How a Roman general defeated a massive army by starving it into submission
In 73 BC, Mithridates VI of Pontus marched a massive force against the Roman-allied city of Cyzicus. Rather than engaging in a direct, bloody confrontation, the Roman commander Lucullus realized that the sheer size of the invading army was its greatest weakness. He chose to starve them out instead.
The conflict began after the death of King Nicomedes IV of Bithynia in 74 BC. When Rome claimed his kingdom, Mithridates invaded, forcing the Roman governor Marcus Aurelius Cotta to retreat to Chalcedon. After Cotta suffered a significant defeat, losing 3,000 men and much of his fleet, Mithridates advanced to the strategic city of Cyzicus. The city sat on a peninsula, and Mithridates employed his chief engineer, Niconides of Thessaly, to construct massive siege engines, including a 150-foot tower, to break its defenses.
Lucullus arrived to find the city under heavy pressure. Recognizing that the Mithridatic army was numerically superior, he refused to engage in a pitched battle. Instead, he interrogated prisoners and discovered the enemy had only four days of food remaining. Lucullus famously told his officers that the best way to defeat such a force was to 'stamp on its stomach.' He established a counter-siege, cutting off the enemy's supply lines while maintaining his own. To maintain morale, a Roman messenger famously swam seven miles using a flotation device to reassure the besieged citizens that help had arrived.
As winter set in, the situation for Mithridates turned catastrophic. Starvation and plague, fueled by unburied corpses, decimated his ranks. Eventually, the king broke through the Roman lines to retreat toward Lampsacus, but his army was intercepted and destroyed at the Granicus river. Of the 300,000 soldiers who had initially marched into Bithynia, only 20,000 effective troops remained. The siege was an unmitigated disaster for Pontus, marking a decisive turning point in the war through the application of logistical warfare rather than brute force.
Source: Siege of Cyzicus
