as the season allowed, Sulla threw
himself with vehemence on the Piraeus; he in fact succeeded by
missiles and mines in making a breach in part of the strong walls of
Pericles, and immediately the Romans advanced to the assault; but it
was repulsed, and on its being renewed crescent-shaped entrenchments
were found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the
invaders found themselves assailed on three sides with missiles
and compelled to retire. Sulla then raised the siege, and contented
himself with a blockade. In the meanwhile the provisions in Athens
were wholly exhausted; the garrison attempted to procure a capitulation,
but Sulla sent back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood
before them not as a student but as a general, and would accept only
unconditional surrender. When Aristion, well knowing what fate was
in store for him, delayed compliance, the ladders were applied and
the city, hardly any longer defended, was taken by storm (1 March
668). Aristion threw himself into the Acropolis, where he soon
afterwards surrendered. The Roman general left the soldiery to
murder and plunder in the captured city and the more considerable
ringleaders of the revolt to be executed; but the city itself
obtained back from him its liberty and its possessions--
even the important Delos,--and was thus once more saved
by its illustrious dead.

Critical Position of Sulla
Want of a Fleet

The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished; but the position
of Sulla remained in the highest degree difficult, and even
desperate. He had now been more than a year in the field without
having advanced a step worth mentioning; a single port mocked all
his exertions, while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest
of Macedonia by Mithradates' lieutenants had recently been completed
by the capture of Amphipolis. Without a fleet--it was becoming daily
more apparent--it was not only impossible to secure his communications
and supplies in presence of the ships of the enemy and the numerous
pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say
nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see
how ships of war were to be got. As early as the winter of 667-8
Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous officers,
Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships
there if possible. Lucullus put to sea with six open boats, which he
had borrowed from the Rhodians a