ration for fighting, which had for long governed
the policy of Rome--a distrust, which the want of standing armies
and the far from exemplary character of the collegiate rule
render sufficiently intelligible--made it, as it were, an axiom
of her policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,
but to the annihilation of her opponent; in this point of view
the Romans were from the outset as little content with the peace
of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the terms which Scipio
Africanus had granted to the Carthaginians. The apprehension often
expressed that a second attack by the Pontic king was imminent,
was in some measure justified by the singular resemblance between
the present circumstances and those which existed twelve years before.
Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with serious armaments
of Mithradates; once more the Thracians overran Macedonia,
and piratical fleets covered the Mediterranean; emissaries were coming
and going--as formerly between Mithradates and the Italians--
so now between the Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court
of Sinope. As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared
in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity
of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war;
the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced
to meet possible emergencies.

Apprehensions of Mithradates
Bithynia Roman
Cyrene a Roman Province
Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehension
the development of the Roman policy. He could not but feel
that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, however much
the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long run almost inevitable,
and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it. His attempt
to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms
of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances
attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result;
Mithradates found in this an indication of the impending renewal
of the conflict. The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly
concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were,
seemed the preliminary to such a war. Still more suspicious
were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus:
it is significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters
Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate
continued to refuse