Pompey

After the battle, Pompey set out to march to the Hyrcanian and Caspian Sea, but was turned back by a multitude of deadly reptiles when he was only three days march distant, and withdrew into Lesser Armenia.

Here the kings of the Elymaeans and the Medes sent ambassadors to him, and he wrote them a friendly answer; but against the Parthian king, who had burst into Gordyene and was plundering the subjects of Tigranes, he sent an armed force under Afranius, which drove him out of the country and pursued him as far as the district of Arbela. Of all the concubines of Mithridates that were brought to Pompey, he used not one, but restored them all to their parents and kindred; for most of them were daughters and wives of generals and princes.

But Stratonice, who was held in highest esteem by the king and had the custody of the richest of his fortresses, was, it would seem, the daughter of a humble harpist, an old man, and poor besides; but she made such a swift conquest of Mithridates as she once played for him at his wine, that he took her with him to his bed, but sent the old man away in great displeasure at not getting so much as a kindly greeting.

In the morning, however, when the old man rose and saw in his house tables loaded with gold and silver beakers, a large retinue of servants, and eunuchs and pages bringing costly garments to him, and a horse standing before his door caparisoned like those of the king’s friends, he thought the thing a mockery and a joke, and tried to run out of doors.