page_title: Roman command structure during First Mithridatic War
section_title: Language of the inscriptions
hierarchical_section_title: Roman command structure during First Mithridatic War / Format of the inscriptions / Language of the inscriptions
context_page_description: Roman command structure during First Mithridatic War refers to the chain of command of the forces sent east by the government of Rome to exercise the Mithridatic War mandate, requiring those forces to defeat Mithridates VI of Pontus, who had evoked the ire of the Senatus Populusque Romanus by slaughtering all the Romans his adherents could find on a single, pre-arranged day, an event now termed the Asiatic Vespers. Previously in Roman history the war and the command structure would have been straightforward: the Senate would declare war, and the mandate to carry it out would be assigned to one of the two consuls elected for the year, with both being assigned if necessary, and ex-consuls being available as generals with the rank of proconsul. For a small war the consul might give the task to an immediate subordinate, a praetor, or if the task was small enough, a legate.
  Beginning in the times of the Mithridatic Wars, the mandates and the chains of command were complicated by a second, parallel series of conflicts, the Roman civil wars. The tension between the Patricians and the Plebeians had produced a system of two parties: the Populares and the Optimates.
context_section_description: The language portrays a mixture of Hellenic and Latin cultural elements, with Hellenic predominating. All modern classifications of Ancient Greek dialects recognize a general division into East Greek and West Greek, formally presented as that by Carl Darling Buck. In general, the West Greek pronunciation retains the originals of sounds that have changed in East Greek; for example, an original "a" instead of an Attic-Ionic "e."
  West Greek speakers extended through Central Greece, the Peloponnesus, Crete, Rhodes, a small region of the coast of Anatolia, and on the west southern Italy, including Sicily. At the beginning of the Hellenistic period, the center of dominance of the West Greek speakers was Macedon. After a long and hard-fought conflict Rome extended its power over them. Once defeated they tended to be docile and loyal to Rome. This was the culture on which Sulla was able to rely in the first two Mithridatic Wars.
  East Greek was centered on the city of Athens, always the largest of Greece. It included the islands of the Aegean and the more northern coast of Anatolia. From a linguistic point of view, the language of Boeotia (originally Aeolic as opposed to Attic-Ionic and Doric) was East Greek also, but politically the Boeotians sided with the West Greeks against Athens, once its rival. Remembering the days of the Delian League Athens resented Roman rule, being quick to instigate a Greek revolt in favor of Mithridates.
  It is true that in Roman times Attic-Ionic had become Koine Greek, a common language of the Eastern Mediterranean, which was to supplant the earlier dialects and become modern Greek. In the 1st century BC, however, the dialects were still spoken locally. They appear in the inscriptions. Thus the inscription at Rhodes was West Greek, or "Doric." The honorific monuments were erected by West Greek speakers, eager to assert loyalty to Rome.
  The vocabulary is of mixed cultures. Sometimes the Greek word translates the Latin, such as tamias for quaestor. If no Greek equivalent exists, one is likely to be innovated, such as antitamias for proquaestor. The Greeks had no native promagistrates. A Latin word may be spelled with Greek letters, such as imperator, which also appears translated as stratagos.
caption: Ancient Greek dialects