o, xxxvii. 7). In 690 he first
reduced the last strongholds still offering resistance in
the kingdom of Pontus, and then moved slowly, regulating matters
everywhere, towards the south. That the organization of Syria
began in 690 is confirmed by the fact that the Syrian provincial
era begins with this year, and by Cicero's statement respecting
Commagene (Ad Q. fr. ii. 12, 2; comp. Dio, xxxvii. 7). During
the winter of 690-691 Pompeius seems to have had his headquarters in
Antioch (Joseph, xiv. 3, 1, 2, where the confusion has been
rectified by Niese in the Hermes, xi. p. 471).

16. III. V. New Warlike Preparations in Rome

17. III. IV. War Party and Peace Party in Carthage

18. Orosius indeed (vi. 6) and Dio (xxxvii. 15), both of them
doubtless following Livy, make Pompeius get to Petra and occupy
the city or even reach the Red Sea; but that he, on the contrary, soon
after receiving the news of the death of Mithradates, which came to
him on his march towards Jerusalem, returned from Syria to Pontus,
is stated by Plutarch (Pomp. 41, 42) and is confirmed by Floras (i.
39) and Josephus (xiv. 3, 3, 4). If king Aretas figures in
the bulletins among those conquered by Pompeius, this is
sufficiently accounted for by his withdrawal from Jerusalem
at the instigation of Pompeius.

19. V. II. Renewal of the War, V. IV. Variance between Mithradates
and Tigranes

20. This view rests on the narrative of Plutarch (Pomp. 36) which
is supported by Strabo's (xvi. 744) description of the position of
the satrap of Elymais. It is an embellishment of the matter, when
in the lists of the countries and kings conquered by Pompeius Media
and its king Darius are enumerated (Diodorus, Fr, Vat. p. 140;
Appian, Mithr. 117); and from this there has been further concocted
the war of Pompeius with the Medes (Veil. ii. 40; Appian, Mithr.
106, 114) and then even his expedition to Ecbatana (Oros. vi. 5).
A confusion with the fabulous town of the same name on Carmel has
hardly taken place here; it is simply that intolerable
exaggeration--apparently originating in the grandiloquent and
designedly ambiguous bulletins of Pompeius--which has converted his
razzia against the Gaetulians (p. 94) into a march to the west
coast of Africa (Plut. Pomp. 38), his abortive expedition against
the Nabataeans into a conquest of the city of Petra, and his award
as to the boundaries of Armenia into a fixing of the boundary of
the Roman empire beyond Nisibis.