Galatia, having passed successively under the rule of Pergamon and Pontus, becomes in 85 a Roman protectorate ruled by puppet kings.

Thebes in Upper Egypt in 85 after three years of hard fighting finally capitulates and is sacked in retribution by government forces.

Archelaus had let his men relax after taking their positions, while Sulla had set his men to work building trenches that he hopes will cut Archelaus' cavalry off from the plains and move the fighting to more boggy areas.

Archelaus, recognizing Sulla's strategy, launches several attacks on the workers and the soldiers sent to protect them.

In one of these, Archelaus' stepson Diogenese distinguishes himself in a valiant attack where he dies gloriously.

In Archelaus' final attack, Sulla routs his troops and carries his camp.

Plutarch says that so many men died that the marshes ran with blood, and almost two hundred years later weapons will still be found sticking out of the marshes.

After the battle, Sulla destroys three Boeotian towns: Anthedon, Darymna, and Halae.

Later, upon meeting fisherman from Halae who gift him fish, Sulla tells them he is surprised there are any of them left, but lets them go and tells them not to worry.

As a result of this incident, the people of Halae are inspired to repopulate their town.

While Sulla is away fighting Mithridates, Rome is suffering from civil disorder at the hands of the two consuls of 85 BCE, Cinna and Carbo, prompting eminent members of society to flee to Sulla's camp, including his wife Metella and their children.

Sulla tries to use his victory at the Battle of Orchomenos to bring about peace with Mithridates so that he can return home, and though Sulla's peace terms are not immediately accepted, Archelaus eventually manages to broker a peace between Sulla and Mithridates.

Hostilities between the Seleucids and Ptolemies have meanwhile enabled the Nabataeans to extend their kingdom northward and to increase their prosperity based on the caravan trade with Arabia and Syria.

The Nabataeans occupy the Hawran, and ...

…shortly after 85 BCE, their king Aretas III rules Damascus and …

…Coele Syria (Lebanon).

Tigranes, following the conclusion of hostilities in 84 BCE, initiates war with the Parthians, whose empire has been temporarily weakened after the death of Mithridates II (about 87 BCE) by internal dissensions and invasions of the Scythians.

He reconquers the valleys he had ceded and lays waste a great part of Media; the kings of Atropatene (Azerbaijan), Gordyene and Adiabene (both on the Upper Tigris River), and Osroene become his vassals.

He also annexes northern Mesopotamia, and in the Caucasus, the kings of Iberia (now Georgia) and Albania accept his suzerainty.

Nicomedes IV, who had fled once again to Rome in the first year of the Mithridatic War, is restored to his throne in Bithynia in 84 BCE.

Fimbria, his troops having defected to Sulla (originally the troops of Flaccus, against whom Fimbria had led a revolt), commits suicide.

Sulla is able to wrap up his affairs in Greece and Asia Minor, and return to Italy.

Cinna, still consul in Rome as the year 84 BCE begins, is faced with minor disturbances among Illyrian tribes.

Perhaps in an attempt to gain experience for an army to act as a counter to Sulla's forces, or to show Sulla that the Senate also has some strength of its own, Cinna raises an army to deal with this Illyrian problem.

Conveniently, the source of the disturbance is located directly between Sulla and another march on Rome.

Cinna had been working to transport his troops across the Adriatic in order to meet Sulla on foreign soil.

The troops are not relishing the upcoming fight, which promises no booty.

Their dissatisfaction is increased when they hear that the second convoy of troops who had been in transport had been shipwrecked in a storm.

Those that survived had returned to their homes.

Cinna orders an assembly in order to terrorize the troops back into obedience and is stoned to death by his own soldiers in a mutiny, his murder not due to his politics, but as more of a brief flare up of the mob spirit within his troops.

Sulla, hearing of Cinna's death, and the ensuing power gap in Rome, gathers his forces in Asia and and prepares for a second march on the capital.