numerous jury (Asconius on Cicero).[1] This was a great improvement; the judges indeed were still bad enough; yet they were after all infinitely better than those taken from the senate. Moreover Pompey during his consulship, with the acquiescence of Crassus, made another great change. He restored the tribuneship to what it had been, so that the tribunes might even again propose laws, it being reserved to the augurs alone to interpose; besides which, the tribunes were to be again allowed to get curule offices when they had served their time, as had been the custom before the days of Sylla. Pompey saw that Sylla had made a blunder, and he wished to root out the evil at once, without being aware that it was only by going too far that the mischief had been done: for it is ever the fault of men of moderate abilities when in power, that they are always for running into extremes, and keeping no bounds. But any essential reform was in fact impossible, the tribuneship being a monstrous nuisance which it was necessary to abate. This happened during the consulship of Pompey in the year 682; the further changes down to Cicero’s consulship (689), I leave until then. The war with Mithridates broke out almost instantly after the death of Nicomedes, many provocations having been given on the side of the Romans: its immediate cause was the alliance of Mithridates with Sertorius. He was completely armed for war, as far as could be done by dint of money and great exertions. The rock on which his enterprise was to split, was his having Asiatics under him, he himself also being one; for Mithridates has been overrated in history. Whatever gold in masses could accomplish, he achieved; but it was to little purpose that he was ever sending new armies into the field, a thing which he was enabled to do by spending vast sums: he knew neither how to conduct a campaign nor to fight a battle. He overran Paphlagonia, and burst into Bithynia and Cappadocia, advancing as far as Chalcedon in Bithynia, into which he drove the Roman consul Cotta. His fleet had decided success; for he chased the Roman ships into the harbour, and took them, The Romans had still (it was then the year 678) the old soldiers of Valerius Flaccus, who had now been there for about thirteen years: these men were quite demoralized, their ranks were thinned by death, and their tempers soured by their having been kept as it were in banishment. Mithridates therefore, after taking Chalcedon and Heraclea, had the way before him open to the most wealthy and powerful town of Cyzicus, a place which maintained its fidelity to the Romans with the same determination which it had already displayed in former campaigns. He had posted his troops on the island upon which part of the city is built, being connected with the mainland only by a dyke: from this island and from the sea, he battered the town with all his engines. The people of Cyzicus, alone, and without any help from the Romans, beat off all the attacks of the