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Easter in Palermo in 1282 had a lot to do with death and little to do with resurrection.
Because Vespers on March 30th marked a long-planned uprising against the French occupiers.
The bloodbath went down in history as the “Sicilian Vespers”.
In the 19th century, which was in love with history, the “Vespers” was rediscovered.
Giuseppe Verdi dedicated an opera to her in 1855, which ended in a massacre.
The Easter afternoon service moved from the stage to science.
In the fifth volume of his “Roman History”, which describes the provinces of the empire, none other than Theodor Mommsen coined the “national Vespers” as a symbol of mass murder, the “mithradatic”.
From there it was only a short way to the “Blood Vespers of Ephesus”, even if it was hardly at Easter, but rather in the summer of 88 BC.
Asia Minor shook.
The name of its author has also undergone changes.
Ancient authors called him Mithridates and thus followed the style of the Roman victors.
Many historians have followed this up to the present day, although Mommsen already used the historically correct name: Mithradates.
The famous historian, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902, described Rome's last great adversary as the epitome of the oriental despot, as a "cruel and suspicious" Sultan, and thus set the pace for many successors.
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Mithradates was the sixth king of that name to rule over the kingdom of Pontus in Asia Minor.
The fact that it was precisely the lord of a better client principality in the forecourt of the Roman power that resisted it for over a quarter of a century to the last consequence has made him not only the main character in tragedies and operas, but also a major topic in historical studies.
Did he really only drive cruelty and unreal power madness or did he see himself as the last defender of Greece against the new world power from the west?
Mithradates VI.
von Pontos (approx. 132–63) presented himself entirely as a Hellenistic ruler
Source: picture-alliance / / HIP
Even his youth is shrouded in legends.
Around 132 BC
Born in BC, he demonstrated an instinct for power and unscrupulousness when he first fled into the wilderness and later murdered his mother and brother from the reign.
With small amounts of poison, he is said to have immunized his body against attacks and learned all 22 languages that were spoken in his small kingdom - basically the north coast of Asia Minor.
There were few cities there from which Sinope had been converted into a residence.
The nobility sat in numerous castles in the hinterland and, like the royal family, traced back to Iranian roots from the time of Persian rule.
Nonetheless, at least the court and upper class were Hellenized and made a point of being accepted as members of the Greek culture.
With the cult name Eupator (derived from the good father) Mithradates allowed himself to be venerated by his subjects and appeared to them as the incarnation of the wine and culture bringer Dionysus.
Historians went so far as to calculate that the king was Macedonian in 73/128.
This is how one imagined the sickle wagon in action
Source: picture-alliance / akg-images
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But Mithradates certainly did not become a god who could choose his goals for himself.
Rather, his career reflected the framework conditions that opened up in Rome's forecourt since its victories over Carthage and the Hellenistic kingdoms of the east.
If he wanted to take on the legions with his army consisting of mercenaries, light cavalry and the dreaded sickle chariot, he had to wait for opportunities offered by the chaos of Roman domestic politics.
There were enough of them, however.
After King Attalus III.
of Pergamon had bequeathed his empire in western Asia Minor 133 in his will to the Romans, they had come into possession of one of the richest and most developed regions of the Mediterranean world.
The country was organized as a province, although some Greek cities were probably allowed to keep their privileges.
The fact that taxes from
Asia made up
"the majority of the Roman state income in general", as the ancient historian Christian Marek writes, is explained by the work of the
publicani
.
This was the name given to the tax tenants from Italy who joined together to form corporations and tried to collect their investments with brutality and unfair means.
The senatorial governors were careful not to hug them, for they themselves endeavored to fill their pockets in their year in office.
In addition, when they returned they were threatened with lawsuits in courts occupied by members of the Roman knighthood, from which the tax tenants also came.
When in Italy in 91 BC
When the so-called alliance war broke out between Rome and its partners, Mithradates saw his chance.
Source: WORLD infographic
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He had already conquered some areas in his neighborhood before, and was repeatedly put in his place by the Romans.
After he had advanced his rule to the Caucasus and into the Bosporan Empire in the north of the Black Sea, he dared in 88 BC.
The invasion of the poorly defended Roman province.
There he was celebrated as a liberator, as an emerging savior and god.
Even in Greece, many cities, especially Athens, opened their gates to its generals and ships.
He had an example made on the defeated Roman governor Manius Aquillius by sending him to the afterlife with liquid gold in his throat.
Then he prepared his "Vespers" from Ephesus.
All viceroys and high officials were instructed to
ensure
the murder of all
tebennophoruntes
(toga carriers), as Romans and Italians were called
, on a given date
, including all women, children and freedmen.
Their helpers should be punished, slaves who killed their masters should be given freedom, informers should be forgiven half of their debts.
The historian Appian has passed down scenes of unimaginable cruelty.
In Ephesus, those seeking protection were dragged out of the temples and slaughtered; in Pergamon they were killed with arrows when they had embraced the statues of the gods.
In Adramyttion the refugees were drowned in the sea.
In Kaunos, first the children were slaughtered in front of their parents, then the women in front of their husbands.
In Tralleis, “brutal people” from the hinterland were commissioned with the bloodbath, and those pleading for protection chopped off their arms in order to pull them away from the idols.
The sources speak of 80,000 to 150,000 victims and agree that it was primarily hatred of the exploiters from Italy that drove the excesses.
The example of Adramyttion, where the entire city council was killed, showed what social explosives had accumulated during Roman rule.
One can only speculate about the motives of Mithradates.
Surely he had recognized the pent-up anger against the publicani and thus the possibility of presenting himself to the Greeks as liberators.
Perhaps, in the Machiavellian sense, he wanted to make them comrades in arms for whom there was no turning back.
What is certain is that he replenished his war chest with the confiscated assets in order to be prepared for the Roman counter-attack.
Mithradates VI.
in the pose of Alexander the Great with a lion skin
Source: picture-alliance / akg-images
Did Mithradates really think he could resist Rome in the long run?
Perhaps his victories over the Roman forces in Asia had encouraged him to be the new Alexander the Great as which he was portrayed.
Or did he believe, as he wrote in a letter, that the Greeks would unite against “the common enemy of the human race” and that Rome would break up in internal conflicts?
But in doing so, like the Carthaginian Hannibal 130 years before him, he fatally underestimated the will to power of the Roman aristocracy and its resources.
Mithradates owed the fact that Rome's counter-attack did not turn into a devastating campaign of revenge to the disagreement of his opponents.
For decades, a dispute over the question of how the collective rule of the Senate aristocracy over the emerging world empire should be shaped has escalated into a revolution and civil war.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla was one of the ambitious generals who increasingly eroded the republic's overdue foundation.
He had been consul in 88.
Since he had subsequently become the lucrative governor of
Asia
, it would have been up to him to wage war with Mithradates.
But the Senate feared the great concentration of power in Sulla's hands and withdrew his command.
For Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78) the war against Mithradates became the means for his ascent in Rome
Source: picture alliance / akg-images
He then marched with his legions on Rome, settled accounts with his opponents, called numerous supporters to the Senate and moved to the east with five legions.
It soon became apparent that the thrown together armies of Mithradates had no chance against the battle-hardened soldiers of Rome.
Athens was conquered, Greece occupied.
When Sulla finally appeared in Asia Minor, the king's rule quickly wavered, not least because his new subjects realized that their new master was also making considerable tax demands.
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But Sulla was in a hurry.
His opponents formed in Rome.
So he granted Mithradates in 85 BC
A mild peace.
The mass murderer was recognized as a "friend of Rome" for withdrawing from the conquered territories, placing 70 warships and paying 2000 talents.
The bill had to be paid by the provincial residents, on whom Sulla placed a five-year tribute and the payment of 20,000 talents burdens.
He himself hurried to Italy, where he established his dictatorship.
This ended the First Mithradatic War.
In the second (83-81), instigated by an ambitious governor, the king was even able to regain some areas and once again prove his unscrupulousness when he had his entire harem killed in a difficult situation so that his wives would not fall into the hands of the Romans allow.
But when Mithradates rebuilt its fleet and even came to an understanding with the renegade governor in Spain, Quintus Sertorius, Rome lost patience and relied on a large-scale reorganization of the Levant.
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48) was entrusted with an extraordinary command to fight the pirates, which made him available to 120,000 men
Source: picture alliance / Prisma Archive
After a few setbacks, the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus succeeded in conquering Pontus in the Third Mithradatic War (73-63).
With the smallest retinue, the king was able to make his way into the Bosporan Empire on remote routes.
There he again assembled an army and is said to have even planned to attack Italy by land.
But his son Pharnakes had other plans.
He started a rebellion and threatened to hand over his father to the Romans.
So cornered, Mithradates took poison with two daughters in his palace in Pantikapaion at the exit of the Sea of Azov.
But since it couldn’t harm him, he ordered a Celtic officer of his bodyguard to give him the fatal blow.
When that in 63 BC
Happened, Mithradates had ruled for 57 years, strong in stature, with Greek education and bloodthirsty and cruel, as Appian noted in his obituary.
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