progress of
Murena; but finding that general disregard his remonstrances, he sent to
Rome to complain of his aggression. When, in the following spring (B.C.
82), he saw Murena preparing to renew his hostile incursions, he at once
determined to oppose him by force, and assembled a large army, with
which he met the Roman general on the banks of the Halys. The action
that ensued terminated in the complete victory of the king, and Murena,
with difficultly, effected his retreat into Phrygia, leaving Cappadocia
at the mercy of Mithridates, who quickly overran the whole province.
Shortly afterward A. Gabinius arrived in Asia, bringing peremptory
orders from Sulla to Murena to desist from hostilities, whereupon
Mithridates once more consented to evacuate Cappadocia. Thus ended what
is commonly called the Second Mithridatic War.

Notwithstanding the interposition of Sulla, Mithridates was well aware
that the peace between him and Rome was in fact only suspension of
hostilities, and that the haughty Republic would never suffer the
massacre of her citizens in Asia to remain ultimately unpunished. Hence
all his efforts were directed toward the formation of an army capable of
contending, not only in numbers, but in discipline, with those of Rome;
and with this view he armed his barbarian troops after the Roman
fashion, and endeavored to train them up in that discipline of which he
had so strongly felt the effect in the preceding contest. In these
attempts he was doubtless assisted by the refugees of the Marian party,
who had accompanied Fimbria into Asia, and on the defeat of that general
by Sulla had taken refuge with the King of Pontus. At their instigation,
also, Mithridates sent an embassy to Sertorius, who was still
maintaining his ground in Spain, and concluded an alliance with him
against their common enemies. But it was the death of Nicomedes III.,
king of Bithynia, at the beginning of B.C. 74, that brought matters to a
crisis, and became the immediate occasion of the war which both parties
had long felt to be inevitable. That monarch left his dominions by will
to the Roman people, and Bithynia was accordingly declared a Roman
province; but Mithridates asserted that the late king had left a
legitimate son by his wife Nysa, whose pretensions he immediately
prepared to support by his arms.

The forces with which Mithridates was now prepared to take the field
were such as might inspire him with no unreasonable confidence of