sence of the ships of the enemy and the numerous
pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say
nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see
how ships of war were to be got. As early as the winter of 667-8
Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous officers,
Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships
there if possible. Lucullus put to sea with six open boats, which he
had borrowed from the Rhodians and other small communities; he himself
merely by an accident escaped from a piratic squadron, which captured
most of his boats; deceiving the enemy by changing his vessels he
arrived by way of Crete and Cyrene at Alexandria; but the Egyptian
court rejected his request for the support of ships of war with equal
courtesy and decision. Hardly anything illustrates so clearly as
does this fact the sad decay of the Roman state, which had once
been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of Egypt to
assist the Romans with all their naval force, and now itself seemed
to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt. To all this fell to be added
the financial embarrassment; Sulla had already been obliged to empty
the treasuries of the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of
the Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated by
the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban territory.
But far worse than all this military and financial perplexity was
the reaction of the political revolution in Rome; the rapid, sweeping,
violent accomplishment of which had far surpassed the worst
apprehensions. The revolution conducted the government in the
capital; Sulla had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been
entrusted to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who
might be daily looked for in Greece. The soldiers had no doubt
adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them in good humour;
but what could be expected, when money and supplies were wanting,
when the general was deposed and proscribed, when his successor
was on the way, and, in addition to all this, the war against
the tough antagonist who commanded the sea was protracted without
prospect of a close?

Pontic Armies Enter Greece
Evacuation of the Piraeus

King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist from his
perilous position. He it was, to all appearance, who disapproved
the defensive system of his generals and sent orders to them to
vanquish the enemy wit