Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/354

324 Greek tribunals. We even hear in regard to tax-collecting of some of the states assigned by Sulla to Rhodes petitioning the Senate that they might pay to Roman rather than Rhodian collectors. This, however, was an exception; and while, generally speaking, in the Greek towns the trading class was in favour of the Roman sway, the feelings of the majority was seen only too clearly when in B.C. 88 Mithradates, King of Pontus, suddenly called upon the Greeks in Asia to strike a blow at the Roman domination.

Mithradates VI., Eupator, held a kingdom origin- ally (between B.C. 313-280) carved out of Cappadocia. It had been extended by the successors of the founder partly by conquest, partly by Roman favour. He himself (B.C. 118-62) had pushed his power westward round the shores of the Black Sea, from Sinope on the south coast to the Crimea on the north, and eastward to the Euphrates. He was a man of considerable culture, and had made alliances with Greeks, especially with Athens, as controlling Delos and thereby the island confederacy, and surrounded himself with Greek officers. In B.C. 105 he began preparations for further annexations by a tour of inspection through Asia Minor, and presently made an arrangement with Nicomedes, King of Bithynia, for a joint invasion of Paphlagonia. This was the first of a series of encroachments and intrigues during the next seventeen years in which he was constantly thwarted by Roman officers or legates who ordered him to relinquish one plan after another. At last, towards the end of B.C. 89, the