Colleen McCullough - 2. The Grass Crown

In April of the year Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus were consuls, the Roman invasion of Galatia and Pontus began. While the third Nicomedes wept and wrung his hands together and pleaded to be allowed to return to Bithynia, the Paphlagonian prince Pylaemenes ordered the army of Nicomedes to advance on Sinope. Manius Aquillius took the field at the head of the one legion of Roman auxiliaries present in Asia Province and marched from Pergamum overland through Phrygia, intending to broach the Pontic border to the north of the great salt lake, Tatta. There was a trade route on this line, which meant Aquillius was able to move fairly quickly. Gaius Cassius picked up his two legions of militia outside Smyrna and took them up the valley of the Maeander into Phrygia on a line heading for the tiny trading settlement of Prymnessus. In the meantime Quintus Oppius had sailed from Tarsus to Attaleia and marched his two legions into Pisidia on a line which led him just to the west of Lake Limnae. At the very beginning of May the Bithynian army crossed into Pontus and reached the Amnias, a tributary of the Halys flowing inland but parallel to the coast around Sinope. The strategy Pylaemenes had adopted consisted of a march from the junction of the Amnias and the Halys northward to the sea, where he intended to divide his forces to attack Sinope and Amisus simultaneously. Unfortunately the army of Bithynia encountered a huge Pontic army under the brothers Archelaus and Neoptolemus on the Amnias before it could reach the wider valley of the Halys, and went down to a crushing defeat. Camp, baggage, troops, arms, everything was lost. Except old King Nicomedes. He had taken a party of barons and slaves he could trust and left his army to its inevitable fate, pointing his own unerring nose toward Rome.

At almost the same moment in time as the Bithynian army met the brothers Archelaus and Neoptolemus, Manius Aquillius and his legion came over a ridge and looked down upon Lake Tatta in the distant south. But the vista had no power to charm Aquillius. Below him on the plain he saw an army vaster than the lake, equipment glittering, ranks betraying to an expert eye all the sign's of superb discipline and confidence. No barbarian horde of Germans, this! One hundred thousand Pontic infantry and cavalry waiting for him to fall into their jaws. With the lightning rapidity only a Roman general truly understood, Aquillius turned his meager little force around and made a run for it. As he neared the Sangarius River not far from Pessinus all that gold and he couldn't tarry to take it! the Pontic army caught up with his rear and began to swallow him whole. Like King Nicomedes, Aquillius abandoned his army to its inevitable fate and fled with his senior officers and two fellow commissioners across the Mysian mountains. King Mithridates himself went after Gaius Cassius, but his insecurity got the better of him; he began to dither, with the result that Cassius heard about the defeats of the Bithynians and Aquillius before Mithridates reached him. The governor of Asia Province picked up his army and retreated southward and eastward to the big trade route crossroads town of Apameia, where he went to earth behind its strong fortifications. South and west of Cassius again, Quintus Oppius also heard the news of defeat and elected to stand at Laodiceia, right in the path of Mithridates as he came down the Maeander. Thus the Pontic army personally commanded by the King came across Quintus Oppius before it located Cassius. Himself wanting to withstand a siege, Oppius soon discovered that the Laodiceians were not of the same mind. The townspeople opened the gates to the King of Pontus strewing flower petals in his tracks, and handed Quintus Oppius over to him as a special gift. The Cilician troops were bidden go home by the same route as they had come, but the King detained their governor, who was tethered to a post in the agora of Laodiceia. Roaring with laughter, the King himself urged the populace to pelt Quintus Oppius with filth, rotten eggs, decaying vegetables, anything soft and noisome. No stones, no pieces of wood. For the King had remembered that Pelopidas had described Quintus Oppius as an honorable man. After two days Oppius was released more or less unharmed, and sent back under a Pontic escort to Tarsus. On foot, a very long walk. When Gaius Cassius learned of the fate which had befallen Quintus Oppius, he abandoned his militia in Apameia and fled on a sorry horse toward the coast at Miletus, keeping the Maeander River between himself and Mithridates, and traveling completely alone. He succeeded in avoiding the Pontic net around Laodiceia, but his identity was discovered in the town of Nysa and he was haled before its ethnarch, one Chaeremon. Gasping from fear turned to delight, Cassius found Chaeremon to be an ardent adherent of Rome and anxious to do anything he could to help. Bemoaning the fact that he dared not tarry, Cassius snatched a good meal and mounted a fresh horse, then rode at the gallop to Miletus, where he located a fast ship willing to take him to Rhodes. Safely arrived in Rhodes, he faced the most appalling task of all the composition of a letter to the Senate and People of Rome that would manage to convince them of the seriousness of the Asian situation without highlighting his own frailties. Naturally enough this Herculean task was not completed in a day or even in a month. Terrified of betraying his guilt, Gaius Cassius Longinus procrastinated. By the end of June all Bithynia and Asia Province had fallen to King Mithridates, save for a few scattered intrepid communities which trusted to their fortifications, their inaccessibility, and the might of Rome. A quarter of a million soldiers of Pontus sat themselves down in lush green pastures from Nicomedia to Mylasa. Since the bulk of them were northern barbarians Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Roxolani, and Caucasians only their healthy fear of King Mithridates prevented them from running amok. The various Ionian, Aeolian, and Dorian Greek cities and seaports of Asia Province made absolutely sure they treated this eastern potentate with all the obsequious prostrations his sort desired. Hatred of forty years of Roman occupation now became an immense asset to King Mithridates, who encouraged anti-Roman sentiment by proclaiming that no taxes, tithes, or duties would be levied that year, nor for the five years to follow. Those who owed money to Roman or Italian lenders were absolved of their debts. As a result, Asia Province was inspired to hope that life under Pontus would be better than life under Rome. The King came down the Maeander and headed north along the coast for one of his favorite cities, Ephesus. Here he took up temporary residence and dispensed justice, further endearing himself to the local people of Asia Province by proclaiming that any detachments of militia surrendering to him would not only be forgiven and freed, but also given money to go home. Those who hated Rome the most or at least the most loudly were elevated to the senior ranks of citizens in every town, city, district. Lists of people known to be Roman sympathizers or employees grew rapidly; the informers were thriving. Beneath all the rejoicing and the fawning attentions, however, lay the terror of those who understood only too well the complete cruelty and capriciousness of eastern kings, how superficial was any apparent kindness. High in favor one moment, head separated from body the next. And no one could tell when the balance would tip.

At the end of June in Ephesus the King of Pontus issued three orders: all were secret, but the third one was most secret of all. How much he enjoyed everything about those orders! Who was to go where, who was to do what oh, the merry dances his dolls would caper! Let other, lesser beings define and refine the details to him alone must the credit go for masterminding the vast and interlocking design. What a design! Humming and whistling, he bustled around the palace driving several hundred co-opted scribes to the writing of those orders, the sealing of them, a huge labor done in the space of one day. And when the last packet for the last courier was sealed, he shepherded the scribes into the palace courtyard and had his bodyguard cut their throats. Dead men kept the best secrets! The first order was sent to Archelaus, not in great favor with Mithridates at the moment; he had tried to take the city of Magnesia-under-Sipylus by frontal assault, was soundly trounced, and himself wounded. However, Archelaus was still his best general, so to him was the first order sent. One packet only. It instructed him to take command of all the Pontic fleets and sail out of the Euxine into the Aegean at the end of Gamelion, a month hence; Gamelion was Roman Quinctilis. The second order was also a single packet. It was sent to the King's son Young Ariarathes (a different son from that Ariarathes who was King of Cappadocia), and instructed him to lead a Pontic army one hundred thousand strong across the Hellespont and into eastern Macedonia at the end of Gamelion, a month hence. The third order was distributed through several hundred packets sent to every town, city, district or community from Nicomedia in Bithynia to Cnidus in Caria to Apameia in Phrygia, and was addressed in each case to the chief magistrate. It decreed that every single Roman, Latin, and Italian citizen in Asia Minor men, women, children must be put to death together with their slaves at the end of Gamelion, a month hence. The third one was his favorite order, the one which caused the King to hug himself and chuckle with glee, to give an occasional skip as he walked about Ephesus smiling from ear to ear. After the end of Gamelion there would be no Roman presence in Asia Minor. And when he was finished with Rome and the Romans, every last one from the Pillars of Hercules to the First Cataract on the Nilus would be dead. Rome would be no more.