Cicero - Anthony Everitt [72]
Sometime towards the end of 62 or perhaps in early 61, Pompey returned to Italy after nearly six years of campaigning. He had swept the seas clear of pirates, the war against Mithridates, King of Pontus, had been won, and Syria from the Euphrates to the frontiers of Egypt had been annexed to the Empire. Trade with Asia Minor could now resume and money flooded back into Rome.
Pompey was an able rather than a great general, but he was an administrator of the first order. The campaign against Mithridates had been long and hard fought, for the king was a wily foe. Hostilities opened after he invaded Bithynia, a new Roman province, thirteen years previously. When Pompey arrived to take over command of the Roman forces in the east from his able predecessor, Lucullus, he found that final victory was close at hand. The groundwork had been done for him and he had only to stamp out the final flames of resistance. Pompey persuaded the King of Parthia to invade Armenia, which was ruled by an ally of Mithridates, while he himself marched into the enemy’s homeland, Pontus. With overwhelming superiority of numbers, the Romans won a crushing victory.
The indomitable old king tried to keep going, seized the territories of a treacherous son, raised fresh troops and meditated an invasion of Italy. But his much put-upon subjects had had enough and revolts ensued. The great game was finally over. Holed up inside a remote citadel, Mithridates tried to poison himself, without success thanks to the physical immunity he had laboriously built up, and was forced to get a slave to stab him.
After some mopping-up operations, Pompey marched south to deal with a civil war in Palestine and visited the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. He dreamed of advancing Roman arms to the Red Sea, but when the news of Mithridates’ death reached him he moved from military to organizational matters. His task was to reorder the eastern empire in such a way that its long-term security was assured. His settlement of the eastern provinces was so well judged that it was to remain in place mostly unchanged until the next century. A chain of directly governed Roman provinces was established along the Mediterranean seaboard, stretching from Pontus in the Black Sea to Syria in the south. Their eastern frontiers were protected by a series of quasi-independent kingdoms which were allowed to manage their internal affairs without interference but whose foreign policy was in Roman hands.
Pompey was only forty-four years old, but it must have seemed to him that there was little left in life for him to do. AS soon as he landed at Brundisium he disbanded his forces, much to everyone’s relief. The sight of the famous general traveling unarmed and in the company of only a few friends, “as if he were coming back from a foreign holiday” (as Plutarch put it), made a huge impression on public opinion. On his leisurely journey along the Via Appia to Rome, where he arrived in February, large crowds came out to watch him pass by.
He felt no need to establish a military autocracy, as some had feared, for he was self-evidently the first man in Rome. But the Senate, envious of his preeminence, could not see that he was at heart a conservative and had no desire for monarchical powers. In any case, if he did ever come under threat, he knew that he had the public support, as well as the financial resources, to raise a new army.
Pompey had two main aims in mind. The first was to persuade the Senate to ratify his eastern settlement, and the second was to arrange for a land-distribution law, which would grant farms to his veterans. His attempted deployment of Metellus Nepos showed that he foresaw trouble and, without making his views entirely clear, he positioned himself alongside the populares in order to gain leverage over the Senate.
Cicero saw an opening. AS a distinguished backbencher in the Senate, he had influence rather than power, but he was still in a position to guide change. His aim as ever was to get the constitution to work better.