te
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting
Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen
taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned
on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit
of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south
of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.
He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,
from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius
to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt,
not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side
of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,
utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,
he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested;
in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned
from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;
Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,
besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person
was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.
Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,
at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's
death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been
commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war
in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,
where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus
after the most obstinate resistance.

In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal
civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.
It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,
that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter
correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years
afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"
side by side in the senate.

Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates

Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing
for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans
or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal
which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs
of the mainland of A