Lucullus, having restoring the Seleucid kingdom, now intends to confront Mithridates in Pontus, but comes under attack from powerful interests in Rome whose hopes of profit from the Asian conquests have been thwarted by Lucullus's judicious management of financial matters.

During the winter of 68-67 BCE at Nisibis, Lucullus’ authority over his army is more seriously undermined by the efforts of his young brother-in-law Publius Clodius Pulcher, apparently acting in the interests and pay of Pompey, who is eager to succeed Lucullus in the eastern command.

The long campaigning and hardships that Lucullus' troops have endured for years, combined with a perceived lack of reward in the form of plunder, have led the troops to become gradually insubordinate.

Encouraged by Clodius Pulcher, this discontent has led to three successive outbreaks of mutiny among the legions in 68-67 BCE.

Despite his continuous success in battle, Lucullus has still not captured either Mithridates or Tigranes.

Tarsus, a prosperous port city on the Tarsus (Cydnus) River in the heart of the fertile Cilician plain in southern Turkey, about two hundred and fifty miles (four hundred kilometers) southeast of modern Ankara, was already largely influenced by Greek language and culture by the time Alexander the Great passed through with his armies in 333 BCE, and as part of the Seleucid Empire it has become increasingly Hellenized.

Strabo praises the cultural level of Tarsus in this period with its philosophers, poets and linguists.

The schools of Tarsus rival Athens and Alexandria.

2 Maccabees (4:30) records its revolt in about 171 BCE against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had renamed the town Antiochia on the Cydnus.

In his time, the library of Tarsus held two hundred thousand books, including a huge collection of scientific works.

The name didn't last, however, due to the confusion of so many cities named Antioch.

Pompey, having in 67 cleared the sea of the pirate menace to Rome’s grain supply, spends the rest of that year and the beginning of the next visiting the cities of Cilicia and Pamphylia, and providing for the government of newly conquered territories.

He subjects Tarsus to Rome, and in 67 BCE it becomes capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, the metropolis where the governor resides.

Those cities of Crete yet unconquered by Metellus in 67 BCE appeal to Pompey, who has control over the Mediterranean to eliminate piracy under the proposal of Gabinius.

The Cretans offer to surrender to Pompey, perhaps believing he will be less harsh than Metellus.

Pompey ignores Metellus' command over the island and accepts the Cretans’ surrender.

Pompey orders Metellus to leave the island with his troops, but Metellus persists, defeating the island after a ferocious three-year campaign and making it a province of Rome.

The Roman conquest of Ierapetra occurs about the same time as that of Knossos, Cydonia and Lato.

Remains of the Roman harbor today can still be seen in the shallow bay.

At the archaeological sites, there seems to be little evidence of widespread damage associated with the transfer to Roman power: a single palatial house complex seems to have been razed.

Ierapetra’s importance as independent state ends in 67 BCE when this last free city in Crete is conquered by the Romans and is surpassed by …

…the city of Gortyn, which seems to have been pro-Roman and will later be rewarded by being made the capital of the joint province of Creta et Cyrenaica, a senatorial province of the Roman empire created in 20 BCE and comprising the island of Crete and the region of Cyrenaica in north Africa (modern Eastern Libya).

Marcus Aurelius Cotta, who had returned to Rome in 70 BCE for his successful prosecution of the Third Mithridatic War, had at first been widely acclaimed for his victory at Heraclea.

Accused, however, around 67 BCE by Gaius Papirius Carbo of appropriation of war booty and convicted of the offense, he is expelled from the Senate.

Julius Caesar, on his return to Rome in 67 BCE, marries Pompeia, a granddaughter of Sulla.

The tribune Aulus Gabinius finally forces a bill through the popular assembly in 67 empowering Pompey to settle the pirate problem, giving Pompey command of the Mediterranean and all the land within fifty miles (eight-one kilometers) of its coast as a means of controlling the depredations of pirates.

The object of another Gabinian measure, which checks the lending of money to foreign ambassadors at Rome, is to prevent the bribing of senators.

By another measure of Gabinius, the Senate is ordered to give audience to foreign envoys on certain fixed days (February 1 - March 1).

Pompey, in his absence from Rome in 66 BCE, has been nominated to succeed Lucullus as commander in the war in the east.

Pompey's command—proposed by the tribune Gaius Manilius, supported by Caesar, and justified by Cicero in pro Lege Manilia—is, like the Gabinian law, opposed by the aristocracy, but is carried nonetheless.

The majority of Lucullus' troops now openly refuse to obey his commands, but agree to defend Roman positions from attack.

Lucullus, a plebeian noble, is incensed at the prospect of his replacement by a "new man" such as Pompey.

The outgoing commander and his replacements trade insults.

Lucullus calls Pompey a "vulture" who feeds from the work of others.

Lucullus is referring not merely to Pompey's new command against Mithridates, but also his claim to have finished the war against Spartacus.

Lucullus returns to Rome.

Ptolemy XII Auletes continues to depend heavily upon Roman support for his quasi-legitimate royal status as the Macedonian king in Hellenistic Egypt.

Hyrcanus seeks counsel from Antipater, satrap of the neighboring province of Idumaea (the former Kingdom of Edom, whose inhabits had been conquered and forcibly converted, among others, to Judaism by Hyrcanus' grandfather John Hyrcanus I).

Antipater, seeing in the weak-willed Hyrcanus a possible tool for his own desire to control Judaea, induces him to wage war on Aristobulus.

Tigranes II of Armenia, under whom the country has become the strongest state in the Roman East, has penetrated as far south as Ptolemais (modern 'Akko, Israel), but in 66 BCE the Roman general Pompey finally defeats him.

Pompey receives him graciously and gives him back his kingdom in exchange for Syria and other southern conquests.