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Updated: June 21, 2025
Sertorius summoned a full council which he called a senate, where, when others joyfully approved of the conditions, and were desirous immediately to accept of his offer, seeing that he desired nothing of them but a name, and an empty title to places not in their power to dispose of, in recompense of which they should be supplied with what they then stood most in need of, Sertorius would by no means agree to it; declaring that he was willing that king Mithridates should exercise all royal power and authority over Bithynia and Cappadocia, countries accustomed to a monarchical government, and not belonging to Rome, but he could never consent that he should seize or detain a province, which, by the justest right and title, was possessed by the Romans, which Mithridates had formerly taken away from them, and had afterwards lost in open war to Fimbria, and quitted upon a treaty of peace with Sylla.
While Sulla crossed to Asia and induced such defection in the army of Fimbria that its leader fell by his own hand, the government in Italy employed the further interval of a year granted to it by these steps of Sulla in energetic preparations; it is said that at Sulla's landing 100,000 men, and afterwards even double that number of troops, were arrayed in arms against him.
Sulla perceived that his soldiers were dissatisfied at the settlement of the war: they thought it a shame that the greatest enemy of the Romans, who had contrived the massacre of one hundred and fifty thousand Romans in Asia in one day, should be seen sailing off with the wealth and the spoils of Asia, which he had been plundering and levying contributions on for four years; Sulla apologised to the soldiers by saying that he should not be able to oppose both Fimbria and Mithridates, if they were united against him.
They were the men who joined Fimbria in putting to death Flaccus, who was a consul and their general, and who gave up Fimbria himself to Sulla self-willed and lawless men, but brave and full of endurance, and experienced soldiers.
Sulla required the restoration of all the conquests he had made: Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, the Hellenic cities, the islands of the sea, and a contribution of three thousand talents. These conditions were not accepted, and Sulla proceeded to Asia, upon which Mithridates reluctantly acceded to his terms. Fimbria fled to Pergamus, and fell on his own sword.
Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger, who after Marius' death was invested with the consulship and the command in the east , was neither soldier nor officer; Gaius Fimbria who accompanied him was not without ability, but insubordinate; the army assigned to them was even in numbers three times weaker than the army of Sulla.
Such were the former aedile Publius Antistius, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius, and the former praetor Gaius Carbo, son of the well-known friend and subsequent opponent of the Gracchi, since the death of so many men of more distinguished talent the two best orators in the judicial courts of the desolated Forum; the consular Lucius Domitius, and above all the venerable -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola, who had escaped the dagger of Fimbria only to bleed to death during these last throes of the revolution in the vestibule of the temple of Vesta entrusted to his guardianship.
Albucilla in Tiberius time having, to kill himself, struck with too much tenderness, gave his adversaries opportunity to imprison and put him to death their own way. And that great leader, Demosthenes, after his rout in Sicily, did the same; and C. Fimbria, having struck himself too weakly, entreated his servant to despatch him.
The pirates called themselves Cilicians; in fact their vessels were the rendezvous of desperadoes and adventurers from all countries discharged mercenaries from the recruiting-grounds of Crete, burgesses from the destroyed townships of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished parties, every one that was wretched and daring and where was there not misery and outrage in this unhappy age?
Not long after he introduced Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes, the two kings, and made them friends Mithridates, when he had handed over to Sylla seventy ships and five hundred archers, set sail for Pontus. Thence he set out and went in search of Fimbria, who lay with the army about Thyatira, and pitching his camp not far off, proceeded to fortify it with a trench.
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