Pompey

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.

After arranging and settling affairs in those parts, Pompey proceeded on his journey, and now with greater pomp and ceremony. For instance, when he came to Mitylene, he gave the city its freedom, for the sake of Theophanes, and witnessed the traditional contest of the poets there, who now took as their sole theme his own exploits. And being pleased with the theatre, he had sketches and plans of it made for him, that he might build one like it in Rome, only larger and more splendid.[*](Cf. chapter xl. 5. The theatre was opened in 55 B.C., and accommodated 40,000 persons.)

And when he was in Rhodes, he heard all the sophists there, and made each of them a present of a talent. Poseidonius has actually described the discourse which he held before him, against Hermagoras the rhetorician, on Investigation in General. At Athens, too, he not only treated the philosophers with like munificence,