e or fair settlement, but even fell to mutual abuse, Pompeius
charging Lucullus with avarice, and Lucullus charging Pompeius with
love of power; and they were with difficulty separated by their
friends. Lucullus being in Galatia assigned portions of the captured
land and gave other presents to whom he chose; while Pompeius, who was
encamped at a short distance, prevented any attention being paid to
the orders of Lucullus, and took from him all his soldiers except
sixteen hundred, whose mutinous disposition he thought would make them
useless to himself, but hostile to Lucullus. Besides this, Pompeius
disparaged the exploits of Lucullus and openly said that Lucullus had
warred against tragedies and mere shadows of kings, while to himself
was reserved the contest against a genuine power and one that had
grown wiser by losses, for Mithridates was now having recourse to
shields, and swords and horses. Lucullus retorting said, that Pompeius
was going to fight with a phantom and a shadow of war, being
accustomed, like a lazy bird, to descend upon the bodies that others
had slaughtered and to tear the remnants of wars; for so had he
appropriated to himself the victories over Sertorius, Lepidus and
Spartacus, though Crassus, Metellus and Catulus had respectively
gained these victories: it was no wonder then, if Pompeius was
surreptitiously trying to get the credit of the Armenian and Pontic
wars, he who had in some way or other contrived to intrude himself
into a triumph over runaway slaves.

XXXII. Lucullus[254] now retired, and Pompeius after distributing his
whole naval force over the sea between Phoenicia and the Bosporus to
keep guard, himself marched against Mithridates, who had thirty
thousand foot soldiers of the phalanx and two thousand horsemen, but
did not venture to fight. First of all, Mithridates left a strong
mountain which was difficult to assault, whereon he happened to be
encamped, because he supposed there was no water there; but Pompeius,
after occupying the same mountain, conjectured from the nature of the
vegetation upon it and the hollows formed by the slopes of the ground
that the place contained springs, and he ordered wells to be dug in
all parts: and immediately the whole army had abundance of water, so
that it was a matter of surprise that Mithridates had all along been
ignorant of this. Pompeius then surrounded Mithridates with his troops
and hemmed him in with his lines. After being blockaded forty-