The states of Europe at this time were as follows. The Roman empire comprised, besides Italy, Provence and part of Dauphiné, the whole of Languedoc with Thoulouse, and Spain with the exception of Biscay and Asturias, although the more distant peoples there were less under its sway. The war against Sertorius had thus far completed the subjection of Spain: beyond were the free Cantabrians, a numerous nation composed of tribes which were quite independent of each other. In Gaul, the Æduans had the ascendancy; yet most of the peoples were without any bond of union, utterly weak, and already overwhelmed by the German tribes. Dalmatia and Illyria were subject to Rome; but her rule did not reach far into the interior, and in the Bosnian mountains the natives still kept their freedom. Macedon, of which the extent was the same as it had been under its last kings, and Greece were Roman provinces. The inhabitants of Thrace, and the tribes north of mounts Scodrus and Scardus, were free.

In Asia, the Bithynian monarchy had been broken up, the last king, Nicomedes, having left his realms by will to the Romans. Mithridates had in Western Asia, Pontus and part of Cappadocia; and on the shores of the Black Sea, his dominions were still wider: the north of Armenia, the country north of Erzerum, Georgia (Iberia), Imeritia (Colchis), Daghestan, and also the peoples south of the Cuban were tributary to him; the Bosporus and the Greek towns in the Crimea were to all intents and purposes provinces of his empire; his influence was even felt as far as the Dniester, on the banks of which his supremacy was acknowledged, and his connexions moreover reached beyond the Danube into Thrace, even to the Roman frontier. The kingdom of the Seleucidæ had quite fallen to pieces, the disputes about the succession, after the death of Demetrius, having split the country into a number of small principalities which carried on feuds against each other with great fury: at last, Antiochus, a petty prince on the coast who could hardly keep his ground, applies in vain for help to the Romans. The other districts, longing for peace, are glad to acknowledge Tigranes as their king, who rules from the frontier of Erzerum as far as Cœle-Syria, over Great Armenia, Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, Hyrcania, Kurdistan, and part of Cilicia: his empire yielded him very rich revenues. In the East, it bordered on the Parthians, who possessed nearly the whole of modern Persia and Babylonia; in Eastern Persia and part of Khorassan, the kings of Bactria may at that time have been still in existence, unless the Scythians had already conquered these countries. Media also did not perhaps belong to the Parthians even quite down to the breaking out of Pompey’s war. Indeed their empire was very loosely connected; the Parthian sovereigns were in the full meaning of the word kings of kings, the provinces being ruled by their once tributary kings. The towns on the coasts of Phœnicia, and in Cœle-Syria and Judæa, were free: the princes (tetrarchs) of Jerusalem, of the race of the Maccabees, were independent, and even bore the title of kings. In Cœle-Syria, numbers of such tetrarchies had been formed.

Egypt under the Ptolemies was confined to its narrowest bounds, from the river of Egypt to Elephantine; yet it was very rich. Its kings had still a yearly revenue of 12,500 talents, as they were the sole owners of the land. But the state was exceedingly weak and disorganised, being under the most wretched and contemptible government. In Asia Minor, the Romans had of latter years acquired through P. Servilius Isauricus Pisidia, Lycia, and Pamphylia: these countries had until then been free; the first, since the war with Antiochus; the two last, since the settlement of the Rhodian affairs. Part of Cilicia was yet independent, each place by itself: here were the real nests of pirates. Cyprus was a dependency of the Ptolemies, but under kings of its own.

In Africa, after the death of Jugurtha, there was another king of the house of Masinissa on the throne of Numidia. His name, however, is unknown: for the inscription in Reinesius, which is said to have been in existence in the sixteenth century, and in which Gauda is mentioned, has not as yet been found again, and is therefore very doubtful. In Sylla’s time, a Hiempsal was lord of Numidia. The country was certainly confined within much narrower limits than it had been under Micipsa, and before the war with Jugurtha; but, it was still a kingdom. The province of Africa was governed by Roman proconsuls.

The Scordiscans and Tauriscans, those Gallic races which had formerly been so harassed by those who had sprung from the same stock with themselves, were dwelling on the banks of the Danube; higher up were the Boians, who were independent, and also the people of Noricum which was already subject to the supremacy of Rome. The German tribes can at that time have scarcely dwelt farther south than the Mayne; there was probably a line from that river and the Neckar through the Odenwald and the Spessart towards Thuringia. The boundary of the German nation in the east cut deep into Poland.

Although the institutions of Sylla could not be overthrown by Lepidus, yet there were many of them, particularly the transfer of the administration of justice to the senate, so hateful from the shameful manner in which they were worked, that even many of the well-meaning among the ruling party abhorred them, and openly declared themselves against them. The venality of the courts of justice was quite glaring: we may learn what their condition was from Cicero’s orations; it was such that honest men were ashamed of the vile abuse. To make the judges independent, was therefore the great question of the day. But while it was wished to wrest the jurisdiction from the grasp of the senate, there was also, on the other hand, some reason to beware of the knights; and therefore an expedient was sought for, to keep that immense privilege from falling entirely into their hands. In such times, the line of demarcation between the different ranks is formed only by landed or by moneyed property; as soon as people want to generalize, there is no other standard but this, although it is a thoroughly false one. Such a classification then becomes unavoidable: Rome was on this wrong road, as France is now. There was in that age, and very likely there had been even as early as the war of Hannibal, a census fixed for the senators; either of 800,000 or 1,000,000 sesterces, being at any rate more considerable than the minimum of the census equestris. Now the Lex Judiciaria of Lucius Aurelius Cotta (682) enacted that a number of senators, knights, and tribuni ærarii, chosen it would seem by the tribes from people of a lower census than that of the equestrian order, should in about equal proportions constitute the courts as a very numerous jury (Asconius on Cicero).^[1] This was a great improvement; the judges indeed were still bad enough; yet they were after all infinitely better than those taken from the senate.

Moreover Pompey during his consulship, with the acquiescence of Crassus, made another great change. He restored the tribuneship to what it had been, so that the tribunes might even again propose laws, it being reserved to the augurs alone to interpose; besides which, the tribunes were to be again allowed to get curule offices when they had served their time, as had been the custom before the days of Sylla. Pompey saw that Sylla had made a blunder, and he wished to root out the evil at once, without being aware that it was only by going too far that the mischief had been done: for it is ever the fault of men of moderate abilities when in power, that they are always for running into extremes, and keeping no bounds. But any essential reform was in fact impossible, the tribuneship being a monstrous nuisance which it was necessary to abate.

This happened during the consulship of Pompey in the year 682; the further changes down to Cicero’s consulship (689), I leave until then.

The war with Mithridates broke out almost instantly after the death of Nicomedes, many provocations having been given on the side of the Romans: its immediate cause was the alliance of Mithridates with Sertorius. He was completely armed for war, as far as could be done by dint of money and great exertions. The rock on which his enterprise was to split, was his having Asiatics under him, he himself also being one; for Mithridates has been overrated in history. Whatever gold in masses could accomplish, he achieved; but it was to little purpose that he was ever sending new armies into the field, a thing which he was enabled to do by spending vast sums: he knew neither how to conduct a campaign nor to fight a battle. He overran Paphlagonia, and burst into Bithynia and Cappadocia, advancing as far as Chalcedon in Bithynia, into which he drove the Roman consul Cotta. His fleet had decided success; for he chased the Roman ships into the harbour, and took them, The Romans had still (it was then the year 678) the old soldiers of Valerius Flaccus, who had now been there for about thirteen years: these men were quite demoralized, their ranks were thinned by death, and their tempers soured by their having been kept as it were in banishment. Mithridates therefore, after taking Chalcedon and Heraclea, had the way before him open to the most wealthy and powerful town of Cyzicus, a place which maintained its fidelity to the Romans with the same determination which it had already displayed in former campaigns. He had posted his troops on the island upon which part of the city is built, being connected with the mainland only by a dyke: from this island and from the sea, he battered the town with all his engines. The people of Cyzicus, alone, and without any help from the Romans, beat off all the attacks of the enemy. In the meanwhile, Lucullus came to Asia. He was a staunch partisan of Sylla, and of melancholy importance in Roman history: more than any other Roman, he transplanted the luxury of Asia to Rome. He was distinguished as a general, and as Cicero thinks so highly of him, he must certainly have had some estimable qualities; but he cannot have gotten his great wealth by fair means. Whilst Mithridates was besieging Cyzicus, Lucullus took a very advantageous position in Phrygia, on the Æsepus; and there, by cutting off his supplies, he put Mithridates to such straits that he was forced to raise the siege, after which he was no longer able to keep his ground any where. Mithridates indeed carried on the siege of Cyzicus too long; yet he ought not to be blamed too harshly for it, since the same thing has happened with generals of higher name. All great generals have made blunders in their turn, with perhaps the solitary exception of the Duke of Wellington. But the king now at once retreats, vanishes entirely from our sight, and is in the heart of Pontus whither Lucullus follows him. Here also Mithridates does not know how to defend himself at all, or to make any sort of stand; nor even how to impede the enemy when it was besieging the towns which, like Amisus, Sinope, and others, bravely held out; nor yet how to relieve a place; but he lets himself be driven out of his country, and throws him self into the arms of Tigranes with whom he was allied by marriage. All his great armaments, his hundreds of thousands of hoplites were dispersed; all the most important towns of Western Pontus, the truly favoured part of the land, were conquered. Lucullus now followed him across the mountains into Armenia, and besieged Tigranocerta in the Arzanene, in the district of Erzerum. The Armenian army was in the first battle scattered like chaff before the wind, and Tigranocerta also was taken after a somewhat better conducted siege, which, however, did not last long. Tigranes fell back before Lucullus. Gibbon very justly remarks, that under circumstances which seem unfavourable, the character of a people will sometimes strikingly change; but that sometimes it will only change in some of its features, and not in others. The Armenians behaved on this occasion, just as cowardly as the troops of Xerxes had done against the Greeks, and they had shown themselves the same at the retreat of the ten thousand; but they afterwards improved so much, that in the times of the Eastern Roman Empire, until late in the middle ages, the Armenian soldiers were among the very bravest, and formed the flower of the Byzantine army. Armenia is a very cold country, so that we can still less account for the former cowardice of the nation, as Gibbon likewise remarks: the Highlands of Armenia are much colder than Germany; in the neighbourhood of Erzerum snow often falls as early as towards the end of September, and quite commonly in October. Yet it seems that other causes exercised their influence. In after days, the Armenians, since the spread of the Christian religion among them, became very important allies to the Christian Emperors against the Magians of Persia; and still later they distinguished themselves by their enthusiasm for the Paulician tenets. Lucullus went on as far as Mesopotamia, and took up his head-quarters at Nisibis, the Zobah of the 2d book of Samuel^[2] (in the Vulgate, the 2d book of Kings), the seat of the Syrian kings in that country; which from the times of Diocletian became the border fortress of the Romans against Persia. Here Lucullus seems chiefly to have employed his power as proconsul for the purpose of enriching himself. At Nisibis, a mutiny broke out among his soldiers, headed by his brother-in-law, P. Clodius: (Lucullus had married one of his sisters.) This outbreak originated with the Valerian soldiers, who had obtained a promise at Rome, that those who had served twenty years should have their discharge. The actual period of service was in those days more and more prolonged, whilst in the times of the younger Scipio not more than six years of uninterrupted military service were exacted: the Valerians therefore had a very good right to demand their discharge. Yet Lucullus would not part with them; perhaps because he had not received the necessary reinforcements, and was not able to let them go. Clodius on this occasion played the mutineer, as he did during the whole of his life. Lucullus, thus checked in his progress, was obliged to retreat to Cappadocia: thither Mithridates again broke in, and he routed C. Valerius Triarius, and reconquered the greater part of Pontus. An outcry had already been raised against Lucullus, that he wanted to protract the war for the sake of enriching himself; and now that the campaign was unfavourable, he was compelled to yield the command to Pompey.

Pompey, in the meanwhile, after the conclusion of the war against Sertorius, had conducted that against the pirates. These must have been a nuisance of long standing; for the rough inhabitants of the coasts of Cilicia had been sea-rovers for ages: even as early as the Macedonian time, they are mentioned as such; so that they must already have had their strongholds there. The coast of Cilicia was also very well suited for this; for although there were some important and thriving towns, like Tarsus, there, the people mostly dwelt in small fortified places as at Maina. Formerly this coast land had been subject to the Syrian rule; but when the power of the Seleucidæ was broken up in the year 630, Cilicia became independent, and many robbers by land and by sea settled there, especially in Κιλικία τραχεῖα. In the war of Mithridates, they were encouraged by the latter to make prizes, and their daring was beyond belief: Cicero in his oration de imperio Cn. Pompeii (thus, and not de lege Manilia it is called in all the MSS,) gives an idea of the extent of this pest. From the coast of Syria to the pillars of Hercules, no man was safe anywhere; all the seas were swarming with the ships of the pirates. Those whom they took prisoners they dragged into their fastnesses, obliging them to ransom themselves; or else they sold them, or tortured them to death and threw them into the sea. In Italy itself, they sacked and conquered towns: they once even landed at Ostia whence they carried off Romans of rank who were walking about the shore, even prætors with all the state attached to their office. Rome depended on supplies from Sicily and other agricultural countries, and as these were very often intercepted, the city was in constant dread of a famine. Allied with the pirates were the Cretans, who had, at all times, been robbers like them by sea and land. The naval force of the Romans had much decayed; whereas the pirates had a countless number of boats, which, though small, were too strong for a merchantman. Pompey now received the command against this enemy, and this is the most brilliant period of his life. The fame which he acquired on this occasion is well earned: his plan of operations is quite excellent. He surrounded them as with a net in a battue, and hunted them out of the most distant spots; then, more and more closely contracting his own fleet until he drove them to Cilicia, he overpowered them in a battle, took their ships, and reduced their towns, transferring the inhabitants to other places; partly into larger Cilician towns and fruitful districts, where they might gain their livelihood, and at the same time be well watched; partly also into Greece, especially into the neighbourhood of Dyme, into Achaia and the wasted countries of the Peloponnesus.

This was a benefit to the world itself: for this Pompey deserved the everlasting thanks of all who dwelt on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Standing higher than ever in public opinion, he was in consequence of this popularity intrusted with the war against Mithridates. Nor had the Romans ever reason to rue this decision, though indeed they made victory much more easy for him than it had been for Lucullus, as he received considerable reinforcements. Mithridates lost in one battle all that he had regained, without the Roman arms having any great honour from it: he fled to Colchis, and from thence along the roots of mount Caucasus to the Bosporus. Pompey followed close at his heels, by what is now Erzerum, as far as Georgia and the neighbourhood of Tiflis, and the princes of that country did homage to Rome: one of the sons of Mithridates, named Machares, who held the kingdom of Bosporus as a fief, made a separate peace with the Romans; but when he heard that his father was approaching, he laid hands on his own life. Mithridates, who in his misfortunes, with eastern fury, freely vented his passions upon those around him, now became an object of hatred; his servants and children (of whom he had very many) trembled before him. Moreover, he had formed boundless plans: having still a great deal of money, he now conceived the vast design of going to Italy; and he wanted to stir up the Bastarnæ and other peoples on the banks of the Danube, to league themselves with him. When his soldiers heard of this, they could not but remark, that as yet none of his undertakings had been successful; and so they broke out into a mutiny at Panticapæum, being joined by Pharnaces the king’s son. The outbreak displayed all the dreadful features of an eastern insurrection; and therefore Mithridates put an end to his own life, thinking perhaps that his son would not rest until he knew his father to be dead. Pharnaces now made peace with Pompey, and he was not ashamed to send him his father’s body: Pompey, however, had it buried with kingly pomp. Pharnaces got the kingdom of the Bosporus and the neighbouring lands, as well as the country of the Cubanians; and this he kept until the later times of Cæsar: when, however, he ventured to mix himself up with the civil wars (se inserere armis Romanis as Tacitus expresses it), he met with his ruin. Pompey now turned his arms against Tigranes, who was glad to obtain a shameful peace by paying a large sum of money, and by giving up all his possessions with the exception of Armenia: even of this he had to yield a part to a rebellious son, but it soon came back to him. Syria he had to renounce altogether: it was reduced in formam provinciæ Romanæ. Pompey went as far as Egypt, and made himself master of Syria and Phœnicia: one of his generals even reached the country of the Nabathæan Arabs, where he received the homage of the Arab king Haret. In Judæa, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus were contending for the throne: Pompey declared for the former. Aristobulus was made prisoner, and led a captive in his triumph; the town of Jerusalem fell into the power of the Romans; the temple was held against them for nearly three months, and then it was taken and pillaged, but not destroyed.

The death of Mithridates happened in the year of Cicero’s consulship, the conquest of Syria in the following one: it is not certain whether Pompey’s triumph was at the end of the year 690, or in the beginning of 691. Pompey’s behaviour after the conclusion of the war was praiseworthy. He showed an animus civilis, and dismissed the whole of his army: he might have tried to do just what Sylla did, and made himself the tyrant of the republic. Of the extravagantly flattering honours bestowed upon him, he only once took advantage, and that was at the Circensian games. Thus far he behaved sensibly enough; but in other respects, his conduct in peace was soon such as to belie the name of Magnus, which had been conferred upon him by Sylla in war. His triumph was magnificent: among the trophies, there was a list of the tributes which the commonwealth had gained from the conquered countries. The numbers of these, however, as given in Plutarch, seem to me rather too small than too great: if we bear in mind the immense land-taxes which in the time of the Maccabees came in from Judæa and other districts in Syria, we cannot believe that these numbers can have been correct. It is true that the amount of the new revenue was larger than the sum total of all that had been levied until then; but it is also to be taken into account, that Syria was one of the finest and richest countries in the world.