Mithridatic Wars (2.9-2.10)

Not long afterward dissensions broke out among the Macedonians. Antigonus expelled Laomedon from Syria and assumed the government himself. He had with him one Mithridates, a scion of the royal house of Persia. Antigonus had a dream that he had sowed a field with gold, and that Mithridates reaped it and carried it off to Pontus. He accordingly arrested him, intending to put him to death, but Mithridates escaped with six horsemen, fortified himself in a stronghold of Cappadocia, where many joined him in consequence of the decay of the Macedonian power, and possessed himself of the whole of Cappadocia and of the neighboring countries along the Euxine. This great power, which he had built up, he left to his children. They reigned one after another until the sixth Mithridates in succession from the founder of the house, and he went to war with the Romans. Since there were kings of this house of both Cappadocia and Pontus, I judge that they divided the government, some ruling one country and some the other.

At any rate a king of Pontus, the Mithridates surnamed Euergetes (the Benefactor), who was the first of them inscribed as a friend of the Roman people, and who even sent some ships and a small force of auxiliaries to aid them against the Carthaginians, invaded Cappadocia as though it were a foreign country. He was succeeded by his son, Mithridates, surnamed Dionysus, and also Eupator. The [*] Romans ordered him to restore Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, [*] who had fled to them and who seemed to have a better title to the government of that country than Mithridates; or perhaps they distrusted the growing power of that great monarchy and thought it would be better to have it divided into several parts. Mithridates obeyed the order, but he put an army at the service of Socrates, surnamed Chrestus, the brother of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who overthrew the latter and usurped the government. This Nicomedes [*] was the son of Nicomedes the son of Prusias, who had received [*] the kingdom of Bithynia as his patrimony at the hands of the Romans. Simultaneously Mithraas and Bagoas drove out Ariobarzanes, whom the Romans had confirmed as king of Cappadocia, and installed Ariarthes in his place.