The incident served as the casus belli or immediate cause of the First Mithridatic War between the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Pontus.

[3][4] In the 100s BC, Mithridates had continued to avoid confrontation with the Roman republic, which itself was occupied in the Jugurthine and Cimbric wars.

However, due to Mithridates' subjugation of Armenia and other territories along the Black Sea, Roman attention fell on Pontus.

When news reached Rome, the senate decreed that both kings were to be restored and dispatched Manius Aquillius to lead a commission.

[14] News reached Rome of Mithridates' victories and the collapse of Roman rule in Asia in the autumn of 89 BC.

The consul of 88 BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, was given the command against Mithridates and it took him some eighteen months to assemble five legions.

[18] Mithridates furthermore offered freedom to slaves which informed on their Italian masters and debt relief to those who slew their creditors.

[18][21] Many of these cities were under the control of tyrants, and many of the inhabitants enthusiastically fell upon their Italian neighbours, who were blamed "for the prevailing climate of aggressive greed[,] acquisitiveness[,] and... malicious litigation".

After he had taken command of the legions at Nola, a Roman Assembly passed a law stripping him of his authority in favor of Gaius Marius.

Assured of its and his authority, he crossed the Adriatic with minimal troops and no heavy warships, after one year of doing nothing on the eastern front.

[25] The name "Vêpres éphésiennes" was coined in 1890 by historian Théodore Reinach to describe the massacre, making a retrospective analogy with the Sicilian Vespers of 1282.