Still more singular was the circumstance, that with these movements was combined a renewed attempt to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the person of one Euphenes.  Mithradates, who from the Crimea maintained connections with the Thracians, was hardly a stranger to all these events.  The praetor Gaius Sentius defended himself, it is true, against these intruders with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae; but it was not long before mightier opponents came against him.  Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the bold resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the war for the sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and had by land and sea directed thither the flower of his troops.  His son Ariarathes penetrated from Thrace into the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing the country as he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies.  Abdera and Philippi became the principal bases for the operations of the Pontic arms in Europe.  The Pontic fleet, commanded by Mithradates’ best general Archelaus, appeared in the Aegean Sea, where scarce a Roman sail was to be found.  Delos, the emporium of the Roman commerce in those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000 men, mostly Italians, were massacred there; Euboea suffered a similar fate; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory were soon in the hands of the enemy; they might proceed to attack the mainland itself.  The assault, no doubt, which the Pontic fleet made from Euboea on the important Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the brave lieutenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even occupied the island of Sciathus; but he could not prevent the enemy from establishing himself in Greece proper.

The Pontic Proceedings in Greece

There Mithradates carried on his operations not only by arms, but at the same time by national propagandism.  His chief instrument for Athens was one Aristion, by birth an Attic slave, by profession formerly a teacher of the Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of Mithradates; an excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant career which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob, and with due gravity to assure them that help was already on the way to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years lying in ruins.  These addresses of the new Pericles were so far effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned formally renounced the Roman rule.  So the ex-philosopher became a despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced an infamous and bloody rule; and the Piraeeus was converted into a Pontic harbour.  As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a footing on the Greek continent, most of the small free states—­the Achaeans, Laconians, Boeotians—­as far as Thessaly joined them.  Sura, after having drawn