Lucullus

But Voconius was behindhand, owing to his initiation into, and celebration of, the mysteries in Samothrace, and Mithridates put to sea with his armament, eager to reach Pontus before Lucullus turned and set upon him. He was overtaken, however, by a great storm, which destroyed some of his vessels and disabled others. The whole coast for many days was covered with the wrecks dashed upon it by the billows.

As for the king himself, the merchantman on which he was sailing was too large to be readily beached when the sea ran so high and the waves were so baffling, nor would it answer to its helm, and it was now too heavy and full of water to gain an offing; accordingly, he abandoned it for a light brigantine belonging to some pirates, and, entrusting his person to their hands, contrary to expectation and after great hazard, got safely to Heracleia in Pontus.

And so it happened that the boastful speech of Lucullus to the Senate brought no divine retribution down upon him. When, namely, that body was ready to vote three thousand talents to provide a fleet for this war, Lucullus blocked the measure by writing a letter, in which he made the haughty boast that without any such costly array, but only with the ships of the allies, he would drive Mithridates from the sea. And this success he gained with the assistance of Heaven. For it is said that it was owing to the wrath of Artemis of Priapus that the tempest fell upon the men of Pontus, who had plundered her shrine and pulled down her image.

Though many now advised Lucullus to suspend the war, he paid no heed to them, but threw his army into the king’s country by way of Bithynia and Galatia.[*](73 B.C.) At first he lacked the necessary supplies, so that thirty thousand Galatians followed in his train, each carrying a bushel of grain upon his shoulders; but as he advanced and mastered everything, he found himself in the midst of such plenty that an ox sold in his camp for a drachma, and a man-slave for four, while other booty had no value at all. Some abandoned it, and some destroyed it. There was no sale for anything to anybody when all had such abundance.

But when Lucullus merely wasted and ravaged the country with cavalry incursions, which penetrated to Themiscyra and the Illains of the river Thermodon, his soldiers found fault with him because he brought all the cities over to him by peaceable measures; he had not taken a single one by storm, they said, nor given them a chance to enrich themselves by plunder.

Nay, they said, at this very moment we are leaving Amisus, a rich and prosperous city, which it would be no great matter to take, if its siege were pressed, and are following our general into the desert of the Tibareni and the Chaldaeans to fight with Mithridates. But these grievances, not dreaming that they would bring the soldiers to such acts of madness as they afterwards performed, Lucullus overlooked and ignored.