1Perhaps it will now be asked how, since this is so, what remains of the war can be great. 1Learn, citizens; 1for this does not seem to be asked without reason. 1First, Mithridates fled from his kingdom just as Medea of old is said to have fled from this same Pontus; they relate that in her flight she scattered the limbs of her brother in the places where her father would pursue her, so that the gathering of the scattered parts and a father's grief might slow the speed of his pursuit. 1So Mithridates, as he fled, left behind in Pontus the whole vast mass of gold and silver and of all the most beautiful things which he had both received from his ancestors and had himself plundered from all Asia in the earlier war and heaped up in his kingdom.
1While our men were gathering all this up too diligently, the king himself escaped from their hands. 1So grief slowed the one in his eagerness to pursue, and joy slowed the others. 23In this fear and flight Tigranes, the Armenian king, received him, reassured him when he despaired of his fortunes, raised him up when he was crushed, and revived him when he was ruined. 23After Lucullus came into his kingdom with an army, still more nations were stirred up against our commander. 23For fear had been struck into those nations which the Roman people had never thought of either provoking or attacking in war; 23there was also another serious and powerful belief which had spread through the minds of the barbarian peoples, that our army had been led into those regions to plunder a very rich and very holy temple.
23So many great nations were being stirred up by a new kind of terror and fear. 23Our army, however, although it had taken a city from Tigranes' kingdom and had enjoyed success in battle, was nevertheless unsettled by the excessive distance of the place and by longing for their families. 24Here I shall say no more; 24for the end of it was that our soldiers sought a speedy return from those places rather than a further advance. 24Mithridates, meanwhile, had already strengthened himself and his band through the help of those who had gathered to him from his own kingdom, and was aided by large auxiliary forces that came in from many kings and nations.
24We know that this generally tends to happen: that the misfortunes of kings easily draw the resources of many to pity them, especially of those who are either kings or live under a king, since to them the royal name seems great and sacred. 25And so in defeat he was able to achieve more than he had ever dared to wish for when unharmed. 25For when he had got back into his kingdom, he was not content with what had happened to him beyond his hope, that he should ever set foot on that land after he had been driven out, but he made an attack on our famous and victorious army.
25Allow me at this point, citizens, as poets do who write of Roman history, to pass over our disaster, which was so great that it reached the commander's ears not through a messenger from the battle but through a rumour from common talk. 25At this point, in the very midst of that misfortune and most serious reverse in the war, Lucius Lucullus, who might perhaps still have been able to remedy those setbacks in some measure, was compelled by your order — for you thought, following old precedent, that a limit should be set to the length of a command — to discharge part of his soldiers, who had already completed their service, and to hand over part to Manius Glabrio.
26I pass over many things on purpose; 26but judge for yourselves by conjecture how great you think that war has become which the most powerful kings are joining, stirred-up nations are renewing, untouched peoples are taking up, and a new commander of ours is taking over after the old army has been driven back.