Appian The Mithridatic Wars 39: An Exegesis

Abstract

Appian of Alexandria, noted for his success in the law courts in his adopted city of Rome during the second century AD, wrote extensively both on the Roman civil wars and on her foreign campaigns. Amongst modern scholars, Appian has not always been considered reliable as a historian, with much attention having been given to his work on the civil wars. This thesis examines the reliability of Appian in one important passage in The Mithridatic Wars, which forms a constituent part of his work on the foreign campaigns. In The Mithridatic Wars, Appian describes the events that took place during the wars between Rome and Mithridates VI of Pontus, which had begun in 88 BC. It was later the same year that Lucius Cornelius Sulla was appointed to his first consulship and assigned the command against Mithridates. He sailed from Italy to Greece in early 87 BC and quickly received deputations and invitations from most Greek states, but not from Rome’s erstwhile long-term ally, Athens. By that time, Athens had formed a new alliance with Mithridates and was hosting a large part of his army in Attica. Sulla had little choice but to lay siege to Athens and to the Piraeus. After Athens fell in March 86 BC, Sulla’s men poured into the city and engaged in pillage and the indiscriminate slaughter of many of its citizens. In section 39 of The Mithridatic Wars, Appian describes the action taken by Sulla after the city fell which, he asserts, included punishing the tyrant, Aristion, and his entourage with death, instituting laws on the Athenians similar to those established for them when Rome had first conquered Greece, and helping himself to their financial reserves from the treasury at the Acropolis. This thesis provides broad consideration of the issues raised in this passage. Particular attention is given to the clause ‘he instituted laws for everyone’ (νόμους ἔθηκεν ἅπασιν), which underlies much modern scholarship on the issue of whether Sulla imposed a constitution on the Athenians. This thesis examines this issue in detail, and concludes that several of the prominent assertions in this passage are unreliable. After considering whether Rome had previously conquered Greece or established laws for the Athenians, and then whether Sulla imposed a constitution on the Athenians, this thesis concludes with full notes on the assertions made by Appian in this passage.