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Mithridates in Pitane and sent to Lucullus to help him capture the King by blockading the harbor. Haughtily Lucullus refused to work with a Roman he considered not legally appointed. The result was that Mithridates escaped via the sea.
    By the summer of 85 B.C. Sulla had expelled the Pontic armies from Europe, and himself crossed into Asia Minor. On August (Sextilis) 5, the King of Pontus agreed to the Treaty of Dardanus, which required that he retire inside his own borders and stay there. Sulla also dealt with Fimbria, whom he pursued until Fimbria in despair committed suicide; forbidding Fimbria's troops ever to return to Italy, Sulla incorporated them into a standing army for use in Asia Province and Cilicia.
    Sulla was very well aware that King Mithridates was by no means a spent force when he tendered the Treaty of Dardanus and obliged the King to retire. However, he was also aware that if he remained in the east much longer, he would lose all chance of regaining what he considered as his rightful position in Rome. His wife Dalmatica and his daughter Cornelia Sulla had been forced to flee to join him under the escort of Mamercus; his house had been looted and burned down; his property had been confiscated (except that Mamercus had managed to conceal most of it); and his status was now that of an outlaw stripped of Roman citizenship and under interdiction. As was true of his followers; many of the members of the Senate had also fled to join him, unwilling to live under Cinna's administration. Among the refugees were Appius Claudius Pulcher, Publius Servilius Vatia, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the latter from Spain.
    Thus Sulla had no choice but to turn his back on Mithridates and return to Rome; this he planned to do in 84 B.C., but a very serious illness compelled him to linger in Greece for a further year, fretting because his extended absence gave Cinna and his confederates more time to prepare for war. War there was bound to be-Italy was not big enough to contain two factions so obdurately opposed to each other-and so unwilling to forgive and forget for the sake of peace.
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    So too did Cinna and Cinna's Rome understand that war with Sulla on his return was inevitable. When Cinna learned of the death of his consular colleague, Flaccus, he took a new and much stronger man as junior consul, Gnaeus Papirius Carbo. Together with their pliant Senate, they decided that Sulla must be opposed before he reached Italy, still exhausted from the Italian War. With the object of stopping Sulla in western Macedonia before he could cross the Adriatic Sea, Cinna and Carbo began to recruit a huge army which they shipped to Illyricum, just to the north of western Macedonia.
    But recruitment was slow, especially in the fief of the dead Pompey Strabo, Picenum. Thinking his personal attendance would attract more volunteers, Cinna himself journeyed to Ancona to supervise the enlistments. There Pompey Strabo's son Pompey paid Cinna a visit, apparently toying with the idea of joining up. However, he did not. Shortly afterward Cinna died in Ancona in circumstances shrouded with mystery. Carbo took over Rome and control of the Senate, but decided that Sulla would have to be allowed to land in Italy. The war against him would have to be fought on Italian soil after all. Back came the troops from Illyricum, and Carbo laid his plans. After securing the election of two tame consuls, Scipio Asiagenus and Gaius Norbanus, Carbo went to govern Italian Gaul, and placed himself and his section of the army in the port city of Ariminum.
    The stage was set. Now read on....

Fortunes's Favorites

PART I
    from APRIL 83 B.C.
    until DECEMBER 82 B.C.

Fortunes's Favorites
    - 1 -
    Though the steward held his five-flamed lamp high enough to illuminate the two recumbent figures in the bed, he knew its light had not the power to waken Pompey. For this, he would need Pompey's wife. She stirred, frowned, turned her head away in an effort to remain asleep, but the