Sertorius

His negotiations with Mithridates also gave proof of his magnanimity. For Mithridates, after the fall which Sulla gave him, rose up, as it were, for another wrestling bout and tried once more to get the province of Asia into his power. At this time, too, the fame of Sertorius was already great and was travelling every whither, and sailors from the west had filled the kingdom of Pontus full of the tales about him, like so many foreign wares.

Mithridates was therefore eager to send an embassy to him, and was incited thereto most of all by the foolish exaggerations of his flatterers. These likened Sertorius to Hannibal and Mithridates to Pyrrhus, and declared that the Romans, attacked on both sides, could not hold out against two such natures and forces combined, when the ablest of generals was in alliance with the greatest of kings.

So Mithridates sent envoys to Iberia carrying letters and oral propositions to Sertorius, the purport of which was that Mithridates for his part promised to furnish money and ships for the war, but demanded that Sertorius confirm him in the possession of the whole of Asia, which he had yielded to the Romans by virtue of the treaties made with Sulla.

Sertorius assembled a council, which he called a senate, and here the rest urged him to accept the king’s proposals and be well content with them; for they were asked to grant a name and an empty title to what was not in their possession, and would receive therefor that of which they stood most in need. Sertorius, however, would not consent to this. He said he had no objection to Mithridates taking Bithynia and Cappadocia, countries used to kings and of no concern whatever to the Romans;

but a province which Mithridates had taken away and held when it belonged in the justest manner to the Romans, from which he had been driven by Fimbria in war, and which he had renounced by treaty with Sulla,—this province Sertorius said he would not suffer to become the king’s again; for the Roman state must be increased by his exercise of power, and he must not exercise power at the expense of the state. For to a man of noble spirit victory is to be desired if it comes with honour, but with shame not even life itself.