Qualla: Siege of Mytilene (81 BC)

Siege of Mytilene (81 BC): Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC), Public domain. The future dictator of Rome was nineteen years old, and he had just saved another man's life. We don't know that soldier's name. We don't know how Caesar pulled him from the press of bodies along the walls of Mytilene, or what the two of them said afterward. But we know the reward: an oak wreath, plain and green, called the corona civica. In the Roman world, only the rarest Grass Crown ranked above it, and Gaius Julius Caesar earned the corona civica in his very first campaign, on the rocky east coast of Lesbos in 81 BC.

Image: --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Siege of Mytilene (81 BC): Why Rome Came

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC), Public domain. Mytilene had backed the wrong side. During the First Mithridatic War, the wealthy harbor city revolted against Rome and was suspected of sheltering the pirates who plagued the Aegean. When the war ended, the island refused to lay down its defiance, and Rome does not forget defian...

Image: --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Siege of Mytilene (81 BC): A Young Man's First War

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC), Public domain. Caesar had reasons to want to be far from Rome. He had survived the proscriptions of 82 BC, the bloody purges of the dictator Sulla, who pardoned the young aristocrat only reluctantly, supposedly warning that he saw "many a Marius" in him. Posted to Thermus's staff, Caesar was fi...

Image: --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Siege of Mytilene (81 BC): What the Crown Meant

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC), Public domain. The corona civica was made of common oak leaves, and that was the point. Gold and laurel went to commanders; the oak wreath went to the man who pulled a comrade from death. It carried lifelong privileges and an almost sacred prestige, the second-highest decoration in the entire R...

Image: --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC) | Public domain

Siege of Mytilene (81 BC): Standing on the Ground Today

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC), Public domain. Mytilene fell, and the city would spend the centuries that followed rebuilding its fortunes, eventually flourishing again under the very Rome it had defied. The exact line of the 81 BC walls is lost beneath the modern town, but the geography that shaped the fight survives: the tw...

Image: --Immanuel Giel 07:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC) | Public domain