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Fimbria, and superseded him.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
