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Pompey's Campaign against Mithradates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

J. G. C. Anderson
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Extract

When Dr. Rice Holmes' Roman Republic came to hand and I began to turn over at random the pages of vol. i, the first passage which caught my eye was the discussion of Pompey's short campaign against Mithradates. It occurs in one of those numerous and lengthy appendices, attached to each of the three volumes, which the author calls ‘Part II,’ and in which, with regal disregard of the prices and prejudices of publishers, he seeks to probe to the bottom every difficulty that arises in the course of his investigations. This Second Part, which the author hopes some may not find tedious, is, I think, the section to which most scholars will turn first. The discussion of the campaign (p. 428 ff.) revived memories of old studies of my own in which I seemed to have reached somewhat more definite conclusions, at any rate on some points, than Dr. Holmes offers to his readers. In the description of the campaign which he gives in the narrative portion of his work (p. 206 f.) he takes, in my opinion, the correct view about its general course, but the discussion of details does not seem to me to be quite satisfying nor to dispose of the main difficulty which arises out of Strabo's localization of one of the places concerned.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 12 , November 1922 , pp. 99 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © J. G. C.Anderson1922. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 99 note 1 Cp. also Livy, Epit. 100-1, Florus i, 40, 22 ff. and Eutropius, vi, 12.

page 100 note 2 Ch. 48, 3: Pompey did not venture to attack by day (for the king did not leave his camp) nor by night (owing to his own ignorance of the country), πρίν σφας πρὸς τῇ μϵθορία γϵνέσθαι.

page 101 note 1 He omits the cavalry action at Dasteira recorded by Dio, Appian (below), Livy, and Frontinus.

page 101 note 2 ii, 1, 12.

page 101 note 3 Dio, Plutarch, Livy (epit. 101), Frontinus (l.c), Orosius, Floras, Eutropius.

page 101 note 4 The cavalry combat mentioned above (p. 100, and p. 101, n. 1) is placed by him before Armenia Minor was entered and the siege at Dasteira began, wrongly. Dio is supported by Frontinus ii, 5, 33 in Armenia.

page 101 note 6 Appian 105 : ἔνθα τὴν μάχην ένίκα Μιθριδάτην (a statement which Dr. Holmes thinks ‘must evidently be taken in an extended sense’: it is simply inaccurate, and is doubtless an inference from the name Nicopolis). Dio 36, 50, 3 (not mentioned by Dr. Holmes): έν τᾧ χωρᾧ ἐν ᾧ ἐνϵνικήκϵι.

page 102 note 1 Dio's vague words do not seem necessarily to mean that Pompey ‘sent a detachment into the district of Akilisene by the nearer bank of the Euphrates,’ as Dr. Holmes says, modifying a suggestion of M. Th. Reinach. A detachment could not stop Mithradates' army and might find itself in a very perilous position.

page 103 note 1 Kramer's note runs : 'Αγγολισηνῆς codd. exc. xz (?), Xyl(ander) corr.

page 103 note 2 Müller regards his whole account as extraordinarily confused and badly compiled from various sources.

page 103 note 3 See Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (to be published shortly).

page 103 note 4 Stud. Pont. ii, p. 313. His suggestion that this was Appian's precipitous hill, where Mithradates took up his final position, is possible only if Appian has transferred the description to the wrong site—which indeed a careless writer might do.

page 103 note 5 Cp. also xi. 12, 3. The source followed by Pliny v, 83 also made the Euphrates the boundary.

page 104 note 1 Eustathius on Dionysios, Perieg., 765 (Müller).

page 104 note 2 Dio 36, 48; Pliny, N.H., 33, 82 and 5, 83.

page 104 note 3 Strabo xi, 14, 16; H. Gelzer, Bar. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig, 1806, p. 111 ff.

page 104 note 4 Moses of Chorene ii, 60, tr. Langlois in F.H.G. v, P. 393; Agathangelos, tr. Gelzer, op. cit., pp. 114, 116 (tr. Langlois, op. cit., pp. 125, 167) and in the Greek version, ed. de Lagarde, pp. 14, 67.

page 104 note 5 Strabo makes Akilisene march on the south with Sophene, and in this he is borne out by c. 24 of Plutarch's Lucullus (cp. Cumont in Revue Arch. 1905, p. 26 f.

page 104 note 6 Cp. H. Gelzer, Notitiae Episcop. in Bayer. Abhandl., 1900, p. 580, and Georgius Cyprius, p. 183 f.; Cumont, , Stud. Pont, ii, p. 337 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 104 note 7 Stud. Pont, ii, p. 331.

page 104 note 8 Op. cit., p. 330.

page 105 note 1 Plutarch, c. 36; Appian, 107; Dio 37.7, 5.

page 105 note 2 This was pointed out by A. von Gutschmid in a lecture delivered in 1877 and printed in his Kleine Schriften, i, p. 18. He says : ‘Auf dem Wege der griechischen Schrift lässt sich die Verwechselung nicht erklären, sondern einzig und allein daraus, dass Dio das Synhorion einer lateinischen Quelle [note : Die Form Sinhorion hat Amm. Marc. xvi, 7, 10] für Synphorion nahm. Dieser Orthographie liegt die thörichte Ableitung des barbarischen Namens vom griechischen συνορία συνόριον zu Grunde, weil der Ort an der Grenze von Armenien lag, eine Ableitung von der wir aus Strabon wissen, dass sie auf einen Einfall des Theophanes zurückgeht. Folglich ist damit erwiesen, dass Dio hier aus einem lateinischen, von Theophanes abhängenden Historiker geschöpft hat, und der Schluss, dass es kein anderer als Livius sein werde, liegt nahe genug.’ Cp. also Niese, Hermes, 1878, p. 39.

page 105 note 3 Cp. Cumont. op. cit., p. 327.