The Storm Before the Storm полностью

Though the regular administration was small, and the official burdens of being a subject of the Republic light, that did not mean being a provincial was easy to bear. Each governor arrived at the pinnacle of his career and had often taken on loads of debt to make it this far. Governing the provinces was understood to be a time to remake a man’s fortunes. But an incoming governor only had so much time, and with the great wars of conquest now past, they often resorted to extorting money from various tribes and cities in exchange for not going to war. Governors wanted to make as much money as they could before they got out. Unfortunately for the provincials, the next governor would arrive in exactly the same circumstances and the cycle would repeat.²⁵

This type of abuse by the governors was cited as a frequent cause of revolts, so in 149—just as they were annexing the central Mediterranean—the Romans established their first ever permanent court, the quaestio de repetundis: the Extortion Court. The purview of the court was investigating and punishing Roman magistrates who used their power to wring unjust revenue from the provincials. But, of course, jurors for the Extortion Court were drawn exclusively from the senatorial ranks—you can guess how often they found one of their wayward colleagues guilty.²⁶

The new province of Asia was destined to become one of the most lucrative provinces in the empire, and thus a hotbed of extortion and abuse. But before the Romans could exploit their new province they had to organize it—which was about to prove very difficult. When Scipio Nasica and his fellow senatorial ambassadors arrived in 132, they found that not everyone in Pergamum believed that they were the property of the Roman people.

AFTER KING ATTALUS III died, a pretender to the throne named Aristonicus rejected the handover of the kingdom to Rome and claimed the crown for himself. He went around drumming up support, but most of the rich coastal cities had good relations with Rome and there was little interest in joining a revolt. Driven into the interior, Aristonicus had better luck recruiting by promising freedom to slaves in exchange for service. Raising an army of impoverished peasants and field slaves, Aristonicus promised that after they defeated Rome they would all be equal citizens in a free utopia he dubbed Heliopolis—the City of Sun.²⁷

So just as Spain and Sicily were put to bed, the Senate had to turn and deal with Asia. The command went to the new consul, and recently appointed land commissioner, Mucianus. Mucianus lobbied hard for the command, which held the promise of massive eastern riches, but upon arrival in Asia, nothing went right. Mucianus led his legions into the mountainous interior of Anatolia but found himself repeatedly bested by Aristonicus. In a final humiliating blow, Mucianus himself was captured by the enemy. Furious at being made a prisoner, the consul provoked his captors and “blinded with a stick the barbarian who was guarding him.” The guard, “smarting from the pain and burning with rage, stabbed him through the side with a sword.”²⁸

Mucianus’s failure necessitated sending another consular army in 130. This army successfully besieged Aristonicus’s capital and forced Heliopolis to surrender. Most of the inhabitants were either killed or reenslaved; Aristonicus was put in chains and subsequently displayed in a triumphal parade back in Rome. When the parade ended, an executioner strangled Aristonicus to death in a prison cell. The short-lived dream of a slaveless utopia died with him.²⁹

With all of these battles and sieges proceeding over months and years, it was not until 129 that the Romans finally started organizing the old Kingdom of Pergamum into the new province of Asia. The Senate dispatched consul Manius Aquillius with a ten-man senatorial commission to oversee arrangements. But Aquillius turned out to be a man of questionable character. A few scattered cities still resisted Roman occupation, and not wishing to waste his time with mop-up operations, Aquillius turned to “the wicked expedient of poisoning the springs” to bring the last holdouts to their knees. Hardly the tool of honorable conquest.³⁰

But with Rome now firmly in charge, Aquillius and the new senatorial embassy settled the province of Asia. The process still dragged on, however, as the ambassadors had to demarcate the boundaries between royal property and free cities in accordance with Attalus’s will. The former would become state-managed ager publicus, the latter exempt from taxation. While these demarcations were being established, Aquillius took the opportunity to make a little profit on the side. He accepted bribes from neighboring kings to hand over lucrative territory as a “reward” for their help containing Aristonicus. In particular, Aquillius gifted the kingdom of Phrygia to King Mithridates V of Pontus—a shady transaction that would still be disputed a generation later.³¹