READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM

BIOGRAPHIKA : UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

THE HISTORY OF PONTUS.

MITHRIDATES, SYLLA, TIGRANES AND POMPEY.

BC 124 - 61

CHAPTER  I. MITHRIDATES

Mithridates, king of Pontus, whose history I am now beginning to relate, and who rendered himself so famous by the war he supported, during almost thirty years, against the Romans, was surnamed Eupator. He was descended from a house which had given a long succession of kings to the kingdom of Pontus. The first, according to some historians, was Artabazus, one of the seven princes that slew the Magi, and set the crown of Persia upon the head of Darius Hystaspes, who rewarded him with the kingdom of Pontus. But, besides that we do not find the name of Artabazus amongst those seven Persians, many reasons induce us to believe, that the prince of whom we speak was the son of Darius, the same who is called Artabarzanes, who was competitor with Xerxes for the throne of Persia, and was made king of Pontus either by his father or his brother, to console him for the preference given to Xerxes. His posterity enjoyed that kingdom during seventeen generations. Mithridates Eupator, of whom we are treating in this place, was the sixteenth from him.

He was but twelve years of age when he began to reign (BC 124). His father, before his death, had appointed him his successor, and had given him his mother for guardian, who was to govern jointly with him. He began his reign by putting his mother and brother to death; and the sequel corresponded but too well with such a beginning. Nothing is said of the first years of his reign, except that one of the Roman generals, whom he had corrupted with money, having surrendered, and put him into possession of Phrygia, it was soon after taken from him by the Romans, which gave birth to his enmity against them.

Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, being dead (BC91). Mithridates caused the two sons he had left behind him to be put to death, though their mother Laodice was his own sister, and placed one of his own sons, at that time very young, upon the throne, giving him the name of Ariarathes, and appointing Gordius his guardian and regent. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, who was apprehensive that this increase of power would put Mithridates into a condition to possess himself also of his dominions in time, thought proper to set up a certain young man (who seemed very fit for acting such a part) as a third son of Ariarathes. He engaged Laodice, whom he had espoused after the death of her first husband, to acknowledge him as such, and sent her to Rome, to assist and support by her presence the claim of this pretended son, whom she carried thither along with her. The cause being brought before the senate, both parties were condemned; and a decree passed, by which the Cappadocians were declared free. But they said they could not be without a king. The senate permitted them to choose whom they thought fit. They elected Ariobarzanes, a nobleman of their nation. Sylla, upon his quitting the office of praetor, was charged with the commission of establishing him upon the throne. That was the pretext assigned for this expedition; but the real motive of it was, to check the enterprises of Mithridates, whose power daily augmenting, gave umbrage to the Romans. Sylla executed his commission the following year (BC 90); and after having defeated a great number of Cappadocians, and a much greater of Armenians, who came to their aid, he expelled Gordius, with the pretended Ariarathes, and set Ariobarzanes in his place.

Whilst Sylla was encamped upon the banks of the Euphrates, a Parthian, named Orobasus, arrived at his camp, deputed from king Arsaces, to demand the alliance and amity of the Romans. Sylla, when he received him at his audience, caused three seats to be placed in his tent, one for Ariobarzanes, who was present, another for Orobasus, and that in the midst for himself. The Parthian king afterwards, offended at his deputy for having acquiesced in this instance of Roman pride, caused him to be put to death. This is the first time the Parthians had any intercourse with the Romans.

Mithridates did not dare at that time to oppose the establishment of Ariobarzanes; but dissembling the mortification that conduct of the Romans gave him, he resolved to take an opportunity of being revenged upon them. In the mean while he engaged in cultivating powerful alliances for the augmentation of his strength; and began with Tigranes, king of Armenia, a very powerful prince. Armenia had at first appertained to the Persians; it came under the Macedonians afterwards; and upon the death of Alexander made part of the kingdom of Syria. Under Antiochus the Great, two of his generals, Artaxius and Zadriadres, with that prince’s permission, established themselves in this province, of which it is probable they were before governors. After the defeat of Antiochus, they adhered to the Romans, who acknowledged them as kings. They had divided Armenia into two parts. Tigranes, of whom we now speak, was descended from Artaxius. He possessed himself of all Armenia, subjected several neighbouring countries by his arms, and thereby formed a very powerful kingdom. Mithridates gave him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage, and engaged him to enter so far into his projects against the Romans, that they agreed Mithridates should have the cities and countries they should conquer for his share, and Tigranes the people, with all the effects ca­pable of being carried away.

The first enterprise and act of hostility was committed by Tigranes, who deprived Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia, of which the Romans had put him into possession, and re­established Ariarathes, the son of Mithridates, in it. Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, happening to die about this time, his eldest son, called also Nicomedes, ought naturally to have succeeded him, and was accordingly proclaimed king. But Mithridates set up his younger brother Socrates against him, who deprived him of the throne by force of arms. The two dethroned kings went to Rome, to implore aid of the senate, who decreed their re-establishment, and sent Manius Aquilius and M. Altinius to put that decree in execution.

They were both re-instated. The Romans advised them to make irruptions into the lands of Mithridates, promising them their support; but neither the one nor the other dared to attack so powerful a prince so near home. At length, however, Nicomedes, urged both by the ambassadors, to whom he had promised great sums for his re-establishment, and by his creditors, Roman citizens settled in Asia, who had lent him very considerable sums for the same purpose, could no longer resist their solicitations. He made incursions upon the lands of Mithridates, ravaged all the flat country as far as the city Amastris, and returned home laden with booty, which he applied in discharging part of his debts.

Mithridates was not ignorant by whose advice Nicomedes had committed this irruption. He might easily have repulsed him, as he had a great number of good troops on foot; but he did not take the field. He was glad to throw the blame on the side of the Romans, and to have a just cause for declaring war against them. He began by making remonstrances to their generals and ambassadors. Pelopidas was at the head of this embassy. He complained of the various contraventions of the Romans to the treaty of alliance subsisting between them and Mithridates, and in particular of the protection granted by them to Nicomedes, his declared enemy. The ambassadors of the latter replied, and made complaints on their side against Mithridates. The Romans, who were unwilling to declare themselves openly at present, gave the man answer in loose and general terms; that the Roman people had no intention that Mithridates and Nicomedes should injure each other.

Mithridates, who was not satisfied with this answer, made his troops march immediately into Cappadocia, expelled Ariobarzanes again, and set his son Ariarathes upon the throne, as he had done before. At the same time, he sent his ambassador to the Roman generals to make his apology, and to renew his complaints against them. Pelopidas declared to them, that his master was contented the Roman people should be umpire in the affair; and added, that he had already sent his ambassadors to Rome. He exhorted them not to undertake any thing, till they had received the senate’s orders, nor engage rashly in a war that might be attended with fatal consequences. For the rest, he gave them to understand, that Mithridates, in case justice were refused him, was in a condition to procure it for himself. The Romans, highly offended at so haughty a declaration, made answer, that Mithridates was immediately to withdraw his troops from Cappadocia, and not to continue to dis­turb Nicomedes or Ariobarzanes. They ordered Pelopidas to quit the camp that moment, and not return, unless his master obeyed. The other ambassadors were no better received at Rome.

The rupture was then inevitable, and the Roman generals did not wait till the orders of the senate and people arrived; which was what Mithridates wished. The design he had long formed of declaring war against the Romans, had occasioned his having made many alliances, and engaged many nations in his interest. Amongst his troops were reckoned twenty-two nations, of as many different languages, all which Mithridates himself spoke with facility. His army consisted of 250,000 foot and 40,000 horse, without including 130 armed chariots and a fleet of 400 ships.

Before he proceeded to action, he thought it necessary to prepare his troops for it, and made them a long discourse to animate them against the Romans. He represented to them: “That the matter now in hand was not to examine whether war or peace were to be preferred; that the Romans, by attacking the first, had left them no room for deliberation: that their business was to fight and conquer: that he assured himself of success, if the troops persisted to act with the same valour they had already shewn upon so many occasions, and very lately against the same enemies, whom they had put to flight and cut to pieces in Bithynia and Cappadocia: that there could not be a more favourable opportunity than the present, when the Marsi infested and ravaged the very heart of Italy; when Rome was torn in pieces by civil wars, and an innumerable army of the Cimbri from Germany overran all Italy: that the time was come for humbling those proud republicans, who were hostile to the royal dignity, and had sworn to pull down all the thrones of the universe. Then as to what remained, the war his soldiers were now entering upon was highly different from that they had sustained with so much valour in the horrid deserts and frozen regions of Scythia : that he should lead them into the most fruitful and temperate country of the world, abounding with rich and opulent cities, which seemed to offer themselves an easy prey : that Asia, abandoned to be devoured by the insatiable avarice of the proconsuls, the inexorable cruelty of tax-gatherers, and the flagrant injustice of corrupt judges, held the name of Roman in abhorrence, and impatiently expected them as her deliverers : that they followed him, not so much to a war, as to assured victory and certain spoils.”

The army answered this discourse with universal shouts of joy, and reiterated protestations of service and fidelity.

The Romans had formed three armies out of their troops in the several parts of Asia Minor. The first was commanded by L. Cassius, who had the government of the province of Pergamus; the second, by Manius Aquilius; the third, by Q. Oppius, proconsul, in his province of Pamphylia. Each of them had forty thousand men, including the cavalry. Besides these troops, Nicomedes had fifty thousand foot and six thousand horse. They began the war, as I have already observed, without waiting for orders from Rome, and carried it on with so much negligence and so little judgment, that they were all three defeated on different occasions, and their armies ruined. Aquilius and O­pius themselves were taken prisoners, and treated with all kinds of insults. Mithridates, considering Aquilius as the principal author of the war, treated him with the highest indignities. He made him pass in review before the troops, and presented him as a sight to the people, mounted on an ass, obliging him to cry out with a loud voice, that he was Manius Aquilius. At other times he obliged him to walk on foot with his hands fastened by a chain to a horse, that drew him along. At last he caused molten lead to be poured down his throat, and put him to death with the most exquisite torments. The people of Mitylene had treacherously delivered him up to Mithridates at a time when he was sick, and had retired to their city for the recovery of his health.

Mithridates, who was desirous of gaining the people’s hearts by his reputation for clemency, sent home all the Greeks he had taken prisoners, and supplied them with provisions for their journey. That instance of his goodness and lenity opened the gates of all the cities to him. The people came out to meet him every where with acclamations of joy. They gave him excessive praises, called him the preserver, the father of the people, the deliverer of Asia, and applied to him all the other names by which Bacchus was denominated, to which he had a just title, for he passed for the prince of his time who could drink most without being disordered; a quality he valued himself upon, and thought much to his honour.

The fruits of these his first victories were, the conquest of all Bithynia, from which Nicomedes was driven; of Phrygia and Mysia, lately made Roman provinces; of Lycia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia, and several other countries.

Having found at Stratonice a young maid of exquisite beauty, named Monima, he took her along with him in his train.

Mithridates, considering that the Romans, and all the Italians in general, who were at that time in Asia Minor upon different affairs (BC 88), carried on secret intrigues much to the prejudice of his interests, sent private orders from Ephesus, where he then was, to the governors of the provinces, and magistrates of the cities of Asia Minor, to massacre them all upon a day fixed. The women, children, and domestics, were included in this proscription. To these orders was annexed a prohibition to give interment to those who should be killed. Their estates and effects were to be confiscated for the use of the king and the murderers. A severe fine was laid upon such as should conceal the living, or bury the dead; and a reward appointed for whoever discovered those who were hid. Liberty was given to the slaves who killed their masters; and debtors forgiven half their debts, for killing their creditors. The repetition only of this dreadful order is enough to make one shudder with horror. What then must have been the desolation in all those provinces when it was put in execution! Fourscore thousand Romans or Italians were butchered in consequence of it. Some make the slain amount to almost twice that number.

Being informed that there was a great treasure at Cos, he sent people thither to seize it. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, had deposited it there, when she undertook the war in Phoenicia against her son Lathyrus. Besides this treasure, they found eight hundred talents (eight hundred thousand crowns), which the Jews in Asia Minor had deposited there when they saw the war ready to break out.

All those who had found means to escape this general slaughter in Asia, had taken refuge in Rhodes, which received them with joy, and afforded them a secure retreat. Mithridates laid siege to that city ineffectually, which he was soon obliged to raise, after having been in danger of being taken himself in a sea-fight, wherein he lost many of his ships.

When he had made himself master of Asia Minor, Mithridates sent Archelaus, one of his generals, with an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men into Greece. That general took Athens, and chose it for his residence, giving all orders from thence in regard to the war on that side. During his stay there, he engaged most of the cities and states of Greece in the interests of his master. He reduced Delos by force, which had revolted from the Athenians, and reinstated them in the possession of it. He sent them the sacred treasure, kept in that island by Aristion, to whom he gave two thou­sand men as a guard for the money. Aristion was an Athenian philosopher, of the sect of Epicurus. He em­ployed the two thousand men under his command to secure to himself the supreme authority at Athens, where he exercised a most cruel tyranny, putting many of the citizens to death, and sending many to Mithri­dates, upon pretence that they were of the Roman faction.

Such was the state of affairs (BC 87) when Sylla  was charged with the war against Mithridates. He set out immediately for Greece, with five legions, and some cohorts and cavalry. Mithridates was at that time at Pergamus, where he distributed riches, governments, and other rewards, to his friends.

Upon Sylla’s arrival, all the cities opened their gates to him, except Athens, which, subjected to the tyrant Aristion’s yoke, was obliged unwillingly to oppose him. The Roman general, having entered Attica, divided his troops into two bodies, the one of which he sent to besiege Aristion in the city of Athens, and with the other he inarched in person to the port Piraeus, which was a kind of second city, where Archelaus had shut himself up, relying upon the strength of the place, the walls being almost sixty feet high, and entirely of hewn stone. The work was indeed very strong, and had been raised by the order of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war, when, the hopes of victory depending solely upon this port, he had fortified it to the utmost of his power.

The height of the walls did not amaze Sylla. He employed all sorts of engines in battering them, and made continual assaults. If he would have waited a little, he might have taken the higher city without striking a blow, which was reduced by famine to the last extremity. But, being in haste to return to Rome, and apprehending the changes that might happen there in his absence, he spared neither danger, attacks, nor expense, in order to hasten the conclusion of that war. Without enumerating the rest of the warlike stores and equipage, twenty thousand mules were perpetually employed in working the machines only. Wood happening to fall short, from the great consumption made of it in the machines, which were often either broken and spoiled by the vast weight they carried, or burnt by the enemy, he did not spare the sacred groves. He cut down the beautiful avenues of the Academy and Lycaeum, which were the finest walks in the suburbs, and planted with the finest trees; and caused the high walls that joined the port to the city to be demolished, in order to make use of the ruins in erecting his works, and carrying on his approaches.

As he had occasion for abundance of money in this war, and endeavoured to attach the soldiers to his interests and to animate them by great rewards, he had recourse to the inviolable treasures of the temples, and caused the finest and most precious gifts, consecrated at Epidaurus and Olympia, to be brought from thence. He wrote to the Amphictyons assembled at Delphi, That they would act wisely in sending him the treasures of the god, because they would be more secure in his hands; and that if he should be obliged to make use of them, he would return the value after the war. At the same time he sent one of his friends, named Caphis, a native of Phocis, to Delphi, to receive all those treasures by weight.

When Caphis arrived at Delphi, he was afraid, through reverence for the god, to meddle with the consecrated gifts, and bewailed with tears, in the presence of the Amphictyons, the necessity imposed upon him. Upon which, some person there having said, that he heard the sound of Apollo’s lyre from the inside of the sanctuary, Caphis, whether he really believed it, or was willing to take advantage of that occasion to strike Sylla with a religious awe, wrote him an account of what had happened. Sylla, deriding his simplicity, replied, That he was surprised he should not comprehend, that singing was a sign of joy, and by no means of anger and resentment; and, therefore, he had nothing to do but to take the treasures boldly, and be assured that the god saw him do so with pleasure, and gave them to him himself.

Plutarch, on this occasion, notices the difference between the ancient Roman generals, and those of the times we now speak of. The former, whom merit alone had raised to office, and who had no other views from their employments but the public good, knew how to make the soldiers respect and obey them, without descending to use low and unworthy methods for that purpose. They commanded troops that were steady, disciplined, and well inured to execute the orders of their generals without reply or delay. Truly kings, says Plutarch, in the grandeur and nobility of their sentiments, but simple and modest private persons in their train and equipage, they put the state to no other expense in the discharge of their offices than what was reasonable and necessary, conceiving it more shameful in a captain to flatter his soldiers, than to fear his enemies. Things were much changed in the times we now speak of. The Roman generals, abandoned to insatiable ambition and luxury, were obliged to make themselves slaves to their soldiers, and to buy their services by gifts proportioned to their avidity, and often by the toleration and impunity of the greatest crimes.

Sylla, in consequence, was perpetually in extreme want of money to satisfy his troops, and then more than ever for carrying on the siege in which he had engaged, the success of which seemed to him of the highest importance, both with respect to his honour and even his safety. He was desirous of depriving Mithridates of the only city he had left in Greece, and which, by preventing the Romans from passing into Asia, would destroy all hopes of conquering that prince, and oblige Sylla to return shamefully into Italy, where he would have found more terrible enemies in Marius and his faction. He was besides sensibly galled by the keen raillery which Aristion vented every day against him and his wife Metella.

It is not easy to say whether the attack or defence were conducted with most vigour; for both sides behaved with incredible courage and resolution. The sallies were frequent, and attended with almost battles in form, in which the slaughter was great, and the loss generally not very unequal. The besieged would not have been in a condition to have made so vigorous a defence, if they had not received several considerable reinforcements by sea.

What did them most damage was the secret treachery of two Athenian slaves who were in the Piraeus. Those slaves, whether out of affection to the Roman interest, or desirous of providing for their own safety in case the place was taken, wrote upon leaden balls all that was going forward within, and threw them from slings to the Romans. So that how prudent soever the measures were which Archelaus took, who defended the Piraeus, whilst Aristion commanded in the city, none of them succeeded. He resolved to make a general sally; the traitors slung a leaden ball with this intelligence upon it: “Tomorrow, at such an hour, the foot will attack your works, and the horse your camp.” Sylla laid ambushes, and repulsed the besieged with loss. A convoy of provisions was in the night to have been thrown into the city, which was in want of every thing. Upon advice of the same kind the convoy was intercepted.

Notwithstanding all these disappointments, the Athenians defended themselves like lions. They found means either to burn most of the machines erected against the wall, or by undermining them to throw them down and break them to pieces.

The Romans, on their side, behaved with no less vi­gour. By the help of mines also they made a way to the bottom of the walls, under which they hollowed the ground; and, having propped the foundation with beams of wood, they afterwards set fire to the props with a great quantity of pitch, sulphur, and tow. When those beams were burnt, part of the wall fell down with a horrible noise, and a large breach was opened, through which the Romans advanced to the assault. The battle continued a great while with equal ardour on both sides, but the Romans were at length obliged to retire. The next day they renewed the attack. The besieged had built a new wall during the night in the form of a crescent, in the place of the other, which had fallen, and the Romans found it impossible to force it.

Sylla, discouraged by so obstinate a defence, resolved to attack the Piraeus no longer, and confined himself to reduce the place by famine. The city, on the other side, was at the last extremity. A bushel of barley had been sold in it for a thousand drachmas. The inhabitants did not only eat the grass and roots which they found about the citadel, but the flesh of horses, and the leather of their shoes, which they boiled soft. In the midst of the public misery, the tyrant passed his days and nights in revelling. The senators and priests went to throw themselves at his feet, conjuring him to have pity on the city, and to obtain a capitulation from Sylla: he dispersed them with a shower of arrows, and in that manner drove them from his presence.

He did not demand a cessation of arms, nor send deputies to Sylla, till reduced to the last extremity. As those deputies made no proposals, and asked nothing of him to the purpose, but ran on in praising and extolling Theseus, Eumolpus, and the exploits of the Athenians against the Medes, Sylla was tired with their discourse, and interrupted them, by saying: “Gentlemen orators, you may go back again, and keep your rhetorical flourishes for yourselves. For my part, I was not sent to Athens to be informed of your ancient prowess, but to chastise your modern revolt.”

During this audience, some spies, having entered the city, overheard by chance some old men talking in the Ceramicus, and blaming the tyrant exceedingly for not guarding a certain part of the wall, that was the only place by which the enemy might easily take the city by escalade. At their return into the camp, they related what they had heard to Sylla. The parley had been to no purpose. Sylla did not neglect the intelligence given him. The next night he went in person to take a view of the place, and finding the wall actually accessible, he ordered ladders to be raised against it, began the attack there, and, having made himself master of the wall after a weak resistance, entered the city. He would not suffer it to be set on fire, but abandoned it to be plundered by the soldiers, who in several houses found human flesh, which had been dressed to be eaten. A dreadful slaughter ensued. The next day all the slaves were sold by auction, and liberty was granted to the citizens who had escaped the swords of the soldiers, who were very few in number. He besieged the citadel the same day, where Aristion, and those who had taken refuge there, were soon so much reduced by famine, that they were forced to surrender themselves. The tyrant, his guards, and all who had been in any office under him, were put to death.

Some few days after, Sylla made himself master of the Piraeus, and burnt all its fortifications, especially the arsenal, which had been built by Philo, the celebrated architect, and was a wonderful fabric. Archelaus, by the help of his fleet, had retired to Munychia, another port of Attica.

This year (BC 86) upon which we are now entering, was fatal to the arms of Mithridates. Taxiles, one of his generals, arrived in Greece from Thrace and Macedonia, with an army of a hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse, with fourscore and ten chariots armed with scythes. Archelaus, that general’s brother, was at that time in the port of Munychia, and would neither remove from the sea, nor come to a battle with the Romans; but he endeavoured to protract the war, and cut off their provisions. This was very prudent conduct, for Sylla began to be in want of them; so that famine obliged him to quit Attica, and to enter the fruitful plains of Boeotia, where Hortensius joined him. Their troops being united, they took possession of a fertile eminence in the midst of the plains of Elatea, at the foot of which ran a rivulet. When they had formed their camp, the enemies could discover at one view their small number, which amounted to only fifteen thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse. This induced Archelaus’s generals to press him in the warmest manner to proceed to action. They did not obtain his consent without great difficulty. They immediately began to move, and covered the whole plain with horses, chariots, and innumerable troops; for when the two brothers were joined, their army was very formidable. The noise and cries of so many nations, and so many thousand of men preparing for battle, the pomp and magnificence of their array, were truly terrible. The brightness of their arms, magnificently adorned with gold and silver, and the lively colours of the Median and Scythian coats of arms, mingled with the glitter of brass and steel, darted forth as it were flashes of lightning, which, whilst it dazzled the sight, filled the soul with terror.

The Romans, seized with dread, kept close within their intrenchments. Sylla not being able by his discourse and remonstrances to remove their fear, and not being willing to force them to fight in their present state of discouragement, was obliged to lie still, and suffer, though with great impatience, the bravadoes and insulting derision of the barbarians, They conceived so great a contempt for him in consequence, that they neglected to observe any discipline. Few of them kept within their intrenchments; the rest, for the sake of plunder, dispersed in great troops, and straggled to a considerable distance, even several days’ journey, from the camp. They plundered and ruined some cities in the neighbourhood.

Sylla was in the utmost despair when he saw the cities of the allies destroyed before his eyes, for want of power to make his army fight. He at last thought of a stratagem, which was to give the troops no repose, and to keep them incessantly at work in turning the Cephisus, a little river which was near the camp, and in digging deep and large trenches, under pretence of their better security, but in fact, that by being tired of such great fatigues, they might prefer the hazard of a battle to the continuance of their labour. His stratagem was successful. After having worked without intermission three days, as Sylla, according to custom, was taking a view of their progress, they cried out to him with one voice, to lead them against the enemy. Sylla suffered himself to be exceedingly entreated, and did not comply for some time; but when he saw their ardour increase from his opposition, he made them stand to their arms, and marched against the enemy.

The battle was fought near Chaeronea. The enemy had possessed themselves, with a great body of troops, of a very advantageous post, called Thurium: it was the ridge of a steep mountain, which extended itself upon the left flank of the Romans, and was well calculated to check their motions. Two men of Chaeronea came to Sylla, and promised him to drive the enemy from this post, if he would give them a small number of chosen troops, which he did. In the mean time he drew up his army in battle, divided his horse between the two wings, taking the right himself, and giving the left to Murena. Galba and Hortensius formed a second line. Hortensius, on the left, supported Murena, whilst Galba on the right did the same for Sylla. The barbarians had already begun to extend their horse and light-armed foot in a large compass, with design to surround the second line, and charge it in the rear.

At that instant the two men of Chaeronea, having gained the top of Thurium with their small troop, without being perceived by the enemy, shewed themselves on a sudden. The barbarians, surprised and terrified, immediately took to flight. Pressing against each other upon the declivity of the mountain, they ran precipitately down before the enemy, who charged and closely pursued them down the hill sword in hand; so that about three thousand men were killed upon the mountain. Of those who escaped, some fell into the hands of Murena, who had just before formed in order of battle. Having marched against them, he intercepted and made a great slaughter of them: the rest, who endeavoured to regain their camp, fell in upon the main body of their troops with so much precipitation, that they threw the whole army into terror and confusion, and made their generals lose much time in restoring order, which was one of the principal causes of their defeat.

Sylla, taking advantage of this disorder, marched against them with so much vigour, and charged over the space between the two armies with such rapidity, that he prevented the effect of their chariots armed with scythes. The force of these chariots depended upon the length of their course, which gave impetuosity and violence to their motion; instead of which, a short space, that did not leave room for their career, rendered them useless and ineffectual. This the barbarians experienced at this time. The first chariots came on so slowly, and with so little effect, that the Romans, easily pushing them back, with great noise and loud laughter called for more, as was customary at Rome in the chariot-races of the Circus.

After those chariots were removed, the two main bodies came to blows. The barbarians presented their long pikes, and kept close order with their bucklers joined, so that they could not be broken; and the Romans threw down their javelins, and with sword in hand thrust aside the enemy’s pikes, in order to join and charge them with great fury. What increased their animosity, was the sight of fifteen thousand slaves, whom the king’s generals had spirited from them by the promise of their liberty, and posted them amongst the heavy-armed foot. Those slaves had so much resolution and bravery, that they sustained the shock of the Roman foot without giving way. Their battalions were so deep and so well closed, that the Romans could nei­ther break nor move them, till the light-armed foot of the second line had put them into disorder by the discharge of their arrows, and a shower of stones from their slings, which forced them to give ground.

Archelaus having made his right wing advance to surround the left of the Romans, Hortensius led on the troops under his command to take him in flank; which Archelaus seeing, he ordered two thousand horse quickly to wheel about. Hortensius, upon the point of being overpowered by that great body of horse, retired by degrees towards the mountains, perceiving himself too far from the main body, and upon the point of being surrounded by the enemy. Sylla, with great part of his right wing, which had not yet been engaged, marched to his relief. From the dust raised by those troops, Archelaus judged what was going forward, and leaving Hortensius, he turned about towards the place Sylla had quitted, in hopes he should find no difficulty in defeat­’ right wing, which would now be without its general.

Taxiles, at the same time, led on his foot, armed with brazen shields, against Murena: whilst each side raised great shouts, which made the neighbouring hills resound. Sylla halted at the noise, not knowing well to which side he should first hasten. At length he thought it most expedient to return to his former post and support his right wing. He, therefore, sent Hortensius to assist Murena with four cohorts, and taking the fifth with him, he flew to his right wing, which he found engaged in battle with Archelaus, neither side having the advan­tage. But, as soon as he appeared, that wing taking new courage from the presence of their general, opened their way through the troops of Archelaus, put them to flight, and pursued them vigorously for a considerable time.

After this great success, without losing a moment, he marched to the aid of Murena. Finding him also victorious, and that he had defeated Taxiles, he joined him in the pursuit of the vanquished. A great number of the barbarians were killed on the plain, and a much greater cut to pieces in endeavouring to gain their camp; so that, of so many thousand men, only ten thousand escaped, who fled to the city of Chalcis. Sylla wrote in his memoirs, that only fourteen of his men were missing, and that two of them returned the same evening.

To celebrate so great a victory, he gave music-games at Thebes, and caused judges to come from the neighbouring Grecian cities to distribute the prizes; for he had an implacable aversion for the Thebans. He even deprived them of half their territory, which he consecrated to Apollo Pythius and Jupiter Olympius; and decreed, that the money he had taken out of the temples of those gods should be repaid out of their revenues.

These games were no sooner over, than he received advice, that L. Valerius Flaccus, of the adverse party (for at this time the divisions between Marius and Sylla were at the highest), had been elected consul, and had already crossed the Ionian sea with an army, in appearance against Mithridates, but in reality against himself. For this reason he began without delay his march to Thessaly, as with design to meet him. But being arrived at the city of Melitea, news came to him from all sides, that all the places he had left in his rear were plundered by another of the king’s armies, stronger and more numerous than the first. For Dorylaus had arrived at Choices with a great fleet, on board of which were fourscore thousand men, the best equipped, the most warlike and disciplined, of all Mithridates’s troops, and had thrown himself into Boeotia, and possessed himself of the whole country, in order to bring Sylla to a battle. Archelaus would have dissuaded him from that design, by giving him an exact account of the battle he had so lately lost; but his counsel and remonstrances had no effect. lie soon discovered that the advice that had been given him was highly reasonable and judicious.

He chose the plain of Orchomenus for the field of battle. Sylla caused ditches to be dug on each side of the plain, to deprive the enemy of the advantage of an open country, in which their cavalry could act, and to remove them towards the marshes. The barbarians fell furiously on the workmen, dispersed them, and put to flight the troops that supported them. Sylla seeing his army flying in this manner, quitted his horse immediately, and, seizing one of his ensigns, he pushed forwards towards the enemy through those that fled, crying to them: “For me, Romans, I think it glorious to die here. But for you, when you shall be asked where you abandoned your general, remember to say it was at Orchomenus.” They could not endure those reproaches, and returned to the charge with such fury, that they made Archelaus’s troops turn their backs. The barbarians came on again in better order than before, and were again repulsed with greater loss.

The next day, at sunrise, Sylla led back his troops towards the enemy’s camp, to continue his trenches; and falling upon those who were detached to skirmish and drive away the workmen, he charged them so rudely that he put them to flight. These runaways threw the troops who had continued in the camp into such terror, that they were afraid to stay to defend it. Sylla entered it pell-mell with those who fled, and made himself master of it. The marshes, in a moment, were dyed with blood, and the lake filled with dead bodies. The enemies, in different attacks, lost the greatest part of their troops. Archelaus continued a great while hid in the marshes, and escaped at last to Chalcis.

The news of all these defeats threw Mithridates into great consternation. However, as that prince was by nature fruitful in resources, he did not lose courage, and applied himself to repair his losses by making new levies. But, from the fear that his ill success might give birth to some revolt or conspiracy against his person, as had already happened, he took the bloody precaution of putting all he suspected to death, without sparing even his best friends.

He was not more successful in Asia, himself, than his generals had been in Greece. Fimbria, who commanded a Roman army there, beat the remainder of his best troops. He pursued the vanquished as far as the gates of Pergamus, where Mithridates resided, and obliged him to quit that place himself, and retire to Pitane, a maritime place in the Troad. Fimbria pursued him thither, and invested him by land. But, as he had no fleet to do the same by sea, he sent to Lucullus, who was cruizing in the neighbouring seas with the Roman fleet, and represented to him, that he might acquire immortal glory by seizing the person of Mithridates, who could not escape him, and by putting an end to so important a war. Fimbria and Lucullus were of two different factions. The latter would not be concerned in the affairs of the other; so that Mithridates escaped by sea to Mitylene, and extricated himself out of the hands of the Romans. This fault cost them very dear, and is not unusual in states where misunderstandings subsist between the ministers and generals of the army, which make them neglect the public good, lest they should contribute to the glory of their rivals.

Lucullus afterwards twice defeated Mithridates’s fleet, and gained two great victories over him. This happy success was the more surprising, as it was not expected that Lucullus would distinguish himself by military exploits. He had passed his youth in the studies of the bar; and during his being quaestor in Asia, the province had always enjoyed peace. But so happy a genius as his did not want to be taught by experience, which is not to be acquired by lessons, and is generally the growth of many years. He supplied that defect in some measure, by employing the whole time of his journeys, by land and sea, partly in asking questions of persons experienced in the art of war, and partly in instructing himself by the reading of history. So that he arrived in Asia a complete general, though he had left Rome with only a moderate knowledge in the art of war. Let our young warriors consider this with due attention, and observe in what manner great men are formed.

Whilst Sylla was very successful in Greece, the faction that opposed him, and at that time engrossed all power at Rome, had declared him an enemy of the commonwealth. Cinna and Carbo treated the most worthy and most considerable persons with every kind of cruelty and injustice. Most of these, to avoid this insupportable tyranny, had chosen to retire to Sylla’s camp, as to a port of safety; so that in a small time Sylla had a little senate about him. His wife Metella, having escaped with great difficulty with her children, brought him an account that his enemies had burnt his house and ravaged his lands, and begged him to depart immediately to the relief of those who remained in Rome, and were upon the point of being made victims of the same fury.

Sylla was in the greatest perplexity. On the one side, the miserable condition to which his country was reduced, inclined him to march directly to its relief; on the other, he could not resolve to leave imperfect so great and important an affair as the war with Mithridates. Whilst he was under this cruel embarrassment, a merchant came to him to treat with him in secret from the general Archelaus, and to make him some proposals of an accommodation. He was so exceedingly rejoiced when this man had explained his commission, that he made all possible haste to have a conference with that general.

They had an interview upon the sea-coast, near the little city of Delium. Archelaus, who was not ignorant how important it was to Sylla to have it in his power to repass into Italy, proposed to him the uniting his interests with those of Mithridates; and added, that his master would supply him with money, troops, and ships, to maintain a war against the faction of Cinna and Marius.

Sylla, without seeming offended at first with such proposals, exhorted him on his side to withdraw himself from the slavery in which he lived, under an imperious and cruel prince. He added, that he might take upon him the title of king in his government; and offered to have him declared the ally and friend of the Roman people, if he would deliver up to him Mithridates’s fleet under his command. Archelaus rejected such a proposal with indignation, and even expressed to the Ro­man general, how much he thought himself affronted by the supposition of his being capable of such treachery. Upon which Sylla, assuming the air of grandeur and dignity so natural to the Romans, said to him: “If being only a slave, and at best but an officer of a barbarian king, you look upon it as base to quit the service of your master, how dared you to propose the abandoning the interests of the republic to such a Roman as myself? Do you imagine our condition, and the state of affairs between us, to be equal? Have you forgotten my victories? Do you not remember, that you are the same Archelaus whom I have defeated in two battles, and forced in the last to hide himself in the marshes of Orchomenus?”

Archelaus, confounded by so haughty an answer, sustained himself no longer in the sequel of the negotiation. Sylla got the ascendant entirely, and dictating the law as victor, proposed the following conditions: “That Mithridates should renounce Asia and Paphlagonia; that he should restore Bithynia to Nicomedes, and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes; that he should pay the Romans two thousand talents (about three hundred thousand pounds sterling) for the expenses of the war, and deliver up to them seventy armed galleys, with their whole equipment; and that Sylla, on his side, should secure to Mithridates the rest of his dominions, and cause him to be declared the friend and ally of the Roman people.” Archelaus seemed to approve these conditions, and despatched a courier immediately to communicate them to Mithridates. Sylla set out for the Hellespont, carrying Archelaus with him, whom he treated with great honours.

He received Mithridates’s ambassadors at Larissa, who came to declare to him that their master accepted and ratified all the other articles, but that he desired he would not deprive him of Paphlagonia; and that as to the seventy galleys, he could by no means comply with that article. Sylla, offended at this refusal, answered them in an angry tone: “What say you? would Mithridates keep possession of Paphlagonia, and does he refuse me the galleys I demanded? I expected to have seen him return me thanks upon his knees, if I should have only left him the hand with which he butchered a hundred thousand Romans. He will change his note when I go over to Asia, though at present, in the midst of his court at Pergamus, he meditates plans for a war he never saw.” Such was the lofty style of Sylla, who gave Mithridates to understand, at the same time, that he would not talk such language had he been present at the past battles.

The ambassadors, terrified with this answer, made no reply. Archelaus endeavoured to soften Sylla, and promised him that he would induce Mithridates to consent to all the articles. He set out for that purpose, and Sylla, after having laid waste the country, returned into Macedonia.

Archelaus, upon his return, (BC 84) joined him at the city of Philippi, and informed him that Mithridates would accept the proposed conditions; but that he exceedingly desired to have a conference with him. What made him earnest for this interview was his fear of Fimbria, who having killed Flaccus, of whom mention has been made before, and put himself at the head of that consul’s army, was advancing by great marches against Mithridates; and this it was which determined that prince to make peace with Sylla. They had an interview at Dardania, a city of the Troad. Mithridates had with him 200 galleys, 20,000 foot, 6000 horse, and a great number of chariots armed with scythes; and Sylla had only four cohorts and 200 horse in his company. When Mithridates advanced to meet him, and offered him his hand, Sylla asked him whether he accepted the proposed conditions. As the king kept silence, Sylla continued:

“Do you not know, Mithridates, that it is for suppliants to speak, and for the victorious to hear and be silent?”  

Upon this Mithridates began a long apology, endeavouring to ascribe the cause of the war, partly to the gods, and partly to the Romans. Sylla interrupted him, and after having made a long detail of the violences and inhumanities he had committed, he demanded of him a second time, whether he would ratify the conditions which Archelaus had laid before him? Mithridates, surprised at the haughtiness and pride of the Roman general, having answered in the affirmative, Sylla then received his embraces, and afterwards presenting the kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes to him, he reconciled them to each other. Mithridates, after the delivery of the seventy galleys, entirely equipped, and 500 archers, re-embarked.

Sylla saw plainly, that this treaty of peace was highly disagreeable to his troops. They could not bear that a prince, who of all kings was the most mortal enemy to Rome, and who in one day had caused 100,000 Roman citizens, dispersed in Asia, to be put to the sword, should be treated with so much favour, and even honour, and declared the friend and ally of the Romans, whilst almost still reeking with their blood. Sylla, to justify his conduct, gave them to understand, that if he had rejected his proposals of peace, Mithridates, on his refusal, would not have failed to treat with Fimbria; and that if those two enemies had joined their forces, they would have obliged him either to abandon his conquests, or hazard a battle against troops superior in number, under the command of two great captains, who in one day might have deprived him of the fruit of all his victories. Thus ended the first war with Mithridates, which had lasted four years, and in which Sylla had destroyed more than 160,000 of the enemy; recovered Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, Asia, and many other provinces, of which Mithridates had possessed himself; and hav­ing deprived him of a great part of his fleet, compelled him to confine himself within the bounds of his hereditary dominions. But what has been most admired in Sylla is that during three years, whilst the factions of Marius and Cinna had enslaved Italy, he did not dissemble his intending to turn his arms against them; and yet did not discontinue the war he had begun, convinced that it was necessary to conquer the foreign enemy, before he reduced and punished those at home. lie has been also highly praised for his constancy in not hearkening to any proposals from Mithridates, who offered him considerable aid against his enemies, till that prince had accepted the conditions of peace he prescribed him.

Some days after, Sylla began his march against Fimbria, who was encamped under the walls of Thyatira, in Lydia; and, having marked out a camp near his, he began his intrenchments. Fimbria’s soldiers coming out unarmed, ran to salute and embrace those of Sylla, and assisted them with great pleasure in forming their lines. Fimbria, seeing this change in his troops, and fearing Sylla as an irreconcilable enemy, from whom he could expect no mercy, after having attempted in vain to get him assassinated, killed himself.

Sylla condemned Asia in general to pay 20,000 talents, and, besides that fine, rifled individuals exceedingly, by abandoning their houses to the insolence and rapaciousness of his troops, whom he quartered upon them, and who lived at discretion, as in conquered cities. For he gave orders, that every host should pay each soldier quartered on him four drachmas a day, and entertain at table himself, and as many of his friends as he should think fit to invite ; that each captain should have fifty drachmas, and, besides that, a robe to wear in the house, and another when he went abroad.

After having thus punished Asia, he set out from Ephesus with all his ships, and arrived the third day at the Piraeus. Having been initiated in the great mysteries, he took for his own use the library of Apellicon, in which were the works of Aristotle. That philosopher, at his death, had left his writings to Theophrastus, one of his most illustrious disciples. The latter had transferred them to Neleus of Scepsis, a city in the neighbourhood of Pergamus in Asia; after whose death those works fell into the hands of his heirs, ignorant persons, who kept them shut up in a chest. When the kings of Pergamus began to collect industriously all sorts of books for their library, as the city of Scepsis was dependant upon them, those heirs, apprehending these works would be taken from them, thought proper to hide them in a vault underground, where they remained almost a hundred and thirty years; till the heirs of Neleus’s family, who after several generations were fallen into extreme poverty, brought them out to sell to Apellicon, a rich Athenian, who sought every where after the most curious books for his library. As they were very much da­maged by the length of time, and the damp place where they had laid, Apellicon had copies immediately taken of them, in which there were many chasms; because the originals were either rotted in many places, or worm-eaten and obliterated. These blanks, words, and letters, were filled up as well as they could be by conjecture, and that in some places with sufficient want of judgment. From hence arose the many difficulties in those works which have ever since exercised the learned world. Apellicon being dead some short time before Sylla’s arrival at Athens, he seized upon his library, and with these works of Aristotle, which he found in it, enriched his own at Rome. A famous grammarian of those times, named Tyrannion, who lived then at Rome, having a great desire for these works of Aristotle, obtained permission from Sylla’s librarian to take a copy of them. That copy was communicated to Andronicus the Rhodian, who afterwards imparted it to the public, and to him the world is obliged for the works of that great philosopher.

CHAPTER II. SYLLA

Sylla, on setting out for Rome, (BC 83), had left the government of Asia to Murena, with the two legions that had served under Fimbria, to keep the province in obedience. This Murena is the father of him for whom Cicero made the fine oration which bears his name. His son at this time made his first campaigns under him.

After Sylla’s departure, Mithridates being returned into Pontus, turned his arms against the people of Cholcis and the Bosphorus, who had revolted against him. They first demanded his son Mithridates for their king, and having obtained him, immediately returned to their duty. The king, imagining this conduct was the result of his son’s intrigues, took umbrage at it; and having caused him to come to him, he ordered him to be bound with chains of gold, and soon after put him to death. That son had done him great services in the war against Fimbria. We see here a new instance of the jealousy which the excessive love of power is apt to excite, and to what a height the prince, who abandons himself to it, is capable of carrying his suspicions against his own blood; always ready to proceed to the most fatal extremities, and to sacrifice whatever is dearest to him to the slightest distrust. As for the inhabitants of the Bosphorus, he prepared a great fleet and a numerous army, which gave reason to believe his designs were against the Romans. And, in fact, he had not restored all Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, but reserved part of it in his own hands; and he began to suspect Archelaus, as having engaged him in a peace equally shameful and disadvantageous.

When Archelaus perceived it, well knowing the master he had to deal with, he took refuge with Murena, and solicited him warmly to turn his arms against Mithridates. Murena, who passionately desired to obtain the honour of a triumph, suffered himself to be easily persuaded. He made an irruption into Cappadocia, and made himself master of Comana, the most powerful city of that kingdom. Mithridates sent ambassadors to him, to complain of his violating the treaty the Romans had made with him. Murena replied, that he knew of no treaty made with their master. There was in reality no­thing reduced to writing on Sylla’s part, the whole having passed by verbal agreement. In consequence, he continued to ravage his country, and took up his winter­quarters in it. Mithridates sent ambassadors to Rome, to make his complaints to Sylla and the senate.

There came a commissioner from Rome, but without a decree of the senate, who publicly ordered Murena not to molest the king of Pontus. But, as they conferred together in private, this was looked upon as a mere collusion; and indeed Murena persisted in ravaging his country. Mithridates therefore took the field, and, having passed the river Halys, gave Murena battle, defeated him, and obliged him to retire into Phrygia with very great loss.

Sylla, who had been appointed dictator, not being able to suffer any longer that Mithridates, contrary to the treaty he had granted him, should be molested, sent Gabinius to Murena to order him in earnest to desist from making war with that prince, and to reconcile him with Ariobarzanes. He obeyed. Mithridates having put one of his sons, only four years old, into the hands of Ariobarzanes, as a hostage, under that pretext retained the cities in which he had garrisons, promising no doubt to restore them in time. He then gave a great feast, in which he promised prizes for such as should excel the rest in drinking, eating, singing, and rallying : fit objects of emulation! Gabinius was the only one who did not think proper to enter these lists. Thus ended the second war with Mithridates, which lasted only three years. Murena, at his return to Rome, received the honour of a triumph, to which he had no great claim.

Mithridates at length restored Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes (BC 78), being compelled so to do by Sylla, who died the same year. But he contrived a stratagem to deprive him e­tirely of it. Tigranes had lately built a great city in Armenia, which, from his own name, he called Tigranocerta. Mithridates persuaded his son-in-law to conquer Cappadocia, and to transport the inhabitants into the new city and the other parts of his dominions, that were not well peopled. He did so, and took away three hundred thousand souls. From thenceforth, wherever he carried his victorious arms, he acted in the same manner for the better peopling of his own dominions.

The extraordinary reputation of Sertorius, who was giving the Romans terrible employment in Spain, made Mithridates conceive the thought of sending an embassy to him, in order to engage him to join forces against the common enemy. The flatterers, who compared him to Pyrrhus, and Sertorius to Hannibal, insinuated, that the Romans, attacked at the same time on different sides, would never be able to oppose two such formidable powers, when the most able and experienced of generals should act in concert with the greatest of kings. He therefore sent ambassadors to Spain, with letters and instructions for treating with Sertorius; to whom they offered, in his name, a fleet and money to carry on the war, upon condition that he would suffer that prince to recover the provinces of Asia, which the necessity of his affairs had reduced him to abandon by the treaty he had made with Sylla.

As soon as those ambassadors arrived in Spain, and had opened their commission to Sertorius, he assembled his council, which he called the senate. They were unanimously of opinion, that he should accept that prince’s offers with joy; and the rather, because so immediate and effective an aid, as the offered fleet and money, would cost him only a vain consent to an enterprise which it did not in any manner depend upon him to prevent. But Sertorius, with a truly Roman greatness of soul, protested, that he would never consent to any treaty injurious to the glory or interests of his country; and that he would not even desire a victory over his own enemies, that was not acquired by just and honourable methods. And, having made Mithridates’s ambassadors come into the assembly, he declared to them, that he would suffer his master to keep Bithynia and Cappadocia, which were accustomed to be governed by kings, and to which the Romans could have no just pretensions; but he would never consent that he should set his foot in Asia Minor, which appertained to the republic, and which he had renounced by a solemn treaty.

When this answer was related to Mithridates, it struck him with amazement; and he is affirmed to have said to his friends: “What orders may we not expect from Sertorius, when he shall sit in the senate in the midst of Rome; who, even now, confined upon the coast of the Atlantic ocean, dictates bounds to our dominions, and declares war against us, if we undertake any thing against Asia?” A treaty was however concluded, and sworn between them, to this effect: That Mithridates should have Bithynia and Cappadocia; that Sertorius should send him troops for that purpose, and one of his captains to command them; and that Mithridates, on his side, should pay Sertorius three thousand talents d down, and give him forty galleys.

The captain sent by Sertorius into Asia, was one of those banished senators of Rome, who had taken refuge with him, named Marcus Marius, to whom Mithridates paid great honours. For, when Marius entered the cities, preceded by the fasces and axes, Mithridates followed him, well satisfied with the second place, and with only making the figure of a powerful, but inferior, ally in this proconsul’s company. Such was at that time the Roman greatness, that the name alone of that potent republic obscured the splendour and power of the greatest kings. Mithridates, however, found his interest in this conduct. Marius, as if he had been authorized by the Roman people and senate, discharged most of the cities from paying the exorbitant taxes which Sylla had imposed on them; expressly declaring, that it was from Sertorius they received that favour, and to him they were indebted for it. So moderate and politic a conduct opened the gates of the cities to him without the help of arms, and the name alone of Sertorius made more conquests than all the forces of Mithridates.

Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, died this year, and made the Roman people his heirs. His country became thereby, as I have observed elsewhere, a province of the Roman empire. Mithridates immediately formed a resolution to renew the war against them upon this occasion, and employed the greatest part of the year in making the necessary preparations for carrying it on with vigour. He believed, that, after the death of Sylla, and during the troubles with which the republic was agitated, the conjuncture was favourable for re-entering upon the conquests he had given up.

Instructed by his misfortunes and experience, he banished from his army all armour adorned with gold and jewels, which he began to consider as the allurement of the victor, and not as the strength of those who wore them. He caused swords to be forged after the Roman fashion, with solid and weighty bucklers; he collected horses, rather well made and trained than magnificently adorned; assembled a hundred and twenty thousand foot, armed and disciplined like the Roman infantry, and sixteen thousand horse well equipped for service, besides a hundred chariots armed with long scythes, and drawn by four horses. lie also fitted out a considerable number of galleys, which glittered no longer, as before, with gilt flags, but were filled with all sorts of arms, offensive and defensive; and provided im­mense sums of money for the pay and subsistence of the troops.

Mithridates had begun by seizing Paphlagonia and Bithynia. The province of Asia, which found itself ex­hausted by the exactions of the Roman tax-gatherers and usurers, to deliver themselves from their oppression, declared a second time for him. Such was the cause of the third Mithridatic war, which subsisted almost twelve years.

The two consuls, Lucullus and Cotta, were sent against him, each of them with an army under him (BC 74). Lucullus had Asia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia, for his province; the other, Bithynia and Propontis.

Whilst Lucullus was employed in repressing the rapaciousness and violence of the tax-gatherers and usurers, and in reconciling the people of the countries through which he passed, by giving them good hopes for the time to come; Cotta, who was already arrived, thought he had a favourable opportunity, in the absence of his colleague, to signalize himself by some great exploit. He therefore prepared to give Mithridates battle. The more he was told that Lucullus was approaching, that he was already in Phrygia, and would soon arrive, the greater haste he made to fight, believing himself already assured of a triumph, and desirous of preventing his colleague from having any share in it. But he was beaten by sea and land. In the naval battle he lost sixty of his ships, with their whole complements; and in that by land he had four thousand of his best troops killed, and was obliged to shut himself up in the city of Chalcedon, with no hope of any other relief than what his colleague should think fit to give him. All the officers of his army, enraged at Cotta’s rash and presumptuous conduct, endeavoured to persuade Lucullus to enter Pontus, which Mithridates had left without troops, and where he might assure himself of finding the people inclined to revolt, lie answered generously, that he would always esteem it more glorious to preserve a Roman citizen than to possess himself of the whole dominions of an enemy; and without resentment against his colleague, he marched to assist him with all the success he could have hoped. This was the first action by which he distinguished himself, and which ought to do him more honour than all his most splendid victories.

Mithridates, encouraged by the double advantage he had gained, undertook the siege of Cyzicum, (BC 73), a city of the Propontis, which strenuously supported the Roman party in this war. In making himself master of this place, he would have opened himself a passage from Bithynia into Asia Minor, which would have been very advantageous to him, by giving him an opportunity of carrying the war thither with all possible ease and security. It was for this reason he desired to take it. In order to succeed, he invested it by land with three hundred thousand men, divided into ten camps; and by sea with four hundred ships. Lucullus soon followed him thither; and began by seizing a post upon an eminence which was of the highest importance to him, because it facilitated his receiving convoys, and gave him the means of cutting off the enemy’s provisions. He had only thirty thousand foot, and two thousand five hundred horse. The superiority of the enemy in number, far from dismaying, encouraged him; for he was convinced, that so innumerable a multitude would soon be in want of provisions. Hence, in haranguing his troops, he promised them in a few days a victory that would not cost them a single drop of blood. It was in this that he placed his glory; for the lives of the soldiers were dear to him.

The siege was long, and carried on with extreme vigour. Mithridates battered the place on all sides with innumerable machines. The defence was no less vigorous. The besieged did prodigies of valour, and employed all means that the most industrious capacity could invent, to repulse the enemy’s attacks, either by burning their machines, or rendering them useless by a thousand different obstacles which they opposed to them. What inspired them with so much courage was their exceeding confidence in Lucullus, who had let them know, that, if they continued to defend themselves with the same valour, they might assure themselves that the place would not be taken.

Lucullus was indeed so well posted, that, without coming to a general action, which he always carefully avoided, he made Mithridates’s army suffer extremely, by intercepting his convoys, charging his foraging parties with advantage, and beating the detachments he sent out from time to time. In a word, he knew so well how to improve all occasions that offered, he weakened the army of the besiegers so much, and used such address in cutting off their provisions, having shut up all avenues by which they might be supplied, that he reduced them to extreme famine. The soldiers could find no other food but the herbage, and some went so far as to support themselves upon human flesh. Mithridates, who passed for the most artful captain of his times, in despair that a general, who could not yet have had much experience, should so often have deceived him by false marches and feigned movements, and had defeated him without draw­ing his sword, was at length obliged to raise the siege shamefully, after having spent almost two years before the place. He fled by sea, and his lieutenants retired with his army by land to Nicomedia. Lucullus pursued them; and, having come up with them near the Granicus, he killed twenty thousand of them upon the spot, and took an infinite number of prisoners. It is said, that in this war there perished almost three hundred thousand men, either soldiers and servants, or other followers of the army.

After this new success, Lucullus returned to Cyzicum, entered the city, and after having enjoyed for some days the pleasure of having preserved it, and the honours which he derived from that success, he made a rapid march along the coasts of the Hellespont, to collect ships and form a fleet.

Mithridates, after having raised the siege of Cyzicum, repaired to Nicomedia, from whence he passed by sea into Pontus. He left part of his fleet, and ten thousand of his best troops, in the Hellespont, under three of his most able generals. Lucullus, with the Roman fleet, beat them twice; the first time at Tenedos, and the other at Lemnos, when the enemy thought of nothing less than making sail for Italy, and of alarming and plundering the coasts of Rome itself. He killed almost all their men in these two engagements: and in the last took their three generals, one of whom was M. Marius, the Roman senator whom Sertorius had sent from Spain to the aid of Mithridates. Lucullus ordered him to be put to death, because it was not consistent with the Ro­man dignity that a senator of Rome should be led in triumph. One of the two others poisoned himself, and the third was reserved for the triumph. After having cleared the coasts by these two victories, Lucullus turned his arms towards the continent; reduced Bithynia first, then Paphlagonia; marched afterwards into Pontus, and carried the war into the heart of Mithridates’s dominions.

He suffered at first so greatly from a want of provisions in this expedition, that he was obliged to make thirty thousand Galatians follow the army, each with a quantity of wheat upon his shoulders. But upon his advancing into the country, and subjecting the cities and provinces, he found such abundance of all things that an ox sold for only one drachmas, and a slave for no more than four.

Mithridates had suffered almost as much by a tempest, in his passage on the Euxine Sea, as in the campaign wherein he had been treated so roughly. He lost in it almost all the remainder of his fleet and the troops he had brought thither for the defence of his ancient dominions. When Lucullus arrived, he was making new levies with the utmost expedition, to defend himself against that invasion which he had clearly foreseen .

Lucullus, upon arriving in Pontus, without loss of time besieged Amisus and Eupatoria, two of the principal cities in the country, very near each other.

The latter, which had been very lately built, was called Eupatoria, from the surname of Eupator, given to Mithridates; this place was his usual residence, and he had designed to make it the capital of his dominions. Not content with these two sieges at once, Lucullus sent a detachment of his army to form that of Themiscyra, upon the river Thermodon, which place was not less considerable than the two others.

The officers of Lucullus’s army complained, that their general amused himself too long in sieges which were not worth his trouble, and that in the mean time he gave Mithridates opportunity to augment his army and gather strength. To which he answered in his justification: “That is directly what I want; I act designedly thus, that our enemy may take new courage, and assemble so numerous an army as may embolden him to wait for us in the field and fly no longer before us. Do you not observe, that he has behind him immense wildernesses, and infinite deserts, in which it will be impossible for us either to pursue or come up with him? Armenia is but a few days’ march from these deserts. There Tigranes keeps his court, that king of kings, whose power is so great that he subdues the Parthians, transports whole cities of Greeks into the heart of Media, has made himself master of Syria and Palestine, exterminated the kings descended from Seleucus, and carried their wives and daughters into capti­vity. This powerful prince is the ally and son-in-law of Mithridates. Do you think, when he has him in his palace as a suppliant, that he will abandon him, and not make war against us? Hence in hastening to drive away Mithridates, we shall be in great danger of drawing Tigranes upon our hands, who has long sought pretexts for declaring against us, and who can never find one more specious, legitimate, and honourable, than that of assisting his father-in-law, and a king reduced to the last extremity. Why, therefore, should we serve Mithridates against ourselves; or show him to whom he should have recourse for the means of supporting the war with us, by pushing him, against his will, and at a time perhaps when he looks upon such a step as unworthy his valour and greatness, into the arms and protection of Tigranes ? Is it not infinitely better, by giving him time to take courage and strengthen himself with his own forces, to have only upon our hands the troops of Colchis, the Tibarenians, and Cappadocians, whom we have so often defeated, than to expose ourselves to have the additional force of the Ar­menians and Medes to contend with?”

Whilst the Romans (BC 71) attacked the three places we have mentioned, Mithridates, who had already formed a new army, took the field very early in the spring. Lucullus left the command of the sieges of Amisus and Eupatoria to Murena, the son of him whom we have spoken of before, whom Cicero represents in a very favourable light: He went into Asia, a province abounding with riches and pleasures, where he left behind him no traces either of avarice or luxury. He behaved in such a manner in this important war, that he did many great actions without the general, the general none without him. Lucullus marched against Mithridates, who lay encamped in the plains of Cabirae. The latter had the advantage in two actions, but was entirely defeated in the third, and obliged to fly, without either servant or equerry to attend him, or a single horse of his stable. It was not till after some time, that one of his eunuchs, seeing him on foot in the midst of the flying crowd, got off his horse and gave it him. The Romans were so near him, that they almost had him in their hands; and it was owing entirely to themselves that they did not take him. The avarice alone of the soldiers lost them a prey, which they had pursued so long, through so many toils, dangers, and battles, and deprived Lucullus of the sole reward of all his victories. Mithridates, says Cicero, artfully imitated the manner in which Medea, in the same kingdom of Pontus, formerly escaped the pursuit of her father. That princess is said to have cut in pieces the body of Absyrtus, her brother, and to have scattered his limbs in the places through which her father pursued her; in order that his care in taking up those dispersed members, and the grief so sad a spectacle would give him, might stop the rapidity of his pursuit. Mithridates, in like manner, as he fled, left upon the way a great quantity of gold, silver, and precious effects, which had either descended to him from his ancestors, or had been amassed by himself in preceding wars; and whilst the soldiers employed themselves in gathering those treasures, the king escaped their hands. So that the father of Medea was stopped in his pursuit by sorrow, but the Romans by joy.

After this defeat of the enemy, Lucullus took the city of Cabirae, with several other places and castles, in which he found great riches. He found also the prisons full of Greeks and princes nearly related to the king, who were confined in them. As those unhappy persons had long given themselves over for dead, the liberty they received from Lucullus, seemed less a deliverance than a new life to them. In one of those castles, a sister of the king’s, named Nyssa, was also taken, which was to her a great instance of good fortune. For the other sisters of that prince, with his wives, who had been sent farther from the danger, and who believed themselves in safety and repose, all died miserably, Mithridates on his flight having sent them orders to die by Bacchidas the eunuch.

Among the other sisters of the king were Roxana and Statira, both unmarried, and about forty years of age, with two of his wives, Berenice and Monima, both of Ionia. All Greece spoke much of the latter, whom they admired more for her prudence than her beauty, though exquisite. The king having fallen desperately in love with her, had forgotten nothing that might incline her to favour his passion: he sent her at once 15,000 pieces of gold. She was always averse to him, and refused his presents, till he gave her the quality of wife and queen, and sent her the royal tiara, or diadem, an essential ceremony in the marriage of the kings of those nations. Nor did she then comply without extreme regret, and in compliance with the wishes of her family, who were dazzled with the splendour of a crown and the power of Mithridates, who was at that time victorious, and at the height of his glory. From the time of her marriage to the instant of which we are now speaking, that unfortunate princess had passed her life in continual sadness and affliction, lamenting her fatal beauty, which instead of a husband had given her a master, and instead of procuring her an honourable abode and the endearments of conjugal society, had confined her in a close prison, under a guard of barbarians; where, far removed from the delightful regions of Greece, she had only enjoyed a dream of the happiness with which she had been flattered, and had really lost that solid and essential good she possessed in her own beloved country.

When Bacchidas arrived, and had signified to the princesses the order of Mithridates, which favoured them no farther than to leave them at liberty to choose the kind of death they should think most gentle and immediate, Monima, taking the diadem from her head, tied it round her neck, and hung herself up by it. But that wreath not being strong enough, and breaking, she cried out, “oh, fatal trifle, you might at least do me this mournful office!” Then, throwing it away with indignation, she presented her throat to Bacchidas.

As for Berenice, she took a cup of poison; and as she was going to drink it, her mother, who was present, desired to share it with her. They accordingly drank both together. The half of that poison sufficed to carry off the mother, worn out and feeble with age; but was not enough to surmount the strength and youth of Berenice. That princess struggled long with death in the most violent agonies, till Bacchidas, tired with waiting the effects of the poison, ordered her to be strangled.

Of the two sisters, Roxana is said to have swallowed poison, venting a thousand reproaches and imprecations against Mithridates. Statira, on the contrary, was pleased with her brother, and thanked him, for that, being in so great danger for his own person, he had not forgotten them, and had taken care to supply them with the means of dying free, and of withdrawing from the indignities their enemies might else have made them suffer.

Their deaths extremely afflicted Lucullus, who was of a gentle and humane disposition. He continued his march in pursuit of Mithridates; but having received advice that he was four days’ journey before him, and had taken the road to Armenia, to retire to his son-in­law Tigranes, he returned directly; and, after having subjected some of the nations, and taken some cities in the neighbourhood, he sent Appius Clodius to Tigranes, to demand Mithridates of him ; and in the mean time returned against Amisus, which place was not yet taken. Callimachus, who commanded in it, and. was the most engineer of his times, had alone prolonged the siege. When he saw that he could hold out no longer, he set fire to the city, and escaped in a ship that waited for him. Lucullus did his utmost to extinguish the flames, but in vain; and to increase his concern, saw himself obliged to abandon the city to be plundered by the soldiers, from whom the place had as much to fear as from the flames themselves. His troops were insatiable for booty, and he not capable of restraining them. A shower of rain, which then happened to fall, preserved a great num­ber of buildings; and Lucullus, before his departure, caused those which had been burnt to be rebuilt. This city was an ancient colony of the Athenians. Such of the Athenians, during Aristion’s being master of Athens, as desired to fly from his tyranny, had retired thither, and enjoyed there the same rights and privileges with the natives.

Lucullus, when he left Amisus, directed his march towards the cities of Asia, whom the avarice and cruelty of the usurers and tax-gatherers held under the most dreadful oppression: insomuch that those poor people were obliged to sell their children of both sexes, and even set up to auction the paintings and statues consecrated to the gods. And, when these would not suffice to pay the duties, taxes, and interest of their arrears, they were given up without mercy to their creditors, and often exposed to such barbarous tortures, that slavery, in comparison with their miseries, seemed a kind of redress and tranquillity to them.

These immense debts of the province arose from the fine of 20,000 talents n which Sylla had imposed on it. They had already paid the sum twice over: but those insatiable usurers, by heaping interest upon interest, had run it up to 120,000 talents; so that they still owed triple the sums they had already paid.

Tacitus had reason to say, that usury was one of the most ancient evils of the Roman commonwealth, and the most frequent cause of sedition; but at the time we now speak of, it was carried to an excess not easy to be credited.

The interest of money amongst the Romans was paid every month, and was one per cent.; hence it was called usura centesima, or unciarium faenus; because in reckoning the twelve months, twelve per cent, was pai : Uncia is the twelfth part of a whole.

Thee law of the twelve tables prohibited the raising interest to above twelve per cent. This law was revived by the two tribunes of the people, in the 396th year of Rome.

Ten years after, interest was reduced to half that sum, in the 406th year of Rome.

At length, in the 411th year of Rome, all interest was prohibited by decree.

All these decrees were ineffectual. Avarice was always too strong for the laws; and whatever regulations were made to suppress it, either in the time of the republic or under the emperors, it always found means to elude them. Nor has it paid more regard to the laws of the church, which has never entered into any composition on this point, and severely condemns all usury, even the most moderate; because, God having forbidden any, she never believed she had a right to permit it in the least. It is remarkable, that usury has always occasioned the ruin of the states where it has been tolerated; and it was this disorder which contributed very much to subvert the constitution of the Roman commonwealth, and gave birth to the greatest calamities in all the provinces of that empire.

Lucullus, at this time, exerted himself in procuring for the provinces of Asia some relaxation; which he could only effect by putting a stop to the injustice and cruelty of the usurers and tax-gatherers. The latter, finding themselves deprived by Lucullus of the immense gain they made, raised a great outcry, as if they had been excessively injured; and by the force of money animated many orators against him; particularly confiding in having most of those who governed the republic in their debt, which gave them a very extensive and almost unbounded influence. But Lucullus despised their clamours with a constancy the more admirable from its being very uncommon.

CHAPTER. III. TIGRANES

Tigranes, to whom Lucullus had sent an ambassador, though of no great power in the beginning of his reign, had enlarged it so much by a series of successes, of which there are few examples, that he was commonly surnamed king of kings. After having overthrown and almost ruined the family of the kings, successors of the great Seleucus; after having, very often humbled the pride of the Parthians, transported whole cities of Greeks into Media, conquered all Syria and Palestine, and given laws to the Arabians called Scenites; he reigned with an authority respected by all the princes of Asia. The people paid him honours after the manner of the East, even to adoration. His pride was inflamed and supported by the immense riches he possessed, by the excessive and continual praises of his flatterers, and by a prosperity that had never known any interruption.

Appius Clodius was introduced to an audience of this prince, who appeared with all the splendour he could display, in order to give the ambassador a higher idea of the royal dignity; who, on his side, uniting the haughtiness of his natural disposition with that which particularly characterized his republic, perfectly supported the dignity of a Roman ambassador.

After having explained, in a few words, the subjects of complaint, which the Romans had against Mithridates, and that prince’s breach of faith in breaking the peace, without so much as attempting to give any reason or colour for it, he told Tigranes, that he came to demand his being delivered up to him, as due by every sort of title to Lucullus’s triumph; that he did not believe, as a friend to the Romans, which he had been till then, that he would make any difficulty in giving up Mithridates; and that, in case of his refusal, he was instructed to declare war against him.

That prince, who had never been contradicted, and who knew no other law nor rule than his own will and pleasure, was extremely offended at this Roman freedom. But he was much more so with Lucullus’s letter, when it was delivered to him. The title of king only, which it gave him, did not satisfy him. He had assumed that of king of kings, of which he was very fond, and had carried his pride in that respect so far, as to cause himself to be served by crowned heads. He never appeared in public without having four kings attending him; two on foot on each side of his horse, when he went abroad; at table, in his chamber; in short, every where, he had always some of them to do the lowest offices for him; but especially when he gave audience to ambassadors. For, at that time, to give strangers a greater idea of his glory and power, he made them all stand in two ranks, on each side of his throne, where they appeared in the habit and posture of common slaves. A pride so full of absurdity offends all the world. One more refined shocks less, though much the same at bottom.

It is not surprising that a prince of this character should bear with impatience the manner in which Clodius spoke to him. It was the first free and sincere speech he had heard during the five-and-twenty years he had governed his subjects, or rather tyrannized over them with excessive insolence. He answered, that Mithridates was the father of Cleopatra, his wife; that the union between them was of too strict a nature to admit his delivering him up for the triumph of Lucullus; and that if the Romans were unjust enough to make war against him, he knew how to defend himself, and to make them repent it. To express his resentment, he directed his answer only to Lucullus, without adding the usual title of Imperator, or any other commonly given to the Roman generals.

Lucullus, when Clodius reported the result of his commission, and that war had been declared against Tigranes, returned with the utmost diligence into Pontus to begin it. The enterprise seemed rash, and the terrible power of the king astonished all those who relied less upon the valour of the troops and the conduct of the general, than upon a multitude of soldiers. After having made himself master of Sinope, he gave that place its liberty, as he did also to Amisus, and made them both free and independent cities. Cottay did not treat Heraclaea, which he took after a long siege by treachery, in the same manner. He enriched himself out of its spoils, treated the inhabitants with excessive cruelty, and burnt almost the whole city. On his return to Rome, he was at first well received by the senate, and honoured with the surname of Ponticus, upon account of taking that place. But soon after, when the Heracleans had laid their complaints before the senate, and represented in a manner capable of moving the hardest hearts, the miseries Cotta’s avarice and cruelty had made them suffer, the senate contented themselves with depriving him of the latus clavus, which was the robe worn by the senators; a punishment in no wise proportioned to the flagrant excess proved upon him.

Lucullus left Sornatius, one of his generals, in Pontus, with 6000 men, and marched with the rest, which amounted only to 12,000 foot and 3000 horse, through Cappadocia, to the Euphrates. He passed that river in the midst of winter, and afterwards the Tigris, and came before Tigranocerta, which was at some small distance, to attack Tigranes in his capital, where he had lately arrived from Syria. Nobody dared speak to that prince of Lucullus and his march, after his cruel treatment of the person who brought him the first news of it, whom he put to death in reward for so important a service. He listened to nothing but the discourses of flatterers, who told him Lucullus must be a great captain if he only dared wait for him at Ephesus, and did not betake himself to flight and abandon Asia, when he should see the many thousands of which his army was composed. So true it is, says Plutarch, that as all constitutions are not capable of bearing much wine, all minds are not strong enough to bear great prosperity without loss of reason and infatuation.

Tigranes at first had not designed so much as to see or speak to Mithridates, though his father-in-law, but treated him with the utmost contempt and arrogance, kept him at a distance, and placed a guard over him as a prisoner of state, in marshy unwholesome places. But after Clodius’s embassy, (BC 69) he had ordered him to be brought to court with all possible honours and marks of respect. In a private conversation which they had together without witnesses, they cured themselves of their mutual suspicions, to the great misfortune of their friends, upon whom they cast all the blame.

In the number of those unfortunate persons was Metrodorus, of the city of Scepsis, a man of extraordinary merit, who had so much influence with Mithridates, that he was called the king’s father. That prince had sent him on an embassy to Tigranes, to desire aid against the Romans. When he had explained the occasion of his journey, Tigranes asked him: And you, Metrodorus, what would you advise me to do, with respect to your masters demands?” Upon which Metrodorus replied, out of an excess of ill-timed sincerity: “As an ambassador, I advise you to do what Mithridates demands of you; but as your counsel, not to do it.” This was a criminal prevarication, and a kind of treason. It cost him his life, when Mithridates had been apprised of it by Tigranes.

Lucullus was continually advancing against that prince, and was already in a manner at the gates of his palace, without his either knowing or believing any thing of the matter, so much was he blinded by his presumption. Mithrobarzanes, one of his favourites, ventured to carry him that news. The reward he had for it was to be charged with a commission, to go immediately with some troops and bring Lucullus prisoner; as if the matter had been only to arrest one of the king’s subjects. The favourite, with the greatest part of the troops given him, lost their lives, in endeavouring to execute that dangerous commission.

This ill success opened the eyes of Tigranes, and made him recover from his infatuation. Mithridates had been sent back into Pontus with 10,000 horse to raise troops there, and to return and join Tigranes, in case Lucullus entered Armenia. For himself, he had chosen to continue at Tigranocerta, in order to give the necessary orders for raising troops throughout his whole dominions. After this check, he began to be afraid of Lucullus, quitted Tigranocerta, retired to mount Taurus, and gave orders to all his troops to repair thither to him.

Lucullus marched directly to Tigranocerta, took up his quarters around the place, and formed the siege of it. This city was full of all sorts of riches; the inhabitants of all orders and conditions having emulated each other in contributing to its embellishment and magnificence, in order to make their court to the king: for this reason Lucullus pressed the siege with the utmost vigour; believing that Tigranes would never suffer it to be taken, and that he would come on in a transport of fury to offer him battle, and oblige him to raise the siege. And he was not mistaken in his conjecture. Mithridates sent every day. couriers to Tigranes, and wrote him letters, in the strongest terms, to advise him not to hazard a battle, and to make use of his cavalry alone in cutting off Lucullus’s provisions. Taxiles himself was sent by him with the same instructions; who, staying with him in his camp, earnestly entreated him, every day, not to attack the Roman armies, as they were excellently disciplined, veteran soldiers, and almost invincible.

At first he hearkened to this advice with patience enough. But when all his troops, consisting of a great number of different nations, were assembled, not only the king’s feasts, but his councils, resounded with'nothing but vain bravadoes, full of insolence, pride, and barbarian menaces. Taxiles was in danger of being killed, for having ventured to oppose the advice of those who were for a battle; and Mithridates himself was openly accused of opposing it, only out of envy, to deprive his son-in-law of the glory of so great a success.

In this conceit Tigranes determined to wait no longer, lest Mithridates should arrive, and share with him in the honour of the victory. He, therefore, marched with all his forces, telling his friends, that he was only sorry on one account, and that was, his having to engage with Lucullus alone, and not with all the Roman generals together. He measured his hopes of success by the number of his troops. He had twenty thousand archers, or slingers, fifty-five thousand horse, seventeen thousand of which were heavy-armed cavalry, a hundred and fifty thousand foot, divided into companies and battalions, besides pioneers to clear the roads, build bridges, clear and turn the course of rivers, with other labourers of the same description necessary in armies, to the number of thirty-five thousand, who being drawn up in battle-array behind the combatants, made the army appear still more numerous, and augmented its force and confidence.

When he had passed mount Taurus, and all his troops appeared together in the plains, the sight alone of his army was sufficient to strike terror into the most daring enemy. Lucullus, always intrepid, divided his troops. He left Murena with six thousand foot before the place, and with all the rest of his infantry, consisting of twenty-four cohorts, which together did not amount to more than ten or twelve thousand men, all his horse, and about a thousand archers, or slingers, marched against Tigranes, and encamped in the plain, with a large river in his front.

This handful of men made Tigranes laugh, and supplied his flatterers with matter for pleasantry. Some openly jested upon them: others, by way of diversion, drew lots for their spoils; and of all Tigranes’s generals, and all the kings in his army, there was not one who did not entreat him to intrust that affair to him alone, and content himself with being only a spectator of the action. Tigranes himself, to appear agreeable, and a delicate rallier, used an expression, which has been much admired: “If they come as ambassadors, they are a great many; but if as enemies, very few.” Thus the first day passed in jesting and raillery.

The next morning, at sunrise, Lucullus made his ill army march out of their intrenchments. That of the barbarians was on the other side of the river towards the east, and the river ran in such a manner, that it turned off short to the left towards the west, where it was easily fordable. Lucullus, in order to lead his army to this ford, inclined also to the left, towards the lower part of the river, hastening his march. Tigranes, who saw him, believed he fled ; and calling for Taxiles, told him, with a contemptuous laugh: “Do you see those invincible Roman legions? You see they can run away.” Taxiles replied: “I heartily wish your majesty s good fortune may this day work a miracle in your favour; but the arms and motions of those legions do not indicate people running away.”

Taxiles was still speaking, when he saw the eagle of the first legion move on a sudden to the right about, by the command of Lucullus, followed by all the cohorts, in order to pass the river. Tigranes, recovering then with difficulty, like one that had been long drunk, cried out two or three times: “How! are those people coming to us?” They came on so fast, that his numerous troops did not post themselves, nor draw up in battle without much disorder and confusion. Tigranes placed himself in the centre; gave the left wing to the king of the Adiabenians, and the right to the king of the Medes. The greatest part of the heavy-armed horse covered the front of the right wing.

As Lucullus was preparing to pass the river, some of his general officers advised him not to engage upon that day, because it was one of those unfortunate days which the Romans called black-days. For it was the same upon which the army of Cepio had been defeated in the battle with the Cimbri. Lucullus made them this answer, which afterwards became so famous: “And I, for my part, will make this a happy day for the Romans.”

It was the sixth day of October (the day before the nones of October).

After having made that reply, and exhorted them not to be discouraged, he passed the river, and marched foremost against the enemy. He was armed with a steel cuirass, made in the form of scales, which glittered surprisingly, under which was his coat of arms, bordered all round with fringe. He brandished his naked sword in his hand, to intimate to his troops, that it was necessary to close immediately with an enemy who were accustomed to fight only at a distance with their arrows; and to deprive them, by the swiftness and impetuosity of the attack, of the space required for the use of them.

Perceiving that the heavy-armed cavalry, upon whom the enemy very much relied, were drawn up at the foot of a little hill, the summit of which was flat and level, and the declivity of not above five hundred paces, neither much broken, nor very difficult, he saw at first glance what use was to be made of it. He commanded his Thracian and Galatian horse to charge that body of the enemy’s cavalry in flank, with orders only to turn aside their lances with their swords. For the principal, or rather whole force, of those heavy-armed horse, consisted in their lances, and when they had not room to use these, they could do nothing either against the enemy or for themselves; their arms being so heavy, stiff, and cumbersome, that they could not turn themselves, and were almost immoveable.

Whilst his cavalry marched to execute his orders, he took two cohorts of foot, and went to gain the eminence. The infantry followed courageously, excited by the example of their general, whom they saw marching foremost on foot, and ascending the hill. When he was at the top, he shewed himself from the highest part of it, and seeing from thence the whole order of the enemy’s battle, he cried out: “The victory is ours, fellow-soldiers, the victory is ours!” At the same time, with his two cohorts, he advanced against that heavy-armed cavalry, and ordered his men not to make use of their pikes, but close with the troopers sword in hand, and strike upon their legs and thighs, which were the only unarmed parts about them. But his soldiers had not so much trouble with them. That cavalry did not stay their coming on, but shamefully took to flight; and howling as they fled, fell with their heavy unwieldy horses upon the ranks of their foot, without joining battle at all, or so much as making a single thrust with their lances. The slaughter did not begin until they began to fly, or rather to endeavour to fly; for they could not do so, being prevented by their own battalions, whose ranks were so close and deep, that they could not break their way through them. Tigranes, that king so pompous and brave in words, had taken to flight from the beginning with a few followers; and seeing his son the companion of his fortune, he took off his diadem, weep­ing; and giving it him, exhorted him to save himself as well as he could by another route. That young prince was afraid to put the diadem upon his head, which would have been a dangerous ornament at such a time, and gave it into the hands of one of the most faithful of his servants, who was taken a moment after, and carried to Lucullus.

It is said, that in this defeat more than a hundred thousand of the enemy’s foot perished, and that very few of their horse escaped : on the side of the Romans only five were killed, and a hundred wounded. They had never engaged in a pitched battle so great a number of enemies with so few troops; for the victors did not amount to the twentieth part of the vanquished. The greatest and most able Roman generals, who had seen most wars and battles, gave Lucullus particular praises for having defeated two of the greatest and most powerful kings in the world, by two entirely different methods, delay and expedition. For, by protraction and spinning out the war, he exhausted Mithridates when he was strongest and most formidable; and ruined Tigranes by making haste, and not giving him time to look about him. It has been remarked, that few captains have known how, like him, to make slowness active, and haste sure.

It was this latter conduct that prevented Mithridates from being present in the battle. He imagined that Lucullus would use the same precaution and protraction against Tigranes as he had done against himself; so that he marched but slowly and by small days’ journeys to join Tigranes. But having met some Armenians upon the way, who fled with the utmost terror and consternation, he suspected what had happened; and afterwards meeting a much greater number of fugitives naked and wounded, was fully informed of the defeat, and went in search of Tigranes. He found him, at length, abandoned by all the world and in a very deplorable condition. Far from returning his ungenerous treatment, and insulting him in his misfortunes, as Tigranes had done to him, he quitted his horse, lamented their common disgrace, gave him the guard which attended, and the officers who served him, consoled, encouraged him, and revived his hopes; so that Mithridates, upon this occasion, showed himself not entirely void of humanity. Both together engaged in raising new troops on all sides.

In the mean time a furious sedition arose in Tigranocerta; the Greeks having mutinied against the barbarians, and being determined at all events to deliver the city to Lucullus. That sedition was at the highest when he arrived there. He took advantage of the occasion, ordered the assault to be given, took the city; and after having seized all the king’s treasures, abandoned it to be plundered by the soldiers; who, besides other riches, found in it eight thousand talents of coined silver (about one million two hundred thousand pounds sterling). Besides this plunder, he gave each soldier eight hundred drachmas, which, with all the booty they had taken, was not sufficient to satisfy their inordinate avidity.

As this city had been peopled by colonies which had been carried away by force from Cappadocia, Cilicia, and other places, Lucullus permitted them all to return into their native countries. They received that permission with extreme joy, and quitted it in so great numbers, that from one of the greatest cities in the world, Tigranocerta became in an instant almost a desert.

If Lucullus had pursued Tigranes after his victory, without giving him time to raise new troops, he would either have taken or driven him out of the country, and the war would have been at an end. His having failed to do so was very ill taken both in the army and at Rome, and he was accused, not of negligence, but of having intended by such conduct to make himself necessary, and to retain the command longer in his own hands. This was one of the reasons that prejudiced the generality against him, and induced them to think of giving him a successor, as we shall see in the sequel.

After the great victory he had gained over Tigranes, several nations came to make their submissions to him. He received also an embassy from the king of the Parthians, who demanded the amity and alliance of the Romans. Lucullus received this proposal favourably, and sent also ambassadors to him, who, being arrived at the Parthian court, discovered that the king, uncertain which side to take, wavered between the Romans and Tigranes, and had secretly demanded Mesopotamia of the latter, as the price of the aid he offered him. Lucullus, informed of this secret intrigue, resolved to leave Mithridates and Tigranes, and to turn his arms against the king of the Parthians; flattered with the grateful thought, that nothing could be more glorious for him, than to have entirely reduced, in one expedition, the three most powerful princes under the sun. But the opposition this proposal met with from the troops, obliged him to renounce his enterprise against the Parthians, and to confine himself to the pursuit of Tigranes.

During this delay, Mithridates and Tigranes had been indefatigable in raising new troops. They had sent to implore aid of the neighbouring nations, and especially of the Parthians, who were the nearest, and at the same time in the best condition to assist them in the present extremity. Mithridates wrote a letter to their king, which Sallust has preserved, and which is to be found amongst his fragments. I shall insert a part of it in this place.

Letter of Mithridates to Arsaces.

KING OF THE PARTHIANS.

All those who, in a state of prosperity, are invited to enter as confederates into a war, ought first to consider whether peace be at their own option; and next, whether what is demanded of them is consistent with justice, their interest, safety, and glory. You might enjoy perpetual peace and tranquillity, were not the enemy always intent upon seizing occasions of war, and undeterred by any crimes. In reducing the Romans, you cannot but acquire the highest reputation. It may seem inconsistent in me, to propose to you either an alliance with Tigranes, or that you, powerful as you are, should join a prince in my un­fortunate condition. But I dare assert, that those two motives, your resentment against Tigranes upon account of his late war with you, and the disadvantageous situation of my affairs, if you judge rightly, far from opposing my demand, ought to support it. For as to Tigranes, as he knows he has given you just cause of complaint, he will accept, without difficulty, whatever conditions you shall think Jit to impose upon him; and for me, I can say that fortune, by having deprived me of almost all I possessed, has enabled me to give others good counsel, and, which is much to be desired by persons in prosperity, I can, even from my own misfortunes, supply you with examples, and induce you to take better measures than I have done. For, do not deceive yourself; it is with all the nations, states, and kingdoms of the earth, that the Romans are at war; and two motives, as ancient as powerful, put their arms into their hands; the unbounded ambition of extending their conquests, and the insatiable thirst of riches.”

Mithridates afterwards enumerates at large the princes and kings whom they had reduced one after another, and often by means of one another. He repeats also his first successes against the Romans, and his late misfortunes. He goes on to this effect:

“Examine now, I beg you, whether, when we are finally ruined, you will be better able to resist the Romans, or can believe, that they will confine their conquests to my country ? I know you are powerful in men, in arms, and in treasure; it is for that reason we desire to strengthen ourselves by your alliance; they, to grow rich by your spoils. For the rest, it is the intention of Tigranes to avoid drawing the war into his own country, that we shall go with all my troops, which are certainly well disciplined, to carry our arms far from home, and attack the enemy in person in their own country. We cannot therefore either conquer or be conquered, without your being in danger. Do you not know, that the Romans, when they found themselves stopped by the ocean in the west, turned their arms this way? that to look back to their foundation and origin, whatever they have, they have from violence; home, wives, lands, and dominions? A vile herd of every kind of vagabonds, without country, without forefathers, they established themselves for the misfortune of the human race. Neither divine nor human laws restrain them from betraying and destroying their allies and friends, remote nations or neighbours, the weak or the powerful. They reckon as enemies all that are not their slaves; and especially whatever bears the name of king. For few nations affect a free and independent government; the generality prefer just and equitable masters. They suspect us, because we are rivals with them for dominion, and may in time take vengeance for their oppressions. But for you, who have Seleucia, the greatest of cities, and Persia, the richest and most powerful of kingdoms, what can you expect from them but deceit at present, and war hereof after? The Romans are at war with all nations; but especially with those from whom the richest spoils are to be expected. They are become great by boldly enterprising, betraying, and by making one war bring forth another. By this means, they will either destroy all others, or be destroyed themselves. It will not be difficult to ruin them, if you, on the side of Mesopotamia, and we on that of Armenia, surround their army, which will be without provisions or auxiliaries. The prosperity of their arms has subsisted hitherto solely by our fault, who have not been so prudent as to appreciate the views of this common enemy, and to unite ourselves in confederacy against him. It will be for your immortal glory to have supported two great kings, and to have conquered and destroyed these robbers of the world. This is what I earnestly advise and exhort you to do; by warning you to choose rather to share with us, by a salutary alliance, in the conquest of the common enemy, than to suffer the Roman empire to extend itself still farther by our ruin.”

It does not appear that this letter had the effect upon Phraates which Mithridates might have hoped from it. So that the two kings contented themselves with their own troops.

One of the means made use of by Tigranes to assemble a new army was to recall Megadates from Syria, who had governed it fourteen years in his name; to him he sent orders to join him with all the troops in that country. Syria being thereby entirely ungarrisoned, Antiochus Asiaticus, son of Antiochus Eusebes, to whom it of right appertained, as lawful heir of the house of Seleucus, took possession of some part of the country, and reigned there peaceably during four years.

The army of Tigranes and Mithridates was at last formed (BC 68). It consisted of 70,000 chosen men, whom Mithridates had trained well in the Roman discipline. It was about Midsummer before it took the field. The two kings took particular care, in all the movements they made, to choose an advantageous ground for their camp, and to fortify it well, to prevent Lucullus’s attacking them in it; nor could all the stratagems he used, engage them to come to a battle. Their design was to reduce him gradually; to harass his troops on their marches, in order to weaken them; to intercept his convoys, and oblige him to quit the country for want of provisions. Lucullus not being able, by all the arts he could use, to bring them into the open field, employed a new plan, which succeeded. Tigranes had left at Artaxata, the capital of Armenia before the foundation of Tigranocerta, his wives and children; and there he had deposited almost all his treasures. Lucullus marched that way with all his troops, rightly foreseeing that Tigranes would not remain quiet, when he saw the danger to which his capital was exposed. That prince accordingly decamped immediately, followed Lucullus to disconcert his design; and, by four great inarches, having got before him, posted himself behind the river Arsamia, which Lucullus was obliged to pass in his way to Artaxata, and resolved to dispute the passage with him. The Romans passed the river without being prevented by the presence or efforts of the enemy; a great battle ensued, in which the Romans again obtained a complete victory. There were three kings in the Armenian army, of whom Mithridates behaved the worst; for, not being able to look the Roman legions in the face, as soon as they charged, he was one of the first who fled ; which threw the whole army into such a consternation, that it entirely lost all courage; and this was the principal cause of the loss of the battle.

Lucullus, after this victory, determined to continue his march to Artaxata, which was the certain means to put an end to the war. But as that city was still several days’ journey from thence, towards the north, and winter was approaching with its train of snows and storms, the soldiers, already fatigued by a sufficiently rough campaign, refused to follow him into that country, where the cold was too severe for them. He was obliged to lead them into a warmer climate, by returning the way he came.

He therefore repassed mount Taurus, and entered Mesopotamia, where he took the city Nisibis, a place of considerable strength, and he put his troops into winter-quarters.

It was there that the spirit of mutiny began to show itself openly in the army of Lucullus. That general’s severity, and the insolent liberty of the Roman soldiers, and still more the malignant practices of Clodius, had given occasion for this revolt. Clodius, so well known by the invectives of Cicero, his enemy, is hardly better treated by historians. They represent him as a man abandoned to all kind of vices, and infamous for his debaucheries, which he carried to such excess as to commit incest with his own sister, the wife of Lucullus; to these he added unbounded audacity, and uncommon cunning in the contrivance of seditions; in a word, he was one of those dangerous persons, born to disturb and ruin every thing by the unhappy union in himself of the most wicked inclinations, with the talents necessary for put­ting them in execution. He gave a proof of this upon the occasion of which we are now speaking. Discontented with Lucullus, he secretly spread reports against him, well calculated to render him odious. He affected to lament extremely the fatigues of the soldiers, and to enter into their interests. He told them every day, that they were very unfortunate, in being obliged to serve so long under a severe and avaricious general, in a remote climate, without lands or rewards, whilst their fellow-soldiers, whose conquests were very moderate in comparison with theirs, had enriched themselves under Pompey. Discourses of this kind, attended with obliging and affa­ble behaviour, which he knew how to assume occasionally without the appearance of affectation, made such an impression upon the soldiers, that it was no longer in the power of Lucullus to govern them.

Mithridates, in the mean time, had re-entered Pontus with 4000 of his own troops, and 4000 given him by Tigranes. Several inhabitants of the country joined him again, as well out of hatred to the Romans, who had treated them with great rigour, as through the remains of affection for their king, reduced to the mournful condition in which they saw him, from the most splendid fortune and exalted greatness. For the misfortunes of princes naturally excite compassion, and there is generally a profound respect engraven in the hearts of the people for the name and person of kings. Mithridates, encouraged and strengthened by these new aids, and the troops which several neighbouring states and princes sent him, resumed courage, and saw himself, more than ever, in a condition to make head against the Romans. So that not contented with being re-established in his dominions, which a moment before he did not so much as hope ever to see again, he had the boldness to attack the Roman troops, so often victorious; beat a body of them, commanded by Fabius; and, after having put them to the rout, pressed Triarius and Sornatius, two other of Lucullus’s lieutenants in that country, with great vigour.

Lucullus at length engaged his soldiers to quit their winter-quarters, and to go to their aid. But they arrived too late. Triarius had imprudently ventured a battle, in which Mithridates had defeated him, and killed 7000 of his men; amongst whom were reckoned 150 centurions and twenty-four tribunes, which made this one of the greatest losses the Romans had sustained for a great while. The army would have been entirely defeated, but for a wound Mithridates had received, which exceedingly alarmed his troops, and gave the enemy time to escape. Lucullus, upon his arrival, found the dead bodies upon the field of battle, and did not give orders for their interment; which still more exasperated his soldiers against him. The spirit of revolt rose so high, that, without any regard for his character as general, they treated him no longer but with insolence and contempt; and though he went from tent to tent, and almost from man to man, to conjure them to march against Mithridates and Tigranes, he could never prevail upon them to quit the place where they were. They answered him brutally, that as he had no thoughts but of en­riching himself alone out of the spoils of the enemy, he might march alone, and fight them, if he thought fit.

CHAPTER IV. POMPEY

Manius Acilius Glabrio and C. Piso had been elected consuls at Rome. The first had Bithynia and Pontus for his province, where Lucullus commanded. The senate, at the same time, disbanded Fimbria’s legions, which were part of his army. All this news augmented the disobedience and insolence of the troops towards Lucullus.

It is true, his rough, austere, and frequently haughty disposition, gave some room for such usage. He cannot be denied the glory of having been one of the greatest captains of his age; and of having had almost all the qualities that form a complete general. But one was wanting which diminished the merit of all the rest; I mean the art of gaining the affections, and making himself beloved by the soldiers. He was difficult of access; rough in commanding; carried exactitude, in point of duty, to an excess that made it odious; was inexorable in punishing offences; and did not know how to conciliate good-will by praises and rewards opportunely bestowed, or by an air of kindness and affability, and insinuating manners, still more efficacious than either gifts or praises. And what proves that the sedition of the troops was in a great measure his own fault, was their being very docile and obedient under Pompey.

In consequence of the letters which Lucullus had written to the senate, in which he acquainted them, that Mithridates was entirely defeated, and utterly incapable of retrieving himself, commissioners had been nominated to regulate the affairs of Pontus, as of a kingdom totally reduced. They were much surprised to find, upon their arrival, that, far from being master of Pontus, he was not so much as master of his army, and that his own soldiers treated him with the utmost contempt.

The arrival of the consul Acilius Glabrio still added to their licentiousness. He informed them that Lucullus had been accused at Rome of protracting the war for the sake of continuing his command; that the senate had disbanded part of his troops, and forbade them paying him any farther obedience. So that he soon found himself almost entirely abandoned by the soldiers. Mithridates, taking advantage of this disorder, had time to recover his whole kingdom, and to make great ravages in Cappadocia.

Whilst the affairs of the army were in this condition great noise was made at Rome against Lucullus. Pompey had just put an end to the war with the pirates, for which an extraordinary power had been granted to him. Upon this occasion one of the tribunes of the people, named Manilius, proposed a decree to this effect: “That Pompey, taking upon him the command of all the troops and provinces which were under Lucullus, and adding to them Bithynia, where Acilius commanded, should be charged with the conduct of the war against the kings Mithridates and Tigranes, retaining under him all the naval forces, and continuing to command at sea with the same conditions and prerogatives as had been granted him in the war against the pirates; that is to say, that he should have absolute power on all the coasts of the Mediterranean, to thirty leagues distance from the sea.” This was, in effect, subjecting the whole Roman empire to one man. For all the provinces which had not been granted him by the first decree, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, the higher Colchis, and Armenia, were conferred upon him by this second, which included also all the armies arid forces, with which Lucullus had defeated the two kings Mithridates and Tigranes.

Consideration for Lucullus, who was deprived of the glory of his great exploits, and in the place of whom a general was appointed to succeed more to the honours of his triumph than the command of his armies, was not, however, what gave the nobility and senate most concern: they were well convinced that great wrong was done him, and that his services were not treated with the gratitude they deserved : but what gave them most pain, and what they could not support, was that high degree of power to which Pompey was raised, which they considered as a tyranny already formed. For this reason they exhorted each other in private, and mutually encouraged one another to oppose this decree, and not abandon their expiring liberty.

Caesar and Cicero, who were very powerful at Rome, supported Manilius, or rather Pompey, with all their credit. It was upon this occasion that the latter pro­nounced that fine oration before the people, entitled, For the law of Manillas. After having demonstrated, in the first two parts of his discourse, the necessity and importance of the war in question, he proves, in the third, that Pompey is the only person capable of terminating it successfully. For this purpose, he enumerates at length the qualities necessary to form a general of an army, and shews that Pompey possesses them all in a supreme degree. He insists principally upon his probity, humanity, innocence of manners, integrity, disinterestedness, love of the public good: “Virtues, by so much the more necessary (says he), as the Roman name is become infamous and hateful amongst foreign nations, and our allies, in consequence of the debauches, avarice, and unheard-of oppressions of the generals and magistrates we send amongst them. Instead of which, the prudent, moderate, and irreproachable conduct of Pompey will make him be regarded, not as sent from Rome, but descended from heaven, for the happiness of the nations. People begin to believe, that all which is related of the noble disinterestedness of those ancient Romans is real and true; and that it was not without reason, that, under such magistrates, nations chose rather to obey the Roman people than to command others.”

Pompey was at that time the idol of the people; wherefore the fear of displeasing the multitude kept those grave senators silent, who had at first appeared so well inclined, and so full of courage. The decree was authorized by the suffrages of all the tribes; and Pompey, though absent, declared absolute master of almost all Sylla had usurped by arms, and by making a cruel war upon his country.

We must not imagine, says a very judicious historian, that either Cassar or Cicero, who took so much pains to have this law passed, acted from views of the public good. Caesar, full of ambition and great projects, endeavoured to make his court to the people, whose authority he knew was at that time much greater than the senate’s: he thereby opened himself a way to the same power, and familiarized the Romans to extraordinary and unlimited commissions: in heaping upon the head of Pompey so many favours and glaring distinctions, he flattered himself that he should at length render him odious to the people, who would soon take offence at him. So that in lifting him up, he had no other design than to prepare a precipice for him. Cicero also had in view only his own greatness. His weak side was a desire of bearing sway in the commonwealth; not indeed by guilt and violence, but by the method of persuasion. Besides his wish to support himself by the influence of Pompey, he was very well pleased with shewing the nobility and people, who formed two parties, and, in a manner, two republics in the state, that he was capable of making the balance incline to the side he espoused. It was always his policy to conciliate equally both parties, in declaring sometimes for the one, and sometimes for the other.

Pompey, who had lately terminated the war with the pirates, was still in Cilicia, when he received letters to inform him of all the people had decreed in his favour. (BC 66) When his friends, who were present, congratulated him, and expressed their joy, it is said, that he knit his brows, struck his thigh, and cried out, as if oppressed by, and sorry for, that new command: “Gods! what endless labours am I devoted to? Should I not have been more happy as a man unknown and inglorious? Shall I never cease to make war, nor ever have my arms off my back? Shall I never escape the envy that persecutes me, nor live at peace in the country with my wife and children?”

This is usually enough the language of the ambitious, even of those who are most inordinately actuated by that passion. But, however successful they may be in imposing upon themselves, it seldom happens that they deceive others; and the public is far from mistaking them. The friends of Pompey, and even those who were most intimate with him, could not endure his dissimulation at this time. For there was not one of them who did not know, that his natural ambition and passion for command, still more inflamed by his quarrel with Lucullus, made him feel a more refined and sensible satisfaction in the new charge conferred upon him; and his actions soon took off the mask, and discovered his real sentiments.

The first step which he took upon arriving in the provinces of his government, was to forbid any obedience whatsoever to the orders of Lucullus. In his march he altered every thing which his predecessor had decreed. He exonerated some from the penalties Lucullus had laid upon them; deprived others of the rewards he had given them : in short, his sole view in every thing was to let the partisans of Lucullus see that they adhered to a man who had neither authority nor power. Strabo’s uncle, by the mother’s side, highly discontented with Mithridates for having put to death several of his relations, to avenge himself for that cruelty, had gone over to Lucullus, and had given up fifteen places in Cappadocia to him. Lucullus loaded him with honours, and promised to reward him as such considerable services deserved. Pompey, far from having any regard for such just and reasonable engagements, which his predecessor had entered into solely from a view to the public good, affected a universal opposition to them, and looked upon all those as his enemies who had contracted any friendship with Lucullus.

It is not uncommon for a successor to endeavour to lessen the value of his predecessor’s actions, in order to arrogate all the honour to himself; but certainly none ever carried that conduct to such monstrous excess as Pompey did at this time. His great qualities and innumerable conquests are exceedingly extolled; but so base and odious a jealousy ought to sully, or rather totally eclipse, the glory of them. Such was the manner in which Pompey thought fit to begin.

Lucullus made bitter complaints of this conduct. Their common friends, in order to a reconciliation, con­certed an interview between them. It passed at first with all possible politeness, and with reciprocal marks of esteem and amity. But these were only compliments, and a language that extended no farther than the lips, which costs the great nothing. The heart soon explained itself. The conversation growing warm by degrees, they proceeded to invectives; Pompey reproaching Lucullus with his avarice, and Lucullus Pompey with his ambition, in which they spoke the truth of each other. They parted more incensed, and greater enemies than before.

Lucullus set out for Rome, whither he carried a great quantity of books, which he had collected in his conquests. Of these he formed a library, which was open to all the learned and curious, whom it drew about him in great numbers. They were received at his house with all possible politeness and generosity. The honour of a triumph was granted to Lucullus, but not without being long contested.

It was he who first brought cherries to Rome, which, till then, had been unknown in Europe. They were thus called from Cerasus, a city in Cappadocia.

Pompey began by engaging Phraates, king of the Parthians, in the Roman interest. He has been spoken of already, and is the same who was surnamed the god. He concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with him. He offered peace also to Mithridates; but that prince, believing himself sure of the amity and aid of Phraates, would not so much as hear it mentioned. When he was informed that Pompey had anticipated him, he sent to treat with him. But Pompey having demanded, by way of preliminary, that he should lay down his arms, and give up all deserters, those proposals were very near occasioning a mutiny in Mithridates’s army. As there were abundance of deserters in it, they could not suffer any thing to be said upon delivering them up to Pompey; nor would the rest of the army consent to see themselves weakened by the loss of their comrades. To appease them, Mithridates was obliged to tell them that he had sent his ambassadors only to inspect the condition of the Roman army; and to swear that he would not make peace with the Romans, either on those or on any other conditions.

Pompey, having distributed his fleet in different stations, to guard the whole sea between Phoenicia and the Bosphorus, marched by land against Mithridates, who had still 30,000 foot, and 2000 or 3000 horse; but did not dare, however, to come to a battle. That prince was encamped upon a mountain, in a very strong position, where he could not be forced; but he abandoned it on Pompey’s approach, for want of water. Pompey immediately took possession of it; and conjecturing, from the nature of the plants and other signs, that there must be an abundance of springs within it, he ordered wells to be dug, and in an instant the camp had water in abundance. Pompey could not sufficiently wonder how Mithridates, for want of attention and curiosity, had been so long ignorant of so important and necessary a resource.

Soon after he followed him, encamped near him, and shut him up within strong ramparts, which he carried quite round his camp. They were almost eight leagues in circumference,1 and were fortified with strong towers, at proper distances from each other. Mithridates, either through fear or negligence, suffered him to finish his works. Pompey’s plan was to starve him out. And in fact he reduced him to such a want of provisions, that his troops were obliged to subsist upon the carriage-beasts in their camp. The horses alone were spared. After having sustained this kind of siege for almost fifty days, Mithridates escaped by night undiscovered, with all the best troops of his army, having first ordered all the useless and sick persons to be killed.

Pompey immediately pursued him; came up with him near the Euphrates; encamped near him; and apprehending, that, in order to escape, he would make haste to pass the river, he quitted his intrenchments, and advanced against him by night, in order of battle. His design was merely to surround the enemy, to prevent their flying, and to attack them at day-break the next morning. But all his old officers made such entreaties and remonstrances to him, that they induced him to fight without waiting till day; for the night was not very dark, the moon giving light enough for distinguishing objects, and knowing one another. Pompey could not withstand the ardour of his troops, and led them on against the enemy. The barbarians were afraid to stand the attack, and fled immediately in the utmost consternation. The Romans made a great slaughter of them, killed above 10,000 men, and took their whole camp.

Mithridates, with 800 horse, in the beginning of the battle opened himself a way, sword in hand, through the Roman army, and went off. But those 800 horse soon quitted their ranks and dispersed, and left him with only three followers, of which number was Hypsicratia, one of his wives, a woman of masculine courage and warlike boldness; which occasioned her being called Hypsicrates, by changing the termination of her name from the feminine to the masculine. She was mounted that day on horseback, and wore the habit of a Persian. She continued to attend the king, without giving way to the fatigues of his long journeys, or being weary of serving him, though she took care of his horse herself, till they arrived at a fortress where the king’s treasures and most precious effects lay. There, after having distributed the most magnificent of his robes to such as were assembled about him, he made a present to each of his friends of a mortal poison, that none of them might fall alive into the hands of their enemies, but by their own consent.

That unhappy fugitive saw no other hopes for him, than from his son-in-law Tigranes. He sent ambassadors to demand permission to take refuge in his dominions, and aid for the re-establishment of his entirely ruined affairs. Tigranes was at that time at war with his son. He caused those ambassadors to be seized and thrown into prison, and set a price upon his father-in-law’s head, promising 100 talents to whosoever should seize or kill him; under pretence that it was Mithridates who had made his son take up arms against him; but in reality to make his court to the Romans, as we shall soon see.

Pompey, after the victory he had gained, marched into Armenia Major against Tigranes, He found him at war with his son, who bore the same name with himself. We have already mentioned that the king of Armenia had espoused Cleopatra, the daughter of Mithridates. He had three sons by her, two of whom he had put to death without reason. The third, to escape the cruelty of so unnatural a father, had fled to Phraates, king of Parthia, whose daughter he had married. His father-in-law carried him back to Armenia at the head of an army, where they besieged Artaxata. But finding the place very strong, and provided with every thing necessary for a good defence, Phraates left him part of the army to carry on the siege, and returned with the rest into his own dominions. Tigranes, the father, soon after fell upon the son with all his troops, beat his army, and drove them out of the country. That young prince, after this misfortune, had designed to withdraw to his grandfather Mithridates. But on the way he was informed of his defeat; and having lost all hope of obtaining aid from him, he resolved to throw himself into the arms of the Romans. Accordingly, he entered their camp, and went to Pompey to implore his protection. Pompey gave him a very good reception, and was glad of his coming; for, as he was about to carry the war into Armenia, he had occasion for such a guide as he. He therefore caused that prince to conduct him directly to Artaxata.

Tigranes, terrified at this news, and sensible that he was not in a condition to oppose so powerful an army, resolved to have recourse to the generosity and clemency of the Roman general. He put into his hands the ambassadors sent to him by Mithridates, and followed them directly himself. Without taking any precaution, he entered the Roman camp, and went to submit his person and crown to the discretion of Pompey and the Ro­mans. He said: “That of all the Romans, and of all mankind, Pompey was the only person in whose faith he could confide; that, in whatsoever manner he should decide his fate, he should be satisfied; that he was not ashamed to be conquered by a man whom none could conquer; and that it was no dishonour to submit to him, whom fortune had made superior to all others.”

When he arrived on horseback near the intrenchments of the camp, two of Pompey’s lictors came out to meet him, and ordered him to dismount and enter on foot; telling him, that no stranger had ever been known to enter a Roman camp on horseback. Tigranes obeyed, ungirt his sword, and gave it the lictors; and afterwards, when he approached Pompey, taking off his diadem, he would have laid it at his feet, and prostrated himself to the earth to embrace his knees. But Pompey ran to prevent him; and taking him by the hand, carried him into his tent, made him sit on the right, and his son, the young Tigranes, on the left side of him. After which he deferred hearing what he had to say to the next day, and invited the father and son to sup with him that evening. The son refused to be there with his father; and as he had not shewn him the least mark of respect during the interview, and had treated him with the same indifference as if he had been a stranger, Pompey was very much offended at that behaviour. He did not, however, entirely neglect his interests, in determining upon the affair of Tigranes. After having condemned Tigranes to pay the Romans 6'000 talents for the charges of the war he had made against them without cause, and to relinquish to them all his conquests on the hither side of the Euphrates, he decreed, that he should reign in his ancient kingdom Armenia Major, and that his son should have Gordiana and Sophena, two provinces upon the borders of Armenia, during his father’s life, and all the rest of his dominions after his death; reserving, however, to the father the treasures he had in Sophena, without which it would have been impossible for him to have paid the Romans the sum which Pompey required of him.

The father was well satisfied with these conditions, which still left him a crown. But the son, who had entertained chimerical hopes, could not relish a decree which deprived him of what had been promised him. He was even so much discontented with it, that he wanted to escape, in order to excite new troubles. Pompey, who suspected his design, ordered him to be always kept in view; and, upon his absolutely refusing to consent that his father should withdraw his treasures from Sophena, he caused him to be put into prison. Afterwards, having discovered that he solicited the Ar­menian nobility to take up arms, and endeavoured to engage the Parthians to do the same, he put him amongst those whom he reserved for his triumph.

A short time after, Phraates, king of the Parthians, sent to Pompey, to claim that young prince as his son­in-law; and to represent to him, that he ought to make the Euphrates the boundary of his conquests. Pompey made answer, that the younger Tigranes was more related to his father than his father-in-law; and that as to his conquests, he should give them such bounds as reason and justice required; but without being pre­scribed them by any one.

When Tigranes had been suffered to possess himself of his treasures in Sophena, he paid the 6000 talents, and besides that, gave every private soldier in the Roman army fifty drachmas, 1000 to each centurion, and 10,000 to each tribune; and by that liberality obtained the title of friend and ally of the Roman people. This would have been pardonable, had he not added to it abject behaviour and submissions unworthy of a king.

Pompey gave all Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes, and added to it Sophena and Gordiana, which he had designed for young Tigranes.

After having regulated every thing in Armenia, Pompey marched northwards in pursuit of Mithridates. Upon the banks of the Cyrus he found the Albanians and Iberians, two powerful nations, situate between the Caspian and Euxine seas, who endeavoured to stop him; but he beat them, and obliged the Albanians to demand peace. He granted it, and passed the winter in their country.

The next year (BC 65) he took the field very early against the Iberians. This was a very warlike nation, and had never hitherto been conquered. It had always retained its liberty, during the time that the Medes, Persians, and Macedonians, had successively possessed the empire of Asia. Pompey found means to subdue this people, though not without very considerable difficulties, and obliged them to demand peace. The king of the Iberians sent him a bed, a table, and a throne, all of massy gold; desiring him to accept those presents as earnests of his amity. Pompey put them into the hands of the questors for the public treasury. He also subjected the people of Colchis, and made their king Olthaces prisoner, whom he afterwards led in triumph. From thence he returned into Albania, to chastise that nation for having taken up arms again, whilst he was engaged with the Iberians and the people of Colchis.

The army of the Albanians was commanded by Cosis, the brother of king Orodes. That prince, as soon as the two armies came to blows, singled out Pompey, and spurring furiously up to him, darted his javelin at him. But Pompey received him so vigorously with his spear, that it went through his body, and laid him dead at his horse’s feet. The Albanians were overthrown, and a great slaughter was made of them. This victory obliged king Orodes to buy a second peace upon the same terms with that which he had made with the Romans the year before, at the price of great presents, and by giving one of his sons as a hostage for his observing it better than he had done the former.

Mithridates, in the meantime, had passed the winter at Dioscurias, in the north-east of the Euxine sea. Early in the spring he marched to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, through several nations of the Scythians, some of which suffered him to pass voluntarily, and others were obliged to it by force. The kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosphorus is the same which is now called Crim Tartary, and was at that time a province of Mithridates’s empire. He had assigned it as an establishment to one of his sons, named Machares. But that young prince had been so vigorously pressed by the Romans, whilst they besieged Sinope, and their fleet was in possession of the Euxine sea, which lay between that city and his kingdom, that he had been obliged to make a peace with them, and had inviolably observed it till then. He well knew that his father was extremely displeased with such conduct, and therefore very much dreaded meeting him. In order to a reconciliation, he sent ambassadors to him upon his route, who represented to him, that he had been reduced to act in that manner, contrary to his inclination, by the necessity of his affairs. But finding that his father was not influenced by his reasons, he endeavoured to escape by sea, and was taken by vessels sent expressly by Mithridates to cruise in his way. He chose rather to kill himself than fall into his father’s hands.

Pompey, having terminated the war in the north, and seeing it impossible to follow Mithridates into the remote country to which he had retired, led back his army to the south, and on his march subjected Darius king of the Medes, and Antiochus king of Comagena. He went on to Syria, and made himself master of the whole empire. Scaurus reduced Coelesyria and Damascus, and Gabinius all the rest of the country as far as the Tigris: these were two of his lieutenant-generals. Antiochus Asiaticus, son of Antiochus Eusebes, heir of the house of the Seleucidae, who, by Lucullus’s permission, had reigned four years in part of that country, of which he had taken possession when Tigranes abandoned it, came to solicit him to re-establish him upon the throne of his ancestors. But Pompey refused to give him audience, and deprived him of all his dominions, which he made a Roman province. Thus, whilst Tigranes was left in possession of Armenia, who had done the Romans great hurt during the course of a long war, Antiochus was de­throned, who had never committed the least hostility, and by no means deserved such treatment. The reason given for it was, that the Romans had conquered Syria from Tigranes; that it was not just that they should lose the fruit of their victory; that Antiochus was a prince who had neither the courage nor capacity necessary for the defence of the country; and that to put it into his hands would be to expose it to the perpetual ravages and incursions of the Jews and Arabians, which Pompey took care not to do. In consequence of this way of reasoning, Antiochus lost his crown, and was reduced to the necessity of passing his life as a private person. In him ended the empire of the Seleucids, after a duration of almost 250 years.

During these expeditions of the Romans in Asia, great revolutions happened in Egypt. The Alexandrians, weary of their king Alexander, took up arms; and after having expelled him, called in Ptolemy Auletes to supply his place. That history will be treated at large in the ensuing article.

Pompey afterwards went to Damascus, where he regulated several affairs relating to Egypt and Judea. During his residence there, twelve crowned heads went thither to make their court to him, and were all in the city at the same time.

A fine contention between the love of a father and the duty of a son was seen at this time; a very extraordinary contest in those days, when the most horrid murders and parricides frequently opened the way to thrones. Ariobarzanes, king of Cappadocia, voluntarily resigned the crown in favour of his son, and put the diadem on his head in the presence of Pompey. The most sincere tears flowed in abundance from the eyes of the son, who was truly afflicted at a circumstance for which others would have highly rejoiced. It was the sole occasion in which he thought disobedience allowable; and he would have persisted in refusing the sceptre, if Pompey’s orders had not interfered, and obliged him at length to submit to paternal authority. This is the second example Cappadocia has displayed of such a contest of generosity. We have spoken in its place of a similar contest between the two Ariaratheses.

As Mithridates was in possession of several strong places in Pontus and Cappadocia, Pompey judged it necessary to return thither in order to reduce them. He made himself master of almost all of them upon his arrival, and afterwards wintered at Aspis, a city of Pontus.

Stratonice, one of Mithridates’s wives, surrendered a castle of the Bosphorus, which she had in her keeping, to Pompey, with the treasures concealed in it, demanding only for recompense, that if her son Xiphares should fall into his hands, he should be restored to her. Pompey accepted only such of those presents as would serve for the ornaments of temples. When Mithridates knew what Stratonice had done, to revenge her facility in surrendering that fortress, which he considered as a treason, he killed Xiphares in his mother’s sight, who beheld that sad spectacle from the other side of the strait.

Caina, or the New City, was the strongest place in Pontus, and therefore Mithridates kept the greatest part of his treasures, and whatever he had of greatest value, in that place, which he conceived impregnable. Pompey took it, and with it all that Mithridates had left in it. Amongst other things were found secret memoirs, written by himself, which gave a very good insight into his character. In one part he had noted down the persons he had poisoned, amongst whom were his own son Ariarathes, and Alcaeus of Sardis; the latter, because he had carried the prize in the chariot-race against him. What fantastical records were these! Was he afraid that the public and posterity should not be informed of his monstrous crimes, and his motives for committing them?

His memoirs of physics were also found there, which Pompey caused to be translated into Latin by Lenaeus, a good grammarian, one of his freedmen; and they were afterwards made public in that language. For, amongst the other extraordinary qualities of Mithridates, he was very skilful in medicine. It was he who invented the excellent antidote which still bears his name, and from which physicians have experienced such effects, that they continue to use it successfully to this day.

Pompey, during his stay at Aspis, made such regulations in the affairs of the country, as the state of them would admit. As soon as the spring returned, he marched back into Syria for the same purpose. He did not think it advisable to pursue Mithridates in the kingdom of the Bosphorus, whither he was returned. To do that, he must have marched round the Euxine Sea with an army, and passed through many countries, either inhabited by barbarous nations, or entirely desert; a very dangerous enterprise, in which he would have run great risk of pe­rishing. So that all Pompey could do was to post the Roman fleet in such a manner as to intercept any convoys that might be sent to Mithridates. Fie believed, by that means, he should be able to reduce him to the last extremity; and said, on setting out, that he left Mithridates more formidable enemies than the Romans, which were hunger and necessity.

What carried him with so much ardour into Syria was his excessive and vainglorious ambition to push his conquests as far as the Red Sea. In Spain, and before that in Africa, he had carried the Roman arms as far as the western ocean on both sides of the straits of the Mediterranean. In the war against the Albanians, he had extended his conquests to the Caspian Sea, and believed there was nothing wanting to his glory, but to push them on as far as the Red Sea. Upon his arrival in Syria, he declared Antioch and Seleucia, upon the Orontes, free cities, and continued his march towards Damascus; from whence he designed to have gone on against the Arabians, and afterwards to have conquered all the countries to the Red Sea. But an accident happened which obliged him to suspend all his projects, and to return into Pontus.

Some time before, an embassy had come to him from Mithridates, who demanded peace. He proposed, that he should be suffered to retain his hereditary dominions, as Tigranes had been, upon condition of paying a tribute to the Romans, and resigning all his other provinces. Pompey replied, that then he should also come in person, as Tigranes had done. Mithridates could not consent to such a meanness, but proposed sending his children, and some of his principal friends. Pompey would not be satisfied with that. The negotiation broke off, and Mithridates applied himself to making preparations for war with as much vigour as ever. Pompey, who received advice of this activity, judged it necessary to be upon the spot, in order to have an eye to every thing. For that purpose, he went to pass some time at Amisus, the ancient capital of the country. There, through the just punishment of the gods, says Plutarch, his ambition made him commit faults which drew upon him the blame of all the world. He had publicly charged and reproached Lucullus, for having, while the war still raged, dis­posed of provinces, given rewards, decreed honours, and acted in all things as victors are not accustomed to act till a war is finally terminated ; and now he fell into the same inconsistency himself. For he disposed of governments, and divided the dominions of Mithridates into provinces, as if the war had been at an end. But Mithridates still lived, and every thing was to be apprehended from a prince inexhaustible in resources, whom the greatest defeats could not disconcert, and whom losses themselves seemed to inspire with new courage, and to supply with new strength. And indeed at that very time, when he was believed to be irretrievably ruined, he was actually meditating a terrible invasion into the very heart of the Roman empire with the troops he had lately raised.

Pompey, in the distribution of rewards, gave Armenia Minor to Dejotarus, prince of Galatia, who had always continued firmly attached to the Roman interests during this war, to which he added the title of king. It was this Dejotarus who, by always persisting, through gratitude, in his adherence to Pompey, incurred the resentment of Caesar, and had occasion for the eloquence of Cicero to defend him.

He made Archelaus also high-priest of the Moon, who was the supreme goddess of the Comanians in Pontus, and gave him the sovereignty of the place, which contained at least 6000 persons, all devoted to the worship of that deity. I have already observed, that this Archelaus was the son of him who commanded in chief the troops sent by Mithridates into Greece in his first war with the Romans, and who, being disgraced by that prince, had, with his son, taken refuge amongst them. They had always, from that time, continued their firm adherents, and had been of great use to them in the wars of Asia. The father being dead, the high-priesthood of Comana, and the sovereignty annexed to it, were given to the son, in recompense for the services of both.

During Pompey’s stay in Pontus, Aretas, king of Arabia Petraea, took advantage of his absence to make incursions into Syria, which very much distressed the inhabitants. Pompey returned thither. Upon his way he came to the place where lay the dead bodies of the Romans killed in the defeat of Triarius. He caused them to be interred with great solemnity, which gained him the hearts of his soldiers. From thence he continued his march towards Syria, with the view of execut­ing the projects he had formed for the war of Arabia; but news of importance interrupted those designs.

Though Mithridates had lost all hopes of peace, ever since Pompey had rejected the overtures he had caused to be made to him; and though he saw many of his subjects abandon his party; far from losing courage, he had formed the design of crossing Pannonia, and passing the Alps, to attack the Romans in Italy itself, as Han­nibal had done before him : a project more bold than prudent, with which his inveterate hatred and blind de­spair had inspired him. A great number of the neighbouring Scythians had entered themselves in his service, and considerably augmented his army. He had sent deputies into Gaul to solicit the nations there to join him, when he should approach the Alps. As great pas­sions are always credulous, and men easily flatter themselves in what they ardently desire, he was in hopes that the flame of the revolt among the slaves in Italy and Sicily, perhaps ill extinguished, might suddenly rekindle upon his presence : that the pirates would soon repossess themselves of the empire of the sea, and involve the Romans in new difficulties; and that the provinces, op­pressed by the avarice and cruelty of the magistrates and generals, would be anxious to throw off the yoke by his aid, under which they had so long groaned. Such were the thoughts that he had revolved in his mind.

But as, in order to execute this project, it was necessary to march more than 500 leagues, and traverse the countries now called Little Tartary, Podolia, Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, Hungary, Stiria, Carinthia, the Tirol, and Lombardy; and pass three great rivers, the Borysthenes, Danube, and Po; the bare idea of so toilsome and dangerous a march threw his army into such terror, that, to prevent the execution of his design, they conspired against him, and chose Pharnaces, his son, king, who had been active in exciting the soldiers to this revolt. Mithridates then, seeing himself abandoned by all the world, and that even his son would not suffer him to escape where he could, retired to his apartment, and, after having given poison to such of his wives, concubines, and daughters, as were with him at that time, he took the same himself; but when he perceived that it had not its effect upon him, he had recourse to his sword. The wound he gave himself not sufficing, he was obliged to desire a Gaulish soldier to put an end to his life. Dion says, he was killed by his own son.

Mithridates had reigned sixty years, and lived seventy-two. His greatest fear was of falling into the hands of the Romans, and of being led in triumph. To prevent that misfortune, he always carried poison about him, in order to escape that way, if other means should fail. The apprehension he was in, lest his son should deliver him up to Pompey, occasioned his taking the fatal resolution which he executed so suddenly. It is generally said, that the reason that the poison which he drank did not kill him was, his having taken antidotes so much, that his constitution was proof against it. But this is believed an error, and that it is impossible any remedy should be a universal antidote against all the different species of poison.

Pompey was at Jericho in Palestine, whither the differences between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, of which we have spoken elsewhere, had carried him, when he received the first news of Mithridates’s death. It was brought him by expresses despatched on purpose from Pontus with letters from his lieutenants. Those expresses arriving with their lances crowned with laurels, which was customary only when they brought advice of some victory, or news of great importance and advantage, the army was very eager and solicitous to know what it was. As they had only begun to form their camp, and had not erected the tribunal from which the general harangued the troops, without staying to raise one of turf, as was usual, because that would take up too much time, they made one of the packs of their carriage-horses, upon which Pompey mounted without ceremony. He acquainted them with the death of Mithridates and the manner of his killing himself; that his son Pharnaces submitted himself and his dominions to the Romans, and that thereby that tedious war, which had endured so long, was at length terminated. This was a subject of great joy to both the army and general.

Such was the end of Mithridates; a prince, says historian, of whom it is difficult either to speak or be silent: full of activity in war, of distinguished courage; sometimes very great through the favours of fortune, and always through his invincible resolution ; truly a general in his prudence and counsel, and a soldier by his bold and hazardous exploits; a second Hannibal in his hatred of the Romans.

Cicero says of Mithridates, that after Alexander he was the greatest of kings : Ille rex post Alexandrum maximus. It is certain that the Romans never had such a king in arms against them. Nor can we deny that he had his great qualities: a vast extent of mind, that embraced every subject; a superiority of genius, capable of the greatest undertakings; a constancy of soul, that the severest misfortunes could not depress; an industry and bravery, inexhaustible in resources, and which, after the greatest losses, brought him on a sudden again on the stage, more powerful and formidable than ever. I cannot, however, believe, that he is to be considered as a consummate general; that idea does not seem to result from his actions. He obtained great advantages at first; but against generals without either merit or experience. When Sylla, Lucullus, and Pompey, opposed him, it does not appear he acquired any great honour, either by his address in posting himself to advantage, by his presence of mind in unexpected emergencies, or intrepidity in the heat of action. But, should we admit him to have all the qualities of a great captain, he cannot but be considered with horror, when we reflect upon the innumerable murders and parricides with which he polluted his reign, and that inhuman cruelty which regarded neither mother, wives, children, nor friends, and which sacrificed every thing to his insatiable ambition.

Pompey being arrived in Syria, went directly to Damascus, with design to set out from thence to begin at length the war with Arabia. When Aretas, the king of that country, saw him upon the point of entering his dominions, he sent an embassy to make his submissions.

The troubles of Judea employed Pompey some time. He returned afterwards into Syria, from whence he set out for Pontus. Upon his arrival at Amisus, he found the body of Mithridates there, which Pharnaces his son had sent to him; no doubt, to convince Pompey by his own eyes of the death of an enemy who had occasioned him so many difficulties and fatigues. He had added great presents, in order to conciliate his favour. Pompey accepted the presents; but as for the body of Mithridates, looking upon their enmity as extinguished by death, he did it all the honours due to the remains of a king, sent it to the city of Sinope to be interred there with the kings of Pontus, his ancestors, who had long been buried in that place, and ordered the sums that were necessary for the solemnity of a royal funeral.

In this last journey he took possession of all the places in the hands of those to whom Mithridates had confided them. He found immense riches in some of them, especially at Telaurus, where part of Mithridates’s most valuable effects and precious jewels were kept: his principal arsenal was also in the same place. Amongst these were 2000 cups of onyx, set and adorned with gold; with so prodigious a quantity of all kinds of plate, furniture, and military accoutrements for man and horse, that it cost the questor, or treasurer of the army, thirty entire days in taking the inventory of them.

Pompey granted Pharnaces the kingdom of Bosphorus, as a reward for his parricide, declared him the friend and ally of the Roman people, and marched into the province of Asia, in order to winter at Ephesus. Here he distributed rewards to his victorious army. He gave each of his soldiers 1500 drachmas, and to the officers according to their several posts. The total sum to which his liberalities amounted, all raised out of the spoils of the enemy, was 16,000 talents; besides which, he had 20,000 more, to put into the treasury at Rome, upon the day of his entry.

His triumph continued two days, and was celebrated with extraordinary magnificence. Pompey caused 324 captives of the highest distinction to march before his chariot; amongst whom were Aristobulus, king of Judea, with his son Antigonus; Olthaces, king of Colchis; Tigranes, the son of Tigranes, king of Armenia; the sister, five sons, and two daughters, of Mithridates. In the place of that king’s person, his throne, sceptre, and a colossal busto of gold of eight cubits, or twelve feet, in height, were carried in triumph.