that she was removed from her native country, enjoying her anticipated happiness only in imagination, while she was deprived of all those real pleasures which she might have had at home.  When Bacchides arrived, and told the women to die in such manner as they might judge easiest and least painful, Monime pulled the diadem from her head, and, fastening it round her neck, hung herself.  As the diadem soon broke, “Cursed rag!” she exclaimed, “you won’t even do me this service;” and, spitting on it, she tossed it from her, and presented her throat to Bacchides.  Berenike took a cup of poison, and gave a part of it to her mother, who was present, at her own request.  Together they drank it up; and the strength of the poison was sufficient for the weaker of the two, but it did not carry off Berenike, who had not drunk enough, and, as she was long in dying, she was strangled with the assistance of Bacchides.  Of the two unmarried sisters of Mithridates it is said, that one of them, after uttering many imprecations on her brother and much abuse, drank up the poison.  Statira did not utter a word of complaint, or anything unworthy of her noble birth; but she commended her brother for that he had not neglected them at a time when his own life was in danger, and had provided that they should die free and be secure against insult.  All this gave pain to Lucullus, who was naturally of a mild and humane temper.

XIX.  Lucullus advanced as far as Talaura,[376] whence four days before Mithridates had fled into Armenia to Tigranes.  From Talaura Lucullus took a different direction, and after subduing the Chaldaei and Tibareni, and taking possession of the Less Armenia, and reducing forts and cities, he sent Appius to Tigranes to demand Mithridates; but he went himself to Amisus, which was still holding out against the siege.  This was owing to Kallimachus the commander, who by his skill in mechanical contrivances, and his ingenuity in devising every resource which is available in a siege, gave the Romans great annoyance, for which he afterwards paid the penalty.  Now, however, he was out-generailed by Lucullus, who, by making a sudden attack, just at that time of the day when he was used to lead his soldiers off and to give them rest, got possession of a small part of the wall, upon which Kallimachus quitted the city, having first set fire to it, either because he was unwilling that the Romans should get any advantage from their conquest, or with the view of facilitating his own escape.  For no one paid any attention to those who were sailing out; but when the flames had sprung up with violence, and got hold of the walls, the soldiers were making ready to plunder.  Lucullus, lamenting the danger in which the city was of being destroyed, attempted from the outside to help the citizens against the fire, and ordered it to be put out; yet nobody attended to him, and the soldiers called out for booty, and shouted and struck their armour, till at last Lucullus