The war lasted five years and ended in a Roman victory, which forced Mithridates to abandon all of his conquests and return to Pontus.

[5] In the late summer 90 BC a Senatorial legation was sent east, under Manius Aquillius and Manlius Maltinus, to restore Nicomedes and Ariobarzanes to their kingdoms.

[7] Cassius' small army was probably the standard peacetime garrison force of between a whole and half legion (5 to 10 cohorts) and a few local auxiliary units – certainly no more than 5,000 troops in all.

The Aquillian legation soon augmented it with a large force of Galatian and Phrygian auxiliary regiments and with these troops proceeded to restore both monarchs.

Mithridates, angry with the Romans, refused to cooperate but neither did he offer opposition and both kings were restored without any fighting in autumn 90 BC.

With Aquillius' support they now urged the two kings to invade the Pontic kingdom to secure the funds with which to repay the loans that had been needed for the bribes.

[10] Around the middle of spring, 89 BC, Nicomedes invaded the ancient Mithridateian dynastic lands of Mariandynia, plundering as far east as Amastris without encountering resistance.

As a final means of enlisting as much sympathy as possible in Anatolia, he offered no opposition to the Bithynian raid, preferring to appear as manifestly wronged by what was seen as the puppets and representatives of Rome.

After a lengthy delay they finally came up with a publicly acceptable pronouncement: the Romans did not wish harm done to their ally Mithridates, nor could they allow war to be made against Nicomedes because it was against the interests of Rome that he be weakened.

The occupation (summer 89 BC) was rapid and once again (now for a fourth time) Ariobarzanes I the philoromaios was expelled and the rule of Mithridates' son enforced.

The main ancient source, Appian, now states that both sides began to assemble large forces for all-out war,[20] and implies precipitate action by the Pontic King.

But the present situation was even better from Marius' viewpoint, since the war was now inevitable but still impending: which gave him time to get out to Asia province before it began, if he hurried.

However, it was not Marius but Sulla, the newly elected consul, who received the command against Mithridates (autumn 89 BC, probably calendar December).

News of Mithridates' second expulsion of Ariobarzanes (c. July 89 BC) must have reached Rome in September, a month or two before Sulla was elected consul with Pompeius Rufus, for Plutarch records at the time of his entry into office: Sulla regarded his consulate as a very minor matter compared with future events.

In Bithynia Mithridates received a radical and strange piece of advice from a prominent Greek philosopher at his court, Metrodoros of Skepsis, who was known as ho misoromaios (the Roman-hater) on account of the extremity of his anti-Roman sentiments.

In writing to all the civic authorities of the province, detailing the measures to be taken, the king stipulated that the killings were to be carried out exactly one month after the date of his letter.

Sulla captured Athens on March 1, 86 BC, but Archelaus evacuated Piraeus, and landed in Boeotia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Chaeronea.

Sulla's army took Athens on the Kalends of March,[24] in the consulship of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna, February 12, 86 BC.

Soon afterwards he captured Athens' harbor of Piraeus, looting and demolishing this area, most of which was destroyed by fire, including architect Philon's famous arsenal.

[25] Caius Scribonius Curio Burbulieus was put in charge of the siege of the Acropolis of Athens, and it was "some time" before Aristion and his followers surrendered when their water ran out[26] (perhaps the late spring).

[28] Early in the spring of 86 BC, Taxiles concentrated most of his troops, sent word to Archelaos to join him in the Magnetic ports, and marched south from Macedonia into Thessaly.

But despite his great energy and reputation as an experienced vir militaris, there was little Hortensius could do against the enormous disproportion of the forces descending upon him, other than gather together some Thessalian auxiliary units he had been commissioned to recruit, and fall back southwards.

Flaccus' army passed through Macedonia, crossed the Hellespont and landed in Asia, where many of the Greek cities were in rebellion against Mithridates.

After crossing the Hellespont, Flaccus was killed in a mutiny led by Flavius Fimbria, who went on to defeat Mithridates and recapture Pergamum.

post-Hadrian annalist survives in retrieved fragments, from books XXVI, XXVIII, XXXIII, XXXV and XXXVI of his history, in 5th century uncials of African origin at the bottom of a ter scriptus manuscript palimpsest: see L. D. Reynolds (ed.)

René Henry Photius Bibliothèque Tome IV: Codices 223-229 (Association Guillaume Budé, Paris, 1965), pp.

F. Jacoby FGrH no.257 - English translations and commentary by William Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels (University of Exeter Press, 1996) - translated by John Dryden, with revision by Arthur Hugh Clough, as Plutarch: Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (London, John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd.) Caius Marius, pp.

624–626 - translated by Rex Warner, with Introductions and notes by Robin Seager, as Fall of the Roman Republic, Six Lives by Plutarch: Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero (Penguin Books, 1958; with noted added by Robin Seager, 1972) RE = Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, eds.