Marcus Marius (quaestor 76 BC)

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Marcus Marius was a

Mithradates of Pontus as an advisor and military commander in the Third Mithridatic War. He is named as or more likely confused with a Varius in Appian.[2]

Family and political connections

No connection has been established between this Marius and

Orosius[3] implies, but does not directly state, that he was on the list of the proscribed.[4] He was certainly a fugas (φυγάς), a fugitive or exile, in keeping with the "peculiar legal situation" of Sertorius's men, some of whom were proscripti, and others of whom were hostes publici, "public enemies." In both cases, their lives and property were forfeit, and their sons and grandsons lost the rights of citizenship, but the proscribed in addition had bounties on their heads.[5]

Mission to the East

Coin of Mithradates VI

Sertorius sent Marcus Marius as a military advisor and his representative to Mithradates during the protracted negotiations between the two over an alliance. By 75 BC, Mithradates offered to recognize Sertorius as head of the Roman state,

sesterces) and a fleet of 40 ships;[7] in return, he asked that Sertorius recognize his claims in Anatolia. Sertorius reserved in his own name Rome's claim to Asia, already organized as a province and acquired — he insisted — legitimately, but he asserted no rights over Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, and Galatia; these, he said, "had nothing to do with the Romans."[8]

Marius went East with troops. Bearing the fasces and axes, he entered at least two Asian cities and granted them and a number of others independent status and tax exemptions on behalf of the Sertorian government; in effect, he assumed possession of Asia with proconsular powers. His authority was held pro praetore, that is, under the auspices of Sertorius and without holding his own imperium. Plutarch calls him a stratêgos (στρατηγός), "general," rather than a praetor.[9]

In Plutarch's view, the province welcomed the new regime, because it had been oppressed by Rome's tax collectors and contractors (publicani) and by the "rapacity and insolence" of the soldiers stationed there. Marius's policy is consistent with that of Sertorius in cultivating the goodwill of the provincials under his government.[10]

Mithradates permitted Marius to assert Roman primacy as agreed. The treaty with the Pontic king was concluded in the summer of 74, in anticipation of what would become the Third Mithridatic War in the spring of 73.[11]

Sertorius and M. Marius were not the only Romans who preferred an alliance to a war with Mithradates. Two former officers of the notorious

populares.[16]

Military command and death

With the alliance between Pontus and

bequest. Sertorius probably made his arrangements before that time, or at least before he was aware that the death had created a new Roman province in Anatolia. Its first Roman governor was Marcus Aurelius Cotta, the consul of 74. The other consul of that year, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, managed to jettison his originally assigned province of Cisalpine Gaul and acquire a more ambitious playing field: the provinces of Cilicia and eventually Asia, along with the chief command of the war against Mithradates.[18]

Lucullus landed in Anatolia during the fall of 74. Mithradates saw his opportunity, and invaded Cappadocia and Bithynia. During this period, Marcus Marius served as advisor and co-commander to the Pontic king. At Chalcedon, a maritime town of Bithynia, they marched and sailed against Cotta, who rushed into battle before Lucullus could join him, prematurely savoring a triumph he didn't want to share. Cotta was instead crushed and forced to withdraw within the town.[19] Marius held joint command with Mithradates' general Eumachos at Chalcedon and in Phrygia.[20]

Lucullus was camped somewhere along the

Iznik).[21] Although Lucullus commanded 30,000 infantry and 2,500 horse, he was daunted by the size of the opposing army and reluctant to engage. The arrival of an omen, as reported by Plutarch, was thus fortuitous:[22]

But presently, as they were on the point of joining battle, with no apparent change of weather, but all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar (pithos), and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated. This marvel, as they say, occurred in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae.[23]

No battle occurred. For Marius, delay posed a logistical problem. He had only a few days of supplies for his troops. Lucullus learned of the shortage through prisoner interrogations and decided to wait him out. Marius was forced to move on without the fight he had sought, but the delay allowed Mithradates to leave Chalcedon and set out for Cyzicus.

Mithradates' motive for this siege has sometimes been construed as retribution for the aid given by Cyzicus to the Romans at Chalcedon, but was also a strategic decision. Cyzicus was weakened from losing a significant number of troops at Chalcedon, and its capture would provide him with an abundant and much-needed food supply, as well as access to an excellent harbor and major inland routes.[24] After taking up a position, he divided his forces for a three-prong invasion of the interior. His general Eumachus headed to Phrygia, where he advanced into Pisidia and Isauria. Metrophanes and the Roman renegade Lucius Fannius penetrated as far as northeast Lydia. Lucius Magius remained with Mithradates and appears from this point to have begun misleading him, perhaps because he had heard what may have been still only a rumor of Sertorius's death.

According to some reconstructions of events, it was at this time that Marius assumed the governorship of the Roman province of Asia, where he gained immediate control of Parium and Lampsacus, rejoining the Pontic forces only later in the siege; this is not entirely clear in the ancient sources, which may be recounting operations he conducted earlier upon arrival.[25]

Despite the size of Mithradates' forces and his awe-inspiring

Granicus (Biga) rivers.[28]

Marius then took to the sea. Along with Alexandros the Paphlagonian and Dionysios Eunuchos ("the

Scyros; Lucullus then sent infantry by land across Neae to their rear, killing many and forcing the rest back to sea.[30] Lucullus sunk or captured 32 ships of the royal fleet provided by Mithradates and additional transport vessels. Dionysios committed suicide, but Alexandros was captured and held for display in Lucullus's anticipated triumph. Among the dead were a number of men who had been on Sulla's proscription lists. Marius at first escaped, possibly from a sinking ship, since he was later found ashore taking refuge in a cave.[31]

Like Sertorius himself, Marius at some point had lost an eye; when Lucullus gave the order to track down enemy survivors, he specified that no one-eyed men should be killed, so that he could personally oversee the renegade's death: "Lucullus wished Marius to die under the most shameful insults."[32] Orosius reports that he atoned for his rebellious spirit with penalties he earned.[33]

In fiction

Marcus Marius is a character in

popularist sympathizers supposed to have been among Lucullus's forces from the legions who had served under Fimbria. Ford's fictional description of Marius's execution recalls the dismemberment of Gratidianus: "he had Marius mounted on a crosstree in that barbaric exercise the Romans call crucifixion and then lopped off his hands, feet, nose, and ears, pruning him like a fig tree in winter. It was a deliberately brutal message, and its effect was not lost, for it caused most of the other exiled Romans fighting for Pontus to scatter in discouragement."[34]

Sources

Ancient sources

19th-century histories

The following 19th-century historians present narrative reconstructions of strategy and military operations at Chalcedon and Cyzicus:

Selected bibliography

  • Keaveney, Arthur. Lucullus: A Life. Routledge, 1992. See especially Keaveney's narrative of Chalcedon and Cyzicus in limited preview and Appendix 2: "When did the Third Mithridatic War begin?"
  • Konrad, Christoph F. Plutarch's Sertorius: A Historical Commentary. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Limited preview online.
  • Konrad, Christoph F. "From the Gracchi to the First Civil War (133–70)." In A Companion to the Roman Republic. Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, 2010.
  • McGing, B.C. The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus. Brill, 1986. Limited preview online.

Further reading

  • E. Gabba, Republican Rome: The Armies and the Allies (1976) 120 ff for analysis of Sertorius's policy toward Mithradates. Limited preview online.

References

  1. T.R.S. Broughton
    , The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1952), vol. 2, p. 93.
  2. Orosius
    call him Marius in contexts that indicate the same man is meant.
  3. Orosius
    6.2.21–22.
  4. ^ Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, p. 182, says that he "can be safely counted among the proscribed."
  5. ^ Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, p. 182.
  6. Eupator in Asia
    , does seem to indicate that the king treated Sertorius in something like the same way that Sertorius treated himself — as the leader of a government in exile" (p. 142).
  7. ^ The timing of the fleet's departure for Spain is not altogether clear in the ancient sources, and reconstructions by modern scholars place it variously: before Marius went East, shortly after his arrival, or after Mithradates broke off his siege at Cyzicus. Konrad argues that the fleet was sent after Marius's arrival and probably arrived in Spain sometime between summer 75 and spring 74.
  8. ^ Appian, Mithridatic Wars 68: mêden prosêkonta Rômaiois; Plutarch, Life of Sertorius 23–24.
  9. ^ Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, pp. 187 and 201–202.
  10. ^ Plutarch, Sertorius 24; Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, p. 202.
  11. ^ The start date of the Third Mithridatic War has been a vexed scholarly question divided into camps advocating the spring either of 74 or of 73; see McGing, Foreign Policy of Mithridates, pp. 138–139.
  12. ^ On the politics of Magius and Fannius, see Emilio Gabba, Republican Rome, The Army, and the Allies (University of California Press, 1976), p. 113 online. A Publius Magius was tribune of the plebs in 87 BC with M. Marius Gratidianus.
  13. ^ Bobbio Scholiast 95 (Stangl). Appian is misleading, or the text has been misread, when he calls Magius and Fannius "Sertorians"; see Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, pp. 191–192.
  14. ^ Appian, Mithridatic Wars 90; this long friendship, however, ended with Attidius's execution in a conspiracy.
  15. ^ McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates, p. 145.
  16. ^ Gabba, Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies, places Magius in particular among the "extremists" (p. 59). See also Konrad, Plutarch's Sertorius, p. 198.
  17. ^ C.F. Konrad, "From the Gracchi to the First Civil War (133–70)," in A Companion to the Roman Republic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007, 2010), p. 185 online.
  18. ^ Konrad, Companion, p. 185.
  19. ^ Arthur Keaveney, Lucullus: A Life (Routledge, 1992), p. 77.
  20. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Felix Jacoby
    ) 434 F (1.28.3) = Memnon 28–29; Appian, Mithridatic Wars 68, 76, 77; Orosius 6.2; and Cicero, Pro Murena 33 (where he is not named).
  21. ^ Keaveney, Lucullus, p. 77.
  22. ^ Plutarch, Lucullus 8.
  23. ^ Plutarch, Life of Lucullus 8.6–7, Loeb Classical Library translation, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius.
  24. ^ Keaveney, Lucullus, p. 78.
  25. ^ This sequence of events is presented by Keaveney, Lucullus, pp. 78–79 and 83, who regards Marius's governorship as unsuccessful, contra Plutarch; Keaveney has Mithradates sending ships to Sertorius only at this point, which likely would mean they arrived only after his assassination.
  26. ^ Plutarch, Lucullus 10.
  27. ^ Memnon 28.
  28. ^ Keaveney, Lucullus p. 84.
  29. ^ Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, vol. 4, p. 329.
  30. ^ Keaveney, Lucullus, p. 85.
  31. Orosius
    6.2.21–22.
  32. ^ Plutarch, Lucullus 12.5.
  33. ^ Orosius 6.2.2.
  34. ^ Michael Curtis Ford, The Last King: Rome's Greatest Enemy (St. Martin's Press, 2004), pp. 227–228.