the king’s side, and join him in an attack on the Samians.  He drove the king’s party also out of Chios, and he gave the people of Kolophon freedom by seizing Epigonus, their tyrant.  It happened about this time that Mithridates had left Pergamum, and was shut up in Pitane.[327] While Fimbria[328] was keeping the king blockaded there on the land side and pressing the siege, Mithridates, looking to the sea, got together and summoned to him ships from every quarter, having given up all design of engaging and fighting with Fimbria, who was a bold man and had defeated him.  Fimbria observing this, and being deficient in naval force, sent to Lucullus, and prayed him to come with his fleet and help him to take the most detested and the most hostile of kings, in order that Mithridates, the great prize, which had been followed through many contests and labours, might not escape the Romans, now that he had given them a chance of seizing him, and was caught within the nets.  He said, if Mithridates was taken, no one would have more of the glory than he who stopped his flight and laid hold of him when he was trying to steal away; that if Mithridates were shut out from the land by him, and excluded from the sea by Lucullus, there would be a victory for both of them, and that as to the vaunted exploits of Sulla at Orchomenus and Chaeronea,[329] the Romans would think nothing of them in comparison with this.  There was nothing unreasonable in all that Fimbria said; and it was plain to every man that if Lucullus, who was at no great distance, had then accepted the proposal of Fimbria, and led his ships there and blockaded the port with his fleet, the war would have been at an end, and all would have been delivered from innumerable calamities.  But whether it was that Lucullus regarded his duty to Sulla above all private and public interests, or that he detested Fimbria, who was an abandoned man, and had lately murdered his own friend and general,[330] merely from ambition to command, or whether it was through chance, as the Deity would have it, that he spared Mithridates, and reserved him for his own antagonist—­he would not listen to Fimbria, but allowed Mithridates to escape by sea, and to mock the force of Fimbria.  Lucullus himself, in the first place, defeated off Lektum in the Troad,[331] the king’s ships, which showed themselves there, and again observing that Neoptolemus was stationed at Tenedos with a larger force, he sailed against him ahead of all the rest, in a Rhodian galley of five banks which was commanded by Demagoras, a man well affected to the Romans, and exceedingly skilful in naval battles.  Neoptolemus came against him at a great rate, and ordered the helmsman to steer the ship right against the vessel of Lucullus; but Demagoras, fearing the weight of the king’s vessel and the rough brass that she was fitted with, did not venture to engage head to head, but he quickly turned his ship round and ordered them to row her stern foremost,[332] and the vessel being thus depressed at the stern received the blow, which was rendered harmless by falling on those parts of the ship which were in the water.  In the meantime his friends coming to his aid, Lucullus commanded them to turn his ship’s head to the enemy; and, after performing many praiseworthy feats, he put the enemy to flight, and pursued Neoptolemus.