I. PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS: MURENA AND SERVILIUS

Mithridates might have accepted what the Peace of Dardanus seemed to offer – the recognition of his independence within his kingdom and freedom of action to the north and west, in the regions of his Crimean, Sarmatian and sub-Caucasian territories. The Peace required his withdrawal from the Roman dependencies south and west of the Halys in Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia and Cappadocia, though he retained the coastal zone of Paphlagonia that his father Euergetes had acquired. So too a century earlier the Seleucids were left free by the Peace of Apamea in their activities ‘beyond Taurus’. But in 83–82 B.C. Licinius Murena, left by Sulla to re-establish the Roman province of Asia, intervened against Mithridates, first in Cappadocia, where the king was attempting to restrict the territorial recovery of the restored Ariobarzanes, and then in western Pontus, where Murena carried out two extensive raids on the pretext that the military preparations of Mithridates for the recovery of the rebellious Greek cities of the Crimea were in fact aimed against Rome. After suffering the devastations of two great raids without resistance, when Murena appeared for the third time despite the intervention of a Roman arbiter who gave ambiguous advice, Mithri dates led his army out and inflicted a series of defeats on Murena’s forces, which he pursued through northern Galatia to the borders of Phrygia. An emissary of Sulla himself now arrived who put an end to the righting and secured the evacuation of Cappadocian territory by Mithridates. Murena withdrew to hold an unearned triumphal celebration in Rome.

This affair reveals the existence of contrary policies at Rome. While Sulla was determined to maintain no more than the former protectorates beyond the borders of Asia in Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia, and to recognize Mithridates as a Roman vassal, his own man was bent on renewing war with Mithridates, and after Sulla’s death a majority within the Senate connived at a refusal to ratify the Peace of Dardanus, of which Murena had denied the very existence on the grounds that it was not formulated in a written text. Yet Mithridates tried hard through his emissaries to secure the ratification of the Peace. When his agents failed to secure a hearing by the Senate in 78 he realized that powerful men were keen to renew a war that offered the prospect of vast enrichment.