Successianus, repelled the attack; and the assailants, fearing the arrival of the other Roman garrisons, hastily withdrew, for which they had difficulty in procuring the necessary transports. But the plan was not given up; in the next year they came back, and, as the commandant had meanwhile been changed, the fortress surrendered. The Borani, who this time had retained the Bosporan vessels and had them manned by pressed mariners and Roman captives, possessed themselves of the coast far and wide, and reached as far as Trapezus. Into this well fortified and strongly garrisoned town all had fled, and the barbarians were not in a position for a real siege. But the leadership of the Romans was bad, and the military discipline so on the decline that not even the walls were occupied; so the barbarians scaled them by night, without encountering resistance, and in the great and rich city enormous booty, including a number of ships, fell into their hands. They returned successful from the far distant land to the Maeotis. [Sidenote: To Bithynia.] Excited by this success, a second expedition of other but neighbouring Scythian bands was in the following winter directed against Bithynia. It is significant of the unsettled state of things that the instigator of this movement was Chrysogonus, a Greek of Nicomedia, and that he was highly honoured by the barbarians for its successful result. This expedition was undertaken--as the necessary number of ships was not to be procured--partly by land, partly by water; it was only in the neighbourhood of Byzantium that the pirates succeeded in possessing themselves of a considerable number of fishing-boats, and so they arrived along the Asiatic coast at Chalcedon, whose strong garrison on this news ran off. Not merely this town fell into their hands, but also along the coast Nicomedia, Chios, Apamea; in the interior Nicaea and Prusa; Nicomedia and Nicaea they burnt down, and reached the river Rhyndacus. Thence they sailed home, laden with the treasures of the rich land and of its considerable cities. [Sidenote: To Greece.]