XLIV.  As the law did not allow a general to enter the city before his triumph, Pompeius sent to the Senate to request they would put off the consular elections and to grant him this favour, that he might in his own person assist Piso in his canvass.  As Cato opposed his request, he did not attain his object.  But Pompeius admiring Cato’s boldness of speech and the vigour which he alone openly displayed in behalf of the law, desired in some way or other to gain the man; and as Cato had two nieces, Pompeius wished to take one of them to wife and to marry the other to his son.  Cato saw his object, which he viewed as a way of corrupting him and in a manner bribing him by a matrimonial alliance; but his sister and wife took it ill that he should reject an alliance with Pompeius Magnus.  In the mean time Pompeius wishing to get Afranius[305] made consul, expended money on his behalf among the tribes, and the voters came down to the gardens of Pompeius where they received the money, so that the thing became notorious and Pompeius had an ill name for making that office which was the highest of all and which he obtained for his services, venal for those who were unable to attain to it by merit.  “These reproaches however,” said Cato to the women, “we must take our share of, if we become allied to Pompeius.”  On hearing this the women agreed that he formed a better judgment than themselves as to what was proper.

XLV.  Though the triumph[306] was distributed over two days, such was its magnitude that the time was not sufficient, but much of the preparation was excluded from the spectacle, and enough for the splendour and ornament of another procession.  The nations over which Pompeius triumphed were designated by titles placed in front.  The nations were the following, Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, the Iberians, Albani, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, the parts about Phoenice and Palestine, Judaea, Arabia, and the whole body of pirates by sea and land who had been subdued.  Among these nations fortified places not fewer than a thousand were taken, and cities not far short of nine hundred, and eight hundred piratical ships; and cities forty save one were founded.  Besides this it was shown on written tablets that 5000 myriads (fifty millions) were the produce of the taxes, while from the additions that he had made to the state they received 8500 myriads (eighty-five millions), and there were brought into the public treasury in coined money and vessels of gold and silver twenty thousand talents, not including what had been given to the soldiers, of whom he who received the least according to his proportion received fifteen hundred drachmae.  The captives who appeared in the procession, besides the chief pirates, were the son of Tigranes the Armenian with his wife and daughter, and Zosime a wife of King Tigranes, and Aristobulus King of the Jews, and a wife and five children of Mithridates, and Scythian women, and also hostages