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Updated: June 13, 2025
Accordingly, Tigranes would not even wait for Mithridates, for fear he should share in the glory; but he advanced with all his force, and greatly complained to his friends, it is said, that he would have to encounter Lucullus alone, and not all the Roman generals at once.
It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved through the streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693 the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great adorned, to say nothing of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates and by the children of the three mightiest kings of Asia, Mithradates, Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life.
But after Lucullus, Tigranes and Mithridates were able to do nothing; the latter, being disabled and broken in the former wars, never dared to show his army to Pompey outside the camp, but fled away to Bosporus, and there died.
At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal of Rome.
He therefore kept the soldiers together, without making any further attempt to force them, or lead them out to battle, for he was well content if they would stay with him, and he allowed Cappadocia to be ravaged by Tigranes, and Mithridates to resume his arrogance, as to whom he had written to the Senate, to inform them that he was completely subdued; and the commissioners were now with him who had been sent to settle the affairs of Pontus, on the supposition that the country was completely in the power of the Romans.
But then being strangely puffed up, and his head heated, he would not limit his fortune with Parthia and Syria; but looking on the actions of Lucullus against Tigranes and the exploits of Pompey against Mithridates as but child's play, he proposed to himself in his hopes to pass as far as Bactria and India, and the utmost ocean.
Do you not see that a huge and boundless wilderness is in his rear, and the Caucasus 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 into Armenia, and above the plains of Armenia Tigranes 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.
On the one hand, Parthia had evidently much to fear from the military force and the covetous disposition of Tigranes, king of Armenia, the son-in-law of Mithridates, and at this time his chosen alley. Tigranes had hitherto been continually increasing in strength.
This engagement he executed with fidelity. It had happened that the eldest living son of Tigranes, a prince bearing the same name as his father, having raised a rebellion in Armenia and been defeated, had taken refuge in Parthia with Phraates. Phraates determined to take advantage of this circumstance.
Pompeius also annulled the regulations of Lucullus, and he took off with him all the soldiers with the exception of sixteen hundred, whom he left to Lucullus for his triumph; and even these did not follow him very willingly: so ill suited was the temper of Lucullus, or so unlucky was he in securing that which, of all things, is the chief and greatest in a general; for, if he had possessed this quality, with the other many and great virtues that he had, courage, activity, judgment, and justice, the Roman empire would not have had the Euphrates for its limit, but the remotest parts of Asia, and the Hyrkanian Sea; for all the other nations had already been defeated by Tigranes, and the Parthian power was not such as it afterwards showed itself to be in the campaign of Crassus, nor so well combined, but owing to intestine and neighbouring wars, was not even strong enough to repel the attacks of the Armenians.
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