CLASSICAL CORNER
FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN
227: DIPLOMAT PUDDINGS
I’m writing this on 13 June 2018, the day between Singapore summit and Moscow World Cup opener. We live in a welter of conferences and meetings: Brexit, Davos, G-7, Trump and ‘Little Rocket Man’. What happened in their ancient equivalents?
Around 499-8 BC, Aristagoras of Miletos went to Sparta seeking its help in the Ionian Revolt against Persia. As related by Herodotus (bk5 chs50-1), he gained audience with King Cleomenes who had with him his eight-year-old daughter Gorgo, refusing Aristagoras’s request to send her away. The latter began by offering a bribe of 10 talents for Spartan assistance. Cleomenes refused. Aristagoras kept raising the ante until he reached 50, at which point little Gorgo cried out: “Father, go away or this man will corrupt you.” Cleomenes left the room, and that was the end of negotiations. One doubts it was common practice to include precocious children in high-level talks. Perhaps Gorgo may be seen as a young prefiguration of Ivanka Trump, described in the Washington Post (20 June 2017) as “a validator for her father”.
In 416 BC, at the height of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians attacked the neutral island of Melos. A meeting was hastily arranged between the two sides. Thucydides (bk 5 chs84106) gives a purported verbatim text of what is now commonly called ‘The Melian Dialogue’. The gist of the Athenian speeches is stark: Might is Right. If you had the upper hand, you’d do the same to us – Socrates disputes this ‘philosophy’ in Book One of Plato’s Republic. Negotiations collapsed, the Athenians conquered, they slaughtered all Melian males and enslaved the women and children.
Roman diplomacy was equally belligerent. Full story in Livy (bk45 ch12) and Polybius (bk29 ch27). In 168 BC, Popilius Læna led a delegation to prevent King Antiochus IV from attacking Egypt. When they met, the latter attempted a handshake. Instead, Læna thrust at him documents containing pre-emptive demands from the Senate. As Antiochus tried to temporise, Popilius used his rod of office to draw a circle around the king in the sand, proclaiming: “Before you step out of that circle, give me an answer to take to Rome.” The astounded King immediately capitulated – rather more effective than Obama’s Syrian ‘Red Line’.
It is generally thought there is an allusion to Popilius’s mission and fleet in this sentence from Daniel 11. 30 in the Old Testament: “For the ships of Kittim (or Chittim) shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.”
Similar obduracy was shown by the fiveman Roman delegation sent to Carthage in 218 BC to demand the latter hand over Hannibal. The Carthaginians attempted to argue, but were cut off by Quintus Fabius (one of the quintet) who gathered the folds of his toga and held them out, saying: “I offer you peace or war. You choose.” The Carthaginians shot back: “Give us whichever you choose.” Fabius (obviously pre-decided) gave them War, which the other side unanimously shouted to accept.
In 255 BC, Roman general Regulus was sent home by his Carthaginian captors to negotiate peace. Instead, he urged his countrymen to fight on, then returned to Carthage knowing he would be tortured to death. As compensation, his widow was given several Carthaginian prisoners whom she savagely and slowly executed.
This quintessential Roman episode furnished a patriotic Ode (bk3 no5) from Horace and inspired Kipling’s Regulus in his Stalky & Co. series (1899).
Normal rules of diplomacy did not apply in the case of Numidian Prince Jugurtha, who gave the Romans a lot of trouble in North Africa c.118-108 BC. After much political in-fighting between Roman commanders Marius and Sulla, the latter made a deal with Jugurtha’s father-in-law and military ally, King Bocchus of Mauritania. Prime source Sallust ( Jugurthine War, chs109-13) says that he, after arranging the meeting, long hesitated over whether to betray Jugurtha to Sulla or vice-versa. Finally, swayed by generous bribes from the Roman, he opted for the former. Jugurtha, who came to the meeting unarmed, as per agreement, was captured and taken to Rome, where, after losing an ear-lobe when his otic bling was ripped off, he was incarcerated in Rome’s notorious Tullianum gaol and starved to death.
Diplomacy of a rather different kind was employed by the young Julius Cæsar. In 80 BC he was ambassador to the court of King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia, where he was said to have conducted negotiations in the royal bed. Suetonius,
JC, ch49, quotes Cicero’s claim that Cæsar lost his virginity on a golden bed with purple coverlets, furnishing his soldiers’ satiric triumphal marching song: “All the Gauls did Cæsar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him. Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror” – the Latin suggests Cæsar was the passive partner. This incident inspired one of Cæsar’s political rivals to dub him “Every wife’s husband, every husband’s wife”.
Modern conferences are also junkets at the tax-payers’ expense. Singapore coughed up 15 million dollars for the KimTrump love-in. See also Alyson Krueger’s online account of the extravagances at Davos. But, nothing can compare with the meeting between Nero and Armenian King Tiridates.
According to Suetonius ( Nero, ch13) and Dio Cassius (bk62,ch5), Tiridates was rapturously received on arrival and escorted with full pomp to Nero who ceremoniously performed his official coronation. The emperor was particularly impressed by his insistence on wearing his sword (against Roman custom) for the occasion, albeit he did reluctantly agree to have the scabbard nailed shut so that he could not draw it. He received a huge popular reception, especially when demonstrating his archery skills in shooting one arrow through two bulls. A sumptuous banquet followed. Tiridates was understandably bored and irritated when Nero, clad in gladiatorial costume, ‘entertained’ the guests with his execrable voice. Tiridates turned to praising crack general Corbulo, “a man of mighty physique” (Tacitus, Annals, bk13 ch8 para3), fresh from big Eastern victories. This encomium did Corbulo no favours; he was presently ordered by Nero to commit suicide – which he did. To cap all this, he received a total of 200 million sesterces from the emperor.
Singing apart, Trump would have loved all this – coronation, cash and – a Roman first – an exhibition of Ethiopian female wrestlers. One can visualise him groping the grapplers.
“An ambassador is an honest gentleman who is sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” – Thomas Wooton (1568-1639, uttered in 1604 on a mission at Augsburg).