t such a king
would be pursued by the daggers of assassins; sixteen hundred men
were condemned to death by the royal courts of inquisition as having
been implicated in such conspiracies.

Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast

While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking his
temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same
time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land.
Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian
fleet against Mithradates, had with better success repeated his
efforts to procure vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and
reinforced his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and
Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to the attack.
He dexterously avoided measuring himself against superior forces and
yet obtained no inconsiderable advantages. The Cnidian island and
peninsula were occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and
Chios were wrested from the enemy.

Flaccus Arrives in Asia
Fimbria
Fimbria's Victory at Miletopolis
Perilous Position of Mithradates

Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Macedonia and
Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing the straits, had reached
Chalcedon (end of 668). There a military insurrection broke out
against the general, ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil
from the soldiers. The soul of it was one of the chief officers
of the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in Rome for a
true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who, after having differed
with his commander-in-chief, transferred the demagogic practices
which he had begun in the Forum to the camp. Flaccus was deposed
by the army and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far
from Chalcedon; Fimbria was installed by decree of the soldiers
in his stead. As a matter of course he allowed his troops every
indulgence; in the friendly Cyzicus, for instance, the citizens
were ordered to surrender all their property to the soldiers on pain
of death, and by way of warning example two of the most respectable
citizens were at once executed. Nevertheless in a military point
of view the change of commander-in-chief was a gain; Fimbria was not,
like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic and talented.
At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the west of Brussa) he defeated
the younger Mithradates, who as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had
marched against him, completel