Archelaus, the general of Mithradates, was in occupation of Phocis and Boeotia, and in the summer of B.C. 86 was defeated with great slaughter at Chaeroneia. He still, however, had command of the sea, and retreating to Chalcis carried on a series of piratical descents upon the coast of the Peloponnese and the western islands. It was not till Sulla's legate, Lucullus, had collected a fleet from Egypt, Rhodes, Cyprus, and other islands that the Romans were able to stop these piracies. Meanwhile Greece had to endure both them and the severities of Sulla, who not only punished those Athenian citizens who had remained during the Pontic occupation, but mulcted many other states. Half the territory which had been left to Thebes was now devoted to repay the treasures he had taken from the temples at Delphi, Olympia, and Epidaurus. Oropus—taken from Athens—was assigned in similar payment to the oracle of Amphiaraus in Boeotia, and works of art from many places were shipped to Rome. Among other valuables it is specially recorded that Sulla seized the library of Apellicon, containing the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus. The cowed inhabitants tried to propitiate him by paying him honours as a benefactor, and he left the Hellenic world full of his statues, his trophies, and his devastations.
The swift change of front on the part of the Greek cities in Asia was no less sudden and complete. The king made one more attempt to retain Greece. He sent an army of seventy thousand men under Dorilaus into Boeotia later in the same year (B.C. 86)
