Cicero - Anthony Everitt [112]
Cicero’s patience was sorely tried and eventually he wrote to Appius in terms of firm but courteously indirect protest. He also inquired nervously of the whereabouts of three military cohorts.
Malicious persons … said you were holding assizes in Tarsus, making both administrative and judicial decisions, although you had reason to think that your successor had arrived.… Their talk had no effect on me.… But I must own candidly that I am disturbed to find three cohorts missing from my exiguous force, and those the most nearly up to strength, and to be ignorant of their whereabouts.
Cicero was right to be worried about the state of the armed forces at his disposal. Persistent reports were coming in that the Parthians were on the move and he would be expected to do what he could to resist them. The allied kingdoms, which Pompey had arranged as buffer states in his eastern settlement, looked increasingly unreliable.
Cicero urgently needed to lay his hands on the missing soldiers. Cilicia was garrisoned with two legions, but both were under strength. Some had been mutinous, although Appius had eventually pacified them by settling their arrears of pay. When campaigning abroad, the Romans usually employed as soldiers only their own citizens and relied on local levies for cavalry and lightly armed soldiers; but Cilicia was a recent acquisition and had no tradition of supplying troops to the Romans. Recruitment promised to be difficult. Caelius in Rome was just as worried about the military situation as Cicero was, but he warned that there would be little sympathy back home for his predicament. “Your army is hardly capable of defending a single pass. Unfortunately nobody allows for this: a man holding public office is expected to cope with any emergency, as though every item in complete preparedness had been put at his disposal.”
Cicero joined his army and did his best to enlist locals. AS a precaution, he sent the boys, Marcus and Quintus, north to the friendly kingdom of Galatia (in modern-day Turkey), where he hoped they would be out of harm’s way at the court of its ruler, Deiotarus. Deiotarus sent him a Roman-style legion of Galatians, who turned out to be surprisingly good soldiers.
AS the autumn came on, the news grew worse. The Parthians were reported to have crossed the Euphrates and there was talk that the King of Armenia was planning to invade Cappadocia, an allied kingdom to the northeast of Cilicia, in support. No word had come from the nearest province, Syria, where the new governor was the stubborn and luckless Bibulus, Caesar’s fellow Consul in 59. In fact, it was not even clear if he had arrived yet to take up his duties. Cicero commented dryly: “My best resource is winter.” He positioned his troops in the Taurus Mountains, from where he could either march north to meet a threat to Cappadocia or descend into the flatlands of eastern Cilicia near the Syrian border. In a dispatch to the Senate in mid-September he urgently appealed for more troops.
The young King of Cappadocia, Ariobarzanes, who styled himself “the Pious and Pro-Roman,” came to see the new Roman governor in a highly nervous state. He had recently inherited the throne after his father’s assassination and told Cicero that he had uncovered a plot against his own life. The idea was to install his brother, who would take an anti-Roman line. The Queen Mother was implicated and a semi-independent principality was on the point of open rebellion. Cicero advised him to take strong measures to punish the conspirators. But although Ariobarzanes asked for troops, none could be spared. It was agreed that the king could threaten their use, if necessary. AS SO often with young men, Cicero got on well with Ariobarzanes and when they were not talking politics they found time to discuss the differences between the Roman and Galatian systems of augury.
Hearing that