sing of anything
to anybody when all had abundance. The Roman army had advanced with
their cavalry and carried their incursions as far as Themiskyra and
the plains on the Thermodon,[365] without doing more than wasting and
ravaging the country, when the men began to blame Lucullus for
peaceably gaining over all the cities, and they complained that he had
not taken a single city by storm, nor given them an opportunity of
enriching themselves by plunder. "Nay, even now," they said, "we are
quitting Amisus,[366] a prosperous and wealthy city, which it would be
no great matter to take, if any one would press the siege, and the
general is leading us to fight with Mithridates in the wilds of the
Tibareni and Chaldaeans."[367] Now, if Lucullus had supposed that
these notions would have led the soldiers to such madness as they
afterwards showed he would not have overlooked or neglected these
matters, nor have apologised instead to those men who were blaming his
tardiness for thus lingering in the neighbourhood of insignificant
villages for a long time, and allowing Mithridates to increase his
strength. "This is the very thing," he said, "that I wish, and I am
sitting here with the design of allowing the man again to become
powerful, and to get together a sufficient force to meet us, that he
may stay, and not fly from us when we advance. Do you not see that a
huge and boundless wilderness is in his rear, and the Caucasus[368] is
near, and many mountains which are full of deep valleys, sufficient to
hide ten thousand kings who decline a battle, and to protect them? and
it is only a few days' march from Kabeira[369] into Armenia, and above
the plains of Armenia Tigranes[370] the King of Kings has his
residence, with a force which enables him to cut the Parthian off from
Asia, and he removes the inhabitants of the Greek cities up into
Media, and he is master of Syria and Palestine, and the kings, the
descendants of Seleucus, he puts to death, and carries off their
daughters and wives captives. Tigranes is the kinsman and son-in-law
of Mithridates. Indeed, he will not quietly submit to receive
Mithridates as a suppliant; but he will war against us, and, if we
strive to eject Mithridates from his kingdom we shall run the risk of
drawing upon us Tigranes, who has long been seeking for a pretext
against us, and he could not have a more specious pretext than to be
compelled to aid a man who is his kinsman and a king. Why, then,
should w