Mithridates the Great by Philip Matyszak Page A

get to Rhodes, the nearest point which had unambiguously declared for Rome, but the distance was too great, and the countryside too hostile. Aquillius was captured and added to Mithridates’ collection of captured Roman officials. By some reports Mithridates also captured Cassius at Apameia and thus briefly had the full set, though he released Cassius on the grounds that he had no quarrel with the man. Certainly Oppius was later released, and allowed to avail himself of the famous medical facilities on the island of Cos whilst he recovered from the shock of his ordeal (though Cos, too, later fell to Mithridates).

    For Aquillius there was no relief. Mithridates needed a scapegoat, and he really was very disappointed in Aquillius and the uncompromising stand he had taken at the start of their relationship. The unfortunate commissioner was paraded through each town that Mithridates visited, often tied backwards on the back of a donkey; his humiliation symbolizing that of the power he represented. Aquillius’ suffering reached a dramatic end at Pergamum, where Mithridates had him killed with molten gold poured down his throat. 12 This brutally-effective propaganda gesture showed all Asia Minor both Mithridates’ contempt of Roman money-grubbing ways and the fact that Mithridates had no intention of negotiating with Rome once he had made his point, for everyone knew that the senate would not readily forgive such mistreatment of one of its own.
    As 89 BC drew to a close, Mithridates could look back on a year well spent. Pontus and his lands across the Black Sea were secure, Cappadocia was finally and unambiguously his, and his flanks to the south and east were secured by the bulwark of Armenia. Bithynia and Pergamum were now as much the possessions of Pontus as Pergamum had once been of Rome. Once deprived of their land base, the small Roman squadron of ships blocking the Hellespont had been easily pushed aside, and commerce was flowing through the Black Sea ports again. Yet more to the point, the large Pontic navy of some three hundred decked ships now guarded the seaboard of Asia Minor, and there was no friendly ally to provide the Romans with the kind of bridgehead which they had been given for the campaign of Magnesia against the Seleucids.
    The nearest Rome had to an ally was Rhodes in the southwest, and resistance to Pontus increased the nearer one came to that island. Some cities of Caria held out – some surrendering after a prolonged siege, others maintaining their resistance through the whole of the war. Some cities, such as Magnesia-ad-Sipylum, put up more than a token resistance (Archelaus was wounded there). However, many others were like Ephesus, where the citizens helped the Romans as long as they could, providing many with safe passage to Rhodes, but, when the Pontic army turned up, they opened the gates and outdid themselves in finding ingenious ways of demonstrating how fervently anti-Roman they had been all along. Mithridates gave the loyalty of his new allies a further boost by proclaiming a five-year amnesty from tribute. Perhaps he was feeling particularly benevolent as he was a husband again, having married Monima, a pretty girl who caught his eye at Stratonice, a recalcitrant town which he personally brought to heel on the way back from Ionia (Ionia was the general term for the historically-Greek western seaboard.)

    Having won and secured Asia Minor, Mithridates waited with some confidence for the Roman counter-strike. Having undoubtedly studied Roman history, Mithridates knew that the Roman response to the loss of a medium-sized army in one year was to gather forces, elect a commander, and return the next year with a considerably larger army. Rather to his surprise, this did not happen.

Chapter 4
    Imperial Pontus
    Mehanwhile, back in Rome ...
    If Mithridates had been encouraged to launch his military adventure in Asia Minor by the belief that Rome was failing as a social and political entity, the year