and
Mytilene in Lesbos the consular Manius Aquillius.(12) The whole
fury of the barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled
into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of the war.
The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor, sometimes on foot chained
to a powerful mounted Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and
proclaiming his own name; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle
again arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the king's
orders molten gold was poured down his throat--in order to
satiate his avarice, which had really occasioned the war--
till he expired in torture.

Orders Issued from Ephesus for a General Massacre

But the king was not content with this savage mockery, which alone
suffices to erase its author's name from the roll of true nobility.
From Ephesus king Mithradates issued orders to all the governors
and cities dependent on him to put to death on one and the same day
all Italians residing within their bounds, whether free or slaves,
without distinction of sex or age, and on no account, under severe
penalties, to aid any of the proscribed to escape; to cast forth
the corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds; to confiscate their
property and to hand over one half of it to the murderers, and the
other half to the king. The horrible orders were--excepting in a
few districts, such as the island of Cos--punctually executed,
and eighty, or according to other accounts one hundred and fifty,
thousand--if not innocent, at least defenceless--men, women, and
children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor;
a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting
rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any
executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at least
as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge. In a
political point of view this measure was not only without any rational
object--for its financial purpose might have been attained without
this bloody edict, and the natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven
into warlike zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained
guilt--but even opposed to the king's designs, for on the one hand
it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was still capable of
energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of the war, and on the
other hand it struck at not the Romans merely, but the king's natural
allies as well, the non-Roman Italians. This Ephesian massac