[-49-] The nature of the ensuing battle I will now describe.  First, all the trumpeters together at a signal sounded the attack, next the soldiers and all the multitude raised a shout, some rattling their spears against their shields, and others stones against the bronze implements.  The hollowed mountains took up and gave back their din with most frightful effect, so that the barbarians, hearing them suddenly in the night and the wilderness, were terribly alarmed, thinking they had encountered some supernatural phenomenon.  Directly the Romans from the heights smote them at all points with stones, arrows, and javelins, inevitably wounding some by reason of their numbers, and reduced them to every extremity of evil.  They were not drawn up in line of battle, but for marching, and both men and women were moving about in the same place with horses and camels and all sorts of implements; some were borne on coursers, others on chariots, covered wagons, and carts indiscriminately; and some getting wounded already and others expecting to be wounded caused confusion, in consequence of which they were more easily slain, since they kept becoming entangled one with another.  This was what they endured while they were still being struck from afar off.  But when the Romans after exhausting their long-distance ammunition charged down upon them, the edges of the force were slaughtered, one blow sufficing for their death, since the majority were unarmed, and the center was crushed together, as all by reason of the encompassing fear fell toward it.  So they perished, pushed about and trampled down by one another without being able to defend themselves or venture any movement against the enemy.  For whereas they were strongest in cavalry and bowmen, they were unable to see before them in the darkness and unable to make any manoeuvre in the defile.

When the moon rose, some rejoiced, with the idea that in the light they could certainly ward off some one.  And they would have been benefited a little, if the Romans had not had the moon behind them, and so produced much illusion both in sight and in action, while assailing them now on this side and now on that.  For the attackers, being many in number and all in one body, casting the deepest imaginable shadow, baffled their opponents before they had yet come into conflict with them.  The barbarians thinking them near would strike the empty air in vain and when they reached common ground would be wounded in the shadow where they were not expecting it.  Thus numbers of them were killed and the captives were not fewer than the slain.  Many also escaped, among them Mithridates.