King Mithridates VI of Pontus, after his defeat by Roman General Pompey in 63 BCE, flees with a small army from Colchis (modern Georgia) over the Caucasus Mountains to the Crimea.

Establishing himself at Panticapaeum (Kerch), he makes plans to raise yet another army to invade Italy by way of the Danube.

His eldest living son, Machares, viceroy of Cimmerian Bosporus, is unwilling to aid his father.

Mithridates VI had Machares killed, and Mithridates VI takes the throne of the Bosporan Kingdom.

Mithridates now orders the conscriptions and preparations for war.

His youngest son, Pharnaces II, leads a rebellion against his father, joined by Roman exiles in the core of Mithridates VI's Pontic army.

Mithridates withdraws to the citadel, where, after failing in an attempt to poison himself, Mithridates orders a Gallic mercenary to kill him.

His body is sent to Pompey, who buries his enemy in the rock-cut tombs of his ancestors in Amasia, the old capital of the Kingdom of Pontus.

Pharnaces II makes his submission to Pompey, who confirms him as ruler of the new province he creates, the Bosporus Cimmerius (Crimean region).

Pompey has organized Bithynia (annexed in 74) and Pontus from about 65 to 63 BCE into a single Roman province with its capital at Nicomedia.

Pompey moves south in 63 BCE and establishes Roman supremacy in Phoenicia and Coele-Syria, incorporating these regions into the new Syrian province.

Pompey, seeing in Hyrcanus a means of controlling the temple-state, directs his Roman legions in laying siege to and capturing Jerusalem.

He imposes taxes on the Jews and curtails Jewish dominions, granting virtual autonomy to a group of ten or eleven Hellenized cities in Syria and Palestine, henceforth to be known as the Decapolis.

The Romans intend the league to be a means of mutual protection and security against the Greek cities’ Semitic neighbors.

He places the league under the jurisdiction of the newly appointed governor of Syria.

Pompey restores Hyrcanus to the high priesthood and some semblance of civil authority, but without the title of king adopted by his predecessors.

Thus, eighty years of independent Jewish sovereignty end, and a period of Roman dominion begins.

Gadara is the original capital of the league, whose other Hellenistic cities Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (5.74) lists as …

…Abila (Raphana), …

…Scythopolis (modern Bet She'an, Israel), …

…Hippos, …

…Dion, …

…Pella, …