e Roman parties,
but in concert with the one against the other. A more favourable
moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all it was always
better to declare war than to let it be declared against him.
In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as
the last of his race--for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said
to be, illegitimate--left his kingdom by testament to the Romans,
who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering
on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials
and merchants. At the same time Cyrene, which had been already
bequeathed to the Romans in 658,(10) was at length constituted
a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither (679). These
measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about
the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor,
must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia
in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic
kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale. The king
took the decisive step and declared war against the Romans
in the winter of 679-680.

Preparations of Mithradates

Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so arduous a work
singlehanded. His nearest and natural ally was the great-king
Tigranes; but that shortsighted man declined the proposal of his
father-in-law. So there remained only the insurgents and the pirates.
Mithradates was careful to place himself in communication
with both, by despatching strong squadrons to Spain and to Crete.
A formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius,(11) by which Rome
ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia--
all of them, it is true, acquisitions which needed to be ratified
on the field of battle. More important was the support
which the Spanish general gave to the king, by sending Roman officers
to lead his armies and fleets. The most active of the emigrants
inthe east, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius
as his representatives at the court of Sinope. From the pirates
also came help; they flocked largely to the kingdom of Pontus,
and by their means especially the king seems to have succeeded
in forming a naval force imposing by the number as well as
by the quality of the ships. His main support still lay in his
own forces, with which the king hoped, before the Romans should arrive
in Asia, to make himself master of their possessions there;
e