The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

As a sign of mutual solidarity the local magistrates were to wait thirteen days after receipt of the letter and then apprehend and murder every Italian in their jurisdiction—including women and children.56 Under the circumstances, there was little anyone could do but comply. No one was going to risk the wrath of Mithridates just to save a few Italians they didn’t really like anyway. So on the thirteenth day after receiving the letter, every city across Asia arrested and systematically executed all resident Italians. Informers were offered a share of confiscated Italian property, leading neighbor to betray neighbor. Each city soon had a pile of bodies. In total, the dead numbered as many as eighty thousand people. Mithridates himself undertook the central sacrifice of this gruesome pact. Bringing out the captured Manius Aquillius, Mithridates ordered molten gold poured down his throat. There was no going back now. The massacre of the Italians was an act of calculated genocide to bind the eastern cities against Rome. Each was now individually complicit in the murder of Romans. It was now either fight and win with Mithridates, or face the vengeance of Rome alone.57