Then, under pressure from the men of business who were losing money by the instability of Roman dominion in Asia, Senate and people agreed to supersede Lucullus by a younger man, reckoned the best soldier of the day, and a military pupil of Sulla. This was the famous Gnæus Pompeius, known to us familiarly as Pompey. In 67 he had been commissioned to clear the sea of pirates, and did it effectually. Now, with a combination of civil and military power such as no Roman had yet enjoyed, he took over Lucullus’s army, made short work of Mithradates, and utterly broke up the empire of Tigranes. He overran Syria, the region between the Mediterranean and the desert stretching to the Euphrates, penetrated to Judæa and took Jerusalem. This famous event is the first in the long and sad story of the relations of Rome with Judæa. At Jericho, before he reached the holy city, he received the dispatch which told him of the death of Mithradates, the removal from the scene of one who had been for thirty years Rome’s most dangerous enemy. The result of the efforts of Lucullus and Pompey was the establishment of a frontier system in the East which may be said to have held good for the rest of Roman history. The principle of it is not easy to explain; but if the reader will take a map and trace the river Euphrates from its sources in western Armenia to the Arabian desert, and then make it clear to himself that all within that line was to be either Roman or under Roman suzerainty, he will be able to form some idea of its importance in history. There were to be three new Roman provinces: Pontus with Bithynia in the north of Asia Minor, Cilicia on its south-eastern coast, and Syria, the coast region from Cilicia southwards to the frontier of Egypt. But between these and the Euphrates there were two kingdoms, Cappadocia and Galatia, and other smaller ones, which formed _a Roman sphere of influence_ where Rome herself could not as yet be constantly present. Imperfect as this system seems, it was quite strong enough to spread the prestige of the Roman Empire far and wide in the East, and the great king of Parthia, beyond the Euphrates, might well begin to be alarmed for his own safety.