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.