The last remaining rebel armies remained intractably armed in Apulia and Samnium. With the deadline to register as a citizen long since passed, these remaining rebels could not expect the same generosity their cousins were now promised. And some among them like Silo had likely concluded that he was never going back to the Romans. The last remnants of Italia had fled south to Samnium, where they regrouped around Silo. With about thirty thousand men still under arms, Silo raised twenty thousand more. Far from preparing for a last stand, Silo reinforced Nola and recaptured Bovanium, entering the city in grand triumph to reassert Italian dignity. He still believed he could win.67
The Roman forces in the region were now led by Metellus Pius. The two armies finally ran into each other in Apulia in early 88, and though the ensuing battle killed only six thousand men, Silo was among them. After his death, a few Samnites and Lucanians would continue to resist, but the death of Silo marks the official end of the Social War. Down in Apulia the last remnants of the resistance cast about for aid to carry on their cause, and at least one faction looked to the aggressive power of King Mithridates of Pontus. But by then Mithridates of Pontus was already locked in his own mortal struggle with Rome.68
* It was on this visit that Silo infamously hung four-year-old Cato the Younger out the window in an attempt to convince little Cato of the need for Italian citizenship. Cato the Toddler demurred. See Plut. Cato Min. 2.
* Uncle of THE Julius Caesar.
* Elder cousin of THE Julius Caesar.
* Uncle of Cato the Younger.
* Yes, THAT Pompeii.
Envoys met him on the road and asked him why he was marching with armed forces against his country. “To deliver her from tyrants,” he replied.
APPIAN1
THE KINGDOM OF PONTUS STRETCHED ACROSS WHAT IS today the Black Sea coast of Turkey. In the 500s BC the Greeks had planted a ring of colonies around the Black Sea that were later absorbed into the Hellenic kingdoms that emerged after the death of Alexander the Great. The first King Mithridates of Pontus hailed from the mountainous interior of Anatolia, but in the 280s he expanded his domains north to the shores of the Black Sea. His successors continued this expansion, culminating with the capture of the Greek city of Sinope in 183. Hemmed in by east-west-running mountains, the new Kingdom of Pontus occupied the fertile and mineral-rich strip of land between the mountains to the south and the coast to the north. Mixing Greek and Persian elements, the Pontic kings took advantage of the soil, metal, and trade connections they now controlled. But in the mid-second century, Pontus remained a minor eastern kingdom in a world full of minor eastern kingdoms.2
Mithridates VI was born in Sinope fifty years after it became the capital of Pontus. The eldest son of the king, Mithridates was expected to one day reign over Pontus, but his path to power would not be easy. Like any self-respecting Hellenic king, his father was assassinated by poison in 120, leaving a power vacuum in the kingdom. With Mithridates still a minor, his mother, Queen Laodice, stepped in and took over as regent. But contrary to all parental morality, Laodice clearly favored her younger son. The teenage Mithridates dodged an assassination attempt by his mother and ran away from the palace. According to legend, Mithridates embarked on a seven-year-long training montage—hunting, swimming, reading, studying the people, learning fifty languages—until he had become the embodiment of the ideal prince. At the end of the heroic montage, Mithridates returned to Sinope in 113 and evicted his wicked mother and brother, both of whom soon died of “natural causes.”3
Upon his ascension to the throne, Mithridates built up a mercenary army to further project Pontic authority. In the 110s, he answered a call for help from Greek cities in the Crimea, on the other side of the Black Sea, who were under attack from raiding Thracians. Mithridates expelled the Thracians and won the justifiable submission of the Crimean communities. Now joined under his benevolent protection, Mithridates controlled the entire circuit of Black Sea trade—with Russia to the north, Persia to the east, Greece and Italy to the west, and the entire Mediterranean to the south. Mithridates controlled access to wealth, resources, and manpower that would make his Black Sea empire one of the strongest powers Rome ever encountered.4
