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Updated: June 3, 2025
The scale was at last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender excluded his own would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to intervention.
Sulla had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not descended of royal blood the slave, as he called him to his presence.
Another division of cavalry under Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius was obliged, after wandering long in the west of Asia Minor, to return to the camp before Cyzicus. Famine and disease made fearful ravages in the Pontic ranks.
He thought he was upon the Pontic Sea, sailing with a favorable wind, and in sight of the Bosphorus; so that he felicitated his friends in the ship, like a man perfectly safe, and already in harbor. But suddenly he beheld himself in the most destitute condition, swimming upon a piece of wreck.
At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone, proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates, crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.
Another of Lucullus' lieutenants who accidentally came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round him a body of troops and fought a successful engagement with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh from Pontic soil, and had to acquiesce while the king took up winter-quarters in Comana. Farther Retreat to Pontus So the spring of 687 came on.
This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed. This intended invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous, and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.
The Boeotian communities had severely to pay for their renewed revolt from Rome, some of them even to annihilation. Nothing opposed the advance into Macedonia and Thrace; Philippi was occupied, Abdera was voluntarily evacuated by the Pontic garrison, the European continent in general was cleared of the enemy.
At the same time Cyrene, which had been already bequeathed to the Romans in 658, was at length constituted a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither . These measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor, must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale.
Sulla, after the Piraeeus with all its greatly-admired fortifications had been by his orders destroyed, followed the Pontic army, in the hope of being able to fight a pitched battle before the arrival of Flaccus. In vain Archelaus advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in suspense.
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