XXXVI.  After the battle Pompeius set out to advance to the Hyrkanian[273] and Caspian sea, but he was turned from his route by the number of deadly reptiles, when he was three days’ march from it.  He retired to the Less Armenia; and he returned a friendly answer to the Kings of the Elymaei[274] and Medes who sent ambassadors, but against the Parthian king who had invaded Gordyene and was plundering the people of Tigranes, he sent Afranius with a force who drove him out and pursued him as far as the territory of Arbela.  Of all the concubines of Mithridates who were brought to him, he knew not one, but sent all back to their parents and kin; for the greater part were the daughters and wives of generals and princes.  Stratonike,[275] who was in the greatest repute and guarded the richest of the forts, was, it is said, the daughter of a harp-player, who was not rich and was an old man; and she made so sudden a conquest of Mithridates over his wine by her playing, that he kept the woman and went to bed with her, but sent away the old man much annoyed at not having been even civilly spoken to by the king.  In the morning, however, when he got up and saw in his house tables loaded with silver and golden cups, and a great train of attendants, with eunuchs and boys bringing to him costly garments, and a horse standing before the door equipped like those that carried the king’s friends, thinking that this was all mockery and a joke he made an attempt to escape through the door.  But when the slaves laid hold of him and told him that the king had made him a present of the large substance of a rich man who had just died, and that this was but a small foretaste and sample of other valuables and possessions that were to come, after this explanation hardly convinced he took the purple dress, and leaping on the horse rode through the city exclaiming, “All this is mine.”  To those who laughed at him he said, this was nothing strange, but it was rather strange that he did not pelt with stones those who came in his way, being mad with delight.  Of this stock and blood was Stratonike.  But she gave up this place to Pompeius, and also brought him many presents, of which he took only such as seemed suitable to decorate the temples and add splendour to his triumph, and he told her she was welcome to keep the rest.  In like manner when the King of the Iberians sent him a couch and a table and a seat all of gold, and begged him to accept them, he delivered them also to the quaestors for the treasury.

XXXVII.  In the fort Kaenum[276] Pompeius found also private writings of Mithridates, which he read through with some pleasure as they gave him a good opportunity of learning the man’s character.  They were memoirs,[277] from which it was discovered that he had taken off by poison[278] among many others his son Ariarathes and Alkaeus of Sardis because he got the advantage over the King in riding racehorses.  There were registered also interpretations of dreams,[279]