The Provinces of the Roman Empire 4

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 4

In the treaties concluded with the Parthians by Lucullus (iv. 71) {iv.

67.} and Pompeius (iv. 127) {iv. 122.} the Euphrates was recognised

as the boundary, and so Mesopotamia was ceded to them. But this did

not prevent the Romans from receiving the rulers of Edessa among their

clients, and from laying claim to a great part of northern Mesopotamia

at least for their indirect rule, apparently by extending the limits

of Armenia towards the south (iv. 146) {iv. 140.}. On that account,

after some delay, the Parthian government began the war against the

Romans, in the form of declaring it against the Armenians. The answer

to this was the campaign of Crassus, and, after the defeat at Carrhae

(iv. 351 f.) {iv. 335 f.}, the bringing back of Armenia under Parthian

power; we may add, the resumption of their claims on the western half

of the Seleucid state, the carrying out of which, it is true, proved

at that time unsuccessful (iv. 356) {iv. 339.}. During the whole

twenty years of civil war, in which the Roman republic perished and

ultimately the principate was established, the state of war between

the Romans and Parthians continued, and not seldom the two struggles

became intermixed. Pompeius had, before the decisive battle, attempted

to gain king Orodes as ally; but, when the latter demanded the cession

of Syria, Pompeius could not prevail on himself to deliver up the

province which he had personally made Roman. After the catastrophe he

had nevertheless resolved to do so; but accidents directed his flight

not to Syria, but to Egypt, where he met his end (iv. 446) {iv. 424.}.

The Parthians appeared on the point of once more breaking into Syria;

and the later leaders of the republicans did not disdain the aid of the

public foe. Even in Caesar’s lifetime Caecilius Bassus, when he raised

the banner of revolt in Syria, had at once called in the Parthians.

They had followed this call; Pacorus, the son of Orodes, had defeated

Caesar’s lieutenant and liberated the troops of Bassus besieged by

him in Apamea (709) {44 B.C.}. For this reason, as well as in order to

take revenge for Carrhae, Caesar had resolved to go in the next spring

personally to Syria and to cross the Euphrates; but his death prevented

the execution of this plan. When Cassius thereupon took arms in Syria,

he entered into relations with the Parthian king; and in the decisive

battle at Philippi (712) {42 B.C.} Parthian mounted archers joined

in fighting for the freedom of Rome. When the republicans succumbed,

the great-king, in the first instance, maintained a quiet attitude;

and Antonius, while designing probably to execute the plans of the

dictator, had at first enough to do with the settlement of the East.

The collision could not fail to take place; the assailant this time was

the Parthian king.

 

[Sidenote: The Parthians in Syria and Asia Minor.]

 

In 713 {41 B.C.} when Caesar the son fought in Italy with the generals

and the wife of Antonius, and the latter tarried inactive in Egypt

beside queen Cleopatra, Orodes responded to the pressure of a Roman

living with him in exile, Quintus Labienus, and sent the latter, a son

of the dictator’s embittered opponent Titus Labienus, and formerly

an officer in the army of Brutus, as well as (713) {44 B.C.} his

son Pacorus with a strong army over the frontier. The governor of

Syria, Decidius Saxa, succumbed to the unexpected attack; the Roman

garrisons, formed in great part of old soldiers of the republican

army, placed themselves under the command of their former officer;

Apamea and Antioch, and generally all the towns of Syria, except

the island-town of Tyre which could not be subdued without a fleet,

submitted; on the flight to Cilicia Saxa, in order not to be taken

prisoner, put himself to death. After the occupation of Syria Pacorus

turned against Palestine, Labienus towards the province of Asia; here

too the cities far and wide submitted or were forcibly vanquished, with

the exception of the Carian Stratonicea. Antonius, whose attention

was claimed by the Italian complications, sent no succour to his

governors, and for almost two years (from the end of 713 {41 B.C.} to

the spring of 715 {39 B.C.}) Syria and a great part of Asia Minor were

commanded by the Parthian generals and by the republican imperator

Labienus--_Parthicus_, as he called himself with shameless irony, not

the Roman who vanquished the Parthians, but the Roman who with Parthian

aid vanquished his countrymen.

 

[Sidenote: Driven out by Ventidius Bassus.]

 

Only after the threatened rupture between the two holders of power

was averted, Antonius sent a new army under the conduct of Publius

Ventidius Bassus, to whom he entrusted the command in the provinces of

Asia and Syria. The able general encountered in Asia Labienus alone

with his Roman troops, and rapidly drove him out of the province. At

the boundary between Asia and Cilicia, in the passes of the Taurus, a

division of Parthians wished to rally their fugitive allies; but they

too were beaten before they could unite with Labienus, and thereupon

the latter was caught on his flight in Cilicia and put to death. With

like good fortune Ventidius gained by fighting the passes of the Amanus

on the border of Cilicia and Syria; here Pharnapates, the best of the

Parthian generals, fell (715) {39 B.C.}. Thus was Syria delivered from

the enemy. Certainly in the following year Pacorus once more crossed

the Euphrates; but only to meet destruction with the greatest part of

his army in a decisive engagement at Gindarus, north-east of Antioch

(9th June 716) {38 B.C.}. It was a victory which counterbalanced in

some measure the day of Carrhae, and one of permanent effect; for long

the Parthians did not again show their troops on the Roman bank of the

Euphrates.

 

[Sidenote: Position of Antonius.]

 

If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her conquests towards the

East, and to enter on the inheritance of Alexander the Great there in

all its extent, the circumstances were never more favourable for doing

so than in the year 716 {38 B.C.}. The relations of the two rulers to

each other had become re-established seasonably for that purpose, and

even Caesar at that time had probably a sincere wish for an earnest

and successful conduct of the war by his co-ruler and brother-in-law.

The disaster of Gindarus had called forth a severe dynastic crisis

among the Parthians. King Orodes, deeply agitated by the death of

his eldest and ablest son, resigned the government in favour of his

second son Phraates. The latter, in order the better to secure for

himself the throne, exercised a reign of terror, to which his numerous

brothers and his old father himself, as well as a number of the high

nobles of the kingdom, fell victims; others of them left the country

and sought protection with the Romans, among them the powerful and

respected Monaeses. Never had Rome in the East an army of equal numbers

and excellence as at this time: Antonius was able to lead over the

Euphrates no fewer than 16 legions, about 70,000 Roman infantry, about

40,000 auxiliaries, 10,000 Spanish and Gallic, and 6000 Armenian

horsemen; at least half of them were veteran troops brought up from the

West, all ready to follow anywhere their beloved and honoured leader,

the victor of Philippi, and to crown the brilliant victories, which had

been already achieved not by but for him over the Parthians, with still

greater successes under his own leadership.

 

[Sidenote: His aims.]

 

In reality Antonius had in view the erection of an Asiatic

great-kingdom after the model of that of Alexander. As Crassus before

his invasion had announced that he would extend the Roman rule as

far as Bactria and India, so Antonius named the first son, whom the

Egyptian queen bore to him, by the name of Alexander. He appears to

have directly intended, on the one hand, to bring--excluding the

completely Hellenised provinces of Bithynia and Asia--the whole

imperial territory in the East, so far as it was not already under

dependent petty princes, into this form; and on the other hand, to

make all the regions of the East once occupied by Occidentals subject

to himself in the form of satrapies. Of eastern Asia Minor the largest

portion and the military primacy were assigned to the most warlike of

the princes there, the Galatian Amyntas (I. 335). Alongside of the

Galatian prince stood the princes of Paphlagonia, the descendants

of Deiotarus, dispossessed from Galatia; Polemon, the new prince in

Pontus, and the husband of Pythodoris the granddaughter of Antonius;

and moreover, as hitherto, the kings of Cappadocia and Commagene.

Antonius united a great part of Cilicia and Syria, as well as of Cyprus

and Cyrene, with the Egyptian state, to which he thus almost restored

its limits as they had been under the Ptolemies; and as he had made

queen Cleopatra, Caesar’s mistress, his own or rather his wife, so her

illegitimate child by Caesar, Caesarion, already earlier recognised as

joint ruler of Egypt,[22] obtained the reversion of the old kingdom

of the Ptolemies, and her illegitimate son by Antonius, Ptolemaeus

Philadelphus, obtained that of Syria. To another son, whom she had

borne to Antonius, the already mentioned Alexander, Armenia was for

the present assigned as a payment to account for the rule of the East

conceived as in reserve for him. With this great-kingdom organised

after the Oriental fashion[23] he thought to combine the principate

over the West. He himself did not assume the name of king, on the

contrary bore in presence of his countrymen and the soldiers only those

titles which also belonged to Caesar. But on imperial coins with a

Latin legend Cleopatra is called queen of kings, her sons by Antonius

at least kings; the coins show the head of his eldest son along with

that of his father, as if the hereditary character were a matter of

course; the marriage and the succession of the legitimate and the

illegitimate children are treated by him, as was the usage with the

great-kings of the East, or, as he himself said, with the divine

freedom of his ancestor Herakles:[24] the said Alexander and his twin

sister were named by him, the former Helios, the latter Selene, after

the model of those same great-kings, and, as once upon a time the

Persian king bestowed on the refugee Themistocles a number of Asiatic

cities, so he bestowed on the Parthian Monaeses, who went over to him,

three cities of Syria. In Alexander too the king of the Macedonians and

the king of kings of the East went in some measure side by side, and

to him too the bridal bed in Susa was the reward for the camp-tent of

Gaugamela; but the Roman copy shows in its exactness a strong element

of caricature.

 

[Sidenote: Preparations for the Parthian war.]

 

Whether Antonius apprehended his position in this way, immediately

on his taking up the government in the East, cannot be decided; it

may be conjectured that the creation of a new Oriental great-kingdom

in connection with the Occidental principate ripened in his mind

gradually, and that the idea was only thought out completely, after,

in the year 717 {37 B.C.}, on his return from Italy to Asia, he had

once more entered into relations with the last queen of the Lagid

house not to be again broken off. But his temperament was not equal

to such an enterprise. One of those men of military capacity, who

knew how, in presence of the enemy, and especially in a position of

difficulty, to strike prudently and boldly, he lacked the will of the

statesman, the sure grasp and resolute pursuit of a political aim.

Had the dictator Caesar assigned to him the problem of subduing the

East, he would probably have solved it: the marshal was not fitted

to be the ruler. After the expulsion of the Parthians from Syria,

almost two years (summer of 716 {38 B.C.} to summer of 718 {36 B.C.})

elapsed without any step being taken towards the object aimed

at. Antonius himself, inferior also in this respect that he grudged

to his generals important successes, had removed the conqueror of

Labienus and of Pacorus, the able Ventidius, immediately after this

last success, and taken the chief command in person in order to pursue

and to miss the pitiful honour of occupying Samosata, the capital

of the small Syrian dependent state, Commagene; annoyed at this, he

left the East, in order to negotiate in Italy with his father-in-law

as to the future arrangements, or to enjoy life with his young

spouse Octavia. His governors in the East were not inactive. Publius

Canidius Crassus advanced from Armenia towards the Caucasus, and

there subdued Pharnabazus king of the Iberians, and Zober king of the

Albanians. Gaius Sossius took in Syria the last town still adhering

to the Parthians, Aradus; he further re-established in Judaea the

rule of Herodes, and caused the pretender to the throne installed

by the Parthians, the Hasmonean Antigonus, to be put to death. The

consequences of the victory on Roman territory were thus duly drawn,

and the recognition of Roman rule was enforced as far as the Caspian

Sea and the Syrian desert. But Antonius had reserved for himself the

beginning of the warfare against the Parthians, and he came not.