opportunity offered. Then with some
few he openly approached the camp of the barbarians, threw them into
disorder, and enticing them to the point he wished killed a large
number. Encouraged by this, he sent some one way, some another, over the
country after provisions.

[-48-] When Pompey went on procuring these in safety and through certain
men's help had become master of the land of Anaitis, which belongs to
Armenia and is dedicated to some god after whom it is named, and many
others kept seceding to him, while the soldiers of Marcius were added to
his force, Mithridates becoming frightened no longer kept his position,
but immediately started unobserved in the night, and thereafter by night
marches advanced into the Armenia of Tigranes. Pompey followed on, eager
to secure a battle. This, however, he could not do by day, for they
would not come out of their camp, and he did not venture the attempt by
night, fearing his ignorance of the country, until they got near the
frontier. Then, knowing that they would escape, he was compelled to have
a night battle. Having decided on this course he started off before them
at noontime, unobserved of the barbarians, by the road along which they
were to march.

Finding a sunken part of the road, between some low hills, he there
stationed his army on the higher ground and awaited the enemy. When the
enemy entered the sunken way, with confidence and without an advance
guard (since they had suffered no injury previously and now at last were
gaining safety, so that they expected that the Romans would no longer
follow them), he fell upon them in the darkness. There was no
illumination from heaven and they had no kind of light.

[-49-] The nature of the ensuing battle I will now describe. First, all
the trumpeters together at a signal sounded the attack, next the
soldiers and all the multitude raised a shout, some rattling their
spears against their shields, and others stones against the bronze
implements. The hollowed mountains took up and gave back their din with
most frightful effect, so that the barbarians, hearing them suddenly in
the night and the wilderness, were terribly alarmed, thinking they had
encountered some supernatural phenomenon. Directly the Romans from the
heights smote them at all points with stones, arrows, and javelins,
inevitably wounding some by reason of their numbers, and reduced them to
every extremity of evil. They were not drawn up in line of battle, but
f