Roman command structure during First Mithridatic War
Roman command structure during First Mithridatic War refers to the chain of command of the forces sent east by the government of Rome to exercise the Mithridatic War mandate, requiring those forces to defeat Mithridates VI of Pontus, who had evoked the ire of the Senatus Populusque Romanus by slaughtering all the Romans his adherents could find on a single, pre-arranged day, an event now termed the Asiatic Vespers. Previously in Roman history the war and the command structure would have been straightforward: the Senate would declare war, and the mandate to carry it out would be assigned to one of the two consuls elected for the year, with both being assigned if necessary, and ex-consuls being available as generals with the rank of proconsul. For a small war the consul might give the task to an immediate subordinate, a praetor, or if the task was small enough, a legate.
Beginning in the times of the Mithridatic Wars, the mandates and the chains of command were complicated by a second, parallel series of conflicts, the Roman civil wars. The tension between the Patricians and the Plebeians had produced a system of two parties: the Populares and the Optimates. The government itself was bicameral. The Senate was a body of officials appointed from the senatorial class. Its purpose was to issue decrees, which were to be carried out by the two consuls, who were elected magistrates. Elections were performed and laws were passed by the Roman assemblies, of which there were different types. They were considered to be the , "people", in the formula SPQR. The people were considered to be represented in particular by another class of elected magistrate, the Tribunes, who could intercede in the decrees of the Senate.
Gradually the opposition developed that would lead to the end of the Republic. The tribunes were primarily populares. They relied for their authority on the laws of the assemblies. The consuls and praetors were primarily optimates. They took their authority from the Senate. Until the times of the Mithridatic Wars, the system seems to have been operative, supported by the custom of making an informal agreement, English "deal," featuring a quid pro quo, "something for something," for each side. Livy's basic word for this arrangement is a verb, convenire, "come together". Appian explains in Greek that in the period of the civil wars, this arrangement ceased to be effective: the magistrates attacked each other with all the resources at their command.
Thus Sulla's forces going east in 87 BC to fight the Mithridatic war were faced with additional problems. The government on which they should have been able to rely for support was paralyzed by civil conflict of magistrate against magistrate. It was not always clear who was subordinate to whom and what their mandates were. Some Greek inscriptions found by archaeologists suggest a more precise view of the chain of command than can be gleaned from the historians. However the information from inscriptions is limited. For instance, in most cases the dates of the inscriptions are not known exactly. Only tentative conclusions can be drawn from them.
Format of the inscriptions
Management of the Greek inscriptions
Knowledge of ancient Greek inscriptions has been growing in parallel to archaeological data since the beginning of the 19th century. The first efforts at recapturing them were drawings included with sketches of the monuments on which they occur, As the inscriptions themselves became targets for collection and an art of assembling fragments grew the rubbing became the preferred form of reproduction and publication. It was for the most part supplanted by just copying the letters as they appear. At the same time a need was recognized to catalog the many thousands of inscriptions that began to be reconstructed and collected primarily by museums of various agencies public and private.IG and SEG
Now inscriptional material is a prime target of any excavation. The inscriptions have been numbered and systematized by location and type. The standard reference in which they have been published is by international convention named Inscriptiones Graecae, abbreviated in citations by IG or IG2 for the second edition. There are many volumes by different scholars for different regions. Some are available by downloading from the Internet; others are new or are being republished and are under Copyright Law. In a more recent development, inscriptions from these volumes are being translated by various agencies and are available online.There have been several other attempts to develop reference works of Greek inscriptions, sometimes by medium, such as on vases, or on clay tablets, and sometimes by type, such as decrees or on monuments. Each reference has its abbreviation, organization, and numbering system. A common term in use is "supplement," as in Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, which publishes newly discovered inscriptions. Many inscriptions are published in different systems and thus might be referenced in literature under different numbers. In that case there is usually a Concordance correlating inscriptions numbers in one system with numbers in another.
Honorific inscriptions of the Mithridatic War
The inscriptions selected for this article are mainly monumental and honorific: they are the Tituli, or identifiers on the bases of statues erected by a local municipality in Greece to honor some Roman commander or governor. The times are generally the periods of the First and Second Mithridatic Wars. The Third Mithridatic War is later, more widespread, and brought about more fundamental changes. The main inscription under consideration is the one from Rhodes, considered first. Other inscriptions are brought in in support of it. A few inscriptions are coin legends.The inscriptions for the most part come from the relevant volume of the IG. These volumes typically include rubbings, which are then represented by capital letters, or majuscules, which in those times were the only graphemes available to the ancient Greeks. The small letters, or minuscules, were not invented until the Middle Ages; that is, an ancient Greek would not have been able to read the Greek so familiar to those who read it today.
Rubbings are generally represented in text by majuscules. Typically there are no spaces or other white space between words. The modern transliteration may be given instead, or in addition, with brackets around reconstructed or missing text. All text comes from Internet resources. Translations are also from the Internet. Minor variations between sources are to be expected.
Language of the inscriptions
The language portrays a mixture of Hellenic and Latin cultural elements, with Hellenic predominating. All modern classifications of Ancient Greek dialects recognize a general division into East Greek and West Greek, formally presented as that by Carl Darling Buck. In general, the West Greek pronunciation retains the originals of sounds that have changed in East Greek; for example, an original "a" instead of an Attic-Ionic "e."West Greek speakers extended through Central Greece, the Peloponnesus, Crete, Rhodes, a small region of the coast of Anatolia, and on the west southern Italy, including Sicily. At the beginning of the Hellenistic period, the center of dominance of the West Greek speakers was Macedon. After a long and hard-fought conflict Rome extended its power over them. Once defeated they tended to be docile and loyal to Rome. This was the culture on which Sulla was able to rely in the first two Mithridatic Wars.
East Greek was centered on the city of Athens, always the largest of Greece. It included the islands of the Aegean and the more northern coast of Anatolia. From a linguistic point of view, the language of Boeotia was East Greek also, but politically the Boeotians sided with the West Greeks against Athens, once its rival. Remembering the days of the Delian League Athens resented Roman rule, being quick to instigate a Greek revolt in favor of Mithridates.
It is true that in Roman times Attic-Ionic had become Koine Greek, a common language of the Eastern Mediterranean, which was to supplant the earlier dialects and become modern Greek. In the 1st century BC, however, the dialects were still spoken locally. They appear in the inscriptions. Thus the inscription at Rhodes was West Greek, or "Doric." The honorific monuments were erected by West Greek speakers, eager to assert loyalty to Rome.
The vocabulary is of mixed cultures. Sometimes the Greek word translates the Latin, such as tamias for quaestor. If no Greek equivalent exists, one is likely to be innovated, such as antitamias for proquaestor. The Greeks had no native promagistrates. A Latin word may be spelled with Greek letters, such as imperator, which also appears translated as stratagos.
Statue of an envoy to the Romans at Rhodes
Text of the inscription
This inscription is from the lower half of a statue-base found in a suburb of the city of Rhodes located on the northern tip of the island of Rhodes in a garden near the Turkish cemetery, just to the south of the mediaeval city. The latter did not then exist, but was the port of a larger Hellenistic city. It was the capital of the Rhodian Republic, which included holdings in Anatolia, notably Kaunos in Caria. As the republic was a friend and ally of Rome, it and Kaunos served as a refuge for Romans during the troubles of the First Mithridatic War. The port sheltered what was left of the fleet and served as a collection point and haven for the new fleet commanded by Lucullus.The inscription was published by IG in 1895 by Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen. Hiller explains that the rubbing was the work of Robert Koldeway, published in 1894. He accepts Mommen's dates of not before 82 BC, when Murena was made Commander of Asia, and not after 74 BC, when Lucullus was made Consul in Asia. The inscription was found in two pieces, Lapis A and Lapis B. Lapis A has only one comprehensible word.
The language is in a dialect of ancient Greek, Doric Greek, which is evident in the Greek spelling; for example, stratagos for Attic strategos. In this document a certain Dionysios son of Lysanias commends a Rhodian benefactor to the Gods after recounting various benefactions and public services performed by him. Apparently the Rhodian envoy of the monument was sent by the Rhodian free state a number of times as an emissary to the Romans, whom it supported and assisted in every way. The signature by the sculptor is one of the few known of his.
Commanders mentioned in the inscription
The recipients of these ambassadorial visits are five senior Roman commanders:- L. Cornelius L. f. Sulla, pro cos. and commander-in-chief
- L. Cornelius L. f. Lentulus, pro cos.
- L. Licinius L. f. Murena, imperator
- L. Licinius L. f. Lucullus, proquaestor
- A. Terentius A. f. Varro, legate
A second practice of ancient Rome adopted by modern militaries is supersession. If two officers are assigned the same command, the higher-ranking one assumes command, while the other must yield to his authority. For example, Sura was conducting operations under his own command in Central Greece. He was superseded by Sulla on notification by Lucullus. He then had to obey Sulla's legal command to report back to his Macedonian commander. Fimbria in Asia Minor was superseded the moment Sulla set foot in his command. A refusal to obey would be an act of civil war. The men in these cases had much more power than most soldiers today. Mutiny was more common than it is today. Fimbria's men refused to back him in civil war. Sulla at one point is said to have had to totally ignore the murder of an officer, pretending that it never happened.
The centuriones, the commanders of 100, were also key officers. They stood in a conspicuous place near their company in the line of battle. It was they who were in direct contact with the men, and who listened to their complaints, tallied their votes, and spoke for them in a mutiny. Most mutinies were settled by negotiation and agreement. Typically they involved the execution of the most vociferous rebel or rebels as scapegoats. The higher-ranking commanders, such as those listed in the inscription, ignored the centurions at their own risk. Usually they bought their loyalty with higher pay or a higher share of the booty. Sulla was known for his generosity, which bought him the loyalty of the entire army. To obtain the money for this price he took to plundering first the temples and then the expensive art objects of Greece and Asia Minor, a practice followed by all succeeding commanders, regardless of partisanship.
Sulla
is readily identifiable as the strategos, the "general" in charge, with the rank of proconsul. He had been elected consul for 88 BC and was assigned the Mithridatic War by lot, but his involvement in Sulla's first civil war that year prevented him from assuming command of the eastern front, and the next year he was not consul. He negotiated an arrangement with the consuls for 87 BC using the power acquired from his victory in the civil war. They would keep their heads and have Sulla's good will in exchange for their sending him to the east as proconsul still in possession of the mandate. That course required him to command a province, which one of the sources says was Asia. All he had to do to be installed as governor was to take it back from Mithridates.Lentulus
The next officer in the list, Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, is termed a proconsul as well. However, not only does he not appear in the historians as a Proconsul, he does not appear there at all, despite the numerous high-ranking magistrates from his family in that century. Furthermore, he is not on the List of Roman consuls. Thus, not having been consul, he could not normally be appointed to be a proconsul.There was such a person: the earliest studies of the inscription suggest that he was the same as the Lucius Lentulus, a praetor at Rome, to whom Metellus complained of erasures in the roll of citizens in the events leading up to the civil war of 88 BC, as reported by Cicero. Appeals of this sort were processed by the Urban Praetor, who was also required to remain in range of the city. Thus as praetor this Lentulus could not have gone with Sulla. If he did, he must have been promoted out of the job.
In fact there was an exception to the rule that proconsuls must be ex-consuls, which was exercised in the event that legitimate ex-consuls could not be found, as was the case more frequently in the search for officers qualified to be provincial governors. This case was rediscovered by Adrianus Turnebus at the height of Renaissance scholarship in a study of Cicero's "Concerning the Laws". He distinguishes between proconsul, the name of a magistracy, and the phrase pro consule, "acting as proconsul", as in ex praetura pro consule as opposed to ex consulatu. The Rhodians may not have known the difference, or Sulla did not choose to make it known.
Dessau's sources speculate that he was nominally the governor of Cilicia, but none of these governorships were ever occupied. Subsequently, Lentulus vanishes from history, perhaps, Dessau's sources suggest, by death. In the current war he would have been the equivalent of a lieutenant general, sitting with Sulla in the early morning in the headquarters to give the orders of the day to the legionary officers as they reported to receive them. He was also available to lead operations at Sulla's direction.
Murena
was the father of a son by the same name also involved in the Civil and Mithridatic Wars. Unlike Lentulus, Murena is an imperator, but not a proconsul, not even ex praetura. Moreover, he cannot be found on the list of consuls, even though his son can. The idea that he was some sort of praetor at Rome, to become pro consule ex praetura is thus unsubstantiated by any evidence.The rise of Murena
The first history hears of Murena is his behavior before the walls of Athens. Archelaus, reinforced from the sea, sallies out in a surprise attack on Murena's men, who start to retreat precipitously. Murena rallies them and also another legion returning from a wood-cutting expedition. These latter were in disgrace for cowardice. Standing them all against Archelaus, Murena wins the day. Sulla removes the stigma. This was the first indication that Murena was going to be preferred for promotion.His next appearance is in the Battle of Chaeronea, as related by Plutarch in Sulla. Intent on maneuvering, Sulla places him in command of somewhat more than a legion used for detached duty. He was to guard against any sudden moves by Archelaus. His rank is not stated, but the duties are those of a legate. He has won Sulla's confidence, as he is later left as provincial governor of Asia Minor when Sulla returns to Italy at the end of the First Mithridatic War in the Spring of 83 BC. It was a promotion Sulla would regret when Murena plunged him into the Second Mithridatic War despite orders to the contrary.
Murena's rank just before the promotion was legate, not a senior officer: approximately a colonel, if centurions, or company commanders, were captains and military tribunes were majors. It can be seen that Sulla assigned his legate as commander of the province. There is some evidence that a promotion went with this assignment: he was honored with a triumph in 81 BC as a propraetor. A Greek source says that the Senate "sent him out" as hegemon. Whether the contradiction means that he had to return with Sulla in order to receive the command from the Senate, or simply be authorized by the Senate, is not known. He could not have been an honored guest of the Rhodian people before this time, which was 83 BC.
Murena as commander of the east
The Senatorial version may indicate a more sinister collaboration between themselves and Murena against Sulla. Marius had come back from Africa, and in Sulla's absence, he dominated the political landscape, proscribing all Sulla's friends, which is the main reason, say the main sources, why Sulla was anxious to wind down the war and return to Rome. Sulla was hardly gone before Murena mobilized the Romans in his province to attack Mithridates, starting the Second Mithridatic War. Simultaneously with his campaign, the Senate refused to ratify Sulla's agreement.The issue seems to have been bitter feelings over the Asiatic Vespers; the Romans were intent on exacting reparations. Sulla was too lenient for their tastes. They began to plunder Asia Minor. Mithridates wrote to Sulla and the Senate and then withdrew to wait for an answer, of which he had some hope. Sulla had left Lucullus behind, proquaestor again, but now Murena's proquaestor. He found himself in the middle. He was still friends with Mithridates. Although technically working for Murena, he took a sort of vacation, spending his time in philosophy, and in acquiring books and paintings to be sent back to Rome.
An emissary was sent from Sulla to Murena requesting that he cease and desist, which he ignored. Mithridates therefore defended his realm. This time he had the measure of the Romans. After a number of contests Murena was forced to retreat to Phrygia. Meanwhile, Marius forced Sulla's hand, trying to kill Sulla and all his adherents. Sulla found it necessary to engage in another civil war, which he won at the Battle of the Colline Gate, making himself dictator. Marius had died earlier. A new deal was struck with Mithridates, which the Senate still did not ratify.
Murena's rescue
Sulla moved to rescue his former subordinate: he sent Aulus Gabinius, then a young officer, to arrest Murena and bring him back to Rome. There Murena received Sulla's traditional clemency, being the only other officer besides Sulla to claim a triumph as a commander in a victorious war. The twin triumphs of 81 BC may well have been the occasion of the various honorific statues.Mithridates had a new deal, but it was too late. He began to mobilize for an all-out final offensive. Sulla never saw it, as he died in 78. Murena vanished from history, but the family continued in politics with no dislocation. Lucullus inherited the command in Asia. Murena's son went to work for him.
Lucullus
was an important supporter of Sulla, meriting his own article in Plutarch, as well as mention in Plutarch's Sulla, and Appian's Mithridatic Wars. Only some summary annals fail to mention him at all. Even though he receives premier attention from the historians, they fail, somehow, to state explicitly what his position in the Roman army was. For that there are several inscriptions.Lucullus as quaestor and proquaestor
His rank in the First and Second Mithridatic Wars, as can be seen in the inscription on the base of the statue of an envoy to the Romans at Rhodes quoted above, was that of Proquaestor, which takes its meaning from Quaestor. just as Proconsul comes from Consul. Officers can only be Consuls and Quaestors for the year at Rome by election. At subsequent times and other places they are Proconsuls and Proquaestors, unless elected again; however, a waiting interim was required, to avoid just such a tenure.If Lucullus was Proquaestor for Proconsul Sulla out of Rome, then the most obvious explanation is that he was Quaestor for Consul Sulla at Rome in 88 BC. By law, the elections for supreme magistrates returned two two-man teams of Consul and Quaestor. The latter term had already been in use at Rome for other purposes. Etymologically it means "he who inquires",. A quaestor was "he who inquires after ways and means", which at Rome meant primarily treasurer, and out of Rome, Supply Officer. He commanded, for example, the quaestorium, or warehouse, of a camp. The Senate would decide what needed to be done, and allocate specific mandates to the Consuls. The Consuls would look to the Quaestors for ways and means.
In war the Consuls became the joint heads of the armed forces in the field. Wherever they went they took command by supersession. As there were only two Consuls, nowhere near enough to assume all the mandates, the Senate was allowed to appoint Proconsuls as field commanders, theoretically under the ultimate command of the current Consuls. In Roman power politics, this work-around was a weak point, especially under Sulla. The Promagistrates using their influence might be able to force some degree of autonomy from the magistrates, especially if they were of a different political party. Family connection was another basis of power.
The team of Sulla and Lucullus on campaign was brokered by Sulla in a deal with the Consuls. In such a deal it is unlikely that Sulla would choose anyone but his old teammate, Quaestor Lucullus, now to be Proquaestor. He would certainly not choose one of the current Quaestors, who would be working for the current Consuls, not for him, nor would he have any power at all to install his own Quaestor. It is possible that Lucullus was a Proquaestor from the Social War, but then why would Sulla pass over his Quaestor in favor of someone else's former Quaestor? Whatever the facts were, they were so taken for granted that the historians did not even think they should mention it.
There is, however, one exception to the silence of the historians: one mention of a Quaestor, which can hardly be anyone else but Lucullus. It occurs in the context of Sulla's first civil war. Roman society from the outset was divided into tribes, which grew from a few at Rome during foundation to 35 in the 1st century BC in all Italy, excluding the Italian allies, which were independent states. Their loss of the Social War left them in uncertain status. If they were to be included as full citizens in the Roman state they needed to be organized into tribes, as all voting for office was done by the Tribal Assembly at Rome, composed of representatives from each tribe.
The optimates and the populares collaborated to win the Social War, but after it their platforms on the disposition of the conquered Italian states differed sharply. The populares would incorporate them into the existing tribes. However, these new assembleymen, who would be populares, would influence voting in favor of that party. The optimates would avoid this event by grouping the new citizens into a definite number of tribes, which could be defeated as a block in the assembly.
In 90 and 89, the last days of the Social War, the Romans were deciding the fates of the defeated Italic states. The populares were winning the issue of the tribes. The Lex Plautia Papiria and its predecessor, the Lex Julia, provided for the acceptance of some Italic individuals and communities into the tribal structure. They were already making a difference. A proposed measure to "distribute the new citizens among all thirty-five tribes" was vetoed by the optimates. This was to be their last victory in the assembly.
Plutarch says:
Marius at that time was too old for the military. His corpulent figure made a spectacle as he tried to exercise with the young soldiers on Campus Martius. Plutarch expresses an inability to understand his motivations.
However, the proposal passed the Assembly, which had the right to pass any law it pleased, but the law was not necessarily Constitutional; that is, consistent with the traditional system of laws and institutions. There was no Supreme Court to strike it down. In peacetime a lawyer, such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, would have had time to test the law in court. In this case Marius sent Tribunes immediately to relieve Sulla of his command at Nola. Based on an ordinance of the Assembly, he was taking it on himself to bypass the Senate, its decrees, and its acting Consuls, the S part of the SPQR formula. Sulla, moreover, had no recourse except himself as Consul.
Sulla called an assembly of his men, and explained the situation, but he was shouted down by calls for a march on Rome, which would amount to civil war. All six legions voted for it, except the general staff, who promptly left the camp for Rome, with one exception: one quaestor who joined the movement. He is most likely to have been Sulla's quaestor, as there were only two quaestors. There would have been considerable bonding from the event, so that if he were not Lucullus, history would have to assume that after 88 Sulla dumped his closest friend and ally either in favor of an unknown proquaestor, and that the latter was dumped also, or in favor of one of the quaestors of 87 BC, one of whom must then have been Lucullus, who would have had to have deserted his elected consul.
Lucullus as consul and proconsul
According to Cicero, Lucullus inherited the governance of Asia after the departure of Murena. He must have been proquaestor pro praetore, at least informally; however, the Senate did not confirm that rank, but made him an aedile, a beginning rank. Cicero does not state their reasoning, but the position was only temporary. Sulla and Murena were being given a twin triumph at Rome. Asia was de facto at peace. No one made an issue over the fact that the Senate had still not ratified the peace. They had other uses for Lucullus. Presumably recalling him from Asia, they elected him praetor of Africa. After a few years of that he ran for consul and won for the year 74 BC with Marcus Aurelius Cotta. His old friend and mentor, Sulla, had died in 78 after refusing to continue with the dictatorship despite popular urging to do so. He knew that he was seriously ill.The year after Lucullus left office, troubles arose again in Asia. The king of Bithynia, Mithridates' rival, had died and left his kingdom to the Romans. The Senate accepted the offer. Mithridates judged that this was the right moment for the uprising and counterattack he had been planning secretly for years. After war broke out anew the Senate sent Lucullus, a new proconsul, to the east with a renewed mandate for war, the Third Mithridatic War, and a fresh army.
Acquiring a new fleet in Asia he was victorious at sea and on land, driving Mithridates' forces before him wherever he went. Without advice, Mithridates was still a bad general. At a final debacle he and his whole army stampeded out of their camp, flattening its defenses, on hearing a rumor of a minor Roman victory. They escaped massacre by pursuing Roman troops when the Romans stopped to plunder the rich contents of their camp. Mithridates escaped to Armenia, where he had in-laws among the royals. Lucullus captured Pontus. Overconfident, he split his forces, leaving some to guard Pontus, and taking the rest into Armenia.
Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, ridiculed Mithridates as general. He said of the Romans "If they are here as ambassadors, they are too many; if as enemies, altogether too few." He was soon routed by Lucullus, who gave his camp to his own men for plundering. Now that Tigranes was taking the Romans more seriously, he began to cooperate with his in-law and colleague, to the detriment of Lucullus. It was at this time that Mithridates wrote in Iranian to the countrymen of his ancestors, the Parthians, asking for military assistance. They were remnant kingdoms of Alexander's Empire. He had kept the same satrapies and in many cases the same satraps. After his death they restructured into a new Iranian empire. Mithridates was rebuffed, yet the Parthians sent advisors and stationed bowmen on the border. Encountering showers of arrows later, Pompey decided to be content with Anatolia and Syria.
Whether because advised by the Parthians, or because forced to rely on their own ingenuity, the two kings devised a winning plan. Tigranes led Lucullus on into the mountains of Armenia. The weather was too adverse for a successful campaign. The men sensed that something was wrong and it was only with difficulty that he could force them to go on. Mithridates returned to Pontus through the passes and fell on the unsuspecting Romans there. He effected a massacre of 7000 men, penned into a muddy ditch. The high ratios of centurions and tribunes among the slain indicate that the men ultimately deserted their officers on the field. Mithridates then fortified Armenia Minor as a redoubt. Badly wounded himself, he needed time to recover.
The fall of Lucullus
When he heard, Lucullus hastened back to Pontus, sending word that he was coming, but it was too late. The Roman people had also heard. A scandal ensued. The Senate sent envoys to inform Lucullus that he was relieved of duty, and envoys to the army to inform them that they were to disband immediatey. The main reason given was that the war had gone on too long. Plutarch recounts some of the details : Lucullus went through the camp "entreating his soldiers man by man, going about from tent to tent in humility and tears, and actually taking some of the men by the hand in supplication." His appeal was to honor and duty. The men answered for the most part by throwing their empty purses before him. He had enrichened himself, they said, neglecting to remunerate them. He was being punished for his clemency in collecting the reparations and for his nobility in restraining the men from sacking Anatolian communities. Sulla used to distribute this type of income to the men.It was not just Lucullus who was in disgrace. The success of the military depended to a large extent on unit pride. Each unit had its own insignia. The standards-bearer was a position of honor, and whoever held it was paid more. Tradition and reputation were everything to the standing of the unit among the other units. If a unit was consistently mutinous or had a poor performance in battle it was put on notice with a "stigma," amounting to a poor rating. It did not improve it was dissolved and the men were released from service on less than honorable terms, foregoing all benefits, as the Senate would not employ a unit with a tradition of mutiny and dishonor.
The men whom Lucullus begged were those taken away from Fimbria by Sulla, now branded "Fimbria's men," who had also murdered their previous commander. They were only being asked to hold the forts until Lucullus' successor arrived. Dismissed troops had only one further chance of honor, that another commander would allow them to re-enlist and re-employ them in other units. The price for the opportunity was sometimes high; for example, decimation, the execution of every 10th man. The other units managed to persuade Fimbria's men to stay for the summer, but they knew they would not be re-employed, and would not follow military discipline. While Sulla waited, Mithridates and Tigranes re-occupied Anatolia and Syria. They did not attack the Romans further. The Romans at least knew that a larger army was on its way.
Varro
The identity problem
Aulus Terentius Varro is termed a presbeutes in the inscription, which is confusing, since the verbal form of the word is used in Lapis A to mean "envoy." Varro is not the envoy, some unknown person is. If Varro is to be interpreted as envoy, then the inscription commemorates an envoy to an envoy, a sort of circle of mutual recognition not consistent with communications to the other four persons, who were commanders. Governments would be sending envoys to governments, not to their envoys.Traditionally translators therefore resort to the second major meaning of the word as an agent of some sort. Which was it? In the inscription he is an honored guest and benefactor, along with the other commanders, implying that he, too, was a commander, and in the capacity was also presbeutes. A rank of presbeutes acting as commander is implied. Translators since the late 19th century predominantly interpret presbeutes as legatus, a Roman rank, on the border between higher officer and legion-level officer. As in the above translation, Varro becomes "a legatus of the Romans" in some sort of capacity as acting commander.
The "envoy" interpretation is still credible to some, such as J.S. Arkenberg, who refers to "Aulus Terentius Auli filius Varro, ambassador of the Romans, guest of the state, and benefactor of the people." Attempts to discover more about the real person encounter the same problems as for most of the magistrates of the times: the Terentii Varrones family, as well as most of the others, gave all their males the same name, rarely changing the praenomen, or first name. Typically the historians do not use it anyway. Terentius Varro could be any of a number of people. There are many mentions of Varrones but no continuous historical narrative, such as for Sulla or Lucullus. The historical problem is to attribute all the mentions to one or more real persons.
The historian, Appian, does clarify the meaning of presbeutes as the Roman rank, but not for this Varro, rather for another, over a decade later, in the Third Mithridatic War. The circumstances in between are roughly as follows.
The rise of Pompey
brought himself to Sulla's attention at the beginning of Sulla's second civil war when, as a 23-year old civilian, without any authority whatever, he raised three legions in Picenum and marched them to the relief of Sulla in southern Italy. Such was the magnetism of his personality that he compelled the cooperation of all military officers and magistrates required to perform that feat, passing edicts without any right to do so, setting up drafts in each city of the province, selecting the legionary officers himself, and raising the money to arm, equip, and supply them. He regarded that as a superior course of action to just showing up as a refugee like all the rest.This manifest genius was rewarded instantly by Sulla, who, anxious for his safety, had taken a force out to meet him, only to find the three legions secure and marching in good order. Pompey dismounted and saluted Sulla as commander. Sulla dismounted and saluted him as commander, proferring the position on the spot. From then on Pompey was the only officer for whom Sulla would rise on his entry into a room.
Without any rank at all he held successive positions of command under Sulla. A resemblance to Alexander the Great was often noted. Sulla attempted to compensate for his lack of legitimate rank by giving him connection. Pompey would divorce his wife and Sulla's step-daughter would divorce her husband so that she and Pompey could marry. She died shortly after in childbirth, but the connection was cemented. As long as Sulla was dictator, Pompey would not be questioned. That was only a few years, as it turned out. Pompey's license and aggression were more than Sulla could stand. They were not speaking when Sulla died. Nevertheless, Pompey insured that the now unpopular Sulla received a princely funeral.
After the death of Sulla the disposition of Pompey by the Senate was a question mark. They could not assign him to any position of which he was worthy because he had not followed the Cursus Honorum and was too young for any of them. He could not join Lucullus, as he had been disinherited by Sulla and was not on good terms with Sulla's best friend, either. He would not be neglected. He was an optimate, a powerful friend of the Senate in his own right, and was still in command of the three legions Sulla had given to him. The Senate asked him to disband them. He refused. As might be expected of a military genius, he found his own way out of the impasse. What he needed was time and experience.
Pompey negotiated a deal with the Senate by which he would disband his army at Rome if the Senate would send him as co-commander with proconsular powers to share the command of the Roman forces in Spain with another supporter of Sulla with whom he felt he could get along better, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius. The latter was a legitimate proconsul, having been one of the consuls with whom Sulla had made a deal by which he retained the Mithridatic mandate and was able to go east to carry it out. Metellus was commanding a force in Africa when the populares took over Rome in the absence of Sulla. He never relinquished his command though relieved but hid a few legions in Liguria beyond the reach of the populares, claiming that he was still in command until he relinquished it in Rome. When Sulla landed in Italy, he hastened southward with his legions in support.
When Sulla became dictator he sent Metellus to Spain to quell a revolt of the Lusitanians there. When the optimates assumed control the populares all officially lost their commands. The provincial officers either kept their commands illegally or became mercenaries. The Lusitanians had hired Quintus Sertorius away from command of Roman troops in Africa to lead them as a mercenary with proconsular powers. He staged a long guerilla war in the mountains of Spain and Portugal against Metellus, and then against Metellus and Pompey. Pompey was there for years. The war seemed unwinnable. Metellus abandoned it finally to assume a mandate against the Gauls, leaving Pompey as supreme commander. The rebels thought they saw their chance. As Sertorius refused to face the Romans in the lowlands, they assassinated him in 72 BC.
Apparently they had no experience with the use of heavy infantry in open ground, which Sertorius must have known, as he assiduously avoided it. After a number of disasters against Pompey in the lowlands they were forced to surrender. Pompey and Metellus returned to Rome to celebrate twin triumphs in 71. Being at last of age to serve as consul, Pompey ran and won in 70, becoming qualified to be a legal proconsul the next year. Nothing much happened in 70. The next few years would test his skills to the maximum, bringing him forward as the new leader of Roman politics with a Senate-voted title of "the Great."
Pirates, bandits, privateers
Lucullus was relieved of command in 67 BC with no immediate replacement. He remained non-operational in the camps, persuading such troops as would volunteer to stay on in the hope of future employment, to maintain the minimum defense. Mithridates carefully avoided him. It was the Senate's duty to pass on the mandate for war to someone else. They were prevented from doing so by another crisis of national security.Settlements along the entire coastline of Greece and Italy were being attacked, plundered, and burned by troops landing from flotillas. Appian, their main historian, calls them peiratai, "marauders." He reports that they were considered leistoi, "bandits." They appeared to be mainly interested in plunder, including kidnapping and holding for ransom. They began to strike close to Rome. Two praetors with their insignia were taken in a highway ambush.
According to the stories handed down to Appian, the Roman people were not sure of who the attackers were or why they were attacking. The most common belief is that the marauders were bandits from Cilicia, which had a certain reputation for marine banditry:
This paradoxical statement suggests that the Cilician people, who resided in a few handfuls of villages with an urban center or two imposed by external cultures on the westernmost corner of the Turquoise Coast, a rugged terrain formed by mountains descending to the sea, had through some sort of boldness so multiplied in population and military power that they could now dominate thousands of miles of coastline. If this implication were true, they would not need Mithridates or Tigranes, to assume power over the whole Mediterranean.
This view is too contradictory even for Plutarch, who proposes it. He therefore further hypothesizes that the Cilician pirates were joined by “men whose wealth gave them power, and whose lineage was illustrious, and who laid claim to superior intelligence... feeling that the occupation brought them a certain reputation and distinction.” We are to assume, then, that the main motive was not plunder to acquire wealth after all, since they already had it, but was notoriety. Under the influence of this equally incredible motivation they abandoned all thought of country and duty to seize control “over the whole of our Mediterranean Sea, making it unnavigable and closed to all commerce.” They had more than a thousand ships and captured 400 cities. With a comparable force Sulla had invaded and conquered Italy.
Appian presents perhaps the clearest view of the phenomenon of the pirates, or at least a view that is consistent with the other history of the times. The pirates were neither Cilician nor plunderers. They were the naval branch of Mithridates’ armed forces, which sometimes operated quasi-autonomously as Privateers, but less frequently as individuals. They did not consider themselves illegal. They claimed to be collecting the spoils of war. Under a blanket franchise they attacked in squadrons, each consisting of a certain number of ships from an allied nation. They played elaborate charades to conceal their true identity from their victims, hence the quasi-banditry, the ostentatious show of wealth, and the mock respect for Roman citizens, a status to which the victims would ultimately appeal, but this appeal would identify them as the target. The pirates would “release” them. “Cilician” was a ready-made disguise. Appian says:
Appian explains elsewhere that he is covering the topic of the pirates in one place because it is not otherwise covered, which is not strictly true. The true topic covered is the war for control of the seas. The Mithridatic fleet after the disgrace of Lucullus has accomplished all the goals of maritime supremacy: marines are able to strike where and when they please, terrorizing the coastline, and use of the waters for trade, transport, and communications has been denied to the Romans. Appian's remarks on the topic are not confined to a few chapters. Along with the history of land warfare he has been developing a history of naval operations as well.
The Roman fleet
Rome was initially a land power only. If it needed troop transports or warships it rented the services of its allies. The seas were ruled by Etruscan, Greek and Carthaginian fleets. Facing them in a major way for the first time, the Romans found they needed their own fleets.The first official Roman navy
The Roman navy; that is, an official military arm of the SPQR, is believed to have begun in 311 BC with the creation of a pair of elected magistrates, the duumviri navales, “the two naval officers,” whose task was “to have charge of equipping and refitting the fleet.” They were added to the government by the Plebeian Council, one of the Roman Assemblies. Acting on a complaint of the consuls of that year that the Roman army contained too many unqualified officers appointed by Senators through a political spoils system, they passed two laws, which were ratified also by the Senate.The lex Atilia Marcia, proposed by two Tribunes of the People, Lucius Atilius and Gaius Marcius, created a professional corps of legionary-level officers by ruling that of the 24 Military tribunes in the standing army of four legions, 16 must be elected. Being higher than a company commander and lower than a legion commander they were on the legate's staff for any work that might come up, including line commands of battalions or commands of speciality units, such as engineers.
One of the speciality units, the fleet was detached from the army altogether according to a second law proposed by Marcus Decius, another Tribune of the People The law is therefore the Decian Law. The duumviri were minor civilian magistrates. They had no military rank per se. They might also be in the military with different ranks. In this phase of naval history, however, the naval occupations were not part of the army. In Livy's terminology, sailors were not milites, they were socii navales, “naval associates.” Who was considered to associate with whom is not clear. The captain of a ship was its magister, “master.” More of a connection to the upper magistrates is made with an admiral, or commander of more than one ship, the praefectus classis. This prefect is not the military rank. It is a command position. Livy's Summary for Book XII mentions a duumvir who was defeated and killed by the Tarentines in 282 BC while acting as praefectus classis; that is, commander of the squadron.
New strategies for war on the high seas
The small Roman navy remained an ineffective arm until the 5th year of the First Punic War The Carthaginians had taken control of Sicily. The Romans had determined to recapture it but they could not get across the Strait of Messina without being rammed and sunk by the large and experienced Carthaginian fleet, which included the latest ships. A fortuitous set of circumstances led the Romans to build a new fleet. It had major innovations, which enabled them not only to destroy the Carthaginian fleet and take Carthage but to become the only significant naval power in the Mediterranean, so much so that they called it mare nostrum, “our sea.” The innovations were the grappling hook, the boarding ramp, and the Marine Corps.The consuls for the year 260 BC, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina and Gaius Duilius were assigned the First Punic War; specifically, the invasion of Sicily. They both were to be imperatores, Duilius of the land forces, Scipio of the naval forces. Scipio at first borrowed the naval services of the Greek allies in southern Italy. The loan would have included sailors, as the Romans had but few of those. As they started across in convoy formation, the warships protecting the transports, the Carthaginians attacked and drove them back. One aggressive Carthaginian ship ran aground and was taken intact.
Someone among the Romans had the idea of using the captured ship as a model in an accelerated shipbuilding program. His identity did not survive, but the plan could not have been carried out without the approval and support of the consuls. The construction became an incident of note in Roman history. Pliny the Elder reports that the time from the cutting of the trees to the launching of the fleet was 60 days. In that same time rowers were trained on mock benches. Rowing was a skill requiring close coordination between the master, the steersman, the coxwain, stationed amidships, and the rowers, who must learn a repertoire of signals given by the coxwain. At the end of 60 days Scipio found himself admiral of a fleet of 160 new ships manned by newly trained oarsmen. His position was strategos, Latin imperator, the same as for a land general. The ship captains were still nauarchoi, “ship-masters.”
Scipio went ahead to Messina with 17 ships. A deputation arrived from Lipari offering to change sides from Carthaginian to Roman. Arriving in its harbor first with his 17 ships Scipio was subsequently blockaded by a Carthaginian squadron of 20 ships commanded by Boodes, sent by Hannibal Gisco, who demanded Roman surrender. The Roman sailors escaped by swimming ashore. Scipio remained for unknown reasons and was taken prisoner, for which the Romans named him asina, “jackass.” He was not otherwise harmed. Overconfident, Hannibal sailed north with 50 ships hoping to surprise the main Roman fleet, which he now counted as an easy mark. Encountering them off the “Italian headland” he was driven off with loss of most of his ships.
News of the defeat at Lipari was a catalyst for the Romans. Experience with their new fleet was teaching them that they had not managed to capture an example of the latest, most maneuverable warship after all. The one they did capture had run aground. The men complained that “their ships were ill-built and slow in their movements.” According to the law, they were required to send for the other consul, but before they did so, “someone” suggested that they fit the ships with grappling hooks and boarding ramps so that ship-borne soldiers could board enemy ships. The sailors could not be boarders as they had to row. The bigger Carthaginian ships, which these were, were decked, which offered a place for soldiers to wait.
Duilius was sent for. His organization of the ship-board soldiers is generally considered the origin of the Marine Corps, which is not to imply that before him no soldiers ever boarded an enemy ship. He created an organization to do so. These became known as classiarii, “ of the classis.” Their initial victories solidified their fighting reputation, assuring their organizational perpetuity. Some of the emperors later formed regiments of marines to fight on land. There has been no cultural break in the employment of marines since then.
Duilius, reports Polybius, left his land army in command of the chiliarchoi, a rank between the company commander and the legion commander. The only Roman officer that fits is the military tribune, one rank below the legion commander, a legate. This delegation is unusual. Some legates should have been left behind to command the legions left behind.
If the military tribunes were acting legion commanders, then Duilius must have had the legates with him; in fact, they must have commanded the milites Duilius brought with him to serve as classiarii, which were kept separate from the ship-handlers, or socii navales. If one century could fit on one ship, the remaining ships would require 143 centuries, which, in the manipular system in effect 315-107 BC, would amount to 11440 marines of an average of 80 men per ship/century, or two legions. He took about half his standing army of 4 legions to serve as marines. He also would have taken his staff of legates for delegation of command.
A Roman attack now was staged something like this. Their strategy was to close with the enemy immediately under any terms, with little or no maneuvering. At close range a shower of fereae manus, “iron hands,” went out from marine ballistae, grappling the object ship. A 36-foot by 4-foot railed ramp on a swivel swung out perpendicular to the rail. The last 12 feet were bent up vertically with a spike projecting from the bottom, giving the appearance of a “crow” about to peck. When in position the crow pecked, dropping the end of the bridge onto the enemy superstructure. A point of four men in teams of two ran forward to secure the end of the bridge. The entire company ran over it concentrating on the enemy deck before the enemy crew could reach the point. Little resistance could be offered. The captive ship was manned by its former crew, now under Roman direction. The technique was broadened to the assault of cities with a sea wall, the ramp being dropped onto the wall, and to enemy dock facilities.
Allowing for a suitable time to install the new inventions and embark the marines, the Romans proceeded to take the Straits of Messina with their entire force. The numbers on either side vary slightly depending on the author but it is clear that both sides were about evenly matched with about 120 ships. The first conflict was the Battle of Mylae, fought for control of Messina at Milazzo. It was a Roman victory. The Carthaginians attacked twice, losing 30 ships the first time and 20 the second before they perceived that new inventions were being employed against them and beat a retreat. The Romans won again at the Battle of Sulci off Sardinia in 258 BC, and again at the Battle of Tyndaris in 257 BC, etc. Hannibal Gisco was condemned for incompetence by the Carthaginian Senate after Sulci. They evidently still did not understand why the Carthaginians were no longer victorious.
Rome becomes a maritime power
The topic of Roman naval operations is now covered by an extensive bibliography attempting to answer such questions as, was the navy a distinct branch, were the marines a distinct branch, did the marines row, did the rowers fight, what were the chains of command, etc. There are no single, simple answers, except to say that they depend on the theatre of operations, the time period, the government, the state of technology, etc.One modern myth takes its being from the frontier river commands, due to the excavation of a number of river boats along the Rhine and Danube. The vessels were small open patrol boats rowed by milites. Care and deployment of the boats was part of the military education of the regular army. The boat-handling jobs were given by rotation to all the soldiers. When not in use, the boats were stored in sheds in a fortified adjunct of the main base. The boat-handlers were called classiarii even though the boats were not a classis, the handlers were not in the navy or marine corps, and they did no fighting in or from the boats, as one cannot fight and row at the same time. Rivers were used for transport of regular troops, supplies, and communication. One cannot conclude generally that because milites handled river boats on the frontier and were called classiarii, the Roman navy was an adjunct to the army.
The development of the deep-water navy suggests that at their lower levels the navy, army, and marine corps must have been distinct organizations. Ship-masters, navigators, and supporting officers were highly skilled professionals much in demand. Navigation depended mainly on personal knowledge of the coastline, without which the ships were sure to become lost and go aground. Lucullus asking ships from Egypt was also asking for the services of their skilled crews. Those were denied, as the Pharaoh had already sent 300 crews to Mithridates to man new ships. Sailors were not going to be asked to abandon their ships to man some battle line ashore, nor could they be used to board enemy vessels leaving their own vessels to the wind and waves. If marines were to be available to heavy warships they must be stationed at naval bases. It is unthinkable that soldiers would be pulled out of a line of battle to march for days to a naval base to be trained ad hoc as rowers for the navy or to become marines. The fleet would have left port long before. Aboard a ship, the centurion of marines did not take orders from the ship's master or vice versa. Among the magistrates elected to the higher ranks no such distinctions were recognized. A consul or proconsul or any of his staff could command either legions or ships, or both as required. Legates might be assigned army groups or ship squadrons.
The Romans retained their new Command of the sea throughout most of the First Punic War until the Carthaginian navy found that it could not continue its bid for control of Sicily. The issue came to a final resolution in the Battle of the Aegates Islands in 241 BC. Previously at the Battle of Drepana in 249 BC the Romans had lost one fleet due to errors in strategy and a second in a storm. The Carthaginians thus regained control of the sea for a few years.
The treasury being depleted, wealthy Romans banded together to finance construction of another fleet, this time on the model of a Rhodian quinquereme, a heavy battleship, but lighter and more maneuverable with the capability either to ram or to board. By this time Carthage was using marines also. A fleet was sent to Drepana with supplies. The plan was to offload the supplies, embark marines, and attack the Romans. They never reached Drepana. The Roman fleet, specially lightened, attacked them first in the Aegates Islands, captured most of the ships, and sank the rest. Peace was granted to Carthage in exchange for their interest in Sicily and for severe reparations.
Carthage concentrated now on building a state in Mediterranean Spain, which ultimately collided with the Romans at Saguntum, the result being the Second Punic War, 218-201 BC. In it Carthage relied mainly on a land campaign beginning with an invasion of Italy over the Alps by Hannibal. Despite numerous defeats Rome was strong enough to endure and to bring forth the men who would destroy Carthage. From first to last Hannibal encountered Scipio Africanus, who, a 17-year old lad accompanying his father, Publius Cornelius Scipio as an observer at the Battle of Ticinus, used his bodyguard of 30 cavalrymen to rescue his father from capture. A generation later, commander of Roman forces in Africa, he won the Battle of Zama in 202 BC against Hannibal and forced Carthage to a peace it could not endure, stripped of its military and subject to the rule of Rome.
Rome’s expansion into the eastern Mediterranean
Until this point Rome had been mere visitors and trading partners in the Aegean region. Now that Rome had pointed the way to maritime supremacy through amphibious warfare, the smaller coastal states found that they could become players in the international game of power simply by building a naval strike force and using it to plunder shipping and capture coastal cities. A frenzy of fleet-building took place. Skilled mariners were in great demand. Rome was forced to defend itself, which it did by building ad hoc fleets for the use of the magistrates assigned to specific conflicts. Naval facilities were always adjunct to commercial ports or military camps. There were not yet any permanent fleets. For example, the naval base at Misenum and its permanent fleet, the classis misenensis, date to approximately 23 BC in the reign of Augustus Thus when Pliny was its commander he was a specifically naval officer appointed by the emperor, not a magistrate.Securing the Adriatic
Conflict and conquest of the east began in the decade after the First Punic War with the First Illyrian War, 229-228 BC. Illyria was not a unified state. It was rather a region of small independent kingdoms distinguished by language as well as by politics. The major language or language group was spoken by tribes in “Illyria Proper” in the west Balkans, now speaking unrelated Albanian and Slavic languages. No descendant of the Illyrian languages remain. The populations were overrun in the Middle Ages.Livy reports that about the year 302 BC a fleet of Greek marauders under Cleonymus of Sparta kept to the center of the Adriatic on their way north to raid the Veneti, in order to avoid the piracy of the Illyrians, Liburnians, and Istrians, suggesting that the feared piracy was confined to the coasts of the Balkans. Agron having succeeded in 250 BC to the kingship of the Ardiaei, a coastal tribal state of the Illyrians, after 240 built a new fleet with Roman modifications. The lembus was a light monoreme in which the masts and rigging had been replaced by a deck for marines, ideal for amphibious assault, but inadequate in deep-water battles against heavy ships. Agron used them in coasal waters to place a chain of bases in Epirus, assisting in its political disintegration. This aggrandizing activity reached a peak with the amphibious assault in 231 BC on the forces of the Aetolian League, who were besieging the coastal city of Medion in an attempt to compel it to join the League. A force of 100 lembi landed 5000 marines at night, from which a complement of 50 marines per ship is calculated.
Agron celebrated his victory to such a degree of "convivial excesses" that he died of pleurisy. His wife Teuta became regent for his infant son. That year either Agron before his death or Teuta after it ventured to siege the island state of Issa a little further out into the Adriatic. Issa appealed to Rome. As long as the Illyrians had confined themselves to their coastal waters the Romans seemed willing to endure even attacks on their merchant vessels, but now they sent ambassadors to demand an accounting of causes. At least one was killed in an Illyrian attack. The Senate declared war. The Illyrians took Corcyra, placing it under a governor, Demetrius of Pharos. Seeing that the Romans were preparing an army and a fleet, Demetrius secretly turned coat. With him as guide, a consular army of over 20,000 men invaded Illyria forcing Teuta's surrender. Illyrian conquests in Greece became Roman protectorates. Ardiaei was reduced to an inland kingdom, while the Romans set up Demetrius as client king of the Illyrian coast.
Rome enjoyed total peace for several years. In 221 BC the small state of Istria began attacking Roman grain ships, causing the Senate to reply with the First Istrian War, 221 BC. This Istria was located on the Istrian Peninsula in the northeast Adriatic just to the south of what is now Trieste. The war was over in the year it began, the Romans imposing a settlement. Subsequently, Demetrius of Pharos, having married into Teuta's family, changed sides again. Building a fleet of 90 ships he launched a surprise attack on the Roman fleet. The resulting Second Illyrian War was brief resulting in the unseating of Demetrius and his taking refuge with the court of Macedon. A new client-king, Gentius, sat on the throne of Ardiaei. Peace came to the Adriatic under Roman control.
The Second Punic War was upon them. Philip V of Macedon, having been an ally of Teuta, after some victories of Hannibal in Italy, formulated a secret treaty of mutual defense with Carthage in 215. The discovery of a copy on a captured ship led the Senate to send investigators with a force of 55 ships to ascertain its truth. If true, they were to attack Philip. Thus began the First Macedonian War, 214-205 BC. Philip at first sent fleets of Illyrian-style lemni to capture the Adriatic. When it became clear that they were no match for Roman quinqueremes, he withdrew them, effecting a campaign overland to Illyria instead. He relieved Illyria. Realizing that they had no forces to send to the Balkans, the Romans brought in the Aetolian League and Pergamon against Macedon. They were both defeated. However, learning that a Roman army was in Africa, Philip hastened to make peace before the inevitable fall of Carthage. The terms were basically the status quo: the Adriatic with Balkan bases were given to Rome; Philip kept Illyria and Greece.
Liberating Greece and Anatolia from the diadochi kingdoms
Believing that his Roman frontier was secure, Philip entered a war of aggrandizement to the east, securing the colonial possessions of Ptolemaic Egypt, now ruled fortuitously by the six-year-old Ptolemy V Epiphanes. His forays into Asia Minor led him into opposition to Pergamon and Rhodes, both friends of Rome, which hastened to the liberation of the Mediterranean from Macedonian tyranny, resulting in the Second Macedonian War, 200-197 BC. They were joined by a defensive alliance of all the Greek states, including Athens, until Macedon stood alone and was forced to surrender, leaving Rome as the guardian of Greek freedom, which it defended from numerous bases throughout Greece.Peace and freedom were proclaimed by the Roman commander, Titus Quinctius Flamininus. This peace was somewhat uneasy, as the Romans had failed to reach a satisfactory alliance with the Seleucid Empire, co-conspirators with Macedon in the seizure of Ptolemaic lands. The Seleucids were not of much help to Macedon as they were engaged in fighting the Egyprian army in Syria. Having acquired Syria by victory over Egypt, Antiochus III the Great turned his attention to his own "liberation of Greece" from the Romans, invading it through the Hellespont and Thermopylae, starting the Roman–Seleucid War, during which Hannibal, then a refugee, was a personal advisor to Antiochus. The Seleucid army was stopped by a Roman at the Battle of Thermopylae. The rest of the war went no better, forcing the surrender of Antiochus. To obtain peace he paid reparations to Rome and ceded Anatolia to Rhodes and Pergamum.
The losing kingdoms only bided their time. Philip had been given some severe terms by the Senate through Flaminius. He was to remove his troops from Greece and Anatolia, give up all holdings there, return all political power to the local regions, pay heavy reparation to Rome, and give his younger son, Demetrius, as a hostage to Rome. Finding life in the big city to his liking, the young man was soon Romanized, becoming a popular celebrity. Meanwhile, Philip gained some credibility by turning on his former ally, the Seleucid Empire. He facilitated the march of the Roman army through Macedon on its way to Syria, building roads, providing supplies, and warding off Thracian marauders, in reward for which the Romans cancelled the rest of his debt and sent Demetrius home.
Whether Philip was ever sincere remains questionable. The urban praetor began to receive charges filed by many states of Greece claiming that Philip was not facilitating the terms of his settlement. Philip sent Demetrius to defend him before the Senate. The fact that he produced a list given by Philip to the Senate earlier showing the tasks accomplished and those remaining to be accompilshed with regard to Greece suggests a defense of inability to keep up with the schedule. In any case Demetrius won a pardon for him. More serious charges were filed by Pergamon, unknown exactly, but apparently of a territorial nature. The Senate found against Philip. An arbitration committee awarded a piece of Macedon to Pergamon, after which Philip began to mobilize for war. A campaign began at Rome to replace Philip with Demetrius, bypassing his older brother, Perseus. In the last year of his life Philip had Demetrius executed, presumably for some charge such as treason. In 179 BC Perseus inherited the throne. He was anti-Roman.
A counter-liberation provokes Rome to harsh measures
There followed an alliance race between Macedon and Rome. Rome did not go to war lightly; it needed a casus belli, a hostile act. As long as Macedon and its allies did not give Rome one they could find friends where they pleased. In the first year of his reign Perseus made a state marriage with Laodice V, a princess of the Seleucid Empire, recently vanquished by Rome. Around that time also he approved a suit for the hand of his sister, Apame IV, presented by Prusias II of Bithynia. A few years earlier, 183 BC, the Romans had sent envoys to the court of his father, Prusias I of Bithynia, demanding the surrender of Hannibal, who had been given refuge there. Instead, Hannibal died of poisoning, we are told by a summary of a missing book of Livy, but no further detail is given. The fact that Prusias was now joining the Macedonian collaboration suggests that he was distressed over the fate of Hannibal.The period of furtive conspiracies and pretended compliances received an object lesson starting in the second year of Perseus’ reign with the Second Histrian War. King Epulon broke his kingdom's former peace treaty with a surprise attack on the new Roman colony of Aquileia, which had been placed close to the Histrian northern border as a base for the control of the northern Adriatic. The city was not taken but Epulon defeated a consular army sent to relieve it. The next season's consular army under Gaius Claudius Pulcher devastated Histria, colonized it with Veneti, and reduced the population to slavery, placing a colony, Tergeste, that would become Trieste. These measures bought Rome several years of remission, but they were no solution, as the alliance race intensified through fear of Rome. It was a public relations defeat.
Macedon now attempted to restore its credibility to the Greek states by conducting a campaign of massive economic relief. Most of the states were bankrupt, burdened by the heavy costs of war and manifestly unjust reparations. Roman reputation was suffering from a disconnect between the Senate and the men sent to carry out its mandates. The reparations officers, mainly army officers, were charging and collecting exorbitant rates of interest. Fragment 17 of Appian testifies to a growing disenchantment with Rome: a “hatred of the Romans, which the Roman generals had caused”. Into these scenarios stepped Perseus, offering economic aid, arbitration of wars between states, and agreements cancelling debt. Like Antiochus the Great before him, Perseus appears to have been aiming at a role reversal, in which Greece must now be liberated from the tyrannical Romans. The Roman Senate fought back in kind, sending endless commissions, which would criminalize the interest, provide plans for debt payment, and arbitrate disputes. The apparent sincerity of the Macedonians was never questioned. In 172 BC King Eumenes II of Pergamon, still a loyal ally, came to Rome in person to inform on Perseus and sound the alarm of war. Perseus’ intent, he said, was to arouse and ally the Greeks against Rome. For this whole time he had been rearming. When the moment was right he would strike. A counter-embassy from Perseus was rejected. Visiting Delphi on the way back to Pergamon, Eumenes was waylaid by four assassins, but escaped. After a criminal investigation pointed to Perseus as the instigator, Rome declared war.
The Mithridatic fleet
At the beginning of the conflict the Romans dominated the seas, which they had done since defeating the Carthaginian and Etruscan fleets. Mithridates had no significant navy, but he knew how necessary one was going to be.The Roman admiralty
The administration of government facilities of any sort was performed by elected officials called magistrates, Latin ', a specific form of the ubiquitous ', “master,” etymologically “doer of greatest things.” A master was any person of social respect and authority. A magistrate was a person whose authority was assigned by the government. The same word means also “magistracy,” the office in general.The power that was granted to the magistrate to fulfill the duties of his office was the officium. Exercising it he was acting ex officio, which was the most fundamental justification of any action taken by any magistrate. At Rome, magistrates had to justify themselves frequently, especially in the late Republic. Although magistrates had a large degree of freedom and autonomy in the performance of their officia there was nevertheless a hierarchy deriving from the Roman Monarchy. The king then had held all the executive power, appointing magistrates and commanders as he pleased. After the long break of the Republic, the emperor, claiming to be acting king, resumed the executive powers of kings.
Meanwhile, the SPQR fortified itself against monarchy by breaking the executive power into a ladder, so to speak, of magistracies. Each magistrate would be personally approved through election. Once elected, the magistrate had to behave appropriately to the rung of the ladder or Cursus honorum, on which he now stood.
At the top were the two Roman consuls. They could be ordered by the Senate to do anything: fight enemies, build roads and public buildings, provide rescue and relief in disasters, offer medical services, grow crops, and build and command fleets. The substructure on which they relied consisted mainly of the army, which was filled out by a draft, to which all males over a certain age were subject on demand. The soldiers might find themselves doing anything, mainly construction. The old roads over the Alps even today are marked with placques commemorating the legions that constructed them.
The nature of the cursus and the functions of the magistracies were profoundly different from the command structures of today. There was a distinct army, navy and marine corps, but they did not include any magistracies. The latter existed entirely to fill the upper echelons of military or civilian command. The career of Pliny the Elder is an example of how the cursus worked. As a young man he served as a provincial cavalry officer. After successful service he retired, moved to Rome, became a famous and wealthy encyclopedist, and personal assistant of the emperor. Then, and only then, was he qualified to begin the cursus, which was somewhat different from the cursus of the Republic, including imperial officers. He ended with the imperial rank of procurator. When Mount Vesuvius erupted he was commander of the fleet at Misenum.
The title of Pliny's command was praefectus classis, the same as the first known fleet commander. This was a position, not a rank. It has been interpreted imprecisely as “admiral.” The Roman navy had no admirals, or servicemen of admiralty rank. If an Admiralty is to be defined as a permanent branch of government taking responsibility for the navy, and an Admiral is a command rank of a permanent navy, as they usually are today, then the Roman state had no such institutions. It had fleet commanders, who were elected magistrates or the appointees of elected magistrates, or of the Senate, or later of the Emperor. The term admiralty applied to the ancient Romans must mean the commanders of fleets, who might have any of a number of ranks.
Fleet commanders of the Mithridatic Wars
Supporting inscriptions
Honorific inscription at Hypata for Lucullus
Honor to Quaestor Lucullus
This inscription is a titulus, or text, on a broken, honorific statue-base found in a garden in what was ancient Hypata in Thessaly. It was published by IG in 1908, giving it an inscription code of "IG IX 2 38.The word translated by quaestor is Tamias. "treasurur." There were different types. An unqualified tamias, a municipal financial officer, was responsible for public funds and property, a function performed at Rome by the urban quaestor. The supply officer of a military unit, equivalent to the military quaestor, was the tamias ton stratiotikon. The officer who handled funds for the temples was the tamias tou theou. Of this inscription Kern says :
The use of the term quaestor for tamias does not prove that Lucullus was not a proquaestor. Greek inscriptional language does include anti tamias, where anti is the word the Greeks used to translate Roman pro, "in place of." Lucullus arriving in Alexandris to request the use of Egyptian ships is an anti tamias, suggesting that tamias was simply quaestor. Subsequently, however he is quaestor pro praetore in charge of the fleet.
Despite the semantic ambiguity, the geographic circumstances point to tamias being quaestor. The dedicating agency is the koinon of the Ainianes, an ethnic name. The ethnic may be just a convention referring to any people living at Hypata, which once was the capital of the tribe, or it may refer archaically to the older Ainian League.
In any case this inscription is one of a class issued by Thessalian and some other Greek koina. In the previous century Rome subdued the Thessalian countryside by dissolving recalcitrant koina and rewarding cooperative ones. In the 1st century BC it was restoring koina and offering economic assistance to them coordinated through quaestores, which subsequently was occasion of an honorific statue. These inscriptions reveal the existence of a lower-ranking acting quaestor, the leg pro q, which was to be expected as there were not enough quaestores to assist all the koina that needed it.
If the word Quaestor can be taken to mean exactly that, then the year of the inscription can be taken to be the year Lucullus was quaestor. It must be earlier than all the inscriptions that refer to him as proquaestor. In that year, he must have served in some capacity to be honored in Thessaly. The first record of his being in Thessaly was in the year of his mission to arrange supply prior to Sulla's invasion of Greece in 87.
War had been declared the previous year, but due to the circumstances of Sulla's first civil war, he was unable to act on the mandate. The next year he was no longer Consul. He brokered a deal with the Consuls of that year that he should prosecute the war as Proconsul. One of the Consuls for 87 was loyal to Sulla; the other soon broke the deal and brought charges that were grounds for impeachment against Sulla. Sulla had six legions. He could use them either to prosecute the Civil War or to take command in the east. If he chose the east, he knew that his enemy in the recently completed civil war, Marius, would return to Rome and that, without his legions, the populares would soon be dominant, and he would be cut off from the supply and support of Rome.
He therefore set up a supply infrastructure among the loyal Greeks, with the help of Lucullus. When he landed on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth in March 87 BC his first concern was for supply. Regardless of what ships he used to cross the Adriatic, they must be left in the Gulf. He and Lucullus devised a scheme of "borrowing" the wealth stored in temples.
That date was either late 88 or early 87, before March, the month of the invasion. Although the inscription suggests a date of 88 BC, it is not proof positive that the date of the quaestorship per se was not 87. The circumstances, however, are unfavorable to 87. If it was not 88, then Lucullus was not the quaestor that remained loyal to Sulla in the Civil War, but whose quaestor was he? Sulla could no longer hire a quaestor himself, not being Consul. Moreover, if he was quaestor in 87, Sulla had no legitimate authority to invite him further as proquaestor, which would have been up to the Senate, now held by his enemies.
The view that in fact Lucullus was Quaestor in 88 remains a strong one. His timetable as quaestor in 87 is too crowded. In 87 he had two months to accomplish an amazing number of tasks. He had to desert the Consul with whom he was elected to take up with Sulla. He and Sulla then had to decide to go ahead with the invasion of Greece and plan how to live off the countryside. Lucullus must then sail to Greece and travel extensively in the countryside of Central Greece contacting the provincial officers. He sets up a supersession meeting with Sura, then returns to Sulla. The time required for all these activities would be more credible as 6 months, rather than 2.
Ready at last, they sail to the Gulf and demand the promised supplies. The Siege of Athens begins. They raid all the temples. Now Lucullus must set up a mint and coin money. Finally, made propraetor and sent off to Egypt in the fall of 87, having been quaestor less than a year, he serves as fleet commander until 85. It was impossible for him to have been proquaestor, as stated in all his other honorific inscriptions.
Quaestor pro Praetore Lucullus
Whether his quaestorship is dated to the more easily explainable 88 BC or to the more difficult 87 BC, it was only his starting rank in the campaign. There is more evidence that Sulla found him too valuable for the supply officer role. He was of more use as an emissary and expeditionary commander. Toward the end of 87 Sulla sent him on an expedition again, this time to beg ships from Ptolemaic Egypt to counter Archelaus' battle fleet.The request was refused by the welcoming but cautious Egyptian king, and he travelled the islands of the Aegean, working from the Roman naval base at Rhodes, which had successfully repulsed Archelaus. His purpose was to gather a contributed fleet from the islanders. He brought unexpected hope to the adherents of Rome who had not dared to oppose Archelaus.
Around this time the letters to the people of Mopsuestia, formerly Seleuceia, in Cilicia were written, which were engraved on a marble block for public viewing. The main text of the inscription replies to a request to Lucullus that the Temples of Isis and Serapis be granted the power of refuge. It was granted. An initial paragraph from Sulla underwrites the decision by Lucullus. The latter refers to himself as Quaestor pro Praetore : that is, a former quaestor promoted to acting praetor. The date of the letter must be the end of the First Mithridatic War, as the pirates of Cilicia were submitting, with Lucullus perhaps making the decision in 86 BC, and Sulla ratifying in either 86 or 85.
If Lucullus was Quaestor pro Praetore in 86, and Quaestor is to refer only to his rank, then he cannot also have been Proquaestor in 86. And yet, if he was Quaestor in either 88 or 87, as the honorific inscription at Hypata implies, he must have been Proquaestor in 86.
The Proquaestor Pro Quaestore solution
Considered in the light of inscriptions now catalogued and known to moderns, the rank of Lucullus appears to be a problem. There is a question whether he was Quaestor in 88 or Quaestor in 87; however, beyond that, in some years he appears to have been both Quaestor and Proquaestor. If it is assumed that magistrates can be either Quaestors or Proquaestors, but not both, then insoluble contradictions are seen generally solved by tossing out evidence contrary to a given proposition as exclusive choice. Thonemann, for example, after a review of the evidence as he sees it decides Lucullus must have been Quaestor in 87 and Proquaestor thereafter, discarding evidence to the contrary, but whichever view he were to take, he could not keep it without discards.Thonemann distinguishes between "classes of document," the inscriptions taking precedence; however, he goes a step further. They must be mutually reconcilable; if they are not, then they may be moved in time to make them so, which is a step in the direction of writing your own history. The unknown Quaestor of 88 is passed off with "the identification is far from evident." Cicero in Lucullus 2 mentions that Lucullus served as Quaestor in Asia while Murena was fighting the Second Mithridatic War, and yet he reports in Lucullus 11 that the latter was in Alexandria as Proquaestor, which seems to place the cart before the horse. If he was already Proquaestor in 86, how could he be Quaestor in 82? Thonemann dismisses the contradiction as "carelessness," but Cicero repeats it in Pro Archia 5.11, reporting that he ruled Asia as Quaestor. As an ex-magistrate himself, he might be expected to remember these matters.
Thonemann would go so far as to alter the date recommended by the editors of an inscription set up in a former pirate community in Cilicia from 84 BC to 87 BC, requiring a totally different political situation. In 84 the inscription addresses Quaestor pro Praetore Lucullus, commander of the victorious Roman fleet poised offshore. In 87 it must strangely be addressed to an as yet unvictorious Quaestor commanding nothing and without a commander in Central Greece, and be coming from a unit of pirates that had allied itself with Mithridates. Any change in chronology must consider the implied concomitant adjustments to the matrix of events, not just the rank of one magistrate.
A solution was proposed as early as 1837 by a contributor signing only ECB, which Thonemann and some others reject out of hand as "Constitutionally quite impossible". It is based on the Constitutional distinction between "urban quaestor," the treasurer at Rome, and "military quaestor," expected not to be at Rome; that is, "field quaestor." It is one of those distinctions rarely explicitly made by a society that took it for granted.
Any such distinction referenced by just the word "quaestor" is bivocal. On the one hand a Quaestor is someone who holds one of these positions. On the other hand, if the Constitutional rank of Quaestor is not so distinguished, but the office is, then the office and the rank are different meanings. In that case a Proquaestor might be assigned to the job of Quaestor Militaris just as he would be assigned Pro Praetore. He would technically be Proquaestor Pro Quaestore, but no such rank is testified. One might guess that just plain Quaestor would cover it. To demand of all the Quaestors that they be certified as such by the Senate seems unreasonable for the need. Ex-Quaestors would do just as well, or other ranks acting pro Quaestore. Sulla in fact found it necessary as Dictator to increase the number of Quaestors per Consul. It went up from there. There were never enough to go around.
Honorific inscription at Larissa for Sura
An inscription from Larissa in Thessaly honors Q. Braetius Sura and is the only source stating his full name.Sura is known for being the commander of the only Roman forces in Central Greece to resist the incursion of Archelaus there. According to the historians, Central Greece was not his regular duty assignment. He had been under the commander of Macedonia, who ordered him to the defense of Thessaly and Boeotia, which were being subdued, for the most part unwillingly, by Archelaus; i.e., they were mainly pro-Roman.
War had already been declared by the Senate. A war Consul had already been elected, who was Sulla in 88, and he had received the mandate, but he was unable to serve it that year dues to civil war. He sent Lucullus to Central Greece to announce to the Romans that he was coming, and to announce to Sura that he was now superseded, and was to report back to his commander C. Sentius in Macedonia province for the winter. Any refusal to obey the order would be interpreted as another act of civil war. Sura obeyed forthwith, indicating the loyalty of the troops in the eastern theatre to Sulla and to the Senate.
The date of the supersession is the key date of the entire sequence of events in the First Mithridatic War. Was it 88 or 87 BC? Here are the exact words in translation of the major source of the topic, Plutarch in Sulla:
The Senate had given the war to Sulla in 88. In 87 Sulla was not Consul and had no power to conduct anything except under the authority of the Consuls for 87. Unless directed by those Consuls as Quaestor for that year, Lucullus had no power to demand anything from anyone.
The coins engraved with Sulla and Manlius Torquatus
Proquaestor Lucullus leaves a vacancy
At the beginning of his consular career, Sulla was fortunate enough to find an incomparable Quaestor, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who was able to be a confidant of all his plans, collaborate in operations planning, and serve as ambassador to rebel provinces and foreign states, all the while tending successfully to the duties of supply and finance. Expressing the full range of his capabilities, Lucullus was for the most part operating above his pay grade. He was better than the job he had. In recognition of this fact Sulla promoted him to acting fleet commander in 87, beginning with the task of procuring a fleet. He was lost as a Proquaestor for the remainder of the First Mithridatic War. The proquaestorial post was now vacant and must be filled.Lucullus is said by Plutarch to have managed money for Sulla:
This was a lot to ask of a man who shortly was sent off to Egypt pro Praetore and whose name never appears on any Roman currency as moneyer. It is a safe presumption that, unless Plutarch made the story up, Lucullus set up the mint and perhaps designed the currency. He certainly was not doing any minting for the years he was in the Aegean serving as admiral of Sulla's new fleet, nor did he command any mints. From the fact that the money was very popular one might infer that the soldiers called it "Lucullean." They more than anyone else were in the campaign for the money Sulla paid, the metal for which he levied from the temples and as tribute.
Documentary evidence that Sulla had found a candidate appears from 82 BC, a successful year for him. In that year he had defeated all his enemies at Rome and declared himself Dictator. He had sent for his repentant commander in Asia, Murena, who was now ready to accept Sulla's agreement with Mithridates. Lucullus had been relieved of his command of the fleet. He had been kept on nominally as Murena's Proquaestor, but he did not function as that. Either he was being allowed a long vacation or Sulla was using him to report on the situation. In any case he relieved Murena of command, re-assuming his old rank of acting commander, this time in command of Asia. He would never be Proquaestor again. His fate in the Third Mithridatic War, when he was relieved from the Consulship and from command as incompetent, to be replaced by another protege of Sulla, Pompey "the Great," remained totally unanticipated.
The new currency
Sulla and Murena were planning a twin triumph of Asian victory in 81. In preparation for this victory celebration Sulla issued a special, limited run of coins now entitled RRC 367, according to the numbering scheme in Michael H. Crawford's "Roman Republican Coinage." It survives as a number of variants: 367/1, 367/2, etc. The coin legends all say the same, except for minor spelling variations. An example is given below:The coin is an Aureus, a then new type, designed for across-the-table payment of their wages to Sulla's men. A Denarius represented a day's wages; an Aureus, a month's. The obverse represents the goddess, Roma. ECB originally had supposed it is meant to be Pallas Athena, without considering that such an interpretation would place the patron goddess of Rome's enemy, Athens, on its coin. Themes on coins are never sardonic. On the reverse is a representation of a Quadriga driven by Sulla followed by a winged victory, probably a reference to the triumph he claimed in 81. Sulla would not be in a position to declare any such victory until he had won Sulla's second civil war and had become dictator in 82 BC. The quadriga represents the triumph of 81 BC. He probably knew for sure that he was going to claim it after his victory of 82, but he needed Murena present, which is why he sent to arrest him. The minting therefore was most likely to have been 82/81 BC, in Italy, since the head is of Roma.
Sulla's coins at the time have a more or less standard format, perhaps a reflection of their military origin. On the obverse is the goddess, Roma. The abbreviated name of the moneyer also appears. On this coin the moneyer is a member of the Roman patrician family, Manlii Torquati, the founder having been Titus Manlius Torquatus. Approximately every few generations they acquired the Quaestorship and minted legal tender, usually with their own motif, including a Celtic torc. The torc does not appear on this coin, and is not represented by the beaded circle. Torquatus is not a civilian. He is a high officer in Sulla's victorious army, assigned the rank and the position by Sulla.
The delayed epiphany of Proquaestor Torquatus
Lucullus was the last to hold the position of Military Quaestor in 87, but Torquatus does not appear until 82. So it is unclear who was the original minter of Lucullean currency. Investigation of the further identity of Torquatus in the hope of clarification is complicated by the fact that all the men of the Torquatus family bear the same name and so are indistinguishable on the written page. There are definite appearances of Torquati but the connections between the persons are speculative at best.Putting aside the question of subsequent appearances, how far back can the known minter of Sulla be traced? How and when did Sulla meet and employ him? A presumption that he was the ghost minter of the Peloponnesus is by no means warranted: why would he not identify himself until 82? Between 84 and 82, all of Italy was torn by Sulla's second civil war, of greater impact by far than his First. It was a virtual "Return of Odysseus." Torquatus apparently appears at the end of it on the side of the returned Sulla, but in what capacity is also unclear.
In 85 BC it appeared that Sulla had brokered a lasting deal with Mithridates ending the First Mithridatic War. Mithridates would retire to his boundaries, offer the Romans no further resistance, and pay reparations, in return for which he would be molested no more. Sulla retired in jubilation to Athens, where he shopped for antiquities, acquired the books of Aristotle and travelled about the now peaceful countryside. He sought treatment also for the first onset of the disease that would kill him in 78, a numbness of the legs.
Having had a rest, he wrote to the Senate. They had dishonored him in the legal pursuit of his duties, he said. He had been declared a public enemy. His honors were stripped, his property confiscated, his family driven into exile, and his friends murdered. As he was still in command, having never returned to Rome to relinquish it, as the law required, he was now coming home to settle the affair. The innocent had nothing to fear, but he would have vengeance on the guilty. The Senate was ordered to make restitution immediately.
Received and read, this epistle dropped chaos on Italy. The Consuls for the year, Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, both Populares, had been in the field recruiting against the day of Sulla's return. The Senate decreed that they should cease these activities, and they agreed, but illegally declared themselves Consuls for 84, to avoid returning to Rome for any elections. In 84, receiving intelligence that Sulla planned to cross from Liburnia on the Balkan side, they began ferrying troops to there. Some crossed; the rest refused. In the attempt to enforce authority using Lictors, Cinna was stoned to death. Carbo brought the troops back. Due to bad auspices no replacement Consul was elected. Still Sulla delayed his coming.
In 83 BC Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and Gaius Norbanus were Consules, both Populares. Sulla was expected through Liburnia. According to Appian, at the start of the campaign season Sulla left Piraeus, Port of Athens, with 5 legions and 6000 cavalry for the city of Patras on the coast of the Peloponnesus. There is no mention of how he got there, but any other method than ship would imply an unnecessary and troublesome march overland across the Peloponnesus or Central Greece. Plutarch has him making the latter march to Dyrrachium. Sulla could not have made both trips simultaneously, but his army included Greeks from Central Greece, including Macedonians. They might have chosen to use Dyrrachium.
In any case, 1600 ships ferried 46000 men from Patrae to Brindisi, or 1200 ships from Dyrrachium, if you believe Plutarch, or possibly 2800 ships from both places with a round number of 79,000 men, taking control of the heel of Italy. They were welcome at Brindisi.
The inscriptional trail of the Murenae
Far-flung inscription at Messene honoring Commander Murena
This title on a statue base discovered in 1913 in the marketplace of ancient Messene in the Peloponnesus became IG V 1 1454. Subsequently, it was found to be one of a group of three honoring Roman dignitaries Murena, Sulla and Agrippa, all three dubbed as SEG 48 494,495, 496, dated 83-81 BC.There are some peculiarities with the presumption that they were actually there in a military role. First, the Peloponnesus was entirely at peace and fully cooperative with Sulla when he was before the walls of Athens, and did not need any Roman intervention or Roman commander. Second, Messene is far from the theatre where Murena was left in command.
The presumption that the Peloponnesus would somehow naturally be hostile to Romans is based on a gap in the main testimonies. In Appian, Archelaus, failing to take Rhodes, is impelled to subdue the rest of Greece by turning them against each other. Archelaus enters Central Greece in 88 BC with Achaeans, Lacedaemonians and Boeotians. Their compliance in the light of subsequent events is forced and temporary, at least as far as the Boeotians are concerned. The whole of Central Greece rallies around Sulla's eagles. Appian details the defection of Boeotia but says not one word about the Peloponnesians, allowing the possibility that they were still hostile.
Sulla did not have time for hostile Peloponnesians; in fact, he probably could not have kept his position in the Megarid faced with a coalition of Athenians and Peloponnesians. In Plutarch's Sulla he shortly sends out confiscation letters to the Temples at Epidaurus, Olympia, Delphi and elsewhere asking them to ship their treasures to the army in the Megrid, perhaps the Quaestorium at Eleusis — an absurd request to an enemy — and they are quick to comply. He then assigns Lucullus the task of establishing a mint in the Peloponnesus and striking much of the precious metal received into gold and silver coins to be used to pay the men, suggesting that the soldiers had the freedom of the markets there. If the Peloponnesians did not take much of a part in liberating Boeotia, at least they were on just as good terms with the Romans as the Boeotians.
There was no reason for the Romans to maintain a special command for the Peloponnesus or promote anyone to commander there. The command mentioned in the inscription must be the one granted to Murena in 84 BC. The date of the inscription is the same as the one from Rhodes, the period between Second and Third Mithridatic Wars, when the Greek states were trying to reassure the Romans of their continued loyalty. The reason why it is so far-flung remains to be discovered.
Carian statues honoring Murena's sons
Among the main beneficiaries of Roman hegemony were the Karians, who set up an unusual number of statues with honorific tituli in this period. As well as A. Varro and his mother Paulla Terentia the honorands include the two sons of Sulla's Murena, Lucius and Gaius. Lucius is commemorated on a white marble base with cuttings for an equestrian statue.Gaius is commemorated on a circular white marble base with cuttings for a standing statue.
Probably both sons departed Rome with their father early in 87 and remained with him throughout. Cicero ignores Gaius and only mentions young Lucius' service to his father at this time, as well as his participation in the father's eventual triumph. But Gaius' foot-statue erected along with the mounted ikon of their father, indicates that he was already 15 turning 16 in 87 and thus old enough for a position on his father's staff. Gaius Murena's participation in this long period of eastern service in company with his own family and his adfinis Aulus Varro is significant to the history of Varrones Murenae, since it was most likely Gaius who made the son of his father's long-serving legatus his heir by testamentary adoption, thus creating the name Terentius Varro Murena for the first time.
The inscriptional trail of the Varrones
Carian statue honoring Varro's mother
A round statue base from Selimiye thought to have been taken there from Euromos registers Varro's mother's name, Paula Terentia, and her presence in the east, probably among the numerous noble men and women who fled Rome and Italy during and immediately subsequent to the bellum Octavianum. While Sulla was away from Rome conducting operations against Mithridates his enemies persecuted and proscribed his friends and supporters and their families, causing them to seek refuge with his army in the east. This exodus was the prelude to Sulla's second civil war. The inscription is therefore dated to no later than 82 BC.Bilingual text from Delos honoring fleet commander Varro
The bilingual text from Delos appears to be the latest known which includes the Roman ethnic, which is missing from the statue titulus for his mother.Muster of the ship from Cos
A stele thought to have been set up at Samothrace. lists all the officers, specialist crew and marines who served aboard a quadrireme from Kos under the ship's captain Kleonikos and the, evidently Rhodian, admiral Eudamas. At the very top of the list A. Terentius A. f. Varro legatus appears as commander of the entire fleet : ΤΟΥ ΣΤΟΛΟΥ ΠΑΝΤΟΣ.In combination with the Rhodian titulus in which he and Murena imperator are singled out from the other three senior officials as public proxenoi and benefactors of the Rhodian damos, this document demonstrates that A. Varro was Murena's principal fleet commander in the joint land and sea operations with the Rhodians in 84. Appian entirely omits these in his account of the Mithridatic Wars, but briefly alludes to Murena's anti-piracy campaign in the later context of the famous Pompeian bellum Piraticum. In his extant geography Strabo briefly alludes to Murena overrunning the Milyas and deposing the last tyrant of Kibyra, Moagetes. He no doubt covered these events in detail in his Historiai.