VIII.  While Lucullus was busied about these matters, Cotta, thinking it a good opportunity for himself, was preparing to fight with Mithridates; and, though many persons brought him intelligence that Lucullus was encamped in Phrygia on his advanced march, Cotta, thinking that he had the triumph all but in his hands, hastened to engage, that Lucullus might have no share in it.  But he was defeated by land and by sea at the same time; and he lost sixty vessels with all the men in them, and four thousand foot-soldiers, and he was shut up in Chalkedon[347] and besieged there, and obliged to look for help at the hands of Lucullus.  Now there were some who urged Lucullus not to care for Cotta, but to advance forward, as he would be able to seize the kingdom of Mithridates, which was unprotected; and this was the language of the soldiers especially, who were indignant that Cotta, not satisfied with ruining himself and those with him by his imprudent measures, should be a hindrance to their getting a victory without a contest when it was in their power; but Lucullus said in reply to all this in an harangue, that he would rather save one Roman from the enemy than get all that the enemy had.  And when Archelaus,[348] who had commanded for Mithridates in Boeotia, and afterwards had left him, and was now in the Roman army, maintained that if Lucullus would only show himself in Pontus, he might make himself master of everything at once, Lucullus replied that he was not a greater coward than huntsmen, which he should be if he passed by the wild beasts and went to their empty dens.  Saying this he advanced against Mithridates, with thirty thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand five hundred cavalry.  On arriving in sight of the enemy, he was startled at their numbers, and wished to avoid a battle and to protract the time.  Marius, however, whom Sertorius had sent from Iberia to Mithridates in command of a force, came out to meet Lucullus, and challenged him to the contest, on which Lucullus put his army in order of battle; and they were just on the point of commencing the engagement, when, without any evident change, but all at once, the sky opened, and there appeared a huge flame-like body, which came down between the two armies, in form most like a cask, and in colour resembling molten silver, so that both armies were alarmed at the sight and separated.  This, it is said, took place in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae.  Lucullus, considering that it was not possible for any human resources or wealth to maintain for any length of time, and in the presence of an enemy, so many thousands as Mithridates had, ordered one of the prisoners to be brought to him, and asked him first how many messmates he had, and then how much provision he had left in his tent.  When the man had given his answer, he ordered him to be removed, and he put the same question to a second, and to a third.  Then comparing the amount of provisions that the enemy had with the number of those who were to be fed, he concluded that the enemy’s provisions would fail them in three or four days.  He now stuck still more closely to his plan of protracting the time, and he employed himself in getting into his camp a great store of provision, that he might have abundance himself, and so wait till the enemy was reduced to want.