Pompey

Before his return to Italy, he had purchased the pleasantest suburbs of Rome and the most beautiful places of entertainment, and very costly gardens were called Demetrian after him; and yet Pompey himself, up to the time of his third triumph, had a simple and modest house. After that, it is true, when he was erecting the famous and beautiful theatre which bears his name, he built close by it, like a small boat towed behind a ship, a more splendid house than the one he had before. But even this was not large enough to excite envy, so that when he who succeeded Pompey as its owner entered it, he was amazed, and inquired where Pompey the Great used to sup. At any rate, so the story runs.

The king of the Arabians about Petra had hitherto made no account of the Roman power, but now he was thoroughly alarmed and wrote that he had determined to obey and perform all commands. Pompey, therefore, wishing to confirm him in his purpose, marched towards Petra, an expedition which was not a little censured by most of his followers.

For they thought it an evasion of the pursuit of Mithridates, and demanded that he should rather turn against that inveterate enemy, who was again kindling the flames of war and preparing, as it was reported, to march an army through Scythia and Paeonia against Italy. Pompey, however, thinking it easier to crush the king’s forces when he made war than to seize his person when he was in flight, was not willing to wear out his own strength in a vain pursuit, and therefore sought other employment in the interval of the war and thus protracted the time.

But fortune resolved the difficulty. For when he was come within a short distance of Petra, and had already pitched his camp for that day and was exercising himself on horseback near by, dispatch-bearers rode up from Pontus bringing good tidings. Such messengers are known at once by the tips of their spears, which are wreathed with laurel. As soon as the soldiers saw these couriers they ran in throngs to Pompey.

At first he was disposed to finish his exercise, but at their shouts and entreaties he dismounted from his horse, took the dispatches, and led the way into camp. There was no regular tribunals nor had there been time to erect the military substitute, which the soldiers make with their own hands by digging up large clods of earth and heaping them one upon another; but in the eager haste of the moment they piled up the pack-saddles of the beasts of burden and made an eminence of them.

Pompey ascended this and announced to his soldiers that Mithridates was dead, having made away with himself because his son Pharnaces had revolted from him, and that Pharnaces had come into possession of all the power there, acting, as he wrote, in behalf of himself and the Romans.[*](This was in 63 B.C.)

Upon this the army, filled with joy, as was natural, gave itself up to sacrifices and entertainments, feeling that in the person of Mithridates ten thousand enemies had died. Then Pompey, having brought his achievements and expeditions to such an unexpectedly easy completion, straightway withdrew from Arabia,

and passing rapidly through the intervening provinces, came to Amisus. Here he found many gifts that had been brought from Pharnaces, and many dead bodies of the royal family, and the corpse of Mithridates himself, which was not easy to recognize by the face (for the embalmers had neglected to remove the brain), but those who cared to see the body recognized it by the scars.

Pompey himself could not bring himself to look upon the body, but to propitiate the divine jealousy sent it away to Sinope. He was amazed at the size and splendour of the arms and raiment which Mithridates used to wear; although the sword-belt, which cost four hundred talents, was stolen by Publius and sold to Ariarathes, and the tiara was secretly given by Caius, the foster brother of Mithridates, to Faustus the son of Sulla, at his request; it was a piece of wonderful workmanship. All this escaped the knowledge of Pompey at the time, but Pharnaces afterwards learned of it and punished the thieves.