His armies had invaded Greece in 87 B.C. and had even occupied Athens, while the Greek cities of Asia Minor had willingly submitted to him: the whole Hellenic world was fast coming under his sway. Then Sulla had expelled his generals from Greece proper, and had forced him to accept such conditions of peace as kept him quiet for a few years. But when Sulla was dead he started on a fresh career of conquest, and once more the Roman protectorate of Greek civilisation was broken down. For a time it looked as if no power could restore it. The sea was swarming with pirates from Cilicia, who constantly harassed the Roman fleets, and ventured even as far as Italy, snapping up prisoners for sale as slaves in the great slave-market at Delos. And behind Mithradates and these pirates there was another power even more formidable. Tigranes, king of Armenia, had also been extending his dominions southward, and was even in possession of Syria and Judæa at the time of which we are now speaking, 75 B.C. Should the two kings unite their forces and policy, it would be all but impossible for Rome to remain the mistress of the eastern Mediterranean and the Hellenic world. It was another example of Rome’s wonderful good fortune that this alliance was never solidly effected till too late. The Senate, left by Sulla to govern the world, soon showed that it was incapable of grasping the necessity of vigorous action in the East. It was not till 74, four years after Sulla’s death, that they sent out a really capable general with an adequate force. Lucullus, whose name has become a by-word for wealth and luxury, was in his prime a soldier of great ability, and he soon broke the power of Mithradates, who immediately fled for refuge to Tigranes. This made it absolutely necessary to deal with that king also; and Lucullus invaded Armenia and captured the king’s new capital, Tigranocerta. Unluckily, he had not that supreme gift of a great commander which enables him, as it afterwards enabled Cæsar, to lead his men where and when he will; the army mutinied, refusing to go farther into the wild Armenian mountains, the most distant and formidable region a Roman army had as yet penetrated. Lucullus had to retreat.