present circumstances and those which existed twelve years before.  Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with serious armaments of Mithradates; once more the Thracians overran Macedonia, and piratical fleets covered the Mediterranean; emissaries were coming and going—­as formerly between Mithradates and the Italians—­ so now between the Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court of Sinope.  As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war; the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced to meet possible emergencies.

Apprehensions of Mithradates
Bithynia Roman
Cyrene a Roman Province
Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehension the development of the Roman policy.  He could not but feel that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, however much the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long run almost inevitable, and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it.  His attempt to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result; Mithradates found in this an indication of the impending renewal of the conflict.  The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were, seemed the preliminary to such a war.  Still more suspicious were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus:  it is significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate continued to refuse recognition.  The emigrants urged him to strike:  the position of Sertorius in Spain, as to which Mithradates despatched envoys under convenient pretexts to the headquarters of Pompeius to obtain information, and which was about this very time really imposing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting not, as in the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties, but in concert with the one against the other.  A more favourable moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all it was always better to declare war than to let it be declared against him.  In 679 Nicomedes iii Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as the last of his race—­for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said to be, illegitimate—­left his kingdom by testament to the Romans, who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials and merchants.  At the same time Cyrene, which had been already bequeathed to the Romans in 658,(10) was at length constituted a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither (679).  These measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor, must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale.  The king took the decisive step and declared war against the Romans in the winter of 679-680.