The Grass Crown (90 page)

Pelopidas tried to ignore the sweat rolling from his scalp onto his brow and into his eyes, tried to position his hands so that their tremor would not be visible from the throne. “Thus, Great King, the proconsul Aquillius dismissed me from his presence,” he concluded.

The King did not move so much as his lashes, and the look upon his face remained what it had been throughout the audience; impassive, expressionless, bland almost. At forty years of age, having held his throne now for twenty-three years, the sixth King Mithridates, called Eupator, had learned to conceal all save his mightiest displeasures. Not that the news Pelopidas had brought had not provoked a mighty displeasure; rather, it was news he had expected.

For two years he had been living in an accelerated atmosphere of hope, hope generated the day that he heard Rome was at war with her Italian Allies. Instinct had told him this was his chance, and he had gone so far as to write to Tigranes at the time, warn his son-in-law to be ready. When he received word that Tigranes was with him in anything he cared to do, he decided that the first thing he must do was to make the war in Italy as difficult for Rome as he could. So he had sent an embassage to the Italians Quintus Poppaedius Silo and Gaius Papius Mutilus in the new capital of Italica, and offered them money, arms, ships, even troops to augment their own. But to his astonishment, his ambassadors returned with empty hands. Silo and Mutilus refused the Pontic offer with outrage and contempt.

“Tell King Mithridates that Italia’s quarrel with Rome is none of his business! Italia will do nothing to assist any foreign king make mischief against Rome” was their answer.

Like a prodded snail the King of Pontus had withdrawn into himself and sent Tigranes of Armenia an order to wait because the time was not right. Wondering if there would ever be a right time when even Italia, desperately in need of aid to win her battle for freedom and independence, could bite so savagely at the Pontic hand extended in friendship and dripping military largesse.

He dithered, just that little bit too apprehensive to make a firm decision and stick to it. One moment he was sure now was the time to declare outright war on Rome, the next moment he was not sure. Worrying, fretting, he kept all of this within himself; the King of Pontus could have no confidants and advisers extraordinary, even a son-in-law who was himself a great king. His court existed in a vacuum, no one able to say with certainty how the King felt, what his next move might be, whether there was a chance of war. All would welcome it, none wanted it.

Foiled in his overtures to the Italians, Mithridates then bethought himself of Macedonia, where the Roman province held an uneasy frontier a thousand miles long against the barbarian tribes to the north. Stir up trouble along that frontier, and Rome’s full attention would become occupied with it. So Pontic agents were sent to water the seeds of an ever-present hatred of Rome among the Bessi and the Scordisci and the other tribes of Moesia and Thrace, with the result that Macedonia began to endure the worst outbreak of barbarian raids and incursions in many years. In the initial rush to do damage, the Scordisci got as far as Dodona in Epirus. As luck would have it, however, Roman Macedonia was blessed with a superb and incorrupt governor in Gaius Sentius, who was reinforced by a legate, Quintus Bruttius Sura, of even more formidable sinew.

When the barbarian unrest failed to prod Sentius and Bruttius Sura into sending to Rome for additional help, Mithridates turned his attention toward stirring up trouble within the province as well. Shortly after the King decided upon this course, there appeared in Macedonia one Euphenes, who purported to be a direct descendant of Alexander the Great (to whom he bore a startling resemblance), and laid claim to the ancient and defunct throne of Macedonia. The inhabitants of sophisticated places like Thessalonica and Pella saw through him at once, but the upcountry folk espoused his cause ardently; alas for Mithridates, Euphenes proved to lack a true martial spirit and any talent to organize his adherents into an army. Sentius and Bruttius Sura dealt with Euphenes on a purely internal level and did not send urgently to Rome for money and additional troops—the aim of the whole Pontic. exercise.

So here he was, two years down the road from the outbreak of war between Rome and her Italian Allies, no further toward fulfilling his own ambitions. Dithering. Vacillating. Making life miserable for himself and his court. Fending off Tigranes, a more aggressive man, if less intelligent. Wondering. Unable to confide in anyone.

•        •        •

The King moved suddenly on his throne, and every courtier in the room jumped. “What else did you discover during your second—and very long—visit to Pergamum?” he asked Pelopidas.

“That Gaius Cassius the governor has placed his legion of Roman auxiliaries on a war footing and has been training and equipping two legions of militia as well, O Mighty One.” Pelopidas licked his lips, anxious to demonstrate that, though his mission had been a failure, his zeal for his King’s cause remained suitably fanatical. “I have an agent now within the governor’s palace at Pergamum, Great King. Just before I left he told me that he thinks Gaius Cassius and Manius Aquillius are planning to invade Pontus in the spring, in conjunction with Nicomedes of Bithynia and his ally Pylaemenes of Paphlagonia. And also, it seems likely, in conjunction with the governor of Cilicia, Quintus Oppius, who came to Pergamum to confer with Gaius Cassius.”

“Do you know if this projected invasion has the official sanction of the Senate and People of Rome?” asked the King.

“Gossip in the governor’s palace says not, O Great One.”

“Of Manius Aquillius I would expect it, if the pup is of the same kind as the dog was in the days of my father. Greed for gold. My gold.” The full, very red lips stretched back to reveal large yellow teeth. “It seems the governor of the Roman Asian province is of like mind. And Quintus Oppius of Cilicia. A gold-hungry trio!”

“As to the governor of Cilicia, it would appear not, O Mighty King,” said Pelopidas. “They are careful to give him to think that this is an operation mounted against our presence in Cappadocia. I gather Quintus Oppius is what the Romans call an honorable man.”

The King lapsed into silence, lips working in and out like a fish, eyes looking into nothing. It makes a difference when they threaten one’s own lands, thought King Mithridates. I am forced to stand with my back pressed hard against my frontiers, I am supposed to lay down my arms and allow these so-called rulers of the world to rape my country. The country which harbored me when I was a fugitive child, the country I love more than life itself. The country I want to see rule the world.

“They shall not do it!” he said aloud, very strongly.

Every head came up, but the King said nothing more; in and out went the lips, in and out, in and out.

The time is here. It has finally come, thought King Mithridates. My court has listened to this telling of the news from Pergamum, and the court is making a judgment. Not on the Romans. A judgment on me. If I lie down tamely while these gold-hungry Roman commissioners prate that they are the Senate and People of Rome—and talk of broaching my borders—my subjects will despise me. My reputation will suffer so badly that I will cease to make them fear me. And then some of my blood-relatives will deem me ripe for replacement as King of Pontus. I have sons of an age to rule now, each one supported by a mother just dying for power, and there are my cousins of the blood royal—Pelopidas, Archelaus, Neoptolemus, Leonippus. If I lie down under this like the cur the Romans think I am, I will not be King of Pontus any longer. I will be dead.

So it is war against Rome. The time has finally come. Not by my choice, and probably not by theirs. Conjured out of nothing by three gold-hungry Roman commissioners. My mind is made up. I will go to war against Rome.

And, having made his decision, Mithridates felt an enormous weight lift from him, a vast shadow suddenly vanish from the back of his mind; he sat on his throne and seemed to swell like a great golden toad, eyes glittering. Pontus was going to war. Pontus was going to make an example of Manius Aquillius and Gaius Cassius. Pontus was going to own the Roman Asian province. And Pontus was going to cross the Hellespont into eastern Macedonia, march down the Via Egnatia into the west. Pontus would sail out of the Euxine into the Aegean, spread ever westward. Until Italy and Rome herself lay before those Pontic armies and fleets. The King of Pontus would also be the King of Rome. The King of Pontus would be the mightiest sovereign in the history of the world, a greater by far than Alexander the Great. His sons would rule in places as remote as Spain and Mauretania, his daughters would be queens of every land from Armenia to Numidia to Farthest Gaul. All the treasures of the world would belong to the King of the World, all the beautiful women, all the lands everywhere! Then he remembered his son-in-law Tigranes, and smiled. Let Tigranes have the Kingdom of the Parthians, spread eastward to India and the misty countries beyond.

But the King didn’t say he was going to war against Rome. He opened his mouth and said, “Send for Aristion.”

A tenseness had entered into the court, though none knew exactly what was happening to the awesome presence upon the gem-studded throne. Just that something was happening.

There came into the audience chamber a tall and remarkably handsome Greek in tunic and chlamys wrap; without awkwardness or self-consciousness he prostrated himself before the King.

“Rise, Aristion. I have work for you.”

The Greek rose to stand looking attentively adoring; it was a pose he practised in front of the mirror King Mithridates had most thoughtfully placed in his luxurious room, and Aristion flattered himself he had managed to poise himself on the exact line between a sycophancy the King would despise and an independence the King would condemn. For almost a year he had dwelt at the Pontic court in Sinope, having fetched up so far from his home in Athens because he was by trade a Peripatetic, a wandering philosopher of the school founded by the successors of Aristotle, and had thought to find fatter pickings in lands less well endowed with such as he than Greece, Rome, Alexandria. By sheer luck he had found the King of Pontus in need of his services, for the King had been uncomfortably aware of his educational shortcomings ever since his visit to Asia Province ten years earlier.

Careful to couch his instruction in purely conversational terms, Aristion filled the King’s ears with his tales of the vanished might of Greece and then Macedonia, the repulsive and unwelcome might of Rome, the conditions which applied in business and commerce, the geography and history of the world. And eventually Aristion had come to think of himself as the King’s arbiter of elegance and sophistication rather than as the King’s pedagogue.

“The thought that I can be of some use to you fills me with delight, O Mighty Mithridates,” said Aristion in mellifluous tones.

The King then proceeded to demonstrate that—while he may have feared to war against Rome—he had been thinking for years about exactly how he was going to war against Rome.

“Are you wellborn enough to cultivate political power in Athens?” asked the King unexpectedly.

Aristion didn’t betray his surprise; he just looked charming. “I am, O Great One,” he lied.

In actual fact he was the son of a slave, but all that had been a long time ago. No one remembered it, even in Athens. Appearance was all. And his appearance was impressively aristocratic.

“Then I require you to return to Athens at once and begin to amass political power there,” said the King. “I need a loyal agent in Greece with sufficient clout to stir up Greek resentment against Rome. How you do it, I do not care. But when the armies and fleets of Pontus invade the lands on both sides of the Aegean Sea, I want Athens—and Greece!—in the palm of my hand.”

A gasp and a murmur rippled through those present in the throne room, followed by a thrill of excitement, of martial fervor—the King was not going to lie down under the foot of Rome after all!

“We are with you, my King!” cried Archelaus, beaming.

“Your sons thank you, Great One!” cried Pharnaces, senior son.

Mithridates swelled up even more, so deep was his flush of pleasure. Why hadn’t he seen earlier how dangerously close to rebellion and extinction he had come? These his subjects and blood relatives were hungry for war against Rome! And he was ready. He had been ready for years.

“We do not march until the Roman commissioners and the governors of Asia Province and Cilicia have marched,” he said. “The moment our borders are breached, we retaliate. I want the fleets armed and manned, I want the armies in train to move. If the Romans think to take Pontus, I think to take Bithynia and Asia Province. Cappadocia is already mine, and will remain mine because I have armies enough to leave my son Ariarathes with his forces.” The slightly bulging green eyes rested upon Aristion. “What are you waiting for, philosopher? Go to Athens with gold from my treasury to help your cause. But take heed! No one must know you are my agent.”

“I understand, O Mighty King, I do understand!” cried Aristion loudly, and backed from the room.

“Pharnaces, Machares, Young Mithridates, Young Ariarathes, Archelaus, Pelopidas, Neoptolemus, Leonippus, remain here with me,” said the King curtly. “The rest of you can go.”

In April of the year Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus were consuls, the Roman invasion of Galatia and Pontus began. While the third Nicomedes wept and wrung his hands together and pleaded to be allowed to return to Bithynia, the Paphlagonian prince Pylaemenes ordered the army of Nicomedes to advance on Sinope. Manius Aquillius took the field at the head of the one legion of Roman auxiliaries present in Asia Province and marched from Pergamum overland through Phrygia, intending to broach the Pontic border to the north of the great salt lake, Tatta. There was a trade route on this line, which meant Aquillius was able to move fairly quickly. Gaius Cassius picked up his two legions of militia outside Smyrna and took them up the valley of the Maeander into Phrygia on a line heading for the tiny trading settlement of Prymnessus. In the meantime Quintus Oppius had sailed from Tarsus to Attaleia and marched his two legions into Pisidia on a line which led him just to the west of Lake Limnae.