some reinforcements from Macedonia, advanced into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thespiae and engaged in conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during three days at Chaeronea; but they led to no decision and Sura was obliged to retire when the Pontic reinforcements from the Peloponnesus approached (end of 666, beg. of 667).  So commanding was the position of Mithradates, particularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could invite him to make an attempt to land in Italy; but their cause was already by that time lost, and the king rejected the suggestion.

Position of the Romans

The position of the Roman government began to be critical.  Asia Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia to a considerable extent, in the enemy’s hands; by sea the Pontic flag ruled without a rival.  Then there was the Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on the whole, still held the undisputed command of wide districts of Italy; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened every moment to break out afresh and more formidably; and, lastly, the alarming commercial and monetary crisis(13) occasioned by the internal troubles of Italy and the enormous losses of the Asiatic capitalists, and the want of trustworthy troops.  The government would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla; for the northern army was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional embarrassment.  Sulla had to choose which of these three tasks he would undertake; he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war.  It was no trifling matter—­we should perhaps say, it was a great act of patriotism—­that in this conflict between the general interest of his country and the special interest of his party the former retained the ascendency; and that Sulla, in spite of the dangers which his removal from Italy involved for his constitution and his party, landed in the spring of 667 on the coast of Epirus.

Sulla’s Landing
Greece Occupied

But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had been wont to make their appearance in the East.  That his army of five legions or of at most 30,000 men,(14) was little stronger than an ordinary consular army, was the least element of difference.  Formerly in the eastern wars a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in fact without exception commanded the sea; Sulla, sent to reconquer two continents and the islands of the Aegean sea, arrived without a single vessel of war.  Formerly the general had brought with him a full chest and drawn the greatest portion of his supplies by sea from home; Sulla came with empty hands—­for the sums raised with difficulty for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy—­and found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions.  Formerly the general had found his only opponent in the enemy’s camp, and since the close of