Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There

In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the offensive.  On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the victors.  It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king was indebted for this brilliant success.  The far more wretched Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed.  A Roman division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into Apamea.  Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships that were there.  After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies that were from the first turned towards him.  Now the whole country as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the Asiatic war should belong.  Rome seemed zealously employed in the work of self-destruction:  it is no wonder that, though even now minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king.  Hellenes and Asiatics united in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under the name of the new Dionysus.  The cities and islands sent messengers to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite “the delivering god” to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in front of their gates to receive him.  Several places delivered the Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town, and Mytilene