ns and vulgar
scrambling money-makers whom other politicians abused in private but
dared not offend in public. He had no party. Until he was fifty he had
held no command or office of the first rank.

But when the question of the campaign against Mithridates came up
Lucullus felt that he had a claim to it and was prepared, despite his
ordinary aloofness, to push that claim through. Nicomedes, the old King
of Bithynia, had just died (74) and left his rich territory--a buffer
state between the Roman provinces in Asia Minor and Mithridates' kingdom
of Pontus--to the Roman people. This the able and wily King of Pontus
was not going to allow. He declared war, made an alliance with
Sertorius, and marched into Bithynia. This was a serious menace. When
Mithridates invaded Cilicia (73) people remembered the massacre of
fifteen years ago and trembled. Pompeius wanted the command, but he was
still busy in Spain; in the end Lucullus was appointed.

The difficulties of the campaign were at first overwhelming. Lucullus
was not in sole control and his colleagues were refractory. But the
defeat of Cotta, the other consul, at last left him a free hand. Many of
his captains were dismayed by the reduction of the Roman army. Lucullus
remained calm. Mithridates had attacked the port of Cyzicus, far from
his own base, with an army so large that to provision it was extremely
difficult. Lucullus took up a position from which he could cut off his
supplies and so close him in a trap between the town and his own army.
With his smaller army Lucullus refused battle, and when Mithridates
endeavoured to make his way out by dividing his forces Lucullus attacked
the two parts in turn, though it was the dead of winter, and defeated
them disastrously. A vast army perished in the snow. Lucullus was able
to overrun Bithynia and force Mithridates to retreat into Pontus.

It was now that Lucullus took the step which makes his career profoundly
important in the history of Rome. Instead of waiting for instructions
from the Home Government--instructions which he knew would probably have
ordered his recall and certainly a halt in his operations--he resolved
to act boldly on a plan of his own. That plan was no less than the
invasion of Mithridates' kingdom. Nearly all his generals opposed him,
but Lucullus's mind was clear. He burned to wipe out the treaty of
Dardanus and had come to the conclusion that Eastern monarchies were not
so strong as they looked: that