Lucullus

After this, Sornatius was sent with ten cohorts to get supplies of grain. Being pursued by Menander, one of the generals of Mithridates, he faced about, joined battle, and routed the enemy with great slaughter. And again, when Adrian was sent out with a force to procure an abundance of grain for the soldiers, Mithridates did not look on idly, but dispatched Menemachus and Myron, at the head of a large body of cavalry and footmen.

All these, it is said, except two, were cut to pieces by the Romans. Mithridates tried to conceal the extent of the disaster, pretending that it was a slight matter, and due to the inexperience of his generals. But when Adrian marched pompously past his camp, convoying many waggons laden with grain and booty, a great despair fell upon the king, and confusion and helpless fear upon his soldiers. They decided, therefore, to remain where they were no longer.

But when the king’s servants tried to send away their own baggage first, and to hinder the rest from going, the soldiers at once got angry, pushed and forced their way to the exits of the camp, and there plundered the baggage and slew the men in charge of it. There it was that Dorylaüs, the general, with nothing else about him but his purple robe, lost his life for that, and Hermaeus, the priest, was trampled to death at the gates.

Mithridates himself, with no attendant or groom to assist him, fled away from the camp in the midst of the throng, not even provided with one of the royal horses; but at last the eunuch Ptolemaeus, who was mounted, spied him as he was borne along in the torrent of the rout, leaped down from his horse, and gave it to the king.

Presently the Romans, who were forcing the pursuit, were hard upon him, and it was for no lack of speed that they did not take him. Indeed, they were very near doing so, but greed, and petty soldier’s avarice, snatched from them the quarry which they had so long pursued in many struggles and great dangers, and robbed Lucullus of the victor’s prize.

For the horse which carried the king was just within reach of his pursuers, when one of the mules which carried the royal gold came between him and them, either of his own accord, or because the king purposely sent him into the path of pursuit. The soldiers fell to plundering and collecting the gold, fought with one another over it, and so were left behind in the chase.

Nor was this the only fruit of their greed which Lucullus reaped. He had given orders that Callistratus, who was in charge of the king’s private papers, should be brought alive to him, but his conductors, finding that he had five hundred pieces of gold in his girdle, slew him. However, Lucullus allowed such soldiers as these to plunder the enemy’s camp.