Flaccus threatened to send him back to Rome whether he liked it or
not, and when the other consequently made some abusive reply deprived
him of his command. Fimbria set out upon his return with the worst
possible will and on reaching the soldiers at Byzantium greeted them
as if he were upon the point of departure, asked for a letter, and
lamented his fate, pretending to have suffered undeservedly. He
advised them to remember the help he had given them and to be on their
guard; and his words contained a hidden reference to Flaccus, implying
that he had designs upon them. Finding that they accepted his story
and were well disposed toward him and suspicious of the general, he
went on still further and incited them to anger by accusing Flaccus of
various faults, finally stating that he would betray them for money;
hence the soldiers drove away Thermus, who had been assigned to take
charge of them. (Valesius, ib.)

4. ¶Fimbria destroyed many men not to serve the best ends of justice
nor to secure the greatest benefit to Rome but through bad temper and
lust of slaughter. A proof is that he once ordered many crosses to be
made, to which he was wont to bind them and wear out their lives by
cruel treatment, and then when these were found to be many more than
those who were to be put to death he commanded some of the bystanders
to be arrested and affixed to the crosses that were in excess, that
they might not seem to have been made in vain. (Valesius, p. 653.)

5. ¶The same man on capturing Ilium despatched as many persons as he
could, sparing none, and all but burned the whole city to the ground.
He took the place not by storm but by guile. After bestowing some
praise on them for the embassy sent to Sulla and saying that it made
no difference with which one of the two they ratified a truce (for he
and Sulla were both Romans) he thereupon went in among them as among