Mithridates, knowing that the game was over, was desperate to keep hold of his kingdom. Sulla, nervous of his enemies back in Italy, was eager to head home. In return for accepting controls on his offensive capability and the surrender of all the territory he had conquered, the murderer of eighty thousand Italians was rewarded by Sulla with a peck on his cheek. No one had ever emerged so unscathed from a war with the Republic before. Beaten he may have been, but Mithridates still sat on the throne of Pontus. The time would come when Rome would regret that he had not been finished off for good.
