Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard

Content warning for discussion of genocide and child death

Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time

Day 5 will take a look into the historic event known as the Asiatic Vespers, one of the only genocide committed against Rome instead of by it.

Episode Notes Below:

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 3 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 2 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. For this week’s episode we’re going to be talking about a genocide committed AGAINST the Romans. This is particularly unusual because usually the Romans are the ones committing genocides and war crimes. Historically speaking the event is called the Asiatic Vespers, which should explain the pun in the episode title. And if it doesn’t, I’m not going to be explaining it. Google is free.

Our timeline places us in the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars are over, Carthago cecidit and Rome had steadily been expanding its borders in all directions. By the time the Punic Wars were over Rome held all of Italy, most of Iberia, most of Greece, parts of northern Africa, including Carthage, and were on the cusp of moving into the Anatolia (what is today part of the nation of Turkey). You might think that Rome would be tired of wars after their decades of fighting against the Carthiginians, but their victories only made them hungry for more.

During the final decade of the 2nd century BCE the Romans were engaged in 2 distinct wars. One in northwest Africa (the area that is today Algeria) against King Jurgatha of Numidia called the Jugurthine War and one fought around western Europe against various Celtic and Germanic tribes who had invaded from the Jutland Peninsula (modern day Denmark and parts of Northern Germany) called the Cimbrian Wars.

Both wars would end in Roman victories, and we will discuss them very briefly now as they are relevant to our later discussion, but not the main focus of this episode. The Jugurthan War took place two generations after the fall of Carthage. King Massinisa, an ally of Rome against Carthage died in 149. He was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who was succeeded by two sons and an illegitimate nephew. Adherbal (son), Hiempsal I (son), and Jugurtha (the nephew). Micipsa, fearing conflict amongst his three heirs bid them split the kingdom up into three parts. One to be ruled over by each of them.

The Roman Senate has been given the authority, by Micsipa, to make sure his will was carried out, but being the corrupt piece of shit it was, the Senate allowed itself to be bribed by Jugurtha to overlook his crimes after he assassinated Hiempsal and forced Adherbal to flee to Rome for safety. Peace WAS declared, albeit briefly, between the two men, although in 113 BCE Jugurtha, once again, declared war on Adherbal.

Rome, fearing instability in the region, acquiesced to Adherbal’s request for aid and sent troops to the fight and ambassadors to Jugurtha to demand peace negotiations. Jugurtha was clever though, and knew how much the Romans loved to talk. So he kept them doing just that until Cirta, Adherbal’s capital ran out of food and had to surrender. Jugurtha immediately had Adherbal executed as well as all Romans who had aided him in the defense of Cirta.

Now, the Pax Romana didn’t exist just yet, but Rome still took a hard line against anyone who dared to harm her citizens. So in 112 BCE the Jugurthine War was declared. We’re not going to go into any great detail of the Jugurthine War, suffice it to say that Rome won, it lasted until 105 BCE, and that some historians see this war as the true beginning of the fall of the Roman Republic. Gaius Marius was the victorious general and consul of the Jugurthine War (and also the Cimbrian War we’re going to talk about next) and he would use his successes in these, and other wars, to try and seize greater power in Rome.

That brings us to the Cimbrian War. Although, to be perfectly clear, these two wars happened at, pretty much, the same time. The Jugurthine War was 112 to 105 BCE and the Cimbrian War was 113 to 101 BCE, and Gaius Marius fought in both of them. Dude must have had the speed force to be in both places at once.

The Cimbrian Wars were another war in a long line of “Rome didn’t intend to conquer this region, but an ally called for help and they definitely planned on staying after they won the war”. According to Roman sources the Cimbrian peoples came down from the north and, eventually, attacked the Roman allied Celtic federation the Taurisci, who asked Rome for aid against the Cimbrians.

One of the interesting things about the Cimbrian War was that, after an initial victory against the Roman general and consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo the Cimbrians were perfectly poised to carry their invasion into Italy itself, but instead of doing so they turned and pushed their way into Gaul (modern day France). The war against the Cimbri was an unmitigated disaster until Marius came in and shored up the Roman strategy. Marius, it is interesting to note, was the uncle of Julius Caesar. Famed for being the worst hostage and the best knife practice dummy in history.

The Cimbrian War would end with Roman victory and would also spark the rivalry between Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix which would eventually lead to the first of Rome’s great Civil Wars which would see Sulla march on Rome and see Marius outlawed and exiled, albeit very briefly.

I said earlier that there were two major wars during the end of the 2nd century BCE. There were actually 3. The Third being the Second Servile War that took place from 104 until 100 BCE on the island of Sicily. Servile War was the name that Rome gave, or that historians gave, to the three large scale slave uprisings that occurred during the time of the Roman Republic. If you’re wondering where Spartacus is, he won’t be around until the Third Servile War. The reason to bring up the Second Servile War is that this one also involved our good friend Gaius Marius. He was not one of the generals in this war, but he was in northern Africa trying to recruit aid for the war with the Cimbri from the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. There, after discovering that King Nicodemus III had no one to spare for Rome as all able bodied men had been enslaved by tax collectors, the Senate issued an edict stating that no Roman ally could be enslaved. This led to discontent on the island of Sicily as several hundred slaves were freed, but many were not as they were not from Roman allied states. This, combined with the abuses that were rampant in Roman Republic slavery led to a massive, and ultimately futile, uprising against the Republic. Now, Rome and the Kingdom of Pontus, which had been declared in 281 BCE and had been ruled over by a string of Kings all named Mithradates were neighbors across the Anatolia, but during the Cimbrian and Jugurthine Wars they, frankly, had nothing to do with each other. Rome had some interests in the area due to their alliance with Nocodemus and the Kingdom of Bithynia, but they were very occupied with the Cimbrian War, the Jugurthan War, the Second Servile War, and then in the beginning of the 1st century BCE, the Social Wars that they fought against former, autonomous, allies living on the Italian peninsula (the Social War also ended in Roman victory).

With the beginning of the Social War Mithradates VI saw the oppurtunity to expand further into the Anatolia and allied with Tigranes I of Armenia and declared war against the Roman client state of Cappadocia. Mithradates and Tigranes were quickly able to conquer Cappadocia and expel Nicodemus from Bithynia. When Rome heard about this they demanded that both kings be restored to their thrones and then, stupidly, urged those kings to go to war against Pontus and Armenia. Mithradates responded to this aggression by conquering Cappadocia and Bithynia and conquering most of Roman Asia with about a year.

Once Rome was no longer distracted by the Social War they would turn their attention to Pontus and Mithradates, although it would take almost 2 years for Rome to mobilize armies against Mithradates.

See, at first the Roman general Sulla was placed in charge of the forces against Pontus, but political backbiting from Publius Sulpicius Rufus, a political opponent of Sulla, almost saw the army taken from him and placed in the hands of his rival Marius. Sulla responded to this threat by marching into Rome with his forces and taking control by force, forcing Marius into a brief exile.

Mithradates would take the delay in Rome’s response to carry out the event that would come to be called the Asiatic Vespers. The Vespers were a genocide targeted all Roman and otherwise Latin speaking peoples in the western Anatolia

The genocide were a calculated response to the Roman declaration of war. It was meant to force cities to take a side: "no city that did his bidding now could ever hope to be received back into Roman allegiance". The killings took place probably in the first half of the year 88 BC, although precise dating is impossible. Valerius Maximus indicates a death toll of approximately 80,000, while Plutarch claims a death toll of 150,000. The reported numbers, according to fragments of Dio, are however probably exaggerated. They were planned, with Mithridates writing secretly to regional satraps and leaders to kill all Italian residents (along with wives, children, and freedmen of Italian birth) thirty days after the day of writing.

Mithridates furthermore offered freedom to slaves which informed on their Italian masters and debt relief to those who slew their creditors. Assassins and informers would share with the Pontic treasury half the properties of those who were killed. Ephesus, Pergamon, Adramyttion, Caunus, Tralles, Nysa, and the island of Chios were all scenes of atrocities. Many of these cities were under the control of tyrants, and many of the inhabitants enthusiastically fell upon their Italian neighbours, who were blamed "for the prevailing climate of aggressive greed[,] acquisitiveness[,] and... malicious litigation".

Based on this we can see the initial uprising against Roman rule in the region as a kind of class uprising against oppressors. This brings us to an important discussion about the use of violence in social revolutions. Violence is, and always will be, a necessary tool in creating social change. However, there will always be a line that should not be crossed.

Mithradates, in inciting enslaved peoples to rise up against their masters and in debtors to kill their creditors, was based as fuck. That’s some capital G, capital S good shit. Those are the oppressors. Those are the people committing violence against the people of the Anatolia. Political violence SHOULD be directed at the people in positions of authority, especially if those people are using that authority to oppress marginalized communities. The part where the morality starts to slough off like flesh off a 5 day old corpse is when the WOMEN and CHILDREN start to be killed.

The First Mithradatic War (there would be two others) would begin immediately after Rome heard of these massacres. The war would run from 89 BCE until 85 BCE and would, ultimately, end in Roman victory. The war ended with the signing of the treaty Dardanos and the end result was status quo ante bellum. Which is a Latin phrase that basically means. Everything is the same as it was before the war. Mithradates retreated back to Pontus and everything that had been a Roman client state returned to being so.

Of course none of this would bring back to roughly 80,000 Roman and Latin speaking civilians that had been killed during the Vespers, but necromancy doesn’t exist and revivify can only be cast within a minute after death anyway.

That’s it for this week folks. We don’t have any more review at the time of recording this, so we’re gonna jump right into the outro.

Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day