inst Sulla in
Asia.

Sulla left Italy for the East with 30,000 troops. He marched against
Athens, where Archelaus, the general of Mithradates, was intrenched.
After a long siege, he captured and pillaged the city, March 1, 86. The
same year he defeated Archelaus at CHAERONEA in Boeotia, and the next
year at ORCHOMENOS.

Meanwhile Sulla's lieutenant, LUCULLUS, raised a fleet and gained two
victories off the coast of Asia Minor. The Asiatic king was now ready
to negotiate. Sulla crossed the Hellespont in 84, and in a personal
interview with the king arranged the terms of peace, which were as
follows. The king was to give up Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Cappadocia,
and withdraw to his former dominions. He was also to pay an indemnity
amounting to about $3,500,000, and surrender eighty ships of war.

Having thus settled matters with the king, Sulla punished the Lydians
and Carians, in whose territory the Romans had been massacred, by
compelling them to pay at one time five years' tribute. He was now ready
to return to Rome.

The same year that Cinna died, Sulla landed at Brundisium, with 40,000
troops and a large following of nobles who had fled from Rome. Every
preparation was made by the Marian party for his reception; but no
sooner did he land in Italy than the soldiers were induced to desert to
him in immense numbers, and he soon found himself in possession of all
Lower Italy. Among those who hastened to his standard was young POMPEY,
then but twenty-three years old, and it was to his efforts that Sulla's
success was largely due. The next year, 83, the Marian party was joined
by the Samnites, and the war raged more fiercely than ever. At length,
however, Sulla was victorious under the walls of Rome. The city lay at
his mercy. His first act, an order for the slaughter of 6,000 Samnite
prisoners, was a fit prelude to his conduct in the city. Every effort
was made to eradicate the last trace of Marian blood and sympathy from
the city. A list of men, declared to be outlaws and public enemies,
was exhibited in the Forum, and a succession of wholesale murders and
confiscations throughout Rome and Italy, made the name of Sulla forever
infamous.

Having received the title of Dictator, and celebrated a splendid triumph
for the Mithradatic war, he carried (80-79) his political measures.
The main object of these was to invest the Senate, the thinned ranks
of which he filled with his own creatures, with full control over the
s