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86 in the field, but he could not manage his troops, who were now in open mutiny against him. Acilius Glabrio had been sent to succeed Lucullus, and the soldiers considered this sufficient to discharge them of their allegiance; although the new commander delayed his appearance they refused to obey the old one. Mithridates with the assistance of Tigranes had again begun to make head against the Romans; he had cut off and overpowered a division of the Roman army under Triarius before Lucullus could come to its assistance; he had recovered the greater part of his kingdom of Pontus, and was pressing hard upon Cappadocia. It was evident that the Romans had acted prematurely when they decreed the recall of Lucullus under the belief that the war was practically over; and Glabrio and Marcius Rex, the governors on whom would fall the responsibility of defending Asia were obviously not strong enough for the task. Everything seemed to portend a great disaster in the East, and all eyes turned towards the victorious proconsul of the seas and coasts. Manilius (one of the tribunes of the year 66 B.C.) gave voice to the general wish by a proposal that the command against Mithridates should be assigned to Pompey.

A disturbance in Asia was not so much a matter of life and death to the mercantile class at Rome as was the blockade of the seas and coasts by the pirates. Still the interests of the Roman Knights both as merchants and as tax-farmers were seriously affected by the threatened danger, and they expected relief from the same hand which had just rescued them from the more pressing and intolerable calamity.