[-47-] The king for a time kept fleeing, since he was inferior in numbers:  he continually devastated the country before him, gave Pompey a long chase, and made him feel the want of provisions.  But when the Roman invaded Armenia both for the above reasons and because he wanted to capture it while abandoned, Mithridates fearing it would be occupied before his advent also entered the country.  He took possession of a strong hill opposite and there rested with his entire army, hoping to exhaust the Romans by lack of provisions, while he could get abundance from many quarters, being in a subject territory.  He kept sending down some of his cavalry into the plain, which was bare, and injured considerably those who encountered them; after such a movement he would receive large accessions of deserters.

Pompey was not bold enough to assail them in that position, but he moved his camp to another spot where the surrounding country was wooded and he would be troubled less by the cavalry and bowmen of his adversaries, and there he set an ambuscade where an opportunity offered.  Then with some few he openly approached the camp of the barbarians, threw them into disorder, and enticing them to the point he wished killed a large number.  Encouraged by this, he sent some one way, some another, over the country after provisions.

[-48-] When Pompey went on procuring these in safety and through certain men’s help had become master of the land of Anaitis, which belongs to Armenia and is dedicated to some god after whom it is named, and many others kept seceding to him, while the soldiers of Marcius were added to his force, Mithridates becoming frightened no longer kept his position, but immediately started unobserved in the night, and thereafter by night marches advanced into the Armenia of Tigranes.  Pompey followed on, eager to secure a battle.  This, however, he could not do by day, for they would not come out of their camp, and he did not venture the attempt by night, fearing his ignorance of the country, until they got near the frontier.  Then, knowing that they would escape, he was compelled to have a night battle.  Having decided on this course he started off before them at noontime, unobserved of the barbarians, by the road along which they were to march.

Finding a sunken part of the road, between some low hills, he there stationed his army on the higher ground and awaited the enemy.  When the enemy entered the sunken way, with confidence and without an advance guard (since they had suffered no injury previously and now at last were gaining safety, so that they expected that the Romans would no longer follow them), he fell upon them in the darkness.  There was no illumination from heaven and they had no kind of light.