the mere assemblage of enormous hosts was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered useless and involved in the general ruin.  Mithradates sought above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry; in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted.  For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service, and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers.  The considerable army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself to defence and petty warfare.  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.

Dissatisfaction with Lucullus in the Capital and in the Army

The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difficulty, which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect.  In spite of his brilliant victories, people in Rome were not at all satisfied with him.  The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct:  the capitalist party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue and corruption at work to effect his recall.  Daily the Forum echoed with just and unjust complaints regarding the foolhardy, the covetous, the un-Roman, the traitorous general.  The senate so far yielded to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited power—­two ordinary governorships and an important extraordinary command—­in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.

These accusations springing up against the general in Rome found a dangerous echo in the soldiers’ quarters on the Iris andon the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including the general’s own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon the soldiers with this view.  The report beyond doubt designedly circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining with the Pontic-Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians, fed the exasperation of the troops.

Lucullus Advances into Armenia