Of all the kings the Romans attacked, only Mithridates defended himself with courage and posed a threat to them.

His states were ideally located for waging war against them. They bordered on the inaccessible country of the Caucasus -- filled with fierce nations that could be drawn upon -- and from there extended to the Black Sea. Mithridates covered this sea with his vessels and continually made trips to buy new armies of Scythians. Asia was open to his invasions. He was rich, because his cities on the Black Sea carried on an advantageous commerce with nations less industrious than themselves.

Proscriptions, the practice of which began in those times, forced many Romans to leave their country. Mithridates welcomed them with open arms. He formed legions in which he enrolled them and which were his best troops [1].

On its side, Rome, suffering from civil dissensions, occupied with more pressing evils, neglected Asian affairs and let Mithridates pursue his victories or rest after his defeats.

Nothing had been more ruinous to most of the kings than their manifest desire for peace. This deterred all other peoples from sharing with them a peril from which they themselves wanted so much to escape. But Mithridates immediately let it be known to all that he was an enemy of the Romans and always would be.

Finally, the cities of Greece and Asia, feeling the yoke of the Romans weigh more heavily on them every day, placed their confidence in this barbarian king who summoned them to liberty.

This state of affairs led to three great wars which form one of the finest portions of Roman history. For here we do not see princes already vanquished by indulgences and pride, like Antiochus and Tigranes, or by fear, like Philip, Perseus, and Jugurtha, but a magnanimous king, who, in his adversities, like a lion viewing his wounds, was only made more indignant by them.

These wars were peculiar because of their continual and always unexpected shifts of fortune. For if Mithridates could easily replenish his armies, it was also the case that in reverses, when obedience and discipline were needed most, his barbarian troops abandoned him. If he had the art of inciting peoples and making cities revolt, he in turn experienced perfidies on the part of his captains, his children, and his wives. Finally, if he had unskilful Roman generals to deal with, at various times Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey were also sent against him.

This prince defeated the Roman generals and conquered Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. Vanquished in turn by Sulla, reduced, by treaty, to his old borders, harassed by Roman generals, he again became their victor and the conqueror of Asia. Then, pursued by Lucullus and followed into his own country, he was forced to withdraw to Tigranes' realm, and seeing this king hopelessly lost after defeat, and now relying only on himself, he took refuge in his own states and reestablished himself there.

Pompey succeeded Lucullus, and Mithridates was overwhelmed by him. He fled from his states, and, crossing the Araxes, marched from one danger to another through the country of the Lazians [a]. Collecting on his way whatever barbarians he found, he appeared at the Bosporus to confront his son Machares, who had made peace with the Romans [2].

In the abyss in which he found himself, he devised a scheme for carrying the war to Italy and going to Rome with the same nations that subdued it some centuries later, and by the same route [3].

Betrayed by Pharnaces, another of his sons, and by an army dismayed at the magnitude of his enterprises and of the dangers he was about to seek, he died a king.

It was then that Pompey, in a rapid succession of victories, completed the splendid work of Rome's greatness. He joined an infinite number of countries to the body of its empire -- which served the show of Roman magnificence more than its true power. And although it' seemed, from placards carried in his triumph, that he had increased the public revenues by more than a third, power was not increased, and public liberty was only the more endangered [4].