command of an expedition against Delos. Successful at first, he was surprised and driven off, with the loss of his whole force, by the Romans under Orobius. Presently, however, the generals of Mithridates reduced the Cyclades. Menophanes (according to Pausanias) was the leader who captured Delos. "Delos was unfortified, and its inhabitants were unarmed. He sailed down upon it with his triremes; he slaughtered both the natives and the resident foreigners; he plundered much of the property belonging to the merchants, and all the objects dedicated to the gods. He further enslaved the women and children; and levelled the town of Delos with the soil" (αὐτὴν ἐς ἔδαφος κατέβαλε τὴν Δῆλον). At a later time the town of Boiae, opposite Cythera, possessed an ancient wooden statue of Apollo. Tradition said that, at the sack of Delos by Menophanes, the image had been cast into the sea, and that the waves had wafted it to the Laconian shore[1].
This event may be placed in 87 B.C. Two inscriptions[2] indicate that, during a brief space, Athens held Delos for the king of Pontus. Both he and his father, Mithridates Euergetes, figure among those who had sent gifts to the Sacred Isle. Its severe doom may have seemed in his eyes the merited recompense of ingratitude.
In 86 B.C. Sulla took Athens; and the peace of 84 B.C. restored Delos to Rome. A little later we
