were accustomed to a king, and the Romans had nothing to do with them;
but the province which belonged to the Romans by the justest of
titles, which Mithridates took from them and kept, from which, after a
contest, he was driven out by Fimbria, and which he gave up by treaty
with Sulla,[161] -that province he would never allow to fall again
into the power of Mithridates; for it was fit that the Roman state
should be extended by his success, not that his success should be
owing to her humiliation. To a generous mind, victory by honest means
was a thing to desire, but life itself was not worth having with
dishonour.

XXIV. When this was reported to Mithridates he was amazed, and it is
said that he remarked to his friends--what terms, then, will Sertorius
impose when he is seated on the Palatium,[162] if now, when he is
driven to the shores of the Atlantic, he fixes limits to our kingdom,
and threatens us with war if we make any attempt upon Asia? However, a
treaty was made, and ratified by oath, on the following terms:
Mithridates[163] was to have Cappadocia and Bithynia, and Sertorius
was to send him a general and soldiers; and Sertorius was to receive
from Mithridates three thousand talents, and forty ships. Sertorius
sent as general to Asia Marcus Marius, one of the Senators who had
fled to him; and Mithridates, after assisting him to take some of the
Asiatic cities,[164] followed Marius as he entered them with the
fasces and axes, voluntarily taking the second place and the character
of an inferior. Marius restored some of the cities to liberty, and he
wrote to others to announce to them their freedom from taxation
through the power of Sertorius; so that Asia, which was much troubled
by the Publicani,[165] and oppressed by the rapacity and insolence of
the soldiers quartered there, was again raised on the wings of hope,
and longed for the expected change of masters.