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An agreement seems to have been made between the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support; and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates who brought about this agreement with a view to cover his rear and to secure a powerful ally.
Mithradates of Pergamus, an able warrior of the school of Mithradates Eupator, whose natural son he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army the Ityraeans of the prince of the Libanus, the Bedouins of Jamblichus, son of Sampsiceramus, the Jews under the minister Antipater, and the contingents generally of the petty chiefs and communities of Cilicia and Syria.
Caesar entrusted the pursuit of the king, who had gone home by way of Sinope to Pharnaces' illegitimate brother, the brave Mithradates of Pergamus, who as a reward for the services rendered by him in Egypt received the crown of the Bosporan kingdom in room of Pharnaces.
Mithradates, who was no mere sultan and had enjoyed opportunity enough, amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining experience regarding friends and foes, knew very well that in a second Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much alone as in the first, and that he could follow no more prudent course than to keep quiet and to strengthen his kingdom in the interior.
It was not in vain. Mithradates' brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes.
The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate the Scythian princes so far were they driven out of the track of right policy by their negligent style of government, that instead of supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their countrymen.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional position of the already too-powerful general.
The princes of the Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea, turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic war, and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now.
Not even Hellenism had penetrated far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several originally Greek settlements subsisted especially the important commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the empire the country was still in a very primitive condition.
Mithradates had conducted the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating and avoiding battle; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion, and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war the hereditary land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.
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