issued a hideous order for an exterminating
massacre of every Roman and Italian in Asia on an appointed day.
Punishments were proclaimed for anyone who should hide one of the
proscribed or bury his body; rewards were promised for all who killed
or denounced them. Slaves who slew their masters were to be freed. The
murder of a creditor was to be taken as payment by a debtor of half
his debt. [Massacre of Romans and Italians.] There were dreadful
scenes on the fatal day--the thirtieth after the order was issued--in
the Asiatic cities. In Pergamus the victims fled to the temple of
Aesculapius, and were shot down as they clung to the statues. At
Ephesus they were dragged out from the temple of Artemis and slain. At
Adramyttium they swam out to sea, but were brought back and killed,
and their children were drowned. At Cos alone was any mercy shown.
There those who had taken refuge in the temple of Aesculapius were
spared. The number of the slain was said to be 80,000 or even 120,000,
which must have been, however, an incredible exaggeration. [Sidenote:
Objects of the massacre.] By this fiendish crime Mithridates must,
though he was mistaken, have felt that he cut himself off for
ever from all reconciliation with Rome. But no doubt he acted on
calculation. For not only did he get rid of men who might have
recruited the Roman armies; not only did he gratify the long-hoarded
hatred of the farmers and peasants of whom Roman publicans and Roman
slave-masters had so long made a prey; not only did he oblige the
debtors by wiping out their debts and even the very memory of them
in their creditors' blood, but he might well count on putting his
accomplices also beyond the pale of Roman mercy, and so linking them
to his own fortunes. Moreover, vengeance seemed remote. For Sulla had
just marched on Rome instead of to the east, and a civil war in
Italy might make Mithridates permanently supreme in Asia. [Sidenote:
Mithridates' settlement of his new acquisitions.] So he made Pergamus
his capital, leaving Sinope to his son as vice-regent, while
Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Bithynia were turned into satrapies. All
arrears of taxes were remitted; and so wealthy had his spoils made him
that exemption for five years to come was promised to the towns that
had obeyed his orders.

[Sidenote: Reverses of Mithridates. He retires to Pergamus.] But
the tide was already on the turn. In Paphlagonia there was still
resistance. Archelaus was repulsed and w