In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the
offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern
Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed
troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very
superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army
dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the
victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king
was indebted for this brilliant success. The far more wretched
Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves
up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed. A Roman
division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field
in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without
venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy
troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into
Apamea. Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself
up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating
at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated
that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman
province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell
into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships
that were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all
the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had
neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies
that were from the first turned towards him. Now the whole country
as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in
his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution
had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act
against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on
Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles
with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the
Asiatic war should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the
work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now
minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives
of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king. Hellenes and Asiatics united
in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to
compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror