obliged to flee into the interior. The movement was believed to
have died away when he suddenly reappeared at the head of the new
"citizens of the city of the sun,"(33) in other words, of the slaves
whom he had called to freedom en masse, mastered the Lydian towns of
Thyatira and Apollonis as well as a portion of the Attalic townships,
and summoned bands of Thracian free-lances to join his standard.
The struggle was serious. There were no Roman troops in Asia;
the Asiatic free cities and the contingents of the client-princes
of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, could not
withstand the pretender; he penetrated by force of arms into Colophon,
Samos, and Myndus, and already ruled over almost all his father's
kingdom, when at the close of 623 a Roman army landed in Asia.
Its commander, the consul and -pontifex maximus- Publius Licinius
Crassus Mucianus, one of the wealthiest and at the same time one of
the most cultivated men in Rome, equally distinguished as an orator
and as a jurist, was about to besiege the pretender in Leucae, but
during his preparations for that purpose allowed himself to be surprised
and defeated by his too-much-underrated opponent, and was made a prisoner
in person by a Thracian band. But he did not allow such an enemy
the triumph of exhibiting the Roman commander-in-chief as a captive;
he provoked the barbarians, who had captured him without knowing
who he was, to put him to death (beginning of 624), and the consular
was only recognised when a corpse. With him, as it would seem, fell
Ariarathes king of Cappadocia. But not long after this victory
Aristonicus was attacked by Marcus Perpenna, the successor of
Crassus; his army was dispersed, he himself was besieged and taken
prisoner in Stratonicea, and was soon afterwards executed in Rome.
The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance
and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after
the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius (625). The same