d for this brilliant success. The far more wretched
Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves
up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed. A Roman
division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field
in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without
venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy
troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into
Apamea. Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself
up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating
at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated
that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman
province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell
into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships
that were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all
the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had
neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies
that were from the first turned towards him. Now the whole country
as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in
his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution
had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act
against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on
Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles
with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the
Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the
work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now
minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives
of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united
in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to
compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the
Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under
the name of the new Dionysus. The cities and islands sent messengers
to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite "the delivering god"
to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in
front of their gates to receive him. Several places delivered the
Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea
thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town,