attle the flower of the enemy's army--
it was said 200,000 soldiers. Had he still possessed the fleet
which was burnt in the harbour of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated
the whole army of his opponent. As it was, the work of destruction
continued incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive,
the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus took
its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium were blockaded
by it on the European coast and Priapus pillaged on the Asiatic,
and the headquarters of the king were established in the Bithynian port
of Nicomedia. In fact a select squadron of fifty sail,
which carried 10,000 select troops including Marcus Marius
and the flower of the Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean;
the report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy
and there rekindle the civil war. But the ships, which Lucullus
after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded from the Asiatic
communities, began to appear, and a squadron ran forth in pursuit
of the enemy's fleet which had gone into the Aegean. Lucullus himself,
experienced as an admiral,(13) took the command. Thirteen quinqueremes
of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed
and sunk off the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast
and the island of Tenedos. At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos
and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic flotilla
of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus found it,
immediately attacked the ships and the crews scattered over the island,
and possessed himself of the whole squadron. Here Marcus Marius
and the ablest of the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict
or subsequently by the axe of the executioner. The whole Aegean fleet
of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus. The war in Bithynia
was meanwhile continued by Cotta and by the legates of Lucullus,
Voconius, Gaius Valerius Triarius, and Barba, with the land army
reinforced by fresh arrivals from Italy, and a squadron collected
in Asia. Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and Nicaea
while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea (formerly Myrlea)
and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius). They then united for a joint
attack on Mithradates himself in Nicomedia; but the king without
even attempting battle escaped to his ships and sailed homeward,
and in this he was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,
w