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In the meantime, Mithridates was blocked up in Pitane, a city near Troy, from which he could not have escaped, if Lucullus had brought his fleet against it; this, however, out of jealousy to the Roman general Fimbria, he refused to do, contenting himself with naval operations. In these he was successful, gaining two victories over Mithridates's fleet, near the coast of Troy.
As commonly happens in the grand changes which constitute the turning-points of history, the way for Mithridates's vast successes was prepared by a long train of antecedent circumstances.
There was in Mithridates's camp, one Olthacus a chief of the Dandarians, a barbarous people living near the lake Maeotis, a man remarkable for strength and courage in fight, wise in council, and pleasant and ingratiating in conversation.
Some people were pleased with this, and went continually to see him competing and displaying himself in these exercises; but the better sort that saw him, pitied the cupidity and ambition that made one who had risen from utter poverty to extreme wealth, and out of nothing into greatness, unwilling to admit any limit to his high fortune, or to be content with being admired, and quietly enjoying what he had already got: why, as if he still were indigent, should he at so great an age leave his glory and his triumphs to go into Cappadocia and the Euxine Sea, to fight Archelaus and Neoptolemus, Mithridates's generals?
The Syrian and Bactrian kings, at the time of Mithridates's accession, were, both of them, men of talent and energy; but the Syrian monarch was soon involved in difficulties at home, while the Bactrian had his attention attracted to prospects of advantage in a remote quarter, Mithridates might, perhaps, have attacked the territory of either with an equal chance of victory; and as his predecessor had set him the example of successful warfare on his western frontier, we might have expected his first efforts to have been in this direction, against the dependencies of Syria.
But though the effort does not seem to have been ill-timed, it was unsuccessful. No aid was given to the rebels, so far as we hear, by any of their neighbors. Mithridates's prompt return nipped the insurrection in the bud; Hyrcania at once submitted, and became for centuries the obedient vassal of her powerful neighbor.
In the mean time Taxiles, Mithridates's general, coming down from Thrace and Macedon, with an army of one hundred thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and ninety chariots, armed with scythes at the wheels, would have joined Archelaus, who lay with a navy on the coast near Munychia, reluctant to quit the sea, and yet unwilling to engage the Romans in battle, but desiring to protract the war and cut off the enemy's supplies.
At the moment of Mithridates's successes, the Persians might experience a sentiment of satisfaction that the European invader was at last thrust back, and that Asia had re-asserted herself; but a very little experience of Parthian rule was sufficient to call forth different feelings.
For Dorylaus, arriving at Chalcis with a large fleet, on board of which he brought over with him eighty thousand of the best appointed and best disciplined soldiers of Mithridates's army, at once invaded Boeotia, and occupied the country in hopes to bring Sylla to a battle, making no account of the dissuasions of Archelaus, but giving it out as to the last fight, that without treachery so many thousand men could never have perished.
The tyrant Aristion had his very being compounded of wantonness and cruelty, having gathered into himself all the worst of Mithridates's diseased and vicious qualities, like some fatal malady which the city, after its deliverance from innumerable wars, many tyrannies and seditions, was in its last days destined to endure.
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