ere occupied by his armies, and his fleet appeared in the AEgean Sea.
Delos, the emporium of Roman commerce, was taken, and twenty thousand
Italians massacred. Most of the small free States of Greece entered into
alliance with him--the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians. So commanding was
his position, that an embassy of Italian insurgents invited him to land in
Italy.

The position of the Roman government was critical. Asia Minor, Hellas, and
Macedonia were in the hands of Mithridates, while his fleet sailed without
a rival. The Italian insurrection was not subdued, and political parties
divided the capital.

(M977) At this crisis Sulla landed on the coast of Epirus, but with an
army of only thirty thousand men, and without a single vessel of war. He
landed with an empty military chest. But he was a second Alexander--the
greatest general that Rome had yet produced. He soon made himself master
of Greece, with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the Piraeus,
into which the generals of Mithridates had thrown themselves. He
intrenched himself at Eleusis and Megara, from which he commanded Greece
and the Peloponnesus, and commenced the siege of Athena. This was attended
with great difficulties, and the city only fell, after a protracted
defense, when provisions were exhausted. The conqueror, after allowing his
soldiers to pillage the city, gave back her liberties, in honor of her
illustrious dead.

(M978) But a year was wasted, and without ships it was impossible for
Sulla to secure his communications. He sent one of his best officers,
Lucullus, to Alexandria, to raise a fleet, but the Egyptian court evaded
the request. To add to his embarrassments, the Roman general was without
money, although he had rifled the treasures which still remained in the
Grecian temples. Moreover, what was still more serious, a revolution at
Rome overturned his work, and he had been deposed, and his Asiatic command
given to M. Valerius Flaccus.

Sulla was unexpectedly relieved by the resolution of Mithridates to carry
on the offensive in Greece. Taxiles, one of the lieutenants of the Pontic
king, was sent to combat Sulla with an army of one hundred thousand
infantry and ten thousand cavalry.

(M979) Then was fought the battle of Chaeronea, B.C. 86, against the advice
of Archelaus, in which the Romans were the victors. But Sulla could not
reap the fruits of victory without a fleet, since the sea was covered with
Pontic ships. In th