Roman government declared war. During the year B.C. 88 fortune was almost uniformly in favour of Mithradates, and two Roman imperators were being led about as prisoners in the king's train.
Immediately there was a movement throughout all the Greek cities, with some insignificant exceptions, in his favour; and later in the same year, B.C. 88, he issued instructions to the cities—now mostly controlled by his own officers, that all Latin-speaking residents should be put to death on a fixed day. The order was almost universally obeyed, and a massacre took place of almost unexampled horror, no respect being shown to sex, age, or character, or the protection of altar or sanctuary. From the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, of Asclepius at Pergamus, of Hestia at Caunes, of Concord at Tralles, the suppliants were torn away and slain. At Caunes children were killed in the presence of their mothers, wives in that of their husbands. At Adrymittium in Mysia, they were driven into the sea and drowned, at Tralles a Paphlagonian captain and soldiers were hired to carry out the order of death. The massacre, in fact, was an outburst of deadly vengeance for wrongs long silently borne and an indulgence of the long-pent-up anger of an oppressed people. In a few places the right of sanctuary was respected for a time, and some Italians managed to escape to Rhodes, which almost alone of the states in or near Asia held aloof from Mithradates, though it had many grievances against Rome. The loss of its Paraea (or territory on the mainland) and the diminution of its trade by the opening of Delos as
