Selected Passages from the Lives

This archival dossier gathers selected passages from Plutarch's Lives of Lucullus and Pompey in Bernadotte Perrin's public-domain English translation. It follows the Roman war with Mithridates and Tigranes from Pontus and Armenia toward the Bosporus, Colchis, the Caucasus, the Caspian, and the Parthian horizon.

For the Scythian shelf, the value is frontier geography and political sequence. Plutarch does not give a simple Scythian ethnography here; he preserves the late Republican Roman view of the same northern and eastern war-world that also touches Sarmatian, Caucasian, Pontic, Armenian, and steppe-adjacent evidence elsewhere in the archive.

The selected English text is archival, not a New Tianmu translation. It is kept as a large primary-source witness beside Greek source work and beside Appian, Strabo, Orosius, and the inscriptional Bosporan materials.

Text

Lucullus

Lucullus 23.6

These Syrians who were in possession of the city were descended, as it is said, from Syrus, the son of Apollo, and Sinope, the daughter of Asopis.

On hearing this, Lucullus called to mind the advice of Sulla, in his memoirs, which was to think nothing so trustworthy and sure as that which is signified by dreams.

Being informed now that Mithridates and Tigranes were on the point of entering Lycaonia and Cilicia, with the purpose of invading Asia before war was actually declared, he was amazed that the Armenian, if he cherished the design of attacking the Romans, had not made use of Mithridates for this war when he was at the zenith of his power, nor joined forces with him when he was strong, but had allowed him to be crushed and ruined, and now began a war which offered only faint hopes of success, prostrating himself to the level of those who were unable to stand erect.

Lucullus 24.1

But when Machares also, the son of Mithridates, who held the Bosporus, sent Lucullus a crown valued at a thousand pieces of gold, begging to be included in the list of Rome's friends and allies, Lucullus decided at once that the first war was finished. He therefore left Sornatius there as guardian of Pontus, with six thousand soldiers, while he himself, with twelve thousand footmen and less than three thousand horse, set out for the second war. He seemed to be making a reckless attack, and one which admitted of no saving calculation, upon warlike nations, countless thousands of horsemen, and a boundless region surrounded by deep rivers and mountains covered with perpetual snow.

Lucullus 24.8

He also sacrificed a bull to the Euphrates, in acknowledgment of his safe passage. Then, after encamping there during that day, on the next and the succeeding days he advanced through Sophene. He wrought no harm to the inhabitants, who came to meet him and received his army gladly. Nay, when his soldiers wanted to take a certain fortress which was thought to contain much wealth, “Yonder lies the fortress which we must rather bring low,” said he, pointing to the Taurus in the distance; “these nearer things are reserved for the victors.” Then he went on by forced marches, crossed the Tigris, and entered Armenia.

Lucullus 26.1

Thus successful in his campaign, Lucullus struck camp and proceeded to Tigranocerta, which city he invested and began to besiege. There were in the city many Greeks who had been transplanted, like others, from Cilicia, and many Barbarians who had suffered the same fate as the Greeks, — Adiabeni, Assyrians, Gordyeni and Cappadocians, whose native cities Tigranes had demolished, and brought their inhabitants to dwell there under compulsion. The city was also full of wealth and votive offerings, since every private person and every prince vied with the king in contributing to its increase and adornment. Therefore Lucullus pressed the siege of the city with vigour, in the belief that Tigranes would not endure it, but contrary to his better judgment and in anger would descend into the plains to offer battle; and his belief was justified.

Lucullus 26.3

Mithridates, indeed, both by messengers and letters, strongly urged the king not to join battle, but to cut off the enemy's supplies with his cavalry; Taxiles also, who came from Mithridates and joined the forces of Tigranes, earnestly begged the king to remain on the defensive and avoid the invincible arms of the Romans. And at first Tigranes gave considerate hearing to this advice.

Lucullus 26.4

But when the Armenians and Gordyeni joined him with all their hosts, and the kings of the Medes and Adiabeni came up with all their hosts, and many Arabs arrived from the sea of Babylonia, and many Albanians from the Caspian sea, together with Iberians who were neighbours to the Albanians; and when not a few of the peoples about the river Araxes, who are not subject to kings, had been induced by favours and gifts to come and join him; and when the banquets of the king, and his councils as well, were full of hopes and boldness and barbaric threats, — then Taxiles ran the risk of being put to death when he opposed the plan of fighting, and Mithridates was thought to be diverting the king from a great success out of mere envy. Wherefore Tigranes would not even wait for him, lest he share in the glory, but advanced with all his army, bitterly lamenting to his friends, as it is said, that he was going to contend with Lucullus alone, not with all the Roman generals put together.

And his boldness was not altogether that of a mad man, nor without good reason, when he saw so many nations and kings in his following, with phalanxes of heavy infantry and myriads of horsemen.

Lucullus 27.2

When Lucullus held a council of war, some of his officers advised him to give up the siege and lead his army against Tigranes; others urged him not to leave so many enemies in his rear, and not to remit the siege. Whereupon, remarking that each counsel by itself was bad, but both together were good, he divided his army. Murena, with six thousand footmen, he left behind in charge of the siege; while he himself, with twenty-four cohorts, comprising no more than ten thousand heavy infantry, and all the horsemen, slingers, and archers, to the number of about a thousand, set out against the enemy.

When he had encamped along the river in a great plain, he appeared utterly insignificant to Tigranes, and supplied the king's flatterers with ground for amusement. Some mocked at the Romans, and others, in pleasantry, cast lots for their spoil, while each of the generals and kings came forward and begged that the task of conquering them might be entrusted to himself alone, and that the king would sit by as a spectator.

Lucullus 28.4

With these words, he led his men against the mail-clad horsemen, ordering them not to hurl their javelins yet, but taking each his own man, to smite the enemy's legs and thighs, which are the only parts of these mail-clad horsemen left exposed. However, there was no need of this mode of fighting, for the enemy did not await the Romans, but, with loud cries and in most disgraceful flight, they hurled themselves and their horses, with all their weight, upon the ranks of their own infantry, before it had so much as begun to fight, and so all those tens of thousands were defeated without the infliction of a wound or the sight of blood. But the great slaughter began at once when they fled, or rather tried to fly, for they were prevented from really doing so by the closeness and depth of their own ranks. Tigranes rode away at the very outset with a few attendants, and took to flight. Seeing his son also in the same plight, he took off the diadem from his head and, in tears, gave it to him, bidding him save himself as best he could by another route.

Lucullus 28.6

The young man, however, did not venture to assume the diadem, but gave it to his most trusted slave for safe keeping. This slave happened to be captured, and was brought to Lucullus, and thus even the diadem of Tigranes became a part of the booty. It is said that more than a hundred thousand of the enemy's infantry perished, while of the cavalry only a few, all told, made their escape. Of the Romans, on the other hand, only a hundred were wounded, and only five killed.

Antiochus the philosopher makes mention of this battle in his treatise “Concerning Gods,” and says that the sun never looked down on such another. And Strabo, another philosopher, in his “Historical Commentaries,” says that the Romans themselves were ashamed, and laughed one another to scorn for requiring arms against such slaves. Livy also has remarked that the Romans were never in such inferior numbers when they faced an enemy; for the victors were hardly even a twentieth part of the vanquished, but less than this.

Lucullus 28.8

The Roman generals who were most capable and most experienced in war, praised Lucullus especially for this, that he out-generalled two kings who were most distinguished and powerful by two most opposite tactics, speed and slowness. For he used up Mithridates, at the height of his power, by long delays; but crushed Tigranes by the speed of his operations, being one of the few generals of all time to use delay for greater achievement, and boldness for greater safety.

Lucullus 29.4

On learning that many dramatic artists had been captured in the city, whom Tigranes had collected there from all quarters for the formal dedication of the theatre which he had built, Lucullus employed them for the contests and spectacles with which he celebrated his victories. The Greeks he sent to their native cities, giving them also the means wherewith to make the journey, and likewise the Barbarians who had been compelled to settle there. Thus it came to pass that the dissolution of one city was the restoration of many others, by reason of their recovering their own inhabitants, and they all loved Lucullus as their benefactor and founder.

And whatever else he did also prospered, in a way worthy of the man, who was ambitious of the praise that is consequent upon righteousness and humanity, rather than of that which follows military successes. For the latter, the army also was in no slight degree, but fortune in the highest degree, responsible; but the former were the manifestations of a gentle and disciplined spirit, and in the exercise of these qualities Lucullus now, without appeal to arms, subdued the Barbarians. The kings of the Arabs came to him, with proffers of their possessions, and the Sopheni joined his cause.

Lucullus 30.1

Here he received an embassy from the king of the Parthians also, inviting him into friendly alliance. This was agreeable to Lucullus, and in his turn he sent ambassadors to the Parthian, but they discovered that he was playing a double game, and secretly asking for Mesopotamia as reward for an alliance with Tigranes.

Lucullus 30.2

Accordingly, when Lucullus was apprised of this, he determined to ignore Tigranes and Mithridates as exhausted antagonists, and to make trial of the Parthian power by marching against them, thinking it a glorious thing, in a single impetuous onset of war, to throw, like an athlete, three kings in succession, and to make his way, unvanquished and victorious, through three of the greatest empires under the sun.

Accordingly he sent orders to Sornatius and his fellow commanders in Pontus to bring the army there to him, as he intended to proceed eastward from Gordyene. These officers had already found their soldiers unmanageable and disobedient, but now they discovered that they were utterly beyond control, being unable to move them by any manner of persuasion or compulsion. Nay, they roundly swore that they would not even stay where they were, but would go off and leave Pontus undefended.

Lucullus 31.1

Such speeches, and even worse than these, coming to the ears of Lucullus, he gave up his expedition against the Parthians, and marched once more against Tigranes, it being now the height of summer. And yet, after crossing the Taurus, he was discouraged to find the plains still covered with unripe grain, so much later are the seasons there, owing to the coolness of the atmosphere.

Lucullus 31.5

Thereupon Lucullus sacrificed to the gods, in full assurance that the victory was already his, and then crossed the river with twelve cohorts in the van, and the rest disposed so as to prevent the enemy from closing in upon his flanks. For large bodies of horsemen and picked soldiers confronted him, and these were covered by Mardian mounted archers and Iberian lancers, on whom Tigranes relied beyond any other mercenaries, deeming them the most warlike. However, they did not shine in action, but after a slight skirmish with the Roman cavalry, gave way before the advancing infantry, scattered to right and left in flight, and drew after them the cavalry in pursuit. On the dispersion of these troops, Tigranes rode out at the head of his cavalry, and when Lucullus saw their splendour and their numbers he was afraid.

Lucullus 31.7

He therefore recalled his cavalry from their pursuit of the flying enemy, and taking the lead of his troops in person, set upon the Atropateni, who were stationed opposite him with the magnates of the king's following, and before coming to close quarters, sent them off in panic flight. Of three kings who together confronted the Romans, Mithridates of Pontus seems to have fled most disgracefully, for he could not endure even their shouting. The pursuit was long and lasted through the whole night, and the Romans were worn out, not only with killing their enemies, but also with taking prisoners and getting all sorts of booty. Livy says that in the former battle a greater number of the enemy, but in this more men of high station were slain and taken prisoners.

Lucullus 33.4

The winters that followed also vexed them. They spent them either in the enemy's country, or among the allies, encamped under open sky. Not once did Lucullus take his army into a city that was Greek and friendly. In their disaffection, they received the greatest support from the popular leaders at Rome. These envied Lucullus and denounced him for protracting the war through love of power and love of wealth. They said he all but had in his own sole power Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, and the regions extending to the Phasis, and that now he had actually plundered the palaces of Tigranes, as if he had been sent, not to subdue the kings, but to strip them. These were the words, they say, of Lucius Quintus, one of the praetors, to whom most of all the people listened when they passed a vote to send men who should succeed Lucullus in the command of his province. They voted also that many of the soldiers under him should be released from military service.

Lucullus 35.7

The rest of the soldiers Pompey summoned by letter, for he had already been appointed to conduct the war against Mithridates and Tigranes, because he won the favour of the people and flattered their leaders. But the Senate and the nobility considered Lucullus a wronged man. He had been superseded, they said, not in a war, but in a triumph, and had been forced to relinquish and turn over to others, not his campaign, but the prizes of victory in his campaign.

Lucullus 36.6

but by the outer confines of Asia, and the Hyrcanian sea; for all the other nations had already been subdued by Tigranes, and in the time of Lucullus the Parthian power was not so great as it proved to be in the time of Crassus, nor was it so well united, nay rather, owing to intestine and neighbouring wars, it had not even strength enough to repel the wanton attacks of the Armenians.

Now my own opinion is that the harm Lucullus did his country through his influence upon others, was greater than the good he did her himself.

Lucullus 36.7

For his trophies in Armenia, standing on the borders of Parthia, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis, and the vast wealth brought to Rome from these cities, and the display in his triumph of the captured diadem of Tigranes, incited Crassus to his attack upon Asia; he thought that the Barbarians were spoil and booty, and nothing else. It was not long, however, before he encountered the Parthian arrows, and proved that Lucullus had won his victories, not through the folly and cowardice of his enemies, but through his own daring and ability. This, however, is later history.

Lucullus 37.2

Lucullus strove mightily against this decision, and the foremost and most influential men mingled with the tribes, and by much entreaty and exertion at last persuaded the people to allow him to celebrate a triumph; not, however, like some, a triumph which was startling and tumultuous from the length of the procession and the multitude of objects displayed. Instead, he decorated the circus of Flaminius with the arms of the enemy, which were very numerous, and with the royal engines of war; and this was a great spectacle in itself, and far from contemptible. But in the procession, a few of the mail-clad horsemen and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots moved along, together with sixty of the king's friends and generals. A hundred and ten bronze-beaked ships of war were also carried along, a golden statue of Mithridates himself, six feet in height, a wonderful shield adorned with precious stones, twenty litters of silver vessels, and thirty-two litters of gold beakers, armour, and money.

Pompey

Pompey 30.1

When word was brought to Rome that the war against the pirates was at an end, and that Pompey, now at leisure, was visiting the cities, Manlius, one of the popular tribunes, proposed a law giving Pompey all the country and forces which Lucullus commanded, with the addition, too, of Bithynia, which Glabrio had, and the commission to wage war upon Mithridates and Tigranes, the kings, retaining also his naval force and his dominion over the sea as he had originally received them.

Pompey 30.2

But this meant the placing of the Roman supremacy entirely in the hands of one man; for the only provinces which were held to be excluded from his sway by the former law, namely, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Upper Colchis, and Armenia, these were now added to it, together with the military forces which Lucullus had used in his conquest of Mithridates and Tigranes.

Pompey 31.6

Besides this, he would belittle the achievements of Lucullus, declaring that he had waged war against mimic and shadowy kings only, while to himself there was now left the struggle against a real military force, and one disciplined by defeat, since Mithridates had now betaken himself to shields, swords, and horses. To this Lucullus retorted that Pompey was going forth to fight an image and shadow of war, following his custom of alighting, like a lazy carrion-bird, on bodies that others had killed, and tearing to pieces the scattered remnants of wars.

Pompey 32.1

After this, Lucullus withdrew from those parts, and Pompey, having distributed his whole fleet so as to guard the sea between Phoenicia and the Bosporus, himself marched against Mithridates, who had a fighting force of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse, but did not dare to offer battle.

Pompey 32.3

Next, he invested the king's camp and walled him in. But after enduring a siege of forty-five days, Mithridates succeeded in stealing off with his most effective troops; the sick and unserviceable he killed. Then, however, Pompey overtook him near the Euphrates river, and encamped close by; and fearing lest the king should get the advantage of him by crossing the Euphrates, he put his army in battle array and led it against him at midnight.

Pompey 32.4

At this time Mithridates is said to have seen a vision in his sleep, revealing what should come to pass. He dreamed that he was sailing the Pontic Sea with a fair wind, and was already in sight of the Bosporus, and was greeting pleasantly his fellow-voyagers, as a man would do in his joy over a manifest and sure deliverance; but suddenly he saw himself bereft of all his companions and tossed about on a small piece of wreckage. As he dreamed of such distress, his friends came to his couch and roused him with the news that Pompey was advancing to the attack.

Pompey 32.5

He was therefore compelled to give battle in defence of his camp, and his generals led out their troops and put them in array. But when Pompey perceived their preparations to meet him, he hesitated to hazard matters in the dark, and thought it necessary merely to surround them, in order to prevent their escape, and then to attack them when it was day, since they were superior in numbers. But his oldest officers, by their entreaties and exhortations, prevailed upon him to attack at once; for it was not wholly dark, but the moon, which was setting, made it still possible to distinguish persons clearly enough; indeed, it was this circumstance that brought most harm to the king's troops. For the Romans came to the attack with the moon at their backs, and since her light was close to the horizon, the shadows made by their bodies were thrown far in advance and fell upon the enemy, who were thus unable to estimate correctly the distance between themselves and their foes, but supposing that they were already at close quarters, they hurled their javelins to no purpose and hit nobody. The Romans, seeing this, charged upon them with loud cries, and when the enemy no longer ventured to stand their ground, but fled in panic fear, they cut them down, so that many more than ten thousand of them were slain, and their camp was captured. Mithridates himself, however, at the outset, cut and charged his way through the Romans with eight hundred horsemen; but the rest were soon dispersed and he was left with three companions.

Pompey 32.9

Thence Mithridates took costly raiment and distributed it to those who had flocked to him in his flight. He also gave each of his friends a deadly poison to carry with them, that no one of them might fall into the hands of the enemy against his will. From thence he set out towards Armenia on his way to Tigranes; but that monarch forbade his coming and proclaimed a reward of a hundred talents for his person; he therefore passed by the sources of the Euphrates and continued his flight through Colchis.

Pompey 33.1

Pompey then invaded Armenia on the invitation of young Tigranes, who was now in revolt from his father, and who met Pompey near the river Araxes, which takes its rise in the same regions as the Euphrates, but turns towards the east and empties into the Caspian Sea. These two, then, marched forward together, receiving the submission of the cities as they passed; King Tigranes, however, who had recently been crushed by Lucullus, but now learned that Pompey was rather mild and gentle in his disposition, received a Roman garrison into his palace, and taking with him his friends and kindred, set out of his own accord to surrender himself.

Pompey 33.3

When he rode up to the Roman camp, two of Pompey's lictors came to him and bade him dismount from his horse and go on foot; for no man mounted on horseback had ever been seen in a Roman camp. Tigranes, accordingly, not only obeyed them in this, but also unloosed his sword and gave it to them; and finally, when he came into the presence of Pompey himself, he took off his royal tiara and made as if to lay it at his feet, and what was most humiliating of all, would have thrown himself down and clasped his knees in supplication.

Pompey 33.5

With these terms Tigranes was well pleased, and when the Romans hailed him as King, he was overjoyed, and promised to give each soldier half a mina of silver, to each centurion ten minas, and to each tribune a talent. But his son was dissatisfied, and when he was invited to supper, said that he was not dependent on Pompey for such honours, for he himself could find another Roman to bestow them. Upon this, he was put in chains and reserved for the triumph. Not long after this, Phraates the Parthian sent a demand for the young man, and a proposition that the Euphrates be adopted as a boundary between his empire and that of the Romans. Pompey replied that as for Tigranes, he belonged to his father more than to his father-in law; and as for a boundary, the just one would be adopted.

Pompey 34.1

Then leaving Afranius in charge of Armenia, Pompey himself proceeded against Mithridates, and of necessity passed through the peoples dwelling about the Caucasus mountains. The greatest of these peoples are the Albanians and the Iberians, of whom the Iberians extend to the Moschian mountains and the Euxine Sea, while the Albanians lie to the eastward as far as the Caspian Sea.

Pompey 34.2

These latter at first granted Pompey's request for a free passage; but when winter had overtaken his army in their country and it was occupied in celebrating the Roman festival of the Saturnalia, they mustered no less than forty thousand men and made an attack upon it. To do this, they crossed the river Cyrnus, which rises in the Iberian mountains, and receiving the Araxes as it issues from Armenia, empties itself by twelve mouths into the Caspian. Others say that the Araxes makes no junction with this stream, but takes a course of its own, and empties itself close by into the same sea. Although Pompey could have opposed the enemy's passage of the river, he suffered them to cross undisturbed; then he attacked them, routed them, and slew great numbers of them. When, however, their king sent envoys and begged for mercy, Pompey condoned his wrongdoing and made a treaty with him; then he marched against the Iberians, who were not less numerous than the others and more warlike, and had a strong desire to gratify Mithridates by repulsing Pompey.

Pompey 34.5

For the Iberians had not been subject either to the Medes or the Persians, and they escaped the Macedonian dominion also, since Alexander departed from Hyrcania in haste. Notwithstanding, Pompey routed this people also in a great battle, in which nine thousand of them were slain and more than ten thousand taken prisoners; then he invaded Colchis, where, at the river Phasis, Servilius met him, at the head of the fleet with which he was guarding the Euxine.

Colophon

This archival text was prepared from the public-domain English translation of Plutarch's Lives by Bernadotte Perrin, first published in the Loeb Classical Library in 1914. The repaired local source-route captures are the University of Chicago public-domain Perrin pages for Life of Lucullus and Life of Pompey, saved under the bench source folder. Two obvious extraction errors from an earlier capture were corrected against that witness: Lucullus 23.7 reads "purpose," and Pompey 32.5 reads "meet."

The selection is a Pontic and Caucasus frontier dossier rather than a complete edition of either life. It preserves the passages most useful for the Scythian source shelf: Mithridates, Tigranes, Pontus, the Bosporus, Colchis, Armenia, the Taurus, the Araxes, the Caucasus, Albanians, Iberians, the Caspian, Parthia, and the transfer from Lucullus to Pompey.

Prepared and formatted by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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