Philip I Philadelphus, king of the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom, had established himself in Antiochia after 92 BCE and has survived attacks from younger brother Demetrius III Eucaerus.

Seleucid ruler Demetrius III had defeated the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus in battle, but the hostility of the Jewish population had forced him to withdraw.

While attempting to dethrone his brother, Philip I Philadelphus, he is defeated by the Arabs and the Parthian Empire, and taken prisoner.

He will be kept in confinement in Parthia by Mithridates II until his death in 88.

Nicomedes, at the instigation of Roman envoys, now attacks Pontic territory.

Ptolemy X Alexander, the Macedonian ruler of Hellenistic Egypt’, is expelled in 89 by an insurrection of the people of Alexandria, supported by the army, who believe that he had assassinated the dowager queen Cleopatra III a dozen years earlier.

The origins of Ravenna are uncertain.

The first settlement is variously attributed to (and then has seen the co-presence of) the Thessalians, the Etruscans and the Umbrians, afterwards its territory was settled also by the Senones, especially the southern countryside of the city (that wasn't part of the lagoon), the Ager Decimanus.

Ravenna consists of houses built on piles on a series of small islands in a marshy lagoon—a situation similar to Venice several centuries later.

The Romans ignore it during their conquest of the Po River Delta, but later accept it into the Roman Republic as a federated town in 89 BCE.

The precise details of Verona's early history remain a mystery.

The origin of the name Verona is unknown also.

One theory has it as a city of the Euganei, who were obliged to give it up to the Cenomani (550 BCE).

From the beginning of the Roman conquest of the northeastern Italy (about 300 BCE), the relationship between Verona and Rome has usually been one of friendship or alliance.

In the the last decade of the second century BCE, the citizens had fought alongside the Romans against the invading Teutons and Cimbri.

The city derives importance from possessing the main ford in the area, situated on the Adige river about sixty miles (one hundred kilometers) west of modern Venice.

Verona becomes a Roman colonia in 89 BCE.

The other consul, Strabo (other consul) left in sole command, wins a decisive engagement against an Italian Army of sixty thousand men.

After this success, he forces the surrender of Asculum after Sulla captures the city by setting the wooden breastwork on fire.

Sulla moves to the offensive, defeating a Samnite army and recovering some of the major cities in Campania.

Pompeii, which has taken part in the war that the towns of Campania have initiated against Rome, is in 89 BCE besieged by Sulla.

Mithridates of Pontus, after protesting in vain to the Romans, finally declares war in 88, overrunning Bithynia and Cappadocia and invading Roman territory.

Tapping into local discontent with the Roman, he attracts the sympathy of the natives by arranging a general massacre of the Roman and Italian residents, planned scrupulously to take place on the same day, in several towns scattered over Asia Minor (eighty thousand are said to have perished), in order that the Greek cities, as his accessories in the crime, should feel irrevocably committed to the struggle against Rome.

Nicomedes and the Roman armies are defeated and flung back to the coasts of the Propontis and the Aegean and the Roman province of Asia comes under Pontian occupation.

The East is seen by the Romans as a province providing an abundance of gold and silver.

As such, two powerful Romans, Gaius Marius and the Consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla aim at command in the region.

Sulla flees the intrigues of Rome to Anatolia, where he commences the First Mithridatic War.

Tigranes supports Mithridates but is careful not to become directly involved in the war.

Ptolemy X Alexander, after gathering a mercenary force in Syria-Palestine, returns in 88, but when he plunders the temple-tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria to pay his troops, the infuriated populace of the city expels him again.

Fleeing with his queen Berenice to Lycia in Asia Minor, he is killed at sea between Lycia and Cyprus.

Ptolemy IX Lathyros returns from Cyprus to reclaim the throne.

Lacking a queen, he brings back his brother's widow Berenice, who is also his own daughter, and associates her on the throne with himself, though he soon becomes sole ruler.