Азиатская вечерня 88 г. до н.э.

Massacre which occurred before the First Mithridatic War

The Asiatic Vespers (also known as the Asian Vespers, Ephesian Vespers, or the Vespers of 88 BC) refers to the massacres of Roman and other Latin speaking peoples living in parts of western Anatolia c. early 88 BC by forces loyal to Mithridates VI Eupator, ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus, who orchestrated the massacre in an attempt to rid Asia Minor of Roman influence. An estimated 80,000 people were killed during the episode. The incident served as the casus belli or immediate cause of the First Mithridatic War between the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Pontus.

The massacres were a calculated response to the Roman declaration of war. They were meant to force cities to take a side: "no city that did his bidding now could ever hope to be received back into Roman allegiance". The killings took place probably in the first half of the year 88 BC. Valerius Maximus and Memnon indicate a death toll of approximately 80,000; Plutarch claims – "less credibly" – a death toll of 150,000. The reported numbers, according to fragments of Dio, are however probably exaggerated. They were planned, with Mithridates writing secretly to regional satraps and leaders to kill all Italian residents (along with wives, children, and freedmen of Italian birth) thirty days after the day of writing. Mithridates furthermore offered freedom to slaves which informed on their Italian masters and debt relief to those who slew their creditors. Assassins and informers would share with the Pontic treasury half the properties of those who were killed. Ephesus, Pergamon, Adramyttion, Caunus, Tralles, Nysa, and the island of Chios were all scenes of atrocities. Many of these cities were under the control of tyrants, and many of the inhabitants enthusiastically fell upon their Italian neighbours, who were blamed "for the prevailing climate of aggressive greed[,] acquisitiveness[,] and malicious litigation".

The declaration of war was immediate, but implementation of the mandate was delayed by an unrelated civil war already ongoing within the Roman Republic. Sulla received it first from the Senate. After he had taken command of the legions at Nola, a Roman Assembly passed a law stripping him of his authority in favor of Gaius Marius. At the instigation of his men, he marched on Rome to assert the authority of the Senate. Assured of its and his authority, he crossed the Adriatic with minimal troops and no heavy warships, after one year of doing nothing on the eastern front. Meanwhile, Mithridates had created a large fleet that scoured the Aegean of Romans. Pontic forces occupied many vacated parts of the Hellenic world. Mithridates subverted the city of Athens, making use of his partisans there, including the peripatetic philosophers. He could not, however, despite maximum effort, take the port of Rhodes, as the Rhodians were master mariners, on whose ships the Romans had redesigned their own. When Sulla's men finally arrived to conduct a siege of Athens, all mainland Greece had rallied to the Roman cause. A series of conflicts known as the Mithridatic Wars followed.

The precise date of the massacre is disputed by modern historians, who have written about the question at length. A. N. Sherwin White places the event in late 89 or early 88 BC. Ernst Badian, saying "precision seems impossible", places it in the first half of 88 BC, no later than the middle of that year. The name "Vêpres éphésiennes" was coined in 1890 by historian Théodore Reinach to describe the massacre, making a retrospective analogy with the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Subsequent historians have adopted some variation of the phrase, using Vespers as a euphemism for "massacre".