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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The widely accepted redating of the praetorship and propraetorship of Cornelius Sulla from the conventional years 93–92 to the years 97–96 B.C., proposed by E. Badian in an ingenious paper, involved the rearrangement of the story of the Cappadocian succession between c. 101 B.C. and 90 B.C. Badian proposed a much simpler reconstruction of the events recorded in the summary narratives of Justin, Appian, and Plutarch, than the version established by Th. Reinach which has hitherto held the field.
1 Badian, E., ‘Sulla's Cilician Command’, Athenaeum N.S. 37 (1959), 279 ff.,Google Scholar cited below from the reprint in his Studies in Greek and Roman History (Oxford, 1964), pp. 157 ff.Google Scholar
2 Justin 38.2, 3. Strabo 12.2.11 (540). Livy, , Ep. 70.Google ScholarAppian, , Mithr. 10.Google Scholar Th. Reinach, , Trois royaumes de l'Asie mineure (Paris, 1888),Google Scholar repeated with modifications in his Mithridate Eupator (Paris, 1890).Google Scholar Cf. CAH ix.235 ff.Google ScholarMagie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton, 1950), i. 203 ff.,Google Scholar ii. 1098–9, nn. 11–19. Will, E., Histoire du monde hellénistique (Nancy, 1967), ii.395 ff. For the numismatic evidence, see below nn.38, 41, 45.Google Scholar
3 For the significance of 90 B.C. see below, nn.16, 48.
4 Justin 38.2.8, ‘itaque rex illis a senatu statuitur’. He supposes (p. 167) that it was irrelevant to Justin's purpose to explain who set up Ariobarzanes, or how. But Justin 38.3.4 names the Romans who restored him in 90–89, including the obscure Maltinus.
5 p. 166.
6 Justin 38.5.6. Being grouped with the withdrawal from Paphlagonia, the reference to the invasion of c. 101 is clear; in 90–89 Mithridates refused to co-operate in restoring Ariobarzanes (Appian, , Mithr. 11). Badian, p. 166 n.45, cites an adjacent item from this speech in Justin (loc. cit. 9) with strong approval.Google Scholar
7 Plut, . Sulla 5.6–7.Google Scholar
8 Justin 38.3.1. Plut, . Luc. 21.6 dates it twenty-five years before an event of 71–70; cf. Badian, p. 176 n.49.Google Scholar
9 Strabo 11.14.15 (532), 12.2.1 (535).
10 Badian, p. 168.
11 Obsequens 50.110, ‘pax domi forisque fuit’; cf. ibid. 52.112, ‘totus annus tranquility’, for 93, while for 94 he notes a Roman victory in Spain. The years 94–93 are also excluded because C. Sentius was urban praetor in 94, (SIG 3 732), for Sulla's praetorship and propraetorship, but 95–94 remains.
12 Livy, , Ep. 70.Google Scholar Cf. Ep. 74, ‘Nicomedes in Bithyniae, Ariobarzanes in Cappadociae regnum reducti sunt’. So too in Appian, , Mithr. 57, when Sulla in a speech claims 
the verb must mean, as it does twenty lines below, ‘restored to his throne’, pace Badian, n.51.Google Scholar
13 Pol. 32.10–12. Diod. 31.28, 32, 34. Appian, , Syr. 47.Google ScholarLivy, , Ep. 47.Google Scholar Cf. Will, , op. cit. ii.312 ff. (158–156 B.C.). Likewise the Senate does nothing effective to help its favourite Ptolemy VII Physcon against the intransigence of his brother in the same decade, cf. Will ii.302–3: Pol. 31.10, 17–20, 33.11. Diod. 31.23, 33.Google Scholar
14 In 150–149 a senatorial mission was complacent when Nicomedes II eliminated his father Prusias II, whom they were supposed to support; Pol. 36.14.4. Diod. 32. 20–1, 33.14–15, Livy, , Ep. 50.Google Scholar Equally the Senate gave no material support to its protégés in the dynastic feuds of Seleucid Syria: Pol. 31.2.1–11, 11.1–15, 33; 32.2–3, 3.11–12; 33.18.6–14. Diod. 31.27 A, 29–30, 32A. Appian, Syr. 46, 47, 67. Cf. Will, , op. cit. ii.309–23.Google Scholar
15 Sallust, , B.J. 13, 16.1–2, 21.4, 25.4, 27.Google Scholar
16 Appian, , Mithr. 11, 12–14.Google ScholarLivy, , Ep. 74, ambiguously dates the restoration either to late 90 or to 89, though the notice may refer to the s.c. passed in 90 which took effect in summer 89; cf. n.48 below. For the Scyths, Memnon 30.2.Google Scholar
17 Appian, , Mitbr. 15, restoration of Ariarathes; 17, march against Aquilius.Google Scholar
18 Plut, . Marius 31.5.Google Scholar
19 p. 166.
20 Justin 38.5.9. Badian, p. 175 n.45.
21 Justin 38.5.8.
22 Appian, , Mithr. 10.Google Scholar
23 Ibid. 11. Justin 38.3.4. Reinach, , Mitbridate Eupator, p. 112 n.2, dates the death of Nicomedes III to c. 94 by allowing some three years for the two marriages, and the birth of the two children, ofGoogle Scholar
Nicomedes IV before his expulsion, which Appian, , Mithr. 11,Google Scholar synchronizes with the expulsion of Ariobarzanes by Bagoas, c. 91–90. But ibid., p. 111 n.2 he takes too literarally nuper in Cic. de Or. 3.229 to mean that Nicomedes was recognized by the Senate against the claims of Socrates just before Sept. 91.
34 Justin 39.5, cf. 40.1: The Syrians invite Tigranes to be king (in 83) because of their adjacency to the Romans (from 69 on).
35 Plut, . Sulla 5.2; Badian, pp. 158 f.Google Scholar
36 Plut, . Sulla 5.2–5.Google Scholar
27 de Vir. Ill. 75, ‘praetor inter cives ius dixit’.
28 I owe what follows to the as yet unpublished thesis, and private advice, of Dr. C. Pelling, whose commentary on Plutarch's Caesar carries further the study of Plutarch's handling of his sources initiated by D.A. Russell's discussion of the Coriolanus, JRS 53 (1963), 21 f.Google Scholar Plutarch also misrepresents the time factor in Cic. 30.1 by passing straight from the Bona Dea trial to the election of Clodius to the tribunate and his attack on Cicero, with an 
So too in Caes. 21.8 the dispatch of Cato to Cyprus in 58 is connected with the protection of legislation of several years earlier, though Plutarch elsewhere knows the correct date (Cic. 34.2, Pomp. 48.9, Cato Min. 39–40.). Cf. also Caes. 6.7, 7.1, on the entry of Caesar into public life, for concealed time lag, and Lucullus 5.1.
29 Plut, . Timol. i.1.Google Scholar
30 Plut, . Sulla 12.1;Google ScholarAppian, , Mithr. 30.Google Scholar I add that in Plut, . Sulla 11.8Google Scholar Bruttius withdraws ‘immediately’ from Boiotia at the request of Lucullus, but in Appian, , Mithr. 29,Google Scholar he withdraws without haste because reinforcements reach Archelaus. In Sulla 10.8Google Scholar Cinna on entering office ‘immediately’ turns on Sulla, who faced by prosecution leaves for Greece: hardly likely, with an army and a sea voyage, in January.
31 Badian, pp. 159 f. But why should a man of obscure family expect to hold the praetorship suo anno, as Badian assumes? Holding the aedileship would only delay him two years—nothing to a man who had as yet, as Velleius says (2.17.1), no pretensions to the consulship, and who had been in no hurry to secure the quaestorship, which he held five years later than his most distinguished contemporaries; cf. Astin, A.E., The Lex Annalis before Sulla (Brussels, 1958), pp. 44–5, who shows also (pp. 11–12) that less than half of the known praetorians who secured the consulship between 179 and 88 did so within the legal minimum.Google Scholar
32 In Ep. 63 the campaign of the consul in summer 114 rightly precedes the trial of the Vestal in December (cf. Macrob, . Sat. 1.10.5).Google Scholar
33 For this date, Obsequens 49.109. It is true that the Epitomator in 62, 68, 70 places at the end oriental events in which Rome was not directly involved, though in Ep. 74 they come in the middle of a year.
34 Velleius 2.15.3. Badian, p. 158, ‘It may safely be ignored’.
35 Ibid. and 17.2, ‘deinde post praeturam inlustratus bello Italico, etc.’. Admittedly in 2.24.3 he tells the story of Sulla and die Parthian legatus out of place, and the text of 31.3 has a horrid error in back reference sometimes cured by amendment: but 33.1 is a correct back reference.
36 Livy, Ep. 72, dealing with the events of winter 91–90: the warfare of 90 comes in Ep. 73. Obsequens 54 (114). Appian B.C. 1.38 (cf. 40). So too Velleius 2.15.1.Google Scholar
37 Reinach, , op. cit. above, n.2. Badian, nn.53–7.Google Scholar
38 Simonetta, B., ‘Notes on Cappadocian Coinage’, Num. Chron. 1961, 9 ff.Google Scholar
39 Val, . Max. 5.7.Google Scholar ext. 2. Reinach, , Trois royaumes, p. 60. Simonetta, pp. 19 f.Google Scholar
40 Cic. adAtt. 5.20.6, ad Fam. 15.2.4–6: the assassination seems to have been fairly recent. Simonetta, loc. cit., Magie, , op. cit., ii. 1249 n.40, was already aware of the correct numismatic sequence.Google Scholar
41 For the dates of Ariarathes IX, Reinach, , op. cit., pp. 51 f.Google ScholarMagie, , op. cit. ii. 1098 n.12,Google Scholar Badian, p. 177 n.56 to be adjusted to Simonetta, , op. cit., p. 18.Google Scholar He is numbered Ninth because the Ariarathid claimant after the murder of Ariarathes VII (Justin 38.2.1–2) is counted as Eighth. Recently coins have been attributed to him which suggest that he held part of Cappadocia for some two years: Mørkholm, O., Essays in Greek Coinage presented to Stanley Robinson, (Oxford, 1968), pp. 248 ff.Google Scholar
42 This was first revealed by Daux, G., BCH 57 (1933), 81 f.,CrossRefGoogle Scholar citing the evidence redating OGIS 353, available in Inscr. Delos (1938)Google Scholar 1576, 1902, which Badian, n.42, does not use.
43 Badian, p. 177 n.56. Arcathias, son of Mithridates, who leads the invasion of Thrace and dies in Macedonia (Appian, , Mithr. 17–18, 35, 41),Google Scholar is identified with an Ariaradies named by Plut, . Sulla 11Google Scholar as commander, but not as a prince, in the same expedition, and both with Ariarathes IX, then barely twenty years old. Badian ignores the strong counter arguments of Magie, , op. cit. ii. 1105 n.41.Google Scholar It may be added that Appian's man ruled not Cappadocia but Armenia and that he took part in the northern campaign of the first year (88 B.C.) into Paphlagonia and Bithynia, when the recently restored Ariarathes IX should have been defending his kingdom against the southern thrust of Oppius through Lycaonia (Appian, , Mitbr. 17, 18, 20).Google Scholar
44 Simonetta, , op. cit., pp. 17 ff.Google Scholar For possible accession in 99–98, cf. Magie, , op. cit. ii.1098 n.12, and below.Google Scholar
45 Møkholm, O., ‘Some Cappadocian Problems’, Num. Cbron. 1962, 407 ff:Google Scholar ‘Some Cappadocian Die Links’, ibid. 1964, 21 ff. ‘The Clarification of Cappadocian Coins’, ibid. 1969, 26 ff. The criticisms of B. Simonetta, ibid. 1964, 83 ff. and 1967, 7 ff. seem not to have been effective.
46 Op. cit. 1962, p. 408.Google Scholar
47 Mørkholm, , op. cit. 1962, 409 f.Google ScholarBabelon, , Monnaie de la Syrie ancienne, xxxviii, lxxxiv.Google Scholar
48 Livy, , Ep. 74,Google Scholar places the restoration of the two kings between the events of 90 (‘L. Porcius praetor’) and those of 89 (‘Cn. Pompeius consul’). Since the operations of Aquilius spread over 89 and 88 (Livy, , Ep. 77, 78,Google Scholar with Appian, , Mitbr. 17)Google ScholarEp. 74 may refer to the s.c. instructing Aquilius at the end of 90 which had its effect in 89. Cf. Magie, , op. cit. ii.1100Google Scholar n.20, Reinach, , op. cit., p. 115 n.4, for another solution.Google Scholar
49 A recently discovered, though dissipated, hoard of over 800 Cappadocian drachmas added no new regnal number to the material of Simonetta, except for the ‘eleventh’ of Ariobarzanes I, while confirming the limitation to ‘five’ for the first phrase of Ariarathes IX: Mørkholm, , op. cit. n.41 above, pp. 257 f.Google ScholarSimonetta, , op. cit. n.38 above, removed the ‘six’ from the series of Ariobarzanes I.Google Scholar
50 App, . Mithr. 60, after the death of Fimbria and before the congress of Ephesus.Google Scholar
51 This implies that Ariobarzanes was not sufficiently established in Cappadocia to issue coinage until the intervention of Sulla. For 94 B.C. cf. above, n.ll.
