which substantially amounted to a
restoration of the state of matters before the war, met with no
acceptance, he advanced just as he had landed, from the harbours of
Epirus to Boeotia, defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and
Aristion there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory
possessed himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian
mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the
Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves,
and which he failed to carry by a coup de main. A Roman division
under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into
Macedonia; another under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis,
to keep off the enemy's corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla
himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which he
commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prosecuted the siege of
the city and harbour of Athens. The Hellenic cities, governed as
they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally
to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom
themselves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions
and men and paying fines.

Protracted Siege of Athens and the Piraeus
Athens Falls

The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly. Sulla found himself
compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for
which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the
timber. Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and
judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced
repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made
frequent and not seldom successful sorties. The Pontic army of
Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under
the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which
Sulla's brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished
himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly.
From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile definitively
established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by
sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour-
fortress; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but
from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to
make various attempts to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which
were not wholly unsuccessful. So the winter of 667-8 passed away
tediously without result. As soon