re
was altogether a mere meaningless act of brutally blind revenge,
which obtains a false semblance of grandeur simply through the
colossal proportions in which the character of sultanic rule
was here displayed.

Organization of the Conquered Provinces

The king's views altogether grew high; he had begun the war from
despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and the non-arrival of
the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transition to the most highflown hopes.
He set up his home in the west of Asia Minor; Pergamus the seat
of the Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom
of Sinope was handed over to the king's son Mithradates to be
administered as a viceroyship; Cappadocia, Phrygia, Bithynia were
organized as Pontic satrapies. The grandees of the empire and the
king's favourites were loaded with rich gifts and fiefs, and not
only were the arrears of taxes remitted, but exemption from
taxation for five years was promised, to all the communities-
a measure which was as much a mistake as the massacre of the
Romans, if the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of
the inhabitants of Asia Minor.

The king's treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished otherwise
by the immense sums which accrued from the property of the Italians
and other confiscations; for instance in Cos alone 800 talents
(195,000 pounds) which the Jews had deposited there were carried
of by Mithradates. The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of
the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty
Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered
to Rome; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets. The south-
west alone, the city-leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes,
resisted him. In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force
of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood a severe
siege, in which Mithradates' ablest officer Archelaus was defeated and
wounded. Rhodes, the asylum of the Romans who had escaped from Asia
with the governor Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part
of Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of force.
But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty under the eyes
of the king, were awkward novices, and so Rhodian squadrons
vanquished those of Pontus four times as strong and returned home
with captured vessels. By land also the siege made no progress;
after a part of the works had been destroyed, Mithr