Sertorius

When this was reported to Mithridates he acted like one amazed; and we are told that he said to his friends: What terms, pray, will Sertorius impose when he is seated on the Palatine, if now, after he has been driven forth to the Atlantic sea, he sets bounds to our kingdom and threatens us with war if we try to get Asia?

However, a treaty was actually made and ratified with oaths. Mithridates was to have Cappadocia and Bithynia, Sertorius sending him a general and soldiers, while Sertorius was to receive from Mithridates three thousand talents and forty ships.

Accordingly, a general was sent to Asia by Sertorius, one of the senators who had taken refuge with him, Marcus Marius.[*](Cf. the Lucullus, viii. 5.) He was assisted by Mithridates in the capture of certain cities of Asia, and when he entered them with fasces and axes, Mithridates would follow him in person, voluntarily assuming second rank and the position of a vassal.

Marius gave some of the cities their freedom, and wrote to others announcing their exemption from taxation by grace of Sertorius, so that Asia, which was once more harassed by the revenue-farmers and oppressed by the rapacity and arrogance of the soldiers quartered there, was all of a flutter with new hopes and yearned for the expected change of supremacy.