Читать книгу Urban Life and Local Politics in Roman Bithynia - Tonnes Bekker-Nielsen - Страница 11

The Hellenistic monarchs of the second and first century BC have been harshly judged by history. To some extent, this is because their biographies were handed down by Roman historians or by historians who, with the perspicacity that comes of hindsight, saw the expansion of Roman power as inevitable. Even their apologists, however, would have to admit that the foreign policy of late Hellenistic kings was often oriented towards short-term goals, making them easy preys for a policy of divide et impera.

The clash of interests in Asia Minor was fueled by the conflicting ambitions of three great powers: Macedonia, the Seleucid kingdom, and Rome, and of ambitious medium-sized powers like Pergamon, Rhodes, and at a later date the Pontic kingdom of Mithradates VI. Little Bithynia was too small and weak to be an independent player in this Great Game, but through shifting alliances, her rulers tried to exploit the tensions between her neighbours to their own advantage.

The kingdom of Bithynia was a dynastic monarchy, and violent domestic conflicts were mainly concerned with rival claims to the royal power. Nikomedes I killed his brothers to secure undisputed possession of his throne, and at his death in 255-253 BC, his sons fought over the succession. A century later, Prusias II was deposed and killed by his son, Nikomedes Epiphanes, who invaded Bithynia with support from the neighbouring king of Pergamon.

Bloody and protracted as such conflicts could be, their impact on the village population and on the artisans and small traders of the cities was mitigated by the fact that in most cases, the aggressor was out to secure or expand a territory for himself. It was not in his interest to alienate his future subjects by excessive brutality, nor to weaken his tax base by slaughtering the population or destroying cities. That this was appreciated by the population, or at least by their leaders, is evident from the behaviour of the Nikomedians when the unpopular Prusias II was besieged in 149 BC. The citizens opened the gates to the soldiers of Nikomedes Epiphanes, in effect declaring Nikomedia “an open city”. Their city was spared the horrors of a long siege and possibly (though the sources do not say so) rewarded in other ways for its change of allegiance. Prusias sought refuge in the temple of Zeus, where his son had him killed in defiance of the traditional right of asylum – parricide and sacrilege were, in the last analysis, less dangerous politically than leaving a rival claimant to the throne alive.

By the late second century BC, Rome had emerged as the winner of the Great Game and under the terms of king Attalos’ will, the rich kingdom of Pergamon, Bithynia’s southern neighbour, was incorporated into the imperium as the province of Asia. Anti-Roman feeling and the prospect of territorial gains led Nikomedes III of Bithynia into an alliance with Mithradates VI Eupator of Pontos. Their aim was to take Paphlagonia and Cappadocia, then divide these territories between Bithynia and Pontos; however, Roman intervention and inter-allied rivalry frustrated the plan. The death of Nikomedes III in 94 BC led to a struggle for the succession between Nikomedes IV, leader of a pro-Roman faction and his half-brother Sokrates Chrestos, the nominee of Mithradates VI. This vicarious conflict between Rome and Pontos eventually escalated into the First Mithradatic War. The struggle was protracted and though Bithynia was on the side of the victor, the Roman intervention was not without ugly incidents: in 85 BC, the troops at Nikomedia mutinied and killed their commander, L. Valerius Flaccus, then plundered the city.

After the defeat of Mithradates, Nikomedes IV returned from Italy to his kingdom. He was well aware that he owed his throne to the Romans and remained consistently pro-Roman throughout his reign, even following the example of the Pergamene king and bequeathing his kingdom to the Roman people.

A young Roman officer, Julius Caesar, was sent by the governor of Asia on a mission to Bithynia c. 80 BC, “to summon the fleet” (ad accersendam classem), according to Suetonius.³⁰ It was probably no diplomatic mission, for which a twenty-year-old would hardly have been chosen; yet he gained access to the royal circles and spent some time at the court of Nikomedes, so much that it gave rise to rumours of a homosexual relationship.³¹ If there is more to the story than that, Caesar may have been on a fact-finding assignment, to sound opinion at the Bithynian court and prepare Rome for the takeover that might come at any moment if Nikomedes IV should die prematurely. The struggle between Nikomedes and Sokrates had revealed the existence of anti-Roman sentiment among the aristocracy, and there was reason to fear that unpleasant memories of the Roman mutiny and pillage might linger in Nikomedia.

At the death of Nikomedes IV in 74, Mithradates VI once more tried to place a puppet king on the Bithynian throne, and once again, war with Rome was the result. The Pontic king won control of the Bithynian cities and pushed across the border into Mysia, where the important port and city of Kyzikos (at modern Bandirma) withstood a protracted siege. In 73/72 BC, a Roman army under L. Licinius Lucullus forced Mithradates to adandon the siege of Kyzikos and retreat eastwards, while the Lucullan forces re-established Roman control over the cities of western Bithynia.³² During the last stage of the Third Mithradatic War (66-63 BC), Pompey the Great commanded the Roman forces, and after the defeat and suicide of Mithradates, the western part of his kingdom was united with Bithynia. Both territories were incorporated into the empire as the province of Bithynia et Pontus and their administrative structure defined in a provincial code, the lex Pompeia.

Notes

1 Strabon 12.4.7; Stephen of Byzantion, s.v. Nikaia (Meineke 474); Leschhorn 1984, 255.

2 Marek 1993, 21-23; Højte 2006, 20.

3 The most important of these was Astakos, on the southern shore of the gulf, which became part of the territory of the new city of Nikomedia but retained its separate identity: in the second century AD, it is named by Ptolemy of Alexandria (Geogr. 5.1) as a separate settlement. For the location of Astakos, see Şahin 1973, 71-73.

4 Strabon, 12.4.3; Arrian, FGrHist 15.6.29 = Tzetses, Chil. 3.963; Stephen, s.v. Prousa (Meineke 537)

5 For coins bearing the image of the founder Prusias, see IK 40, p. 26-28. Only in a few cases, however, is the figure specifically identified as “Prusias, the founder of Prusa”, e.g. RGMG 1.4 Prusa 48 (Commodus); 116 (Geta).

6 Pliny, NH, 5.148.

7 Strabon 11.14.6.

8 Corsten (IK 40, p. 22-26) attempts to reconcile the two conflicting traditions by positing two foundations, first by a prince Prus… in the sixth century BC, then by Prusias I in the second century BC.

9 Cf. Dion’s apologetic remark, Or. 44.9, that Prusa “is not the largest of our cities and has not been settled for the longest time”.

10 RGMG 1.3 Nikaia 54-55; IK 9.21-30.

11 Kraft 1935, 111; cf. fig. 2.

12 Pol. 1327a11-1331b23.

13 Pol. 1330a34.

14 Pol. 1330b8.

15 The view that a southerly or westerly aspect is to be avoided because the city will be too hot, and therefore unhealthy, recurs in the planning advice given by the Roman architect Vitruvius in the first century AD (De arch. 1.4.1).

16 Pol. 1330b32ff

17 Pol. 1330b32ff

18 Pol. 1330b32ff

19 Pol. 1331a30

20 Şahin 1973, 18.

21 Libanios, Or. 61.7.

22 Libanios, Or 61.17. While the preceding quotation contains a specific reference to the topography of Nikomedia, the generalized list of public buildings may be inspired by Aristides’ Monody on Smyrna, Or. 18.6.

23 Mitchell 1983, 138-139.

24 E.g., RGMG 1.3 Nikomedia 33 (Domitian); 74-75 (Antoninus Pius); 138 (Commodus); 387 (Philip); also Price and Trell 1977, 213-215. Stephen of Byzantion identifies Nikomedia as an emporion, Nikaia as a polis.

25 Pliny, Ep. 10.41. The port installations themselves have long since been destroyed or built over: Lehmann-Hartleben 1923, 167 n. 1.

26 For the letter, see Robert 1937, 231.

27 Athen. 2.43a.

28 Robert 1946, 97 and pl. 1.

29 Cf. Nielsen 1999, 25-26, 214-215.

30 Suetonius, Divus Julius, 2.

31 Suetonius, Divus Julius, 2; 49.

32 Appian, Mithr. 77.