The Grass Crown Read online

  Young Sulla rolled a fascinated eye at his father, amazed at his father's sureness, his conviction he was right. "So many?"

  "Numbers mean nothing, my son," said Sulla, turning to leave the watchtower. “There are at least a dozen ways I could have rolled him up. He thinks in numbers. But he hasn't yet arrived at the real answer, which is to use what you have as one single unit. If he had decided to fight and I had humored him by leading my forces out to face him, he would simply have ordered a charge. Everyone in his army would have rushed at us together. That's so easy to deal with! As for his taking my camp—impossible! But he's dangerous. Do you know why I say that, Young Sulla?"

  "No," said his son, all at sea.

  "Because he decided to go home," said Sulla. "He will get home and worry the business over and over in his mind until he begins to grasp what he ought to have done. Five years, boy! I give him five years. Then I think Rome will have great trouble with King Mithridates."

  Morsimus met them at the bottom of the tower, looking much as Young Sulla had looked—glad and sorry simultaneously. "What do we do now, Lucius Cornelius?" he asked.

  "Exactly what I said to Mithridates. Eight days hence we march for Mazaca, and we pop Ariobarzanes back on his throne. For the time being he'll be all right. I don't think Mithridates will come back to Cappadocia for some years, because I'm not done yet."

  "Not done yet?"

  "I mean I'm not done with him yet. We're not returning to Tarsus," said Sulla, smiling nastily.

  Morsimus gasped. "You're not marching on Pontus!"

  Sulla laughed. "No! I'm going to march on Tigranes."

  "Tigranes? Tigranes of Armenia?"

  "The very one."

  "But why, Lucius Cornelius?"

  Two pairs of eyes were riveted upon Sulla's face, waiting to hear his answer; neither son nor legate had any idea why.

  "I've never seen the Euphrates," said Sulla, looking wistful.

  An answer neither listener had expected; but it was Young Sulla, who knew his father very well, who began to giggle. Morsimus went off scratching his head.

  * * *

  Of course Sulla had an inspiration. There was going to be no trouble in Cappadocia, so much was sure; Mithridates would stay in Pontus for the time being. But he needed a little extra deterrent. And as far as Sulla was concerned, no battle had been fought, no opportunity to acquire gold or treasure had been forthcoming. Nor did Sulla think that the Kingdom of Cappadocia itself was rich enough to donate him anything. What riches might once have lived in Eusebeia Mazaca had long since gone into the coffers of Mithridates—unless he mistook his King of Pontus, which Sulla didn't think he had.

  His orders were specific. Evict Mithridates and Tigranes from Cappadocia, place Ariobarzanes on the throne, then cease any further activity without the borders of Cilicia. As a mere praetor—proconsular imperium or not—he had little choice except to obey. However... Of Tigranes there had been no sign; he had not joined with the King of Pontus on this particular invasion. Which meant he was still dwelling within the mountain fastnesses of Armenia, ignorant of Rome's wishes, uncowed by Rome because he had never set eyes upon a Roman.

  No one might rely upon Rome's wishes being transmitted with accuracy to Tigranes if the only messenger were Mithridates. Thus it behooved the governor of Cilicia to find Tigranes for himself and issue Rome's directives in person, did it not? And who knew? Maybe somewhere along the way to Armenia, a bag of gold would fall at Sulla's feet. A bag of gold he needed desperately. Provided that the bag of gold meant for the personal use of the governor was accompanied by another bag of gold for the Treasury of Rome, it was not considered inappropriate for the governor to accept such largesse; charges of extortion or treason or bribery were only levied when the Treasury saw nothing, or—in the case of Manius Aquillius's father—the governor sold something belonging to the State and popped the proceeds into his own purse. Like Phrygia.

  At the end of the eight-day waiting period Sulla marched his four legions out of the fortress camp he had built, leaving it sitting abandoned on the plateau; one day it might come in handy, as he doubted it would occur to Mithridates to pull it down should he return to Cappadocia. To Mazaca he went with his son and his army, and stood in the palace reception room to watch Ariobarzanes mount his throne, the King's mother and Young Sulla beaming. That the Cappadocians were delighted was obvious; out they came from their houses to cheer their king.

  "If you're wise, King, you'll start recruiting and training an army immediately," said Sulla as he was preparing to leave. "Rome might not always be in a position to intervene."

  The King promised fervently to do this; Sulla had his doubts. For one thing, there was very little money in Cappadocia, and for another, the Cappadocians were not martial people by nature. A Roman farmer made a wonderful soldier. A Cappadocian shepherd did not. Still, the advice had been tendered, and heard. More than that, Sulla knew, he could not accomplish.

  Mithridates, his scouts informed him, had crossed the big red Halys River and was already negotiating the first of the Pontic passes en route to Zela. What no scout could tell him, of course, was whether Mithridates had sent a message to Tigranes of Armenia. Not that it mattered. What Mithridates would say would not show Mithridates in a bad light; the truth would only come out when Tigranes personally encountered Sulla.

  So from Mazaca, Sulla led his neat little army due east across the rolling highlands of Cappadocia, heading for the Euphrates River at the Melitene crossing to Tomisa. The season was now advanced into high spring, and, Sulla was informed, all the passes except the ones around Ararat were open. Should he wish to skirt Ararat, however, those passes would also be open by the time he reached the area. Sulla nodded, said nothing, even to his son or to Morsimus; he had little idea as yet exactly where he was going, intent only upon reaching the Euphrates.

  Between Mazaca and Dalanda lay the Anti-Taurus mountains, not as difficult to cross as Sulla had imagined; though the peaks were high, the pass itself was a fairly low one, and clear of snow and landslides. They marched then through a series of vividly colored rocky gorges, in the floors of which ran torn white rivers, and farmers tilled the rich alluvium through the short growing season. These were ancient peoples, largely left alone as the ages advanced, never inducted into armies nor uplifted from their lands, too insignificant to covet. Sulla marched courteously, bought and paid for whatever he needed by way of supplies, and strung his men out to leave the fields untouched; it was magnificent ambush country, but his scouts were extremely active, and he had no premonition that Tigranes had mobilized and was lying in wait for him this side of the Euphrates.

  Melitene was just an area, it had no town of any size, but the countryside was flat and rich—a part of the Euphrates plain, quite wide between its flanking mountains. Here the people were more numerous but hardly more sophisticated, and clearly they were unused to seeing armies on the march; even Alexander the Great in his tortuous wandering had not visited Melitene. Nor, Sulla learned, had Tigranes on his way to Cappadocia; he had preferred to take the northern route along the headwaters of the Euphrates, in a straighter line from Artaxata than Sulla's present position was.

  And there at last was the mighty river confined between clifflike banks, not as wide as the lower Rhodanus, but flowing much faster. Sulla eyed its racing waters pensively, amazed by their color, a haunting and milky blue-green. His arm tightened about his son, whom he was loving more and more. Such perfect company!

  "Can we cross it?" he asked Morsimus.

  But the Cilician from Tarsus was no wiser than he, and could only shake his head dubiously. "Perhaps later in the year, after all the snows have melted—if they ever do, Lucius Cornelius. The local people say the Euphrates is deeper than it is wide, which must make it the mightiest river in the world."

  "Does it have no bridges across it?'' Sulla asked fretfully.

  "This far up, no. To bridge it here would call for better engineering skills than any in this part of t
he world possess. I know Alexander the Great bridged it, but much lower down its course, and later in the year."

  "It needs Romans."

  "Yes."

  Sulla sighed, shrugged. "Well, I don't have engineers with me, and I don't have the time. We have to get wherever it is we are going before the snows close the passes and prevent our getting back. Though I think we'll go back through northern Syria and the Amanus mountains."

  "Where are we going, Father? Now that you've seen the mighty Euphrates?" Young Sulla asked, smiling.

  "Oh, I haven't seen nearly enough of the Euphrates yet! That is why we're going to march south along this bank until we find a crossing safe enough," said Sulla.

  At Samosata the river was still too strong, though the locals offered bargelike boats; after inspecting them, Sulla declined.

  "We'll continue south," he said.

  The next ford, he was informed, lay at Zeugma, across the border in Syria.

  "How settled is Syria now that Grypus is dead and Cyzicenus reigns alone?" Sulla asked of a local who could speak Greek.

  "I do not know, lord Roman."

  And then, the army packed up and ready to move out, the great river calmed down. Sulla made up his mind.

  "We'll cross here by boat while it's possible," he said.

  Once on the far side he breathed easier, though it was not lost upon him that his troops were more fearful—as if they had crossed some metaphorical Styx, and were now wandering the lands of the Underworld. His officers were summoned and given a lecture on how to keep troops happy. Young Sulla listened too.

  "We're not going home yet," said Sulla, "so everyone had better settle down and enjoy himself. I doubt there's an army capable of defeating us within several hundred miles—if there is one at all. Tell them that they are being led by Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a far greater general than Tigranes or some Parthian Surenas. Tell them that we are the first Roman army east of the Euphrates, and that alone is a protection."

  With summer coming on, it was no part of Sulla's plan to descend to the Syrian and Mesopotamian plains; the heat and the monotony would demoralize his soldiers faster by far than braving the unknown. So from Samosata he struck east again, heading for Amida on the Tigris. These were the borderlands between Armenia to the north and the Kingdom of the Parthians to the south and east, but of garrisons and troops there were none. Sulla's army tramped through fields of crimson poppies, watching its provisions carefully, for though the land was sometimes under cultivation, the people seemed to have little in their granaries to sell.

  There were minor kingdoms hereabouts, Sophene, Gordyene, Osrhoene, and Commagene, each hedged in by vast snowcapped peaks, but the going was easy because it was not necessary to travel through the mountains. In Amida, a black-walled town on the banks of the Tigris, Sulla met the King of Commagene and the King of Osrhoene, who journeyed to see him when news of this strange, peacefully inclined Roman force reached them.

  Their names Sulla found unpronounceable, but each produced a Greek epithet to glorify his name, so Sulla called Commagene, Epiphanes, and Osrhoene, Philoromaios.

  "Honored Roman, you are in Armenia," said Commagene very seriously. "The mighty King Tigranes will assume you invade."

  "And he is not far away," said Osrhoene, equally seriously.

  Sulla looked alert rather than afraid. "Not far away?" he asked eagerly. "Where?"

  "He wants to build a new capital city for southern Armenia, and he has settled upon a site," said Osrhoene. "He plans to call the city Tigranocerta."

  "Where?"

  "To the east of Amida and slightly to the north, perhaps five hundred stades away," said Commagene.

  Quickly Sulla divided by eight. "About sixty miles."

  "You do not intend to go there, surely?"

  "Why not?" asked Sulla. "I haven't killed anybody, nor looted a temple, nor stolen provisions. I come in peace to talk to King Tigranes. In fact, I would ask a favor of you— send messages to King Tigranes at Tigranocerta and tell him I'm coming—in peace!"

  3

  The messages went out and found Tigranes already well aware of Sulla's advance, yet very reluctant to block his progress. What was Rome doing east of the Euphrates? Of course Tigranes didn't trust the peaceful intent, but the size of Sulla's army did not indicate a serious Roman invasion. The important question was whether or not he should attack—like Mithridates, Tigranes feared the name, Rome, enormously. Therefore, he resolved, he would not attack until he was attacked. And in the meantime he would go with his army to meet this Roman, Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

  He had heard from Mithridates, of course. A defensive and sullen letter, informing him briefly that Gordius was dead and Cappadocia once more under the thumb of the Roman puppet, King Ariobarzanes. A Roman army had come up from Cilicia and its leader (not named) had warned him to go home. For the time being, had said the King of Pontus, he had judged it prudent to abandon his plan to invade Cilicia after subduing Cappadocia once and for all. In consequence he had urged Tigranes to abandon his plan to march west into Syria and meet his father-in-law on the fertile alluvial plains of Cilicia Pedia.

  Neither of the Kings had dreamed for one moment that, his mission in Cappadocia successfully completed, the Roman Lucius Cornelius Sulla would go anywhere save back to Tarsus; and by the time Tigranes believed what his spies told him—that Sulla was on the Euphrates looking for a crossing—his messages to Mithridates in Sinope had no hope of reaching their recipient before Sulla appeared on the Armenian doorstep. Therefore Tigranes had sent word of Sulla's advent to his Parthian suzerains in Seleuceia-on-Tigris; their journey, though long, was an easy one.

  The King of Armenia met Sulla on the Tigris some miles west of the site of his new capital; when Sulla arrived on the west bank, he faced the camp of Tigranes on the east bank. Compared to the Euphrates, the Tigris was a creek, running shallower and more sluggishly, brownish in color, perhaps half as wide. It rose, of course, on the wrong side of the Anti-Taurus, and received not one tenth of the tributaries the Euphrates did, nor the bulk of the melting snows and permanent springs. Almost a thousand miles to the south in the area around Babylon and Ctesiphon and Seleuceia-on-Tigris, the two rivers ran only forty miles apart; canals had been dug from the Euphrates to the Tigris to help the latter stream find its way to the Persian Sea.

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  Who goes to whom? asked Sulla of himself, smiling perversely as he put his army into a strongly fortified camp and sat down on the western bank to see who would give in first and take the trip across the river. Tigranes did, not motivated by aggression or fear, but by curiosity. As the days had gone by without Sulla's showing himself, the King just couldn't wait any longer. Out came the royal barge, a gilded, flat-bottomed affair guided by poles rather than oars, shielded from the heat of the sun by a gold and purple canopy fringed with bullion, under which, on a dais, stood one of the King's minor thrones, a magnificent contraption worked in gold, ivory, and gems galore.

  The King came down to the wooden jetty in a four-wheeled golden car which hurt the eyes of the watchers on the west bank, it flashed and glittered so, a slave standing behind the King in the car holding a golden, gem-studded parasol above the royal head.

  "Now how is he going to manage this?" asked Sulla of his son from their hiding place behind a wall of shields.

  "What do you mean, Father?"

  "Dignity!" Sulla exclaimed, grinning. "I can't believe he will soil his feet on that wooden wharf, yet they haven't spread a carpet for him to walk on."

  The conundrum solved itself. Two brawny slaves shoved the parasol-holder aside as they stepped up into the car with the little wheels; there they linked arms and waited. Delicately the King lowered the royal posterior onto their arms, and was carried to the barge, deposited gently upon the throne. While the languid vessel plied its way across the languid river the King sat immobile, not seeming to see the throng on the western bank. The barge bumped into the sloping earth, as there was no jetty on t
his side, and the whole process was repeated. The slaves picked the King up and stood off to one side while the throne was carried to a high flat-topped rock, deposited upon it, and the royal parasol-holder clambered up to shade the chair. Only then was the King transported to his resting place, quite a struggle for the slaves.

  "Oh, well done!" cried Sulla.

  "Well done?" asked Young Sulla, learning avidly.

  "He's got me by the balls, Young Sulla! No matter what I sit on—or even if I stand—he's going to tower above me."

  "What can you do?"

  Well concealed even from the King at his new height, Sulla snapped his fingers for his body-slave. "Help me get this off," he said curtly, struggling with the straps on his cuirass.

  Divested of armor, he removed his leather under-dress as well, changed scarlet tunic for a coarsely woven oatmeal one, belted it with a cord, threw a dun-colored peasant cloak about his shoulders, and put on his wide-brimmed straw peasant's hat.

  "When in the company of the sun," he said to Young Sulla with a grin, "be a cavern."

  Thus it was that when he emerged from between his guard and strolled down to the spot where Tigranes sat like a statue upon his throne, Sulla looked like one of the local lowly. The King, in fact, discounted him as anyone of importance, and continued to stare, frowning, into the massed ranks of Sulla's army.

  "Greetings, King Tigranes, I am Lucius Cornelius Sulla," said Sulla in Greek, arriving at the base of the rock where the King's chair perched. He swept off his hat and looked upward, his pale eyes wide because the King's parasol was between him and the sun.

  The King gaped, first at sight of that hair, then at sight of those eyes. To one used to seeing no eyes save brown— and who considered his Queen's yellow orbs unique—Sulla's were horrifying, patches punched out of a doomsday sky.