Egypt's independence during the last century of Ptolemaic rule has been exercised under Rome's protection and at Rome's discretion.

Rome for much of the period has been content to support a dynasty that has had no overseas possession except Cyprus after 96 BCE (the year in which Cyrene had been bequeathed to Rome by Ptolemy Apion) and no ambitions threatening Roman interests or security.

Ptolemy XII, whose quasi-legitimate and perhaps questionable royal status compels him to depend heavily upon Rome for support for his throne, is in 76 crowned in Alexandria according to Egyptian rites.

Sertorius, contemptuously calling Pompey Sulla's pupil, proves himself more than a match for his adversaries: he razes Lauron, a city allied to Rome, after a battle in which Pompey's forces are ambushed and defeated; he nearly captures Pompey at the battle of Sucro when Pompey decides to fight Sertorius without waiting for Metellus Pius; but is indecisively beaten at Saguntum.

However, Pompey writes to Rome for reinforcements, without which, he says, he and Metellus Pius will be driven out of Hispania.

C. Scribonius Curio, tribune of the plebs in 90 BCE, had later served under Lucius Cornelius Sulla in Greece as a legate in Asia during the campaign to restore the abandoned kingdoms of Mithridates.

He had laid siege to the tyrant Artistion, who had taken position on the Acropolis, during the attack on Athens.

Elected consul in 76 BCE with Gnaeus Octavius, he has come to Macedonia in 75 as Roman proconsul.

He successfully fights the Dardani, the Scordisci, and the Moesi, for which he wins a military triumph.

He is the first Roman general to penetrate to the Danube.

Mithridates II of Parthia, though beset by insurrections and border wars, had continued to control Iran and northern Mesopotamia until his death in 88, after which rival dynastic claimants began fighting for major territories.

The confusion ends in about 76/75 BCE, when the octogenarian king Sanatruces (perhaps a son of Mithridates I) is set on the Parthian throne by the central Asian tribe of the Sacaraucae Scythians, or Saka.

Pompey gains the upper hand in Hispania from 75 BCE on, and he and Metellus begin to capture city after city.

Though he is still able to win significant victories, Sertorius is losing the war, and his authority over his men has declined.

Cicero, like Julius Caesar, had grown up in a time of civil unrest and war.

Sulla’s victory in the first of a series of civil wars has led to a new constitutional framework that undermines libertas (liberty), the fundamental value of the Roman Republic.

His reforms have nonetheless strengthened the position of the equestrian class, contributing to that class’s growing political power.

Cicero is both an Italian eques and a novus homo, but he is, more importantly, a Roman constitutionalist.

His social class and loyalty to the Republic ensure that he will "command the support and confidence of the people as well as the Italian middle classes."

The fact that the optimates faction never truly accepts Cicero will undermine his efforts to reform the Republic while preserving the constitution.

He is able nevertheless to successfully ascend the Roman cursus honorum, holding each magistracy at or near the youngest possible age, becoming, at age thirty-one, quaestor in 75; he spends the year in Sicily.

Lucullus had stayed in Asia after a peace had been agreed between Rome and Pontus, and collected the financial penalty Sulla had imposed upon the province for its revolt; however, he had tried to lessen the burden that these impositions created.

Returning to Rome in 80 BCE, he had been elected curule aedile for 79, along with his brother Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, and gave splendid games.

The most obscure part of Lucullus' public career is the year he spent as Praetor in Rome, followed by his command of Roman Africa, which probably lasted the usual two-year span for this province in the post-Sullan period.

Plutarch's biography entirely ignores this period, 78 BCE to 75 BCE, jumping from Sulla's death to Lucullus' consulate.

However Cicero briefly mentions his praetorship followed by the African command, while the surviving Latin biography, far briefer but more even as biography than Plutarch, comments that he "ruled Africa with the highest degree of justice".

This command is significant in showing Lucullus performing the regular, less glamorous, administrative duties of a public career in the customary sequence and, given his renown as a Philhellene, for the regard he showed for subject peoples who were not Greek.

Bithynia has come increasingly under the control of Rome, although the decade following the restoration of Nicomedes IV has been relatively peaceful.

Young Gaius Julius Caesar, sent in 80 BCE, to raise a fleet using Bithynia's resources, had dallied so long with the King that a rumor of a homosexual relationship had surfaced, leading to the disparaging title, "the Queen of Bithynia", an allegation of which Caesar's political enemies will make much use later in his life.

Nicomedes, like Attalus of Pergamon, bequeaths his entire kingdom to Romei n 74 BCE as one of his last acts as king of Bithynia.

The Roman Senate quickly votes it as a new province.

Rome's old enemy Mithridates VI has other plans for Bithynia, however, and Nicomedes’ death and bequest lead directly to the Third Mithridatic War.

The Romans, after the brief so-called Second Mithridatic War ended in 82 BCE without any territorial gains by either side, had begun securing the coastal region of Lycia and Pamphylia from pirates and established Roman control over Pisidia and Lycaonia.

The Cilician pirates have not been completely defeated however, and Mithridates signs an alliance with them.

He is also allied with the government of Quintus Sertorius in Spain and with his help reorganizes some of his troops in the Roman legionary pattern with short stabbing swords.

In joining those two threats into a unity much larger than its parts, Mithridates has the serious potential of overturning Roman power.

Mithridates has meanwhile forged a strong alliance of his son-in-law, Tigranes, under whom the country has become the strongest state in the Roman East.

At its height, the Armenian Empire extends from the Pontic Alps (in modern northeastern Turkey) to Mesopotamia, and from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean.

Tigranes, apparently invading territories as far away as Ecbatana, has taken the title king of kings which, at this time, according to their coins, even the Parthian kings do not assume.

He is called "Tigranes the Great" by many Western historians and writers, such as Plutarch.

The "King of Kings" never appears in public without having four kings attending him.

Cicero, referring to his success in the east, said that he "made the Republic of Rome tremble before the prowess of his arms.”