which in many places could not be carried into effect without force of arms.  The towns of the territory on the eastern frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted.  Justice moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term.  The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the massacre of the Italians were punished with death.  The persons liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000 talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius Lucullus was left behind.  These were measures fearful in their rigour and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively mild retaliation.  That the exactions in other respects were not unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about 1,000,000 pounds.  The few communities on the other hand that had remained faithful—­particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander—­were richly rewarded:  Rhodes received back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after the war against Perseus.(19) In like manner compensation was made as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla.  Sulla had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not descended of royal blood—­the slave, as he called him—­to his presence.  Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms evacuated by Mithradates.

Sulla Embarks for Italy

The goal was thus attained.  After four years of war the Pontic king was again a client of the Romans, and a single and settled government was re-established in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor; the requirements of interest and honour were satisfied, if not adequately, yet so far as circumstances would allow; Sulla had not only brilliantly distinguished himself as a soldier and general, but had the skill, in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve the difficult mean between bold perseverance and prudent concession.  Almost like Hannibal he had fought and conquered, in order that with the forces, which the first victory gave him, he might prepare forthwith for a second and severer struggle.  After he had in some degree