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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
him, as a contemporary author explicitly confirms, the craving for revenge
for the murder of his patron was sufficient personal motive. 86 However, that
there was such a conflagration is surely not explicable solely in terms of the
intentions of the movement’s leader. What may have been decisive was the
determination of part of the local population to resist the provincialisation
of their land. 87 If, therefore, as it appears, the Mauretanian rebellion resulted
from the typical confusion of a provincial society faced by the establishment
of Roman domination, events were given a personal touch by what
drove Aedemon. The view that Aedemon wanted to be king 88 sounds just as
unlikely as similar reports concerning Simon. It seems more plausible that
he fought for the continuity of the ruling house and the maintenance of
Mauretania’s semi-autonomy. 89
In summary, in Aedemon we can see the combination of three motives for
vengeance. He, probably like the other participants in the revolt, was driven
by the wish to avenge the murder of his king and master. In addition,
Aedemon’s personal feelings in this respect must have been intensified by
the loss of the person who had freed him, his patron, who guaranteed his
high status and prosperity. Finally there was another emotion which Aedemon
will have shared with fellow-rebels: the loss of the remaining freedoms
which his land had formerly possessed.
The Year of the Four Emperors, 69, which provoked great uprisings
in Gaul and the Germanies, also caused trouble in Pontus. Its ringleader,
Anicetus, 90 whose very name (‘Unconquered’) advertised invincibility, was
originally a ‘barbarian slave’ 91 in the service of king Polemon II, dethroned
by Nero. As a freedman, he was prefect in charge of the Pontic king’s navy
– as Tacitus explicitly says, a man of enormous influence ( praepotens). 92
Anicetus was not prepared to come to terms with a new order which meant
the loss of his power; 93 i.e., he may have had a personal motive for rebellion.
His chance stared him in the face in the civil war between claimants to the
imperial throne. He declared officially for Vitellius – imprudently, given the
relative proximity of Vespasian, 94 but an indication that he was not basically
anti-Roman. He recruited bands of men from Pontus, indiscriminately
accepting the poorest of the poor, 95 men for whom the chief attraction was
the prospect of booty. 96 Most of them, according to Tacitus, talking of a
bellum servile, were runaway slaves. 97 He targeted Trapezus, on the eastern
edge of the province, and proved able to win over without a fight its garrison,
made up of former troops of Polemon, and a detachment of the fleet.
With these he dominated the east of Pontus and its coastal waters, which his
troops plundered at will in their greed for booty. 98 To suppress the revolt
Vespasian sent detachments of his legions under the command of Virdius
Geminus. Facing defeat, Anicetus sought refuge with a local dynast living
beyond the imperial frontier who, 99 however, under pressure from Virdius
Geminus, had him executed and handed over his followers. 100
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