Pompey

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. V. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1917.

But the servants laid hold of him and told him that the king had bestowed on him the large estate of a rich man who had recently died, and that these things were only small foretastes and specimens of the goods and chattels still remaining. In this way he was with difficulty persuaded, and putting on his purple robes and leaping upon his horse, he rode through the city, crying: All this is mine.

To those who laughed at him he said that what he was doing was no wonder; the wonder was that he did not throw stones at those who met him, for he was mad with joy. Of such a stock and lineage was Stratonice. But she surrendered this stronghold to Pompey, and brought him many gifts, of which he accepted only those which were likely to adorn the temples at Rome and add splendour to his triumph; the rest he bade Stratonice keep and welcome.

In like manner, too, when the king of the Iberians sent him a couch, a table, and a throne, all of gold, and begged him to accept them, he delivered these also to the quaestors, for the public treasury.