Roman state, which had once been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of Egypt to assist the Romans with all their naval force, and now itself seemed to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt.  To all this fell to be added the financial embarrassment; Sulla had already been obliged to empty the treasuries of the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of the Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated by the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban territory.  But far worse than all this military and financial perplexity was the reaction of the political revolution in Rome; the rapid, sweeping, violent accomplishment of which had far surpassed the worst apprehensions.  The revolution conducted the government in the capital; Sulla had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been entrusted to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who might be daily looked for in Greece.  The soldiers had no doubt adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them in good humour; but what could be expected, when money and supplies were wanting, when the general was deposed and proscribed, when his successor was on the way, and, in addition to all this, the war against the tough antagonist who commanded the sea was protracted without prospect of a close?

Pontic Armies Enter Greece
Evacuation of the Piraeus

King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist from his perilous position.  He it was, to all appearance, who disapproved the defensive system of his generals and sent orders to them to vanquish the enemy with the utmost speed.  As early as 667 his son Ariarathes had started from Macedonia to combat Sulla in Greece proper; only the sudden death, which overtook the prince on the march at the Tisaean promontory in Thessaly, had at that time led to the abandonment of the expedition.  His successor Taxiles now appeared (668), driving before him the Roman corps stationed in Thessaly, with an army of, it is said, 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry at Thermopylae.  Dromichaetes joined him.  Archelaus also—­compelled, apparently, not so much by Sulla’s arms as by his master’s orders—­ evacuated the Piraeeus first partially and then entirely, and joined the Pontic main army in Boeotia.  Sulla, after the Piraeeus with all its greatly-admired fortifications had been by his orders destroyed, followed the Pontic army, in the hope of being able to fight a pitched battle before the arrival of Flaccus.  In vain Archelaus advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in suspense.  Now just as formerly under Darius and Antiochus, the masses of the Orientals, like animals terrified in the midst of a fire, flung themselves hastily and blindly into battle; and did so on this occasion more foolishly than ever, since the Asiatics might perhaps have needed to wait but a few months in order to be the spectators of a battle between Sulla and Flaccus.