their tents by night, which is
considered to be an indication that an army is in a state of mutiny.
Yet Lucullus urged them strongly, and called on them to put endurance
in their souls till they had taken and destroyed the Armenian
Carthage, the work of their greatest enemy, meaning Hannibal. Not
being able to prevail on them, he led them back by a different pass
over the Taurus, and descended into the country called Mygdonike,
which is fertile and warm, and contains a large and populous city,
which the barbarians called Nisibis,[412] but the Greeks Antiocha
Mygdonike. The city was defended in name by Gouras, a brother of
Tigranes, but in fact by the experience and mechanical skill of
Kallimachus, who had given Lucullus great trouble in the siege of
Amisus also. Lucullus seated himself before the city, and, by availing
himself of every mode of pressing a siege, in a short time he took the
city by storm. Gouras, who surrendered himself to Lucullus, was
treated kindly; but he would not listen to Kallimachus, though he
promised to discover concealed treasures of great value; and he
ordered him to be brought in chains to be punished for the
conflagration by which he destroyed Amisus and deprived Lucullus of
the object of his ambition and an opportunity of displaying his
friendly disposition to the Greeks.

XXXIII. So far one may say that fortune accompanied Lucullus and
shared his campaigns: but from this time, just as if a wind had failed
him, trying to force everything and always meeting with obstacles, he
displayed indeed the courage and endurance of a good commander, but
his undertakings produced him neither fame nor good opinion, and even
the reputation that he had he came very near losing by his want of
success and his fruitless disputes. Lucullus himself was in no small
degree the cause of all this; for he was not a man who tried to gain
the affection of the soldiery, and he considered everything that was
done to please the men as a disparagement to the general's power, and
as tending to destroy it. But, what was worst of all, he was not
affable to the chief officers and those of the same rank as himself;
he despised everybody, and thought no man had any merit compared with
his own.[413] These bad qualities, it is said, that Lucullus had,
though he possessed many merits. He was tall and handsome, a powerful
speaker, and equally prudent in the Forum and the camp. Now,
Sallustius says that the soldiers were ill-dispos