When the news of the Social war reached Mithridates, he thought it
needless to temporize longer, and he stretched out his hand to seize the
prize of the dominion of the East. The Armenians, who were at his
disposition, broke into Cappadocia and again overthrew the government,
which was in dependence upon Rome. Mithridates himself invaded Bithynia,
and replied to the remonstrances of the Roman authorities by a declaration
of open war. He called under arms the whole force of which he could
dispose; frightened rumor spoke of it as amounting to three hundred
thousand men. His corsair fleets poured down through the Dardanelles into
the archipelago; and so detested had the Roman governors made themselves
by their extortion and injustice that not only all the islands, but the
provinces on the continent, Ionia, Lydia, and Caria, rose in revolt. The
rebellion was preconcerted and simultaneous. The Roman residents,
merchants, bankers, farmers of the taxes, they and all their families,
were set upon and murdered; a hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and
children were said to have been destroyed in a single day. If we divide by
ten, as it is generally safe to do with historical round numbers, still
beyond doubt the signal had been given in an appalling massacre to abolish
out of Asia the Roman name and power.
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