[Sidenote: War begun. Energy of Mithridates.] But when once the die was cast, Mithridates threw himself into the war with the energy of long-suppressed rage. He sent to court the alliance of Egypt and the Cretan league, to whom he represented himself as the champion of Greece against her tyrant. He tried to stir up revolts in Thrace and Macedonia. He arranged with Tigranes that an Armenian army should co-operate with him, leaving him the land it occupied, but carrying off the plunder. He gave the word, and a swarm of pirate ships swept the Mediterranean under his colours. He summoned an army of 250,000 foot, 40,000 horse, and 130 scythed chariots, a fleet of 300 decked vessels, and 100 other ships called 'Dicrota' with a double bank of oars. He formed and armed in Roman fashion a foreign contingent, in which many Romans and Italians enlisted; and he placed able Greek generals, Archelaus and Neoptolemus, over his troops. [Sidenote: Forces of Rome.] To meet this formidable array the Romans had a fleet off Byzantium, the army of Nicomedes, which was still between Sinope and Amastris, and three corps, each of 40,000 men, but composed for the most part of hastily organized Asiatics; one under Cassius between Bithynia and Galatia, another under Aquillius between Bithynia and Pontus, and a third under Oppius in Cappadocia. The war was decided almost in a single battle. [Sidenote: Victory of Mithridates over Nicomedes.] Neoptolemus and Archelaus routed the Bithynian army on the river Amnias, and captured the camp and military chest. It was a fierce and for some time a doubtful fight, and seems to have been decided by the scythed chariots, which spread terror in the Bithynian ranks. [Sidenote: Victory over Aquillius.] Nicomedes fled to Aquillius, who was defeated by Archelaus near Mount Scorobas, and fled with the king across the Sangarius to Pergamus, whence he attempted to reach Rhodes. Cassius retreated to Phrygia, and tried to discipline his raw levies. But, finding this impossible; he broke up the army and led the Roman troops with him to Apameia. The fleet in the Black Sea was surrendered by its commander.
[Sidenote: Mithridates' progress through Phrygia, Mysia and Asia.] Thus, triumphant by sea and land, Mithridates, after settling Bithynia, marched through Phrygia and Mysia into the Roman province Asia, and was hailed everywhere as a deliverer, for after his victories he had sent home all his Asiatic prisoners with presents. Then he sent messengers into Lycia and Pamphylia to seek the alliance of those countries. Oppius was in Laodicea, on the Lycus. The king offered the townsmen immunity if they surrendered him, and, when they did so, carried him about as a show. [Sidenote: Fate of Aquillius.] Aquillius was also given up by the Mytileneans and made to ride in chains on an ass, calling out who he was wherever he went. At Pergamus Mithridates slew him by pouring molten gold down his throat—a savage punishment, which, however, confirms the impression that it was Roman avarice which forced on the war. Magnesia on the Maeander, Ephesus, and Mitylene welcomed the king joyfully, and Stratoniceia, in Caria, was captured. He then attacked Magnesia near Mount Sipylus, prepared to invade Rhodes, and issued a hideous order for an exterminating massacre of every Roman and Italian in Asia on an appointed day. Punishments were proclaimed for anyone who should hide one of the proscribed or bury his body; rewards were promised for all who killed or denounced them. Slaves who slew their masters were to be freed. The murder of a creditor was to be taken as payment by a debtor of half his debt. [Massacre of Romans and Italians.] There were dreadful scenes on the fatal day—the thirtieth after the order was issued—in the Asiatic cities. In Pergamus the victims fled to the temple of Aesculapius, and were shot down as they clung to the statues. At Ephesus they were dragged out from the temple of Artemis and slain. At Adramyttium they swam out to sea, but were brought back and killed, and their children were drowned. At Cos alone was any mercy shown. There those who had taken refuge in the temple of Aesculapius were spared. The number of the slain was said to be 80,000 or even 120,000, which must have been, however, an incredible exaggeration. [Sidenote: Objects of the massacre.] By this fiendish crime Mithridates must, though he was mistaken, have felt that he cut himself off for ever from all reconciliation with Rome. But no doubt he acted on calculation. For not only did he get rid of men who might have recruited the Roman armies; not only did he gratify the long-hoarded hatred of the farmers and peasants of whom Roman publicans and Roman slave-masters had so long made a prey; not only did he oblige the debtors by wiping out their debts and even the very memory of them in their creditors' blood, but he might well count on putting his accomplices also beyond the pale of Roman mercy, and so linking them to his own fortunes. Moreover, vengeance seemed remote. For Sulla had just marched on Rome instead of to the east, and a civil war in Italy might make Mithridates permanently supreme in Asia. [Sidenote: Mithridates' settlement of his new acquisitions.] So he made Pergamus his capital, leaving Sinope to his son as vice-regent, while Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Bithynia were turned into satrapies. All arrears of taxes were remitted; and so wealthy had his spoils made him that exemption for five years to come was promised to the towns that had obeyed his orders.
[Sidenote: Reverses of Mithridates. He retires to Pergamus.] But the tide was already on the turn. In Paphlagonia there was still resistance. Archelaus was repulsed and wounded at Magnesia. Mithridates in person was forced to abandon the siege of Rhodes. His revenge was sated; he was tired of the hardships of a war which he meant his generals to conduct in future; and with a new wife he went back to Pergamus, to his rings, and his music, and debaucheries, at the very time that a shudder had gone through Italy at the tidings of the massacre, and when Sulla was on his way to avenge it.
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CHAPTER XII.
SULLA IN GREECE AND ASIA.
[Sidenote: Aristion at Athens.] A citizen of Athens, named Aristion, whose mother was an Egyptian slave, and who was the son or adopted son of one Athenion, had been sent by the Athenians as ambassador to Mithridates. He had been a schoolmaster and teacher of rhetoric, and professed the philosophy of Epicurus. He gained the ear of Mithridates, and sent home flaming accounts of the king's power, and of his intention of restoring the democracy at Athens. The Athenians sent some ships of war to bring him home from Euboea, with a present of a silver-footed litter; and in this, clothed in purple, and with a fine ring on his finger, which he had got probably from his friend Mithridates, he came back to Athens with much parade. [Sidenote: Revolt of Athens from Rome.] In a set speech he dilated on the king's splendid successes, and advised the people to declare themselves independent and elect him their general. They did so, and he very soon massacred his opponents and made himself despot. Thus Athens and the Piraeus passed into the hands of Mithridates. The spirit of disaffection to Rome spread rapidly. [Sidenote: Revolt of the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians.] When Archelaus appeared in Greece, the Achaeans, Laconians, and Boeotians, with the exception of Thespiae, joined him, while the Pontic fleet seized Euboea and Demetrias, a town at the head of the gulf of Pagasae.
Sura was sent by the Roman governor of Macedonia to make head against the invaders. He won a naval battle and captured Sciathus, where all the spoils of the enemy were stored. [Sidenote: Conflicts between the Romans and the forces of Mithridates in Boeotia.] Then he marched into Boeotia, and, after a three days' engagement with the combined forces of Archelaus and Aristion, pushed Archelaus back to the coast. The war, perhaps, might have been ended here; but at this moment Lucullus came to announce the approach of Sulla, and to warn Sura that the war had been entrusted to him. So Sura retired to Macedonia. [Sidenote: Sulla lands in Epirus, 87 B.C., and marches on Athens.] Sulla had left Brundusium in 87, and, landing on the coast of Epirus, gathered what supplies he could from Aetolia and Thessaly, and marched straight for Athens. It was soon seen that the foundations of the empire of Mithridates were based on sand. The Boeotians at once submitted, including Thebes, which had joined the king. [Sidenote: Siege of the Piraeus and Athens.] Sulla then began two sieges, that of the Piraeus where Archelaus was, and that of Athens defended by Aristion. Archelaus had before shown himself an intrepid soldier, and he baffled all Sulla's efforts with equal ingenuity and courage. After an unsuccessful attempt to storm the walls, Sulla retired to Eleusis and Megara, thus keeping up his communications with Thebes and the Peloponnese, and set to work constructing catapults and other engines, and preparing an earthwork from which he meant to attack the wall with them. For these purposes he cut down the trees of the Academia and the Lyceum. He was kept informed of intended sallies by two slaves inside the town, who threw out leaden balls with words cut on them. But as fast as the earthwork rose Archelaus built towers on the walls opposite to it, and thence harassed the besiegers. [Sidenote: Battle at the Piraeus. Archelaus nearly taken.] He was also reinforced by Mithridates, and then came out and fought a battle which was for some time doubtful; but he was forced to retire at length with the loss of 2,000 men. He himself remained till the last. The gates were shut and he had to be drawn up by a rope over the wall.
[Sidenote: Sulla's difficulties.] The affairs of Sulla, however, were in no flourishing condition. He had come to Greece with only 30,000 men, with no fleet, and little money. He was forced to plunder the shrines of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. His messenger to Delphi came back saying that he had heard the sound of a lute in the temple, and dared not commit the sacrilege. But Sulla sent him back, saying that he was sure the sound was a note of welcome, and that the god meant him to have the treasure. He promised to pay it back some day, and he kept his word, for he confiscated half the land of Thebes and applied the proceeds to reimbursing the sacred funds. In his worst straits he was always ready with some such mockery. [Sidenote: Sulla sends Lucullus to Egypt.] Winter was now at hand, and Sulla despatched Lucullus to Egypt to get ships. The refusal of the King of Egypt shows what was now thought of the Roman power. Sulla then formed a camp at Eleusis and continued the siege, and so shook the great tower of Archelaus by a simultaneous discharge of twelve leaden balls from his catapults that it had to be drawn back. [Sidenote: Blockade of Athens.] By means of the two slaves he was also able to frustrate the attempts of Archelaus to throw supplies into Athens, which was now suffering from hunger, for Sulla had surrounded it with forts and turned the siege into a blockade. Mithridates now sent his son into Macedonia with an army, before which the small Roman force there had to retire. After this success the prince marched towards Athens, but died on the way. [Sidenote: Desperate defence of the Piraeus.] At the Piraeus scenes occurred which were afterwards repeated at the siege of Jerusalem. Archelaus undermined the earthwork and Sulla made another determined attempt to take the wall by storm. He battered down part of it, fired the props of his mine and so brought down more, and sent troops by relays to escalade the breach. But Archelaus, like the Plataeans in the Peloponnesian war, built an inner crescent-shaped wall, from which he took the assailants in front and on both flanks when they tried to advance. [Sidenote: Sulla turns the siege into a blockade.] At last, wearied by this dogged resistance, Sulla turned the siege of the Piraeus also into a blockade, which meant simply that he hindered Archelaus from helping Athens, for he could not prevent the influx of supplies from the sea.
[Sidenote: Athens taken March 1, B.C. 86.] Athens meanwhile was in dreadful straits. Wheat was selling at nearly 3_l_. 10_s_. a gallon, and the inhabitants were feeding on old leather bottles, shoes, and the bodies of the dead. A deputation came out, but Sulla sent them back because they began an harangue on the deeds of their ancestors, put into their mouths, no doubt, by the rhetorician Aristion. Sulla told them they were the scum of nations, not descended from the old Athenians at all, and that instead of listening to their rhetoric he meant to punish their rebellion. On the night of March 1, 86 B.C., he broke into the town amid the blare of trumpets and the shouts of his troops. He told his men to give no quarter, and the blood, it was said, ran down through the gates into the suburbs. [Sidenote: Aristion slain.] Aristion fled to the Acropolis. Hunger forced him in the end to capitulate, and he was killed. Sulla meanwhile had forced on the siege of Piraeus still more vigorously. He got past the crescent wall, only to find other walls similarly constructed behind it; but he gradually drove Archelaus into Munychia, or the peninsular part of Piraeus, and as he had no ships he could do nothing more. [Sidenote: Archelaus sails from Piraeus, and joins Taxiles, sent by Mithridates with reinforcements.] Either before or after the capture of the Acropolis Archelaus sailed away, in obedience to a summons from Taxiles, a new general whom Mithridates had sent with an army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and ninety scythed chariots into Greece. With these forces and the troops previously sent with his master's son he formed a junction at Thermopylae, marched into Phocis down the valley of the Cephissus, attempted but failed to take Elateia, and came up with Sulla near Chaeroneia. [Sidenote: Sulla forms a junction with Hortensius.] Sulla had marched into Boeotia and joined Hortensius, who had a brought some troops from Thessaly. But he is said by Appian to have had not a third of the enemy's numbers, while Plutarch affirms that he had only 15,000 foot and 1,500 horse.