Mithridates submits to Aquillius.] The king submitted as before, not, indeed, sending troops, but without resisting, and as a proof of his complacency put Socrates to death.  This happened in the year 90, when Rome was pressed hardest by the Italians, and at first sight it seems astonishing that he should not have seized on so favourable a moment.  But in those days news would travel from the west of Italy to Sinope but slowly and uncertainly, and Mithridates would have the fate of Antiochus in mind to warn him how the foes of the great republic fared, and the history of Pergamus to testify to the prosperity of those who remained its friends.  Sulla’s proud tone in 92 would not have lessened this impression; and, before he appealed to force, the crafty king hoped to make his position securer by fraud.  Partly, therefore, from real awe, partly because he was not yet ready, he obeyed Aquillius as he had obeyed Sulla.  But Aquillius, who had once put up Phrygia to auction, knew what pickings there were for a senator when war was afoot in Asia, and perhaps may have had the honester notion that, as Mithridates was sure to go to war soon, it was for the public as well as for his private interest to act boldly and strike the first blow.  So he forced the reluctant Bithynian king to declare war, and to ravage with an army the country round Amastris while his fleet shut up the Bosporus.  Still Mithridates did not stir; all that he did was to lodge a complaint with the Romans, and solicit their mediation or their permission to defend himself. [Sidenote:  Aquillius forces on a war.] Aquillius replied that he must in no case make war on Nicomedes.  It is easy to conceive how such an answer affected a man of the king’s temper.  He instantly sent his son with an army into Cappadocia.  But once more he tried diplomacy. [Sidenote:  Ultimatum of Mithridates.] Pelopidas, his envoy, came to Aquillius, and said that his master was willing to aid the Romans against the Italians if the Romans would forbid Nicomedes to attack him, their ally.  If not, he wished the alliance to be formally dissolved.  Or there was yet another alternative.  Let the commissioners and himself appeal to the Senate to decide between them.  The commissioners treated the message as an insult.  Mithridates, they said, must not attack Nicomedes, and they intended to restore Ariobarzanes.  Possibly the conduct of Aquillius was due to his having been heavily bribed by Nicomedes, who must have felt that when the Romans were gone he would be like a mouse awaiting the cat’s spring; for it is difficult to imagine the foolhardiness which without some such tangible stimulus would at that moment have plunged him into war.