LUCULLUS AND CIMON. 287

first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed the Tigris, took and burnt the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings, Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern parts aa far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media, and making the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Ara- bians. He shattered the power of the kings, and nar- rowly missed their persons, while like wild beasts they fled away into deserts and thick and impassable woods. In demonstration of this superiority, we see that the Per- sians, as if no great harm had befallen them under Cimon, soon after appeared in arms against the Greeks, and over- came and destroyed their numerous forces in Egypt. But after Lucullus, Tigranes and Mithridates were able to do nothing ; the latter, being disabled and broken in the former wars, never dared to show his army to Pom- pey outside the camp, but fled away to Bosporus, and there died. Tigranes threw himself, naked and unarmed, down before Pomjjey, and taking his crown from his head, laid it at his feet, complimenting Pompey with what was not his own, but, in real truth, the conquest already effected by Lucullus. And when he received the ensigns of majesty again, he was well pleased, evidently because he had forfeited them before. And the com- mander, as the wrestler, is to be accounted to have done most who leaves an adversary almost conquered for his successor. Cimon, moreover, when he took the com- mand, found the power of the king broken, and the spirits of the Persians humbled by their great defeats and incessant routs under Themistocles, Pausanias, and Leoty- chides, and thus easily overcame the bodies of men whose souls were quelled and defeated beforehand. But Ti- granes had never yet in many combats been beaten, and was flushed with success when he engaged with Lucullus. There is no comparison between the numbers, which