sinking cause, attracting debtors by the remission of debts, resident aliens by the gift of the citizenship of the towns which they inhabited, and slaves by the promise of freedom—­devices of a desperate man.  A plot was laid against his life which was betrayed, and in his fury he launched out into yet more savage excesses.  He sent a set of men to collect depositions, and they slew indiscriminately those who were denounced, 1600, it is said, in all.

[Sidenote:  Fimbria mutinies against and murders Flaccus.] These events must have occurred in the winter of 86-85 B.C., when Flaccus was on his march from the Adriatic coast through Macedonia and Thrace for Asia.  Flaccus had quarrelled with his lieutenant Fimbria, and superseded him.  The latter, when Flaccus had crossed from Byzantium to Chalcedon, induced the troops, who hated their general, to mutiny.  Flaccus returned in haste; but, learning what had happened, fled back to Chalcedon and thence to Nicomedia.  Here Fimbria, finding him hidden in a well, murdered him, and threw his head into the sea. [Sidenote:  He defeats the son of Mithridates and pursues the king.] Then, attacking the king’s son, he defeated him at the river Rhyndacus, and pursued the king himself to Pergamus and Pitane, where he would have taken him but that he crossed over to Mitylene, while Fimbria had no ships and was thus baulked of his prey.  Another event had happened to aggravate his irritation. [Sidenote:  Lucullus off the coast of Asia Minor.  Overtures of Fimbria to him.] Lucullus, sent by Sulla to collect a fleet, had, as has been related (p. 153), failed in Egypt.  But he had procured ships from Syria and Rhodes, induced Cos and Cnidus to revolt, and driven out the Pontic partisans from Chios and Colophon.  He was now in the neighbourhood, when Mithridates was at Pitane. [Sidenote:  Mithridates meets Sulla and thy come to terms.] But, he turned a deaf ear to Fimbria’s request for aid, and after defeating Neoptolemus, the king’s admiral, met Sulla in the Thracian Chersonese, and conveyed him across to Dardanus, in the Troad, where Mithridates came to meet him.  Each had one feeling in common—­dread lest the other should make terms with Fimbria; and the bargain was soon struck in spite of Sulla’s soldiers, who were thus after all baulked of the long-looked-for Asiatic campaign and their desire to take revenge for the great massacre.  But Sulla, as we have seen (p. 153), got some money to quiet them; and they were in his power in Asia almost as much as he had been in theirs at Rome.  He at once led them against Fimbria, who was near Thyatira, in Lydia. [Sidenote:  Fimbria’s men desert to Sulla.  Fimbria commits suicide.] He summoned that leader to hand over his army, and the soldiers began to desert to him.  Fimbria tried to force them to swear obedience to him, and slew the first who refused.  Then he sent a slave to assassinate Sulla; and the discovery of this attempt so maddened Sulla’s soldiers that Fimbria dared not trust even Sulla’s promised