The great orator M. Antonius fell by the hands of his assassins; and his former colleague, Q. Catulus, who had triumphed with him over the Cimbri, was obliged to put an end to his own life. Cinna was soon tired of the butchery; but the appetite of Marius seemed only whetted by the slaughter, and daily required fresh victims for its gratification. Without going through the form of an election, Marius and Cinna named themselves Consuls for the following year (B.C. 86), and thus was fulfilled the prediction that Marius should be seven times Consul. But he did not long enjoy the honor: he was now in his seventy-first year; his body was worn out by the fatigues and sufferings he had recently undergone; and on the eighteenth day of his Consulship he died of an attack of pleurisy, after a few days' illness. [Illustration: Mount Argaeus in Cappadocia.] CHAPTER XXVII. FIRST MITHRIDATIC WAR. B.C. 88-84. The kingdom of Pontus, which derived its name from being on the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, or Black Sea, was originally a satrapy of the Persian empire, extending from the River Halys on the west to the frontiers of Colchis on the east. Even under the later Persian kings the rulers of Pontus were really independent, and in the wars of the successors of Alexander the Great it became a separate kingdom. Most of its kings bore the name of Mithridates; and the fifth monarch of this name formed an alliance with the Romans, and was rewarded with the province of Phrygia for the services he had rendered them in the war against Aristonicus. He was assassinated about B.C. 120, and was succeeded by his son Mithridates VI., commonly called the Great, who was then only about twelve years of age. His youth was remarkable, but much that has been transmitted to us respecting this period of his life wears a very suspicious aspect; it is certain, however, that when he attained to manhood he was not only endowed with consummate skill in all martial exercises, and possessed of a bodily frame inured to all hardships, but his naturally vigorous intellect had been improved by careful culture. As a boy he had been brought up at Sinope, where he had probably received the elements of a Greek education, and so powerful was his memory that he is said to have learned not less than twenty-five languages, and to have been able in the days of his greatest power to transact business with the deputies of every tribe subject to his rule in their own peculiar dialect. As soon as he was firmly established on the throne he began to turn his arms against the neighboring nations. On the west his progress was hemmed in by the power of Rome, and the minor sovereigns of Bithynia and Cappadocia enjoyed the all-powerful protection of the Republic. But on the east his ambition found free scope. He subdued the barbarian tribes between the Euxine and the confines of Armenia, including the whole of Colchis and the province called Lesser Armenia; and he even added to his dominions the Tauric