oyance, for which he afterwards paid the penalty. Now, however, he
was out-generailed by Lucullus, who, by making a sudden attack, just
at that time of the day when he was used to lead his soldiers off and
to give them rest, got possession of a small part of the wall, upon
which Kallimachus quitted the city, having first set fire to it,
either because he was unwilling that the Romans should get any
advantage from their conquest, or with the view of facilitating his
own escape. For no one paid any attention to those who were sailing
out; but when the flames had sprung up with violence, and got hold of
the walls, the soldiers were making ready to plunder. Lucullus,
lamenting the danger in which the city was of being destroyed,
attempted from the outside to help the citizens against the fire, and
ordered it to be put out; yet nobody attended to him, and the soldiers
called out for booty, and shouted and struck their armour, till at
last Lucullus was compelled to let them have their way, expecting that
he should thus save the city at least from the fire. But the soldiers
did just the contrary; for, as they rummaged every place by the aid of
torches, and carried about lights in all directions, they destroyed
most of the houses themselves, so that Lucullus, who entered the city
at daybreak, said to his friends with tears in his eyes, that he had
often considered Sulla a fortunate man, but on this day of all others
he admired the man's good fortune, in that when he chose to save
Athens he had also the power; "but upon me," he said, "who have been
emulous to imitate his example, the daemon has instead brought the
reputation of Mummius."[377] However, as far as present circumstances
allowed, he endeavoured to restore the city. The fire indeed was
quenched by the rains that chanced to fall, as the deity would have
it, at the time of the capture, and the greatest part of what had been
destroyed Lucullus rebuilt while he stayed at Amisus; and he received
into the city such of the Amisenes as had fled, and settled there any
other Greeks who were willing to settle, and added to the limits of
the territory a tract of one hundred and twenty stadia. Amisus was a
colony[378] of the Athenians, planted, as one might suppose, at that
period in which their power was at its height and had the command of
the sea. And this was the reason why many who wished to escape from
the tyranny of Aristion[379] sailed to the Euxine and settled at
Amisus, w