In this last century before the Christian Era the Mediterranean area was entirely dominated by the Roman Empire with interval strong resistance in the east by the Parthians. Both of these powers, however, had to keep watchful eyes on their frontiers - the Romans to the north where both Celts and Germans were proliferating and the Parthians to the north and east where new Asiatic hordes were beginning to build. In the Far East the great Han Dynasty of China probably equaled or surpassed the Romans in many cultural aspects, size and accomplishments.
Back to Africa: 200 to 101 B.C.
Meroe, now the Republic of Sudan, continued to flourish one thousand miles south of the Mediterranean and Axum continued with some prosperity in the area of northern Abyssinia, now Ethiopia.
In the first part of this century Egypt remained under the Macedonian Ptolemy Dynasty but Caesar marched into the country and took control between 48 and 47 B.C., making the famous alliance with Cleopatra, Egyptian queen. Upon his death Cleopatra made a similar alliance and dalliance with Marc Antony and such was her apparent charm that in 37 B.C. Antony gave up all interest in his government and settled with the queen in Alexandria to a life of pleasure. Stripped of his office by the Roman Senate and defeated at sea by Octavian, he committed suicide in 30 B.C. along with Cleopatra. Egypt was then formally annexed to the Roman Empire under the Emperor Octavian, although the life of the average Egyptian was probably little affected by these administrative changes. At the end of this century there were about 8,000,000 people in this country.
Numidia, now Algeria, joined Carthage to become Roman during this century. The thick belt of megalithic tombs which have been found across north Africa date to this and the next century and thus have no chronological relationship to the similar but much more ancient ones of Europe. No explanation has been offered. The Roman historian, Sallust, of this century, writes that the Libyans were descended from a people who came from Asia Minor and were allied to the Phoenicians through their language. Arab historians have recorded similar beliefs. (Ref. 215, 176, 66) Cyrene, with its large Greek component, became a province of Rome in 74 B.C. (Ref. 222) In the Sahara, itself, water holes had essentially disappeared and there was now truly desert. The great dunes called "ergs" had formed and the rains had become most irregular.
There was no great change in the southern two-thirds of the continent. Iron working continued to spread at a slow pace in the Niger Basin. The camel was introduced into the Sahara from Asia about 100 B.C. The Bantu speakers continued their slow migration down the eastern lands. (Ref. 8) One theory, based on archaeological and skeletal remains, suggests that at about the end of the century a few of the Caucasoid pastoralists descended from the eastern highlands into South Africa. From them some Bushmen acquired cattle and evolved into the culture of the Hottentots. (Ref. 83)
Back to The Near East: 200 to 101 B.C.
During the Hellenistic era the Himyarites of southern Arabia had lost their chief source of prosperity when part of the Indian trade was diverted through Egypt, but in 24 B.C., they were still strong enough to defeat the Roman General Gallus, who had been sent to conquer them and the invaders were driven into the desert where many died from heat and thirst. The Nabataean kingdom, in present day southern Jordan, became powerful at this time, with a capital at Petra. Amman, in northern Jordan, was first destroyed and conquered and then rebuilt by the Romans. (Ref. 176)
By 78 B.C. in Judea the Hasmoneans had enlarged their realm so that their territory was as extensive as it had been under Solomon, but the rulers began to lose their religiosity and yielded to Hellenizing elements. Toynbee (Ref. 221) says that the Jews' Canaanite culture was not a backward one and was probably equal to the Hellenic in achievement, but it was different in ethos and the Hellenic was the more potent and soon dominated.
In 63 B.C., however, Judea was conquered by Pompey for Rome. As he laid siege to Jerusalem, the Jewish King Aristobulus took refuge in the walled precincts of the Temple and held out for three months. When the ramparts finally fell 12,000 Jews were slaughtered, with some leaping to death from the walls. None surrendered. Pompey left the Temple untouched but exacted 10,000 talents ($3,600,000) from the nation and transferred all Hasmonean cities to the Roman power. Hyrcanus II was made high priest and nominal ruler of Judea, but as the ward of Anatipater the Idumean, who had helped Rome. The independent monarchy was ended and Judea became part of the Roman province of Syria. Herod the Great became subject king in 37 B.C. and using Roman funds, financed a local army to drive the invading Parthians back out of this territory. Herod was also an Idumean and not a Jew either by origin or conviction[77]. (Ref. 48) He, like other rulers of his time, had loose morals, ten wives, nine at one time, meted out cruel punishments and had an Hellenic leaning. The Pharisees[78] were against Herod and by the time he died in 4 B.C. he was hated by all the people. His realm was divided among his three sons. On our present calendar Jesus appears to have been born between 7 and 4 B.C. (Ref. 222)
There were about 2,500,000 people in Palestine in this era and most of them spoke Aramic, although the priests and scholars knew Hebrew and the officials and foreigners used Greek. There was constant strife between the Jews in the interior of Palestine and Gentiles on the coast, and there was strife within the Great Council of the Elders of Israel who ruled over the people for religious offenses. The higher priests and Sadducees were a conservative element holding for the written law of the Hebrews (Torah) and the Pharisees and Scribes[79] were a liberal element voting to accept oral traditions as well as the Torah. The Psalms of Solomon and the Book of Joshua (Ecclesiasticus) were written in this century, although the latter is not accepted by the Jews. (Ref. 48)
During this century Syria and Iraq became primarily a battle ground between the two formidable forces of the Romans in the west and the Parthians in the east. Although Antiochus VIII and IX and Seleucus VI each reigned briefly, in 83 B.C. the shrunken Seleucid Kingdom was taken over by Armenia and twenty years later it became a Roman province. (Ref. 222) (Please see map in the ITALY section, this chapter). At the ancient Mesopotamian city of Carrhae, just north of the upper Euphrates, the Roman General Crassus met the Parthians and was defeated and killed by the Shaka bowmen of the Parthians' Suren ally. (Ref. 28, 8)
The Parthians were in control of Iran and were pretty well able to contain the Romans in Syria on their western flank, but they were now having additional troubles on their northern and eastern borders. In 88 B.C. Tigranes II of Armenia invaded Parthia, overrunning four vassal states, reducing the size of Parthian controlled territory. (Ref. 222) In addition the Yue-chi and the neighboring Iranian Shaka had already taken Bactria and were starting to move into the Middle East, attacking eastern Iran. To hold off these attacks the Parthians used very large, heavily armored horses and men in cavalry units called "cataphracts", against the invaders' light, nomad, bow cavalry.
ASIA MINOR: ANATOLIA
TURKEY
We noted in the last chapter that King Mithridates IV of Pontus had launched an imperialistic campaign which had brought him into contact with the displeased Romans.
The First Mithridatic War broke out in 88 B.C. and Mithridates surged out of Asia Minor to take the Cyclades, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace before he was stopped down in Greece, proper, by the Roman Sulla. The king was given a lenient peace and returned to Pontus to raise another army and fleet. The Roman legate in Asia, Murena, realizing that the king was rearming, attacked Pontus in the Second Mithridatic War between 83 and 81 B.C., but was defeated. The Romans returned to the attack in the Third Mithridatic War of 75 to 63 B.C. and this time all Asia Minor became Roman. Wells (Ref. 229) states that
100,000 Roman Italians were massacred during this war. The Roman conquest was complete when King Nicomedes III gave his country of Bithynia to Rome in 75 B.C. About 350 miles south of present day Ankara was the small country of Commagene, ruled by Ceniochus I, who claimed descent from both Greek and Persian kings. He had colossal statues made, including one of himself, and some of these thirty foot high constructions have survived earthquakes, storms and wars, remaining erect at the present time. (Ref. 229, 176)
ARMENIA
Tigranes the Great, actually a son-in-law of Mithridates, united Armenia once again in 95 B.C. and added territory from Syria and Cappadocia, making Armenia the most powerful nation in western Asia. By 70 B.C. his empire extended from the Ararat Valley to the Phoenician city of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, much of this territory having been taken from the Parthians. By 66 B.C., however, Tigranes had fallen into the hands of Pompey as the latter was driving Mithridates of Pontus to the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Thereafter the Armenian king ruled merely as a vassal of Rome. (Ref. 222) By the end of the century when emissaries of the Han Dynasty of China reached the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, they found only stories of a civilization that had receded. The memory of Alexander remained, but of Rome men knew only that Pompey had come to the western shore of the Caspian and then gone away and that Crassus had been destroyed.
Back to Europe: 200 to 101 B.C.
This was the century when Rome gained control of most of the Mediterranean. Augustus took the Cyclades and conquered Crete in 68 - 67 B.C. and Cyprus in 58. Rhodes was already under Roman jurisdiction. (Ref. 38)
Greece became a battle ground for several different campaigns including the First Mithridatic War when the Pontus king was stopped only after he had gotten well down into this peninsula. Athens, which had allied itself with Mithridates, had its prosperity come to an end when it was sacked by the troops of the Roman Sulla in 87 and 86 B.C.. After the sea battle of Actium of 31 B.C. in which Antony and Cleopatra lost to Octavian, Rome legally as well as effectively held the whole of Alexander's heritage in this land and Greece began a reign of peace as an integral part of the Roman Empire. The island of Delos had now become the center of the Athenian world and served as the greatest trading center for slaves in the civilized world.
The basic population of this area remained Celtic and as a frontier of the Roman Empire it served as a battle ground for the Roman-Celtic conflicts, as well as part of the First Mithridatic War. The southern Illyrians were finally conquered by the Roman Augustus between 35 and 34 B.C. The Kingdom of Thrace remained intact and north of this the large Dacian Kingdom also kept its independence in the area of Romania. The Greeks called these people "Getas".
As the century opened there was still some indecision as to the actual scope and power of Rome over the remainder of the Italian peninsula. In 91 B.C. there was one final war between Rome and her neighbors over the idea of a united Italy and the scope of the rule of the Roman Senate. It ended by the practical surrender of the Senate to the concept of reform which allowed thereafter all Italians to become Roman citizens by decree. The classical Latin language emerged about 100 B.C. af ter some imprints from the languages of Asia Minor, the Balkans and Greece and this classical tongue then held sway for about 300 years.
On the government scene, while Sulla was in Asia Minor and the Balkans, the consuls Cinna and Marius had instituted a reign of terror, dissolved the Senate and ruled with "iron hands" until Marius' death. When Sulla returned he made himself a dictator and while restoring law and order and the Senate to power, he desolated large parts of Italy, executing over 5,000 people. He tried to establish a permanently aristocratic constitution but this was followed by all sorts of complications. Among these was the revolt of the slaves under Spartacus in 73 B.C., just after Sulla's death. The slaves held out in southern Italy, using Vesuvius' crater for a time as a fortress but when they were at last captured after two years by Crassus and Pompey some 6,000 were crucified along the Appian way. The two generals, former cronies of Sulla, had risen to power through separate and originally conflicting ways. Gnaeus Pompeius, after prevailing upon Sulla to give him the title of Magnus (The Great), won prominence by subduing the traitor Quintus Sertorius, who as a governor of Spain had attempted to set up a separatist regime of his own in that province. Crassus, in addition to his victory over the slaves, had made himself fabulously wealthy through various and sundry unscrupulous deals and now the two men united to undue Sulla's constitution and had themselves elected consuls in 70 B.C. This was the era of Marcus Tullius Cicero, a lawyer who had as his fondest desire to be accepted into the inner circle of the Senatorial class and his whole career was geared to that aim. By prosecuting one of the corrupt provincial governors Cicero gained a praetorship and a rise to power. Meanwhile Pompey gained still more esteem by conquering the Cilician and Cretan pirates who had been preventing normal sea commerce in the Mediterranean and disrupting the great slave emporium at Delos. Soon, therefore, with Cicero's help, Pompey was given absolute power over both land and sea forces through the entire empire. It was then that he went to reorganize the entire Near East. When he returned after several years involvement in the Mithridatic wars, organizing Asia Minor and Syria and conquering Jerusalem he allegedly brought back some two million slaves. (Ref. 213)
Gaius Julius Caesar was the youngest ruler of the late Republic. By 58 B.C. he had been a high priest, staff officer, finance minister, military governor, senator and consul. He had married three times, had countless love-affairs, led campaigns and been involved in various intrigues [80]. As he ascended the ladder of political power his offices entailed enormous expenses and this got him involved with the multi-millionaire, Crassus, from whom he had to borrow large sums of money. After a period as governor of Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to join the power group of Crassus and Pompey.
Although meeting some opposition in the Senate led by Cato the Younger, a follower of Greek ideals and standing for an honest financial policy in government, Caesar, Crassus and Pompey formed an extra-legal coalition called "the First Triumvirate". Each soon went his separate way, however, with Caesar conducting his victorious campaigns in Gaul[81], Germany and Britain, then returning to take control of Rome, over Pompey's objections. This was followed by a victorious trip to the Middle East in Syria and Egypt. When Caesar then returned to Rome there was great inflation and the "annona", or free grain distribution from the public granaries was excessive. Even by 71 B.C. some 40,000 adult male citizens had been receiving free grain, and in the next decades it increased greatly so that Caesar thought he did well to cut back to 150,000 free-loaders.
Meanwhile Crassus had obtained command of the eastern forces and prepared to emulate the glories of Lucullus and Pompey in Asia Minor and Armenia, but Crassus ran into the Parthians. These fierce Iranians, perhaps with Turanian Mongolian mercenaries, killed 20,000 Roman soldiers along with Crassus and captured 10,000 more at the Battle of Carrhae (53 B.C.) in Syria. The hold of the Romans on Mesopotamia was never very secure.
After Crassus' death Caesar and Pompey faced each other as antagonists and as the months went by definite lines of battle and forces were drawn up and actual civil war followed. Caesar soon won control of all Italy and gained Sardinia, Sicily and North Africa. After defeating Pompey's forces at Ilerda in Spain he returned to Rome to be made dictator. Pompey fled to the east where he built up a loyal military establishment but all for naught as Caesar caught up to him in Thessaly in 48 B.C. and defeated him. Pompey fled to Egypt only to be assassinated by the teen-aged Ptolemy XIII. After having been made dictator "for life" by the Senate in 45 B.C., Caesar was assassinated by "friends" to whom his divine aspirations were intolerable. The extent of the Roman Republic at the death of Caesar is shown in the map below.
NOTE: Insert Map 28: THE ROMAN REPUBLIC AT THE DEATH OF CAESAR
Marc Antony, who had shared a consulship with Caesar, considered himself the sole heir of Caesar and he, with the latter's nephew, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (later Octavian) and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had followed Sulla as consul, all together formed the Second Triumvirate. Publicly the purpose of this association was to avenge the death of Caesar but actually it merely set up power bases for Antony and Octavian. Inevitably they could not abide each other and the quarrels terminated with the Battle of Actium off the Greek coast in 31 B.C. with Octavian winning and subsequently ruling alone as emperor, called Augustus. The people accepted his dictatorship because they had been faring so poorly under the previous senatorial oligarchy. A reign of peace, another "Golden Age", resulted.
Before this time the Romans had raised armies only for specific tasks, disbanding them after the mission was accomplished, but Augustus created a standing army of 25 legions with the equivalent of another, the Praetorian Guard, in Italy as his personal protection. Of the others, 8 legions were stationed along the Rhine, 3 along the Danube in the Balkan area, 4 in the Yugoslav territory, 4 in Syria and Lebanon, 2 each in Egypt and Portugal, and one each in northern Spain and Carthage. Each legion contained 5,000 men divided into 10 cohorts of 480 each.
In spite of the "Golden Age", the relief roles had again built up in Rome to 320,000 so that just under one-third of the population had to receive free government grain to exist. It took some 14 million bushels of grain each year just to supply the city itself where 1,500,000 citizens lived, housed in some 46,600 insulae (apartment blocks) three to eight stories high, made of wood, rubble and brick. Windows were simply wall openings and were covered with shutters or hangings. Only the rich had wells or taps into the city conduits; the rest got water from public fountains. There were public lavatories and toilet receptacles which were frequently emptied into the street. Menial work was done by about 2,000,000 slaves, a middle class citizen owning about eight while the rich might have up to one thousand and an emperor twenty thousand. Slaves made up 35% of the population of Italy. (Ref. 249) Livy stated that it was common for Roman orators to state that "--Jews, Syrians, Lydians, Medes, indeed all Asiatics are born to slavery"[82] Horses were of little use as a source of energy in this Roman period as they were badly harnessed with the yoke tending to throttle them and they could draw only a light load. Four slaves could do as much. Engineers did manage to change water