Pompeius invaded Armenia at the invitation of young Tigranes,[258] who had now revolted from his father, and he met Pompeius near the river Araxes,[259] which rises in the same parts with the Euphrates, but turns to the east and enters the Caspian Sea.  Pompeius and Tigranes received the submission of the cities as they advanced:  but King Tigranes, who had been lately crushed by Lucullus, and heard that Pompeius was of a mild and gentle disposition, admitted a Roman garrison into his palace,[260] and taking with him his friends and kinsmen advanced to surrender himself.  As he approached the camp on horseback, two lictors of Pompeius came up to him and ordered him to dismount from his horse and to enter on foot:  they told him that no man on horseback had ever been seen in a Roman camp.  Tigranes obeyed their orders, and taking off his sword presented it to them; and finally, when Pompeius came towards him, pulling off his cittaris,[261] he hastened to lay it before his feet, and what was most humiliating of all, to throw himself down at his knees.  But Pompeius prevented this by laying hold of his right hand and drawing the king towards him; he also seated Tigranes by his side, and his son on the other side, and said that Tigranes ought so far to blame Lucullus only, who had taken from him Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, Galatia, and Sophene,[262] but that what he had kept up to that time, he should still have, if he paid as a compensation to the Romans for his wrongful deeds six thousand talents, and his son should be King of Sophene.  Tigranes assented to these terms, and being overjoyed by the Romans saluting him as king, he promised to give every soldier half a mina of silver,[263] to a centurion ten minae, and to a tribune a talent.  But his son took this ill, and on being invited to supper he said that he was not in want of Pompeius to show such honour as this, for he would find another Roman.[264] In consequence of this he was put in chains and kept for the triumph.  No long time after Phraates the Parthian sent to demand the young man, as his son-in-law, and to propose that the Euphrates should be the boundary of the two powers.  Pompeius replied that Tigranes belonged to his father rather than to his father-in-law, and that as to a boundary he should determine that on the principles of justice.

XXXIV.  Leaving Afranius in care of Armenia, Pompeius advanced through the nations that dwell about the Caucasus,[265] as of necessity he must do, in pursuit of Mithridates.  The greatest of these nations are Albani and Iberians, of whom the Iberians extend to the Moschic mountains and the Pontus, and the Albani extend to the east and the Caspian Sea.  The Albani at first allowed a free passage to Pompeius at his request; but as winter overtook the Romans in the country and they were occupied with the festival of the Saturnalia,[266] mustering to the number of forty thousand they attacked the Romans, after crossing the Cyrnus[267] river, which rising in the Iberian mountains and receiving