Notwithstanding the interposition of Sulla, Mithridates was well aware that the peace between him and Rome was in fact only suspension of hostilities, and that the haughty Republic would never suffer the massacre of her citizens in Asia to remain ultimately unpunished. Hence all his efforts were directed toward the formation of an army capable of contending, not only in numbers, but in discipline, with those of Rome; and with this view he armed his barbarian troops after the Roman fashion, and endeavored to train them up in that discipline of which he had so strongly felt the effect in the preceding contest. In these attempts he was doubtless assisted by the refugees of the Marian party, who had accompanied Fimbria into Asia, and on the defeat of that general by Sulla had taken refuge with the King of Pontus. At their instigation, also, Mithridates sent an embassy to Sertorius, who was still maintaining his ground in Spain, and concluded an alliance with him against their common enemies. But it was the death of Nicomedes III., king of Bithynia, at the beginning of B.C. 74, that brought matters to a crisis, and became the immediate occasion of the war which both parties had long felt to be inevitable. That monarch left his dominions by will to the Roman people, and Bithynia was accordingly declared a Roman province; but Mithridates asserted that the late king had left a legitimate son by his wife Nysa, whose pretensions he immediately prepared to support by his arms. The forces with which Mithridates was now prepared to take the field were such as might inspire him with no unreasonable confidence of victory. He had assembled an army of 120,000 foot-soldiers, armed and disciplined in the Roman manner, and 16,000 horse, besides a hundred scythed chariots. His fleet, also, was so far superior to any that the Romans could oppose to him as to give him the almost undisputed command of the sea. These preparations, however, appear to have delayed him so long that the season was far advanced before he was able to take the field, and both the Roman Consuls, L. Licinius Lucullus and M. Aurelius Cotta, had arrived in Asia. Neither of them, however, was able to oppose his first irruption. He traversed almost the whole of Bithynia without encountering any resistance; and when at length Cotta ventured to give him battle under the walls of Chalcedon, his army and fleet were totally defeated. Mithridates now proceeded to lay siege to Cyzicus both by sea and land. But Lucullus, who had advanced from Phrygia to the relief of Cotta, and followed Mithridates to Cyzicus, took possession of an advantageous position near the camp of the king, where he almost entirely cut him off from receiving supplies by land, while the storms of the winter prevented him from depending on those by sea. Hence it was not long before famine began to make itself felt in the camp of Mithridates, and all his assaults upon the city having been foiled by