had a third son from him and instructed a young man to apply for the throne of Bithynia (or, more likely, the Cappadocian throne, see note) from the Roman senate. He sent Laodice to Rome to testify that he was Nicomedes' son. When Mithridates heard about this, he sent Gordius to Rome to legitimise his enthronement of Ariarathes IX in Cappadocia by claiming this man was a descendant of Ariarathes V of Cappadocia, who had been an ally of Rome and who died in 130 BC when he supported Rome in a war against Eumenes III of Pergamon. The senate saw the scheming by both kings. It ordered Mithridates to leave Cappadocia and, "to console him", also ordered Nicomedes III to leave Paphlagonia. The text of a decree issued in 102 B.C by the city of Delphi has survived. It concerned the assignment of tasks for thirty slaves which king Nicomedes and queen Laodice provided when the city sent delegates to them to ask them for slaves. The decree also made arrangements for honouring Nicomedes and Laodice. It provided for the erection of a statue of the king and one of queen in the most prominent place in the temple of Pythian Apollo and for the grant to the two monarchs and their descendants of proxeny, priority of access to the oracle of Delphi and in receiving justice, tax exemption, privileged seating at the city's games and other privileges that were given to other proxenoi and benefactors of the city who were given same rights as its citizens, except for public office, and free trade in the city. Diodorus Siculus wrote that when Nicomedes III was asked to provide troops for the consul Gaius Marius during the Cimbrian War with the Cimbri and Teutones in Gallia Transalpina in 104 BC, he turned down the request, saying in his reply that "most of the Bithynians had been taken away as slaves by the tax-collectors, and were dispersed throughout the provinces." The Roman senate acted on this information and decreed that "no freeman belonging to any of the Roman allies should in any province be forced to be a slave, and that the praetors should take care to see that they were all set free." Notes References Sources Primary sources Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, v. 12, books 33-40 (Loeb Classical Library), Loeb, 1989; Granius Licinianus, Grani Liciniani Quae Supersunt (Classic Reprint),Forgotten