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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Cilicia. Exactly the same recognition may well have occurred first to a local
‘big man’, which would lend a natural explanation to the reports of confiscations
under Lysias. It was probably only in the telling that these were
transformed into a story about a bandit who robbed from the rich to give to
the poor.
One of the pirates whom Pompey settled in Cilicia was Tarcondimotus,
a local dynast from the Amanus mountains. 52 In the Roman sources, he
escapes being branded a bandit, but this was no accident. He owed such
generosity to his loyalty to Rome and to the recommendation of Cicero. The
latter, proconsul of Cilicia in 51 bc, lauded Tarcondimotus in the most
glowing terms as ‘our most faithful ally beyond Taurus, and true friend of
the Roman people’. 53 Tarcondimotus was at Pompey’s side at Pharsalus,
aided Julius Caesar’s assassins at Philippi and fell at the battle of Actium in
31 bc while backing Antony. 54 Octavian, of course, might well have regarded
him as a latro, but this is nowhere recorded. And his son, also called
Tarcondimotus, went over to Octavian and in 20 bc was given authority
over his father’s area of influence. 55
Depending on the point of view of the source concerned, we encounter
Antipater, 56 ruler of the cities of Derbe and Laranda in southern Lycaonia at
the time of Cicero, either as a usurper, 57 disparagingly labelled a ‘bandit’
(leistes), or as a respectable local dynast, for whom Cicero personally stood
guarantor to Q. Marcius Philippus, proconsul of Cilicia, in 47 bc. Unfortunately,
Strabo has no more than a bald reference to Antipater ‘the bandit’,
offering no justification for his negative judgement. 58 By contrast, Cicero
stresses in a letter that from Antipater he met with ‘hospitality’ and ‘great
friendship’ (hospitium, summa familiaritas). 59 Antipater also won respect beyond
the frontiers of his territory. A foreign city honoured him in an inscription
for his friendly mediation in a diplomatic affair with Rome. 60 His fate was
sealed by Amyntas, king of the Galatians, who conquered Derbe and its
region around 36 bc, deposing Antipater. 61
The Olympus range, lying on the borders of Mysia and Bithynia, was
the homeland of Cleon, ‘the bandit-overlord’ (ho ton leisterion hegemon). 62 In
41 bc, during the Parthian attack on Asia Minor, Cleon stood loyally by
Rome. His headquarters was a fortress called Callydion. From here he worked
for Mark Antony by intercepting military supplies and money meant for
Q. Labienus, the famous Roman renegade and leader of the Parthian invasion
forces. As the confrontation between Antony and Octavian reached its peak,
Cleon changed sides. Strabo deplores the extent to which the Roman grandee
fawned on the ‘bandit’. Apparently Octavian rewarded Cleon by granting
him an official position: that of priest-prince in Comana-in-Pontus. According
to Strabo, his period in office was a clear demonstration that this high
post had been desecrated by being handed over to an out-and-out bandit.
Cleon’s case is a further illustration of how difficult it is to define a ‘bandit’
like him, and calls for a review of where this discussion has taken us. Syme
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