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Updated: June 12, 2025
Gracchus censured in the bitterest terms the venality of the senate, and in particular laid bare with unsparing and just severity the scandalous traffic which Manius Aquillius had driven with the provinces of Asia Minor; yet it was through the efforts of the same man that the sovereign populace of the capital got itself alimented, in return for its cares of government, by the body of its subjects.
The whole settlement of Asia had been so tainted with the suspicion of pecuniary influences that, when Manius Aquillius successfully ran the gauntlet of the courts, it was difficult to believe that the treasures of the East had not co-operated towards the result, especially as the senate itself by no means favoured some of the features of Aquillius's organisation of the province.
Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked quite as if they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position. But it was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this; and, as he could not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he made use of Nicomedes for that purpose.
Possibly the conduct of Aquillius was due to his having been heavily bribed by Nicomedes, who must have felt that when the Romans were gone he would be like a mouse awaiting the cat's spring; for it is difficult to imagine the foolhardiness which without some such tangible stimulus would at that moment have plunged him into war.
Aquillius and his commissioners must have received definite instructions not to claim for Rome any territory lying east of Mysia, Lydia and Caria; but they seem to have had no instructions as to how the discarded territories were to be disposed of. The consequence was that the kings of the East were soon begging for territory from a Roman commander and his assistants.
Yet some central control was essential; and this was perhaps secured by attaching Phrygia to the province of Asia in the same loose condition of dependence in which Achaea had been attached to Macedonia. In one other particular the settlement of Aquillius was not final.
Moreover, conspiracies of the town- slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth of being conquered by Athenion. Aquillius
After two years of hard conflicts Aquillius is said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him in single combat the Roman general at length put down the desperate resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by famine.
The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius . The same policy was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian territory.
But he was informed by Aquillius, that he must under all circumstances refrain from war against Nicomedes. That indeed was plain. They had employed exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself against them.
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