the struggle between the orders political factions had without exception been united in opposing the public foe; but Romans of note fought under the standards of Mithradates, large districts of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him, and it was at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow the glorious example that Sulla had set before it, and keep truce with him so long as he was fighting against the Asiatic king.  But the vigorous general, who had to contend with all these embarrassments, was not accustomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers before finishing the task immediately in hand.  When his proposals of peace addressed to the king, which substantially amounted to a restoration of the state of matters before the war, met with no acceptance, he advanced just as he had landed, from the harbours of Epirus to Boeotia, defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and Aristion there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory possessed himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves, and which he failed to carry by a coup de main.  A Roman division under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into Macedonia; another under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis, to keep off the enemy’s corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which he commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prosecuted the siege of the city and harbour of Athens.  The Hellenic cities, governed as they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom themselves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions and men and paying fines.

Protracted Siege of Athens and the Piraeus
Athens Falls

The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly.  Sulla found himself compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the timber.  Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made frequent and not seldom successful sorties.  The Pontic army of Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which Sulla’s brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly.  From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile definitively established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour-fortress; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to make various attempts to throw quantities