Rome
and to pay tribute as a vassal. But Pompeius refused to grant
the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh,
and insisted on his personal submission.

His Last Preparations against Rome

Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands
of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans.
Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved
and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army
of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised
after the Roman fashion, and a war-fleet; according to rumour he designed
to march westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along
with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube
as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself
on Italy. This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war
of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march
of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke
of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed. This intended
invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous,
and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.
Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans
were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist
and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it
were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.

Revolt against Mithradates

In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself further
as to the threats of the impotent giant, was employed in organizing
the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king
drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.
His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement
among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen
were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure
beams and sinews for constructing engines of war. The soldiers
too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition.
Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion
and treason; he had not the gift of calling forth affection
and fidelity among those around him. As in earlier years he had
compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek protection
in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his