their tyrant. It happened about
this time that Mithridates had left Pergamum, and was shut up in
Pitane.[327] While Fimbria[328] was keeping the king blockaded there
on the land side and pressing the siege, Mithridates, looking to the
sea, got together and summoned to him ships from every quarter, having
given up all design of engaging and fighting with Fimbria, who was a
bold man and had defeated him. Fimbria observing this, and being
deficient in naval force, sent to Lucullus, and prayed him to come
with his fleet and help him to take the most detested and the most
hostile of kings, in order that Mithridates, the great prize, which
had been followed through many contests and labours, might not escape
the Romans, now that he had given them a chance of seizing him, and
was caught within the nets. He said, if Mithridates was taken, no one
would have more of the glory than he who stopped his flight and laid
hold of him when he was trying to steal away; that if Mithridates were
shut out from the land by him, and excluded from the sea by Lucullus,
there would be a victory for both of them, and that as to the vaunted
exploits of Sulla at Orchomenus and Chaeronea,[329] the Romans would
think nothing of them in comparison with this. There was nothing
unreasonable in all that Fimbria said; and it was plain to every man
that if Lucullus, who was at no great distance, had then accepted the
proposal of Fimbria, and led his ships there and blockaded the port
with his fleet, the war would have been at an end, and all would have
been delivered from innumerable calamities. But whether it was that
Lucullus regarded his duty to Sulla above all private and public
interests, or that he detested Fimbria, who was an abandoned man, and
had lately murdered his own friend and general,[330] merely from
ambition to command, or whether it was through chance, as the Deity
would have it, that he spared Mithridates, and reserved him for his
own antagonist--he would not listen to Fimbria, but allowed
Mithridates to escape by sea, and to mock the force of Fimbria.
Lucullus himself, in the first place, defeated off Lektum in the
Troad,[331] the king's ships, which showed themselves there, and again
observing that Neoptolemus was stationed at Tenedos with a larger
force, he sailed against him ahead of all the rest, in a Rhodian
galley of five banks which was commanded by Demagoras, a man well
affected to the Romans, and exceedingly skilful in naval batt