Despite the losses at Chaeronea, Mithridates’s Black Sea empire still had manpower left to draw on. Sulla was forced back on campaign when Archelaus sailed back over to Greece at the head of another army 120,000 strong. The two armies met at Orchomenus, and this time Sulla’s troops wavered in the early stages of the fight. But Sulla confronted a cohort in retreat and yelled, “For me, O Romans, an honorable death here; but you, when men ask you where you betrayed your commander, remember to tell them, at Orchomenus.” Shamed into action, the men turned and fought. The Pontic army was once again
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