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Updated: June 17, 2025
Moreover he directed his attention in turn to the latter themselves, and by now assisting them and now abandoning them incurred full responsibility for great numbers of them being slain and for the fact that the entire region of Pontus and of the Parthians was not subdued at that time immediately after the victory over Pharnaces.
He did not know that Caesar finished whatever he took in hand. Without negotiating further, Caesar took with him the one legion which he brought from Alexandria and the troops of Calvinus and Deiotarus, and advanced against the camp of Pharnaces at Ziela. When the Bosporans saw him approach, they boldly crossed the deep mountain-ravine which covered their front, and charged the Romans up the hill.
In fact Pharnaces king of the Bosporus pushed his officiousness so far, that on the news of the Pharsalian battle he took possession not only of the town of Phanagoria which several years before had been declared free by Pompeius, and of the dominions of the Colchian princes confirmed by him, but even of the kingdom of Little Armenia which Pompeius had conferred on king Deiotarus.
Who will compare with this simple record the language of Cæsar, though so often celebrated, "Veni, vidi, vici I came, I saw, I conquered;" words at least as remarkable for egotism as for laconic force: or who would represent the battle of Zela, and the defeat of the Pharnaces as worthy of being named in connection with the memorable victory of Tabor.
His followers, however, became disaffected, his son Pharnaces rebelled, and he had no other remedy than suicide to escape capture. He died B.C. 63, after a reign of fifty-three years, in the sixty-ninth year of his age—the greatest Eastern prince since Cyrus. Racine has painted him in one of his dramas as one of the most heroic men of the world.
He saw that he must punish Pharnaces before he returned to Rome, and he immediately addressed himself to the work. He made a hasty progress through the Syrian towns, hearing complaints and distributing rewards and promotions. The allied chiefs came to him from the borders of the Province to pay their respects. He received them graciously, and dismissed them pleased and satisfied.
The still recent defeat of Crassus had stirred the ambition of the Asiatic princes; and to leave the Eastern frontier disturbed was to risk a greater danger to the Empire than was to be feared from the impatient politics of the Roman mob, or the dying convulsions of the aristocracy. Pharnaces, a legitimate son of Mithridates the Great, had been left sovereign of Upper Armenia.
And certainly, though a man did nothing but go on, he could hardly attain that promptitude with which, having been everywhere victorious in Gaul, he left it, and, following Pompey to Brundusium, in eighteen days' time he subdued all Italy; returned from Brundusium to Rome; from Rome went into the very heart of Spain, where he surmounted extreme difficulties in the war against Afranius and Petreius, and in the long siege of Marseilles; thence he returned into Macedonia, beat the Roman army at Pharsalia, passed thence in pursuit of Pompey into Egypt, which he also subdued; from Egypt he went into Syria and the territories of Pontus, where he fought Pharnaces; thence into Africa, where he defeated Scipio and Juba; again returned through Italy, where he defeated Pompey's sons: "Ocyor et coeli fiammis, et tigride foeta."
So completely did she succeed that Cæsar, who never had been averse to the charms of beautiful women, remained at her court for a considerable time and led his armies against a king named Pharnaces at Cleopatra's bidding. After this he returned to Rome, where he was made dictator, with absolute power, and was as great as Sulla had ever been.
So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator, in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign, twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field against the Romans. The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order of the latter laid in the royal sepulchre of Sinope.
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