s corps and the governorship of Roman
Asia he committed to his best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena.
The revolutionary measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation
of the slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled;
a restoration, which in many places could not be carried into effect
without force of arms. The towns of the territory on the eastern
frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned
from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted. Justice
moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term.
The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the
massacre of the Italians were punished with death. The persons
liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according
to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five
years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000
talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius
Lucullus was left behind. These were measures fearful in their rigour
and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree
and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively
mild retaliation. That the exactions in other respects were not
unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards
carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about
1,000,000 pounds. The few communities on the other hand that had
remained faithful--particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of
Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander--were richly rewarded: Rhodes received
back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after
the war against Perseus.(19) In like manner compensation was made
as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians
for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the
insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account
of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla. Sulla
had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet
the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live
in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the
haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not
descended of royal blood--the slave, as he called him--to his
presence. Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend
the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms
evacuated by Mithradates.