en by some of his women; and
there were lewd letters of Monime[280] to him and his answers to her.
Theophanes says that there was also found an address of Rutilius[281]
in which he urged the King to the massacre of the Romans in Asia. But
most persons with good reason suppose this to be a malicious story of
Theophanes, perhaps invented through hatred to Rutilius, who was a
man totally unlike himself, or perchance to please Pompeius, whose
father Rutilius in his historical writings had shown to be a
thoroughly unprincipled fellow.

XXXVIII. Thence Pompeius went to Amisus,[282] where his ambition led
him to reprehensible measures. For though he had abused Lucullus
greatly, because while the enemy was still alive, he published edicts
for the settlement of the countries and distributed gifts and honours,
things which victors are accustomed to do when a war is brought to a
close and is ended, he himself, while Mithridates was still ruling in
the Bosporus[283] and had got together a force sufficient to enable
him to take the field again, just as if everything was finished, began
to do the very things that Lucullus had done, settling the provinces,
and distributing gifts, many commanders and princes, and twelve
barbarous kings having come to him. Accordingly he did not even deign
when writing in reply to the Parthian,[284] as other persons did, to
address him by the title of King of Kings, and he neglected to do this
to please the other kings. He was also seized with a desire and a
passion to get possession of Syria and to advance through Arabia to
the Erythraean sea,[285] that in his victorious career he might reach
the ocean that encompasses the world on all sides; for in Libya he was
the first who advanced victoriously as far as the external sea, and
again in Iberia he made the Atlantic sea the boundary of the Roman
dominion; and thirdly, in his recent pursuit of the Albani he came
very near to reaching the Hyrkanian sea. Accordingly he now put his
army in motion that he might connect the circuit of his military
expeditions with the Erythraean sea; and besides, he saw that
Mithridates was difficult to be caught by an armed force, and was a
harder enemy to deal with when flying than when fighting.

XXXIX. Wherefore, remarking that he would leave behind him for
Mithridates an enemy stronger than himself, famine, he set vessels to
keep a guard on the merchants who sailed to the Bosporus; and death
was the penalty for those w