Sulla

and when the greater part of them came out to give him battle, he engaged with them and routed them, and such was their panic that no resistance was made, and he took their camp by storm. The marshes were filled with their blood, and the lake with their dead bodies, so that even to this day many bows, helmets, fragments of steel breastplates, and swords of barbarian make are found embedded in the mud, although almost two hundred years have passed since this battle.[*](Plutarch must, therefore, have written this Life shortly before 115 A.D.) Such, then, are the accounts given of the actions at Chaeroneia and Orchomenus.

Now since Cinna and Carbo[*](Elected consul with Cinna in 85 B.C.) at Rome were treating the most eminent men with injustice and violence, many of these had fled from their tyranny and were repairing to Sulla’s camp as to a harbour of refuge, and in a little time he had about him a semblance of a senate. Metella, also, who had with difficulty stolen herself and her children away, came with tidings that his house and his villas had been burned by his enemies, and with entreaties that he would come to the help of his partisans at home.

But while he was in doubt what to do, and could neither consent to neglect his country when she was outraged, nor see his way clear to go away and leave unfinished so great a task as the war with Mithridates, there came to him a merchant of Delos, named Archelaüs, who secretly brought from Archelaüs the king’s general certain vague hopes and propositions. The matter was so welcome to Sulla that he was eager to have a personal conference with Archelaüs;

and they had a meeting on the sea-coast near Delium, where the temple of Apollo is. Archelaüs began the conference by urging Sulla to abandon Asia and Pontus and sail for the war in Rome, on condition of receiving money, triremes, and as large a force as he wished, from the king. Sulla rejoined by bidding him take no further thought for Mithridates, but assume the crown himself in his stead, becoming an ally of the Romans, and surrendering to them his ships.