Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/70

Rh LUOULLUS ho rem.iiued constant to his life s end. Sulla s favourable notice was secured by good military service in the so-called Social War, which finally completed the subjugation of Rome s Italian allies and in fact of the whole peninsula. In 88 B.C. came the great Mithridatic war in the East, with the direction of which Sulla was charged. In that year the young Lucullus went with him as his quaestor to Greece and Asia Minor, and, while Sulla was besieging Athens, he raised a fleet and drove Mithridates out of the Mediterranean. He won a brilliant victory off Tenedos, and it seems probable that, had he been as faithful to Rome as he was to Sulla and his party, he might have ended a perilous war. But, like many of his contemporaries, Lucullus was too much of a party man to be a genuine patriot. In 84 B.C. peace was concluded with Mithridates, and the great king had to cede the Greek islands and a large part of his Asiatic possessions, and was practically reduced to the position of a mere Roman dependant. Sulla returned to Rome, while Lucullus remained in Asia, and by a series of wise and generous financial reforms laid the foundation of the future wealth and prosperity of the province. The result of his policy was that he stood particularly well with the provincials, but unfortunately for himself made a host of enemies among the powerful class which farmed the public revenue. He was in Asia till 80 B.C., and then returned to Rome as curule aedile, in which capacity he exhibited together with his colleague, his brother Marcus, games which were long remembered by the citizens of Rome for their exceptional magnificence. We may infer that thus early in life he had found the means of acquiring an immense fortune, which throughout his whole career it was his delight lavishly to display. Soon afterwards he was elected prcetor, and was next appointed to the pro vince of Africa, where again lie won a good name as a just and considerate governor. In the year 74 B.C. he became consul, with Aurelius Cotta as his colleague. An attempt was made at this time by a leader of the democratic party to repeal the legislation of Sulla, and its failure appears to hive been mainly due to the strenuous efforts of Lucullus The East was now again unsettled, and Bithynia, which had been bequeathed to Rome by its king Nicomedes, was threatened by Mithridates. The new province with the command of the fleet fell to Cotta, but Lucullus was called to lead the armies of Rome against this dangerous enemy. In 74 B.C. he was in Asia at the head of a force of about 30,000 foot and 2000 horse. The king of Pontus was already on Roman ground in Bithynia, and Cotta was shut up in Chalcedon on the Propontis by a vast host of 150,000 men. The enemy s fleet had forced its way into the harbour, and had burnt all the Roman vessels lying at anchor. The advance of Lucullus, however, forced the king to raise the siege and retire along the sea-coast, till Ii3 halted before the strong city of Cyzicus, the key of Asia, as it was called, built on an island at a little distance from the mainland, with which it was connected by a bridge. All the attempts of Mithridates on the place were foiled by a gallant defence, and it was not long before Lucullus took up a threatening position in the rear of his army, which cut off all his land communications and left him only master of the sea. Bad weather and violent storms and scant supplies soon drove the king from the walls of Cy/ieus, and his vast army was dispersed without having had the chance of fighting a single pitched battle. His fleet too, which a? yet had had the command of the ^gean, was soon afterwards destroyed by Lucullus, and thus his whole power for offensive warfare had completely collapsed. He himself withdrew into his own proper territory, and all that the Roman general had to fear was that he might baffle pursuit by a flight eastward into the remote wilds of Armenia. However, in the autumn of 73 B.C., Lucullus pushed into the heart of Pontus far beyond the Halys, the limit of the famous Scipio s advance east ward, and continued his onward march, regardless of the murmurs of his weary soldiery, to Cabeira or Neocsesarea (now Niksar), where the king had gone into winter quarters with a vague hope that his son-in-law, Tigranes, the powerful king of Armenia, and possibly even the Parthians, might, for their own sakes, come to his aid against a common foe. It was by a very toilsome march through difficult roads that the Roman army at last reached Cabeira, to find themselves confronted by a greatly superior force. But the troops of Mithridates were no more a match for the Roman legionaries than were the Persians for Alexander, and a large detachment of his army was decisively cut up by one of Lucullus s lieutenant-generals. The king decided on instant retreat, but the retreat soon became a disorderly flight, and Lucullus, seizing the moment for attack, annihilated his enemy, Mithridates himself escaping with difficulty over the mountain range between Pontus and Cappadocia into Lesser Armenia. He found a sort of refuge in the dominions of Tigranes, but he was in fact detained as a prisoner rather than received as an honoured friend and ally. Pontus thus, with the exception of some of the maritime cities, such as Sinope, Heraclea, and Amisus, which still clung to the king under whom they had enjoyed a free Greek constitution, became Roman territory. Two years were occupied in the siege and capture of these strongholds, while Lucullus busied himself with a general reform of the administration of the province of Asia. His next step was to demand the surrender of Mithridates and to threaten Tigranes with war in the event of refusal. He had indeed no direct authority from the home government to attempt the conquest of Armenia, but he may well have supposed that in invading the country he would be following out Sulla s policy, and securing Rome in the East from a serious danger. Nor was it unnatural that there should be a fascination in the idea of winning renown in the distant and almost unknown regions beyond the Euphrates. In the spring of the year 69 B.C., at the head of only two legions, which, it appears, by no means liked the hardships of the expedition, he marched through Sophene, the south western portion of Armenia, crossed the Tigris, and pushed on to the newly-built royal city, Tigranocerta, situated on one of the affluents of that river. A motley host, made up out of the tribes bordering on the Black Sea and the Caspian, hovered round his small army, but failed to hinder him from laying siege to the town. On this occasion Lucullus showed consummate military capacity, contriving to maintain the siege and at the same time to give battle to the enemy with a force which must have been inferior in the ratio of something like one to twenty. According to his own account he put the Armenians to rout with a loss of five Roman soldiers, leaving 100,000 dead on the field of battle. The victory before the walls of Tigranocerta was undoubtedly a very glorious one for the arms of Rome, and it resulted in the dissolution of the Armenian king s extensive empire. There might now have been peace but for the interference of Mithridates, who for his own sake pressed Tigranes to renew the war and to seek the aid and alliance of Parthia. The Parthian king, how ever, was disposed to prefer a treaty with Rome to a treaty with Armenia, and desired simply to have the Euphrates recognized as his western boundary. Mithridates next appealed to the national spirit of the peoples of the East generally, and endeavoured to rouse them to a united effort against Roman aggression. He hoped to crush his enemy amid the mountains of Armenia, and indeed the position of Lucullus was highly critical. The home government