Difficulties to Be Encountered

The resolution was a grave one, especially considering the condition of the Roman army.  It was indispensable during the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia might lose its communications with home; and besides it might be easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his former kingdom.  The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000 men, was obviously inadequate for this double task.  Under ordinary circumstances the general would have asked and obtained from his government the despatch of a second army; but as Lucullus wished, and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce that plan and—­although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops—­to carry the war over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most 15,000 men.  This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the army consisting throughout of veterans.  A far worse feature was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed.  Lucullus was an able general, and—­according to the aristocratic standard—­ an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being a favourite with his soldiers.  He was unpopular, as a decided adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor; unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself; unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished, haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever it was possible, to ease and pleasure.  There was no trace in him of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general and the soldier.  Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers had every reason to complain of the unmeasured prolongation of their term of service.  His two best legions were the same which Flaccus and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east;(14) notwithstanding that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them beyond the Euphrates to face a new incalculable war—­it seemed as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than the vanquished of Cannae.(15) It was in fact more than rash that, with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general should at his own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance with