sporadic; but after this the faction leaders struggled against each other with great armies in military fashion for the prize of their native land.”
THERE BEING NO garrison and so no official resistance, Sulla entered Rome at the head of two legions. This was sacrilege. A strict and ancient taboo forbade soldiers to enter the city (except for a triumph). Never before had it been so comprehensively broken. As the men filed down the narrow street to the center, shocked citizens flung stones and roof tiles on their heads, until Sulla threatened to set fire to their houses.