es of Mithridates.] He, too, was in a difficult position.
The inhabitants of Asia Minor soon found that in yielding to him they
had exchanged whips for scorpions. He suspected that the defeat of
Archelaus at Chaeroneia would excite rebellion, and he seized as many
of the Galatian chiefs as he could, and slew them with their wives and
children. The consequence was that the surviving chiefs expelled the
man whom he had sent as satrap. He suspected the Chians also, and
made them give up their arms and the children of their chief men
as hostages. Then he made a requisition on them for 2,000 talents
(488,000_l_.), and because they could not raise the money, or because
the tyrant pretended that there was a deficiency, the citizens were
shipped off to the east of the Black Sea, and the island was occupied
by colonists. The man who had managed the affair of Chios was sent to
play the same game at Ephesus. But the people were on their guard,
slew him, and raised the standard of rebellion. Tralles, Hypaepa,
Metropolis, Sardis, Smyrna, and other towns followed their example.
Mithridates tried to buoy up his sinking cause, attracting debtors by
the remission of debts, resident aliens by the gift of the citizenship
of the towns which they inhabited, and slaves by the promise of
freedom--devices of a desperate man. A plot was laid against his life
which was betrayed, and in his fury he launched out into yet more
savage excesses. He sent a set of men to collect depositions, and they
slew indiscriminately those who were denounced, 1600, it is said, in
all.

[Sidenote: Fimbria mutinies against and murders Flaccus.] These events
must have occurred in the winter of 86-85 B.C., when Flaccus was on
his march from the Adriatic coast through Macedonia and Thrace
for Asia. Flaccus had quarrelled with his lieutenant Fimbria, and
superseded him. The latter, when Flaccus had crossed from Byzantium
to Chalcedon, induced the troops, who hated their general, to mutiny.
Flaccus returned in haste; but, learning what had happened, fled back
to Chalcedon and thence to Nicomedia. Here Fimbria, finding him hidden
in a well, murdered him, and threw his head into the sea. [Sidenote:
He defeats the son of Mithridates and pursues the king.] Then,
attacking the king's son, he defeated him at the river Rhyndacus, and
pursued the king himself to Pergamus and Pitane, where he would have
taken him but that he crossed over to Mitylene, while Fimbria had no
ships a