reaction of the Asiatics against the
Occidentals.

(M974) The resources of this Oriental king were immense, since he bore
rule over the shores of the Euxine to the interior of Asia Minor. His
field for recruits to his armies stretched from the mouth of the Danube to
the Caspian Sea. Thracians, Scythians, Colchians, Iberians, crowded under
his banners. When he marched into Cappadocia, he had six hundred scythed
chariots, ten thousand horse, and eighty thousand foot. A series of
aggressions and conquests made this monarch the greatest and most
formidable Eastern foe the Romans ever encountered. The Romans, engrossed
with the war with the Cimbri and the insurrection of their Italian
subjects, allowed his empire to be silently aggrandized.

(M975) The Roman Senate, at last, disturbed and jealous, sent Lucius Sulla
to Cappadocia with a handful of troops to defend its interests. On his
return, Mithridates continued his aggressions, and formed an alliance with
his father-in-law, Tigranes, king of Armenia, but avoided a direct
encounter with the great Occidental power which had conquered the world.
Things continued for awhile between war and peace, but, at last, it was
evident that only war could prevent the aggrandizement of Mithridates, and
it was resolved upon by the Romans.

(M976) The king of Pontus made immense preparations to resist his powerful
enemies. He strengthened his alliance with Tigranes. He made overtures to
the Greek cities. He attempted to excite a revolt in Thrace, in Numidia,
and in Syria. He encouraged pirates on the Mediterranean. He organized a
foreign corps after the Roman fashion, and took the field with two hundred
and fifty thousand infantry and forty thousand cavalry--the largest army
seen since the Persian wars. He then occupied Asia Minor, and the Roman
generals retreated as he advanced. He made Ephesus his head-quarters, and
issued orders to all the governors dependent upon him to massacre, on the
same day, all Italians, free or enslaved--men, women, and children, found
in their cities. One hundred and fifty thousand were thus barbarously
slaughtered in one day. The States of Cappadocia, Sinope, Phrygia, and
Bithynia were organized as Pontic satrapies. The confiscation of the
property of the murdered Italians replenished his treasury, as well as the
contributions of Asia Minor. He not only occupied the Asiatic provinces of
the Romans, but meditated the invasion of Europe. Thrace and Macedonia
w