The World

When Wudi died in 87, buried, no doubt in a jade suit, in the Maoling tomb, his concubines may have been sacrificed, though this might be an echo of the First Emperor. Among the beautiful artefacts buried with him was the Golden Horse, a two-foot-high statue of the one of Wudi’s ‘heavenly horses’. Even more than the First Emperor, Wudi was the creator of Chinese empire: he had doubled its size, yet his killings, witch-hunts and extravagance had unleashed court feuds and ‘100 peasant revolts’.

In 73, the slaves of Rome rebelled – and the city’s potentates, Pompey and Crassus, competed to crush them.

BALD FORNICATOR AND EGYPTIAN QUEEN: CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA

It started in the gladiator school at Capua where seventy gladiators – all of whom were slaves – escaped and elected a Thracian, Spartacus, as leader. Establishing his headquarters near Mount Etna, he repeatedly defeated Roman units, assisted by his partner, a Dionysian priestess. Rome was run on slave labour, boosted by captives from its wars, and Romans were terrified of revolt: 40 per cent of its Italian population were enslaved, and this was the third slave revolt in forty years. Spartacus’ rebels, recruited from the rural slaves who laboured in mines and plantations, could not decide whether to escape across the Alps or go looting in Italy, but they had no programme to liberate all slaves. Within a year, 40,000 ex-slaves and their families had joined Spartacus, who had seized a swathe of southern Italy before marching north. Since Pompey was conquering Hispania, and other legions were confronting the Poison King in Asia, Rome was vulnerable. The property speculator Crassus raised forces and defeated the slaves, crucifying 6,000; Pompey mopped up. Both claimed credit.

In 67 BC, Pompey was sent east to crush the resurgent Mithridates of Pontus. First, he defeated the Poison King, whom he pursued into the Caucasus where Mithridates committed suicide, then he annexed much of Asia Minor and Syria. He deposed the Seleucids, and brought under Roman sway the kingdoms of Arab Nabataea and Jewish Judaea. When a Judaean prince of the Maccabean family defied him, he stormed Jerusalem, violating the Temple by entering the Holy of Holies, and left a rump Judaea under Jewish rule. The Egyptian king Piper (Ptolemy XII Auletes) courted Pompey, winning his support with eyewatering bribes. It is possible that Pompey met Piper’s six-year-old daughter, Cleopatra, who would later be adept at negotiating with Roman potentates. Suddenly Rome was a tricontinental empire: only in Parthia had Pompey met his match. Pompey invaded Georgia and Armenia, but Farhad II of Parthia seized back Armenia. Pompey and Farhad negotiated as equals.

Back in Rome, democracy was being destroyed by fights for the prizes of its growing empire. A conspiracy to overthrow it in a bloody massacre was only defeated thanks to the eloquence of consul, brilliant orator and sublime writer Marcus Tullius Cicero. Arriving home in Rome, flaunting Alexander the Great’s cloak (captured from Mithradates), Pompey, richer and more powerful than any Roman had ever been, was awarded an unprecedented third triumph for victories on a third continent and granted the agnomen Magnus – Great. The tri-triumphator launched a spectacular building programme. There was something of the modern politician about this man, described as ‘honest of face, shameless of heart’, but even self-righteous Cicero was dazzled by his ‘incredible godlike virtus’. Pompey dominated the fragile Roman democracy but did not seize total power. Instead the senators, wary of this bumptious meteor, procrastinated in confirming his Asian arrangements. Crassus tried to undermine him by backing Caesar, who lagged behind the other two.