Accordingly, Mithridates sent
ambassadors to Iberia, with letters to Sertorius and proposals. On his
part he offered to supply money and ships for the war, and he asked
from Sertorius a confirmation of his title to the whole of Asia, which
he had given up to the Romans pursuant to the treaty made with Sulla.
Sertorius assembled a council, which he called a senate, and all the
members advised to accept the king's proposal, and to be well content
with it; they said the king only asked of them a name and an empty
answer touching things that were not in their power, in return for
which they were to receive what they happened to stand most in need
of. But Sertorius would not listen to this; he said he did not grudge
Mithridates having Bithynia and Cappadocia; these were nations that
were accustomed to a king, and the Romans had nothing to do with them;
but the province which belonged to the Romans by the justest of
titles, which Mithridates took from them and kept, from which, after a
contest, he was driven out by Fimbria, and which he gave up by treaty
with Sulla,[161] -that province he would never allow to fall again
into the power of Mithridates; for it was fit that the Roman state
should be extended by his success, not that his success should be
owing to her humiliation. To a generous mind, victory by honest means
was a thing to desire, but life itself was not worth having with
dishonour.
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