LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

Mithradates’ foot soldiers at the Battle of chaeronea 379
VI eupator had inherited from his father, and for a long time he strived to
maintain it. Since, however, Mithradates desired to expand his kingdom,
while rome insisted on preserving the balance of powers around the
province of Asia, the republic and the pontic kingdom were on a collision
course. the tension turned to conflict and the conflict flared into outright
war in the year 89. Mithradates quickly overcame the ill-prepared roman
forces and became master of Asia Minor. 6 Desiring to push the battlefield
upon which his forces and the forces of rome would clash as far away
from his possessions as possible, he sent one of his most trusted generals,
Archelaos, to Athens. the general appointed by the roman Senate to
confront Mithradates’ forces was Sulla. In spite of the fact that he had
been declared a public enemy at home, the roman general continued his
campaign and the first major encounter with the pontic forces was at Athens
and piraeus, which the romans besieged and finally took in 86.
After losing Athens to Sulla and considering that his position at piraeus
is not tenable in the long run, Archelaos made full use of his maritime
supremacy and retreated by sea to euboea and thence to the pass of
thermopylae, where he made the junction with the troops brought from
Macedon by taxiles. At the same time, Sulla was compelled to follow him,
for two main reasons. on the one hand, his troops could hardly find food
in Attica – a region which had a hard time feeding its inhabitants even in
times of peace and had, moreover, been devastated by the lengthy siege of
Athens. on the other hand, in Greece had arrived the vanguard of another
roman army, led by hortensius, and he feared that the legate and his troops
would be annihilated by the pontic troops if left to their fate.
Sulla succeeded in joining hortensius, but his position continued
to appear weak. After all, he found himself in Beotia, a region where
wide valleys opened up between mountains, offering suitable terrain for
in the third punic War and against Aristonikos: App., Mithr., 30 and App., Mithr., 39,
respectively. A useful summary of the information available about Mithradates IV and
Mithradates V may be found in McGing, 1986, 34-42.
6 to most ancient writers and modern scholars, this is a clear clue that eupator
had been preparing this conflict for a long time (thus, among others, Sulla’s discourse
as reported in App., Mithr., 57.230-58.239 and plut., Sull., 24). Callataÿ notes that the
minting of coins by the pontic king accelerates greatly only in May-June 89 (CAllAtAŸ,
1997, 282-284), which may lead one to believe Mithradates did not prepare for the conflict
well in advance, but this is unlikely, given that during this age kings were content to use
any coins that were at their disposal, including coins issued by former kings of their own
dynasty or even foreign coins that had reached them as a result of taxation of trade or in the
form of booty. Besides, even Callataÿ agrees that Mithradates may have seen the conflict
with rome as inevitable as early as 95 (CAllAtAŸ, 1997, 274).