Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/360

330 which was defeated by Sulla at Orchomenus with such immense slaughter that the hold of Mithradates in Greece was completely destroyed. The effect in Asia was immediate. The Greek cities expelled their Pontic garrisons and declared for Rome. The movement had begun after the battle at Chaeroneia, for the yoke of Mithradates had been found to be no lighter than that of Rome. If he remitted taxes, he enforced military service, and incurred the resentment of the mercantile classes by a partial abolition of debts and the enfranchisement of slaves who had betrayed their masters. These measures, joined to some instances of severity, such as the deportation of the inhabitants of Chios, turned the feelings of the Greeks from him, and we have a series of inscriptions in Ephesus and elsewhere renouncing his authority and striving—by representing that they had acted under compulsion—to ingratiate themselves once more with Rome. The campaign or march of Flaccus and Fimbria, sent out to supersede Sulla, cleared Macedonia and Thrace as far as Byzantium of the enemy and carried victory into Bithynia (B.C. 85-4). The appearance of the fleet collected by Lucullus then enabled Sulla (who declined to be superseded) to negotiate with Mithradates, who, by the treaty of Delium (B.C. 84), agreed to evacuate Roman Asia and to restore the inhabitants whom he had removed from Chios and Macedonia.

The results to Asiatic Greece were deplorable. Sulla treated the province with great severity, especially, of course, those states which had been