When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened the existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored senatorial government to devote the requisite attention to the internal and external security of the empire, various matters presented themselves, the settlement of which could not be postponed without injuring the most important interests and allowing present inconveniences to grow into future dangers. Apart from the very serious complications in Spain, it was absolutely necessary effectually to check the barbarians in Thrace and the regions of the Danube, whom Sulla on his march through Macedonia had only been able slightly to chastise (iii. 309), and to regulate, by military intervention, the disorderly state of things along the northern frontier of the Greek peninsula; thoroughly to suppress the bands of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially the eastern waters; and to introduce better order into the unsettled relations of Asia Minor. The peace which Sulla had concluded in 670 with Mithra-dates, king of Pontus (iii. 308), and of which the treaty with Murena in 673 (iii. 345) was essentially a repetition, bore throughout the stamp of a provisional arrangement to meet the exigencies of the moment; and the relations of the Romans with Tigranes, king of Armenia, with whom they had de facto waged war, remained wholly untouched in this peace.