to gain; and, fugitive
and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court
was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man, who,
although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback
in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground
like the best. Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit:
while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies
and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth
as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field
of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed
so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king
appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta;
whereas the position of Lucullus was very difficult, and, if peace
should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued,
even in a high degree precarious.

Renewal of the War

The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the great-king
almost as a father, and was now able to exercise a personal
influence over him, overpowered by his energy that weak man,
and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war,
but also to entrust Mithradates with its political and military
management. The war was now to be changed from a cabinet contest
into a national Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia
were to unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty
Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to reconcile
the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to induce them
to make common cause against Rome. At the suggestion of Mithradates,
Tigranes offered to give back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who
had reigned since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians--
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys"--and to enter into friendship
and alliance with him. But, after all that had previously taken place,
this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception;
Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates
by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans,
and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient
foreigner fought out their strife. Greater success attended
the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east
than to the kings. It was not difficult to represent the war
as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was;
it might very well be made a religious war a