In Asia, the Bithynian monarchy had been broken up, the last king, Nicomedes, having left his realms by will to the Romans. Mithridates had in Western Asia, Pontus and part of Cappadocia; and on the shores of the Black Sea, his dominions were still wider: the north of Armenia, the country north of Erzerum, Georgia (Iberia), Imeritia (Colchis), Daghestan, and also the peoples south of the Cuban were tributary to him; the Bosporus and the Greek towns in the Crimea were to all intents and purposes provinces of his empire; his influence was even felt as far as the Dniester, on the banks of which his supremacy was acknowledged, and his connexions moreover reached beyond the Danube into Thrace, even to the Roman frontier. The kingdom of the Seleucidæ had quite fallen to pieces, the disputes about the succession, after the death of Demetrius, having split the country into a number of small principalities which carried on feuds against each other with great fury: at last, Antiochus, a petty prince on the coast who could hardly keep his ground, applies in vain for help to the Romans. The other districts, longing for peace, are glad to acknowledge Tigranes as their king, who rules from the frontier of Erzerum as far as Cœle-Syria, over Great Armenia, Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, Hyrcania, Kurdistan, and part of Cilicia: his empire yielded him very rich revenues. In the East, it bordered on the Parthians, who possessed nearly the whole of modern Persia and Babylonia; in Eastern Persia and part of Khorassan, the kings of Bactria may at that time have been still in existence, unless the Scythians had already conquered these countries. Media also did not perhaps belong to the Parthians even quite down to the breaking out of Pompey’s war. Indeed their empire was very loosely connected; the Parthian sovereigns were in the full meaning of the word kings of kings, the provinces being ruled by their once tributary kings. The towns on the coasts of Phœnicia, and in Cœle-Syria and Judæa, were free: the princes (tetrarchs) of Jerusalem, of the race of the Maccabees, were independent, and even bore the title of kings. In Cœle-Syria, numbers of such tetrarchies had been formed. Egypt under the Ptolemies was confined to its narrowest bounds, from the river of Egypt to Elephantine; yet it was very rich. Its kings had still a yearly revenue of 12,500 talents, as they were the sole owners of the land. But the state was exceedingly weak and disorganised, being under the most wretched and contemptible government. In Asia Minor, the Romans had of latter years acquired through P. Servilius Isauricus Pisidia, Lycia, and Pamphylia: these countries had until then been free; the first, since the war with Antiochus; the two last, since the settlement of the Rhodian affairs. Part of Cilicia was yet independent, each place by itself: here were the real nests of pirates. Cyprus was a dependency of the Ptolemies, but under kings of its own.