oman camp was taken;
the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern
officers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied
on the field of battle, and, when Lucullus arrived on the right bank
of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers,
but through the reports of the natives.

Mutiny of the Soldiers

Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military conspiracy.
At this very time news arrived from Rome that the people had resolved
to grant a discharge to the soldiers whose legal term of service had
expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command
in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year:
the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio,
had already landed in Asia Minor. The disbanding of the bravest
and most turbulent legions and the recall of the commander-in-chief,
in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela,
dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general
had most urgent need of their aid. Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia
he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes' son-in-law,
Mithradates of Media, had already engaged the Romans successfully
in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing
to the same point from Armenia. Lucullus sent to Quintus Marcius
the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way
to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him;
Marcius declared that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia.
He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the supreme
command committed to him by the people; Glabrio showed still less
inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so difficult
and hazardous. Lucullus, compelled to retain the command,
with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against
the Armenian and the Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a movement
against the advancing Armenians.

Farther Retreat to Asia Minor

The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when they reached
the point where the routes to Armenia and Cappadocia diverged,
the bulk of the army took the latter, and proceeded to the province
of Asia. There the Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge;
and although they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty
of the commander-in-chief and the other corps, they yet persevered
in their purpose of disbanding if the winter sh