Zarbienus, the King of the Gordyeni, as it has been already told,
secretly communicated, through Appius, with Lucullus about an
alliance, being oppressed by the tyranny of Tigranes; but his design
was reported to Tigranes, and he was put to death, and his children
and wife perished with him, before the Romans invaded Armenia.
Lucullus did not forget all this; and, on entering Gordyene, he made a
funeral for Zarbienus, and, ornamenting the pile with vests, and the
king's gold, and the spoils got from Tigranes, he set fire to it
himself, and poured libations on the pile, with the friends and
kinsmen of the king, and gave him the name of friend and ally of the
Roman people. He also ordered a monument to be erected to him at great
cost; for a large quantity of gold and silver was found in the palace
of Zarbienus, and there were stored up three million medimni of wheat,
so that the soldiers were well supplied, and Lucullus was admired,
that without receiving a drachma from the treasury, he made the war
support itself.

XXX. While Lucullus was here, there came an embassy from the King of
the Parthians[407] also, who invited him to friendship and an
alliance. This proposal was agreeable to Lucullus, and in return he
sent ambassadors to the Parthian, who discovered that he was playing
double and secretly asking Mesopotamia from Tigranes as the price of
his alliance. On hearing this Lucullus determined to pass by Tigranes
and Mithridates as exhausted antagonists, and to try the strength of
the Parthians, and to march against them, thinking it a glorious
thing, in one uninterrupted campaign, like an athlete, to give three
kings in succession the throw, and to have made his way through three
empires, the most powerful under the sun, unvanquished and victorious.
Accordingly he sent orders to Sornatius and the other commanders in
Pontus to conduct the army there to him, as he was intending to
advance from Gordyene farther into Asia. These generals had already
found that the soldiers were difficult to manage and mutinous; but now
they made the ungovernable temper of the soldiers quite apparent,
being unable by any means of persuasion or compulsion to move the
soldiers, who, with solemn asseverations, declared aloud that they
would not stay even where they were, but would go and leave Pontus
undefended. Report of this being carried to the army of Lucullus
effected the corruption of his soldiers also, who had been made inert
towards m