he king there was no want of brave men who despised death; and the
armour glittering with gold and silver and the rich dresses of the
Scythians and Medes mingled gaily with the bronze and steel of the
Greek troopers. No unity of military organization, it is true,
bound together these party-coloured masses; the army of Mithradates
was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic war-machines, which had so often
already--on the last occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia--
succumbed to a superior military organization; but still the east was
in arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the empire
also matters looked far from peaceful.

Weak Counterpreparatons of the Romans

However much it was in itself a political necessity for Rome to
declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular moment was as
unhappily chosen as possible; and for this reason it is very probable
that Manius Aquillius brought about the rupture between Rome and
Mithradates at this precise time primarily from regard to his own
interests. For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal
in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius Cassius and the
militia of western Asia, and, owing to the military and financial
distress in which they were placed at home in consequence of the
insurrectionary war, a Roman army could not in the most favourable
case land in Asia before the summer of 666. Hitherto the Roman
magistrates there had a difficult position; but they hoped to
protect the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as
they stood--the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in its position
taken up in the previous year in the Paphlagonian territory between
Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius
Aquillius, and Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian,
and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued
to blockade the Bosporus.

Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There

In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the
offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern
Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed
troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very
superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army
dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the
victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king
was indebte