Glabrio, who was to take up in the stead of Lucullus the chief command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had remained stationary in the west of Asia Minor and, while instigating the soldiers by various proclamations against Lucullus, had not entered on the supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain it.
Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done; the Pontic cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in Bithynia and Cappadocia.

Pompeius had been led by the piratical war to proceed with his army to Asia Minor; nothing seemed more natural than to invest him with the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war, to which he himself had long aspired.

But the democratic party did not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of its general, and carefully avoided taking the initiative in the matter.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional position of the already too-powerful general.

Pompeius himself retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps he would in reality have returned home after fulfilling the commission which he had received, but for the occurrence of an incident unexpected by all parties.
The Manillian Law One Gaius Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignificant man had when tribune of the people by his unskilful projects of legislation lost favour both with the aristocracy and with the democracy.
In the hope of sheltering himself under the wing of the powerful general, if he should procure for the latter what every one knew that he eagerly desired but had not the boldness to ask, Manilius proposed to the burgesses to recall the governors Glabrio from Bithynia and Pontus and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and to entrust their offices as well as the conduct of the war in the east, apparently without any fixed limit as to time and at any rate with the freest authority to conclude peace and alliance, to the proconsul of the seas and coasts in addition to his previous office (beg.

of 688).