local economy.
Rome had civilian contractors (the Halliburtons of their day) called
publicani
who did everything from road- and public-building construction to tax collection in these conquered and soon-to-be conquered territories. It was a system ripe for the corrupting, and in no time Roman governors were looking for excuses to annex more and more territory in the hopes of getting hefty windfalls from the publicani who would in turn get lucrative government contracts to strip the newly incorporated territory of its wealth and then build a lot of very expensive roads.
So when the inevitable happened and in 88 B.C. a Roman general named Manius Aquillius trumped up an excuse to pick a fight with the kingdom of Pontus, Mithridates correctly read simmering Greek resentment of these Roman leeches and set himself up as defender of Greek liberty. Aquillius had the triple misfortune of getting out-generaled and crushed in battle near the city of Protostachium, being caught and handed over to Mithridates, and of being the son of a former governor of Asia who had levied ruinous taxes (50 percent and higher) on inhabitants who turned out to have long memories.
Golden-Throated Bastard
Never one to miss an opportunity, Mithridates had Aquillius dragged to Pergamum (a major city) on the back of a donkey, pelted with filth the entire way. Then, on stage in front of thousands in the city’s gorgeous outdoor amphitheatre, he had him executed in a particularly grisly manner. The historian Appian tells us how: “Mithridates poured molten gold down his throat, thus rebuking the Romans for their bribe-taking.”
In the decades that followed, the armies of the Roman Republic fought no less than three wars against Mithridates, eventually wearing him down and defeating his forces, then incorporating his kingdom into their foreign territories. On the run and trying to evade capture (and the subsequent march through Rome in chains as part of some general’s triumph before being executed), Mithridates is reputed to have attempted suicide by taking poison. In a fitting irony, he proved immune to the effects of the drug and had to opt for running onto a sword held steady by one of his officers.
Gold-plated bastard.
24
CLEOPATRA VII, QUEEN OF EGYPT
Yes, That Cleopatra
(69–30 B.C.)
I will not be triumphed over.
—Cleopatra VII of Egypt
Cleopatra, the queen who made Rome tremble with equal parts fear, hatred, and awe. The last ruler of the last independent successor state of Alexander the Great’s empire, she imposed her will not with military might or massed sea power (although she initially possessed plenty of the latter) but instead used her wits and outlasted or co-opted all of her political foes save one.
Although born in Egypt, Cleopatra was a Macedonian down to her toenails. And unlike so many other members of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was smart, smart, smart. Succeeding her doting father at the age of eighteen in 51 B.C., she cut a remarkable figure. Fluent in nine languages (Latin, interestingly enough, not being one of them), she was the only Ptolemy ever to bother to learn Coptic, the language of ancient Egypt.
Rather than playing up her Greek bloodlines, Cleopatra emphasized her “Egyptian-ness,” publicly and ostentatiously taking part in Egyptian religious rituals; dressing more like Nefertiti than like Athena, she styled herself the “New Isis,” the living embodiment of the Egyptian mother goddess (something earlier attempted to lesser effect by that Seleucid bastard Antiochus IV). Her Egyptian subjects (if not always her Greek ones) literally worshipped her for it.
To Romans, she represented every ethnocentric prejudice they so despised about so-called “decadent Easterners.” Married in succession to both of her younger brothers (likely never consummated, because propaganda aside, Cleopatra was, as far as we can tell, very choosy about whom she slept with), she waited to have a child with Julius Caesar, into
Rome had civilian contractors (the Halliburtons of their day) called
publicani
who did everything from road- and public-building construction to tax collection in these conquered and soon-to-be conquered territories. It was a system ripe for the corrupting, and in no time Roman governors were looking for excuses to annex more and more territory in the hopes of getting hefty windfalls from the publicani who would in turn get lucrative government contracts to strip the newly incorporated territory of its wealth and then build a lot of very expensive roads.
So when the inevitable happened and in 88 B.C. a Roman general named Manius Aquillius trumped up an excuse to pick a fight with the kingdom of Pontus, Mithridates correctly read simmering Greek resentment of these Roman leeches and set himself up as defender of Greek liberty. Aquillius had the triple misfortune of getting out-generaled and crushed in battle near the city of Protostachium, being caught and handed over to Mithridates, and of being the son of a former governor of Asia who had levied ruinous taxes (50 percent and higher) on inhabitants who turned out to have long memories.
Golden-Throated Bastard
Never one to miss an opportunity, Mithridates had Aquillius dragged to Pergamum (a major city) on the back of a donkey, pelted with filth the entire way. Then, on stage in front of thousands in the city’s gorgeous outdoor amphitheatre, he had him executed in a particularly grisly manner. The historian Appian tells us how: “Mithridates poured molten gold down his throat, thus rebuking the Romans for their bribe-taking.”
In the decades that followed, the armies of the Roman Republic fought no less than three wars against Mithridates, eventually wearing him down and defeating his forces, then incorporating his kingdom into their foreign territories. On the run and trying to evade capture (and the subsequent march through Rome in chains as part of some general’s triumph before being executed), Mithridates is reputed to have attempted suicide by taking poison. In a fitting irony, he proved immune to the effects of the drug and had to opt for running onto a sword held steady by one of his officers.
Gold-plated bastard.
24
CLEOPATRA VII, QUEEN OF EGYPT
Yes, That Cleopatra
(69–30 B.C.)
I will not be triumphed over.
—Cleopatra VII of Egypt
Cleopatra, the queen who made Rome tremble with equal parts fear, hatred, and awe. The last ruler of the last independent successor state of Alexander the Great’s empire, she imposed her will not with military might or massed sea power (although she initially possessed plenty of the latter) but instead used her wits and outlasted or co-opted all of her political foes save one.
Although born in Egypt, Cleopatra was a Macedonian down to her toenails. And unlike so many other members of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was smart, smart, smart. Succeeding her doting father at the age of eighteen in 51 B.C., she cut a remarkable figure. Fluent in nine languages (Latin, interestingly enough, not being one of them), she was the only Ptolemy ever to bother to learn Coptic, the language of ancient Egypt.
Rather than playing up her Greek bloodlines, Cleopatra emphasized her “Egyptian-ness,” publicly and ostentatiously taking part in Egyptian religious rituals; dressing more like Nefertiti than like Athena, she styled herself the “New Isis,” the living embodiment of the Egyptian mother goddess (something earlier attempted to lesser effect by that Seleucid bastard Antiochus IV). Her Egyptian subjects (if not always her Greek ones) literally worshipped her for it.
To Romans, she represented every ethnocentric prejudice they so despised about so-called “decadent Easterners.” Married in succession to both of her younger brothers (likely never consummated, because propaganda aside, Cleopatra was, as far as we can tell, very choosy about whom she slept with), she waited to have a child with Julius Caesar, into
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