1And if I now had to speak about the achievements of our army and its commander, I could recount a great many battles of the greatest importance; 1but that is not what we are about. 1This is what I say: if this war, if this enemy, if that king had deserved contempt, neither would the senate and the Roman people have thought it should be taken up with such concern, nor would Lucius Lucullus have waged it for so many years and with such glory, nor indeed would the Roman people have entrusted the task of bringing that war to an end to Pompey with such eagerness. 34Of all its battles, which are countless, the very fiercest seems to me the one that was joined with the king himself and fought out with the utmost exertion.
34When he had escaped from that battle and fled to the Bosporus, where no army could reach him, even in extreme misfortune and in flight he still kept the name of king. 34And so Pompey himself, though he had taken possession of the kingdom and driven the enemy from all its coasts and familiar haunts, nevertheless set so much store by the life of one man that, although he held by his victory everything that the king had held, had approached or had hoped for, he did not judge the war finished until he had driven him from life. 34Is this the enemy you despise, Cato, with whom so many generals waged wars in so many battles over so many years, whose life, even when he had been driven out and cast down, was valued so highly that only when his death was announced did they at last consider the war finished?
34In this war, then, we maintain that Murena as legate was recognised as a man of the bravest spirit, the soundest judgement and the greatest endurance, and that this service of his carried no less distinction towards winning the consulship than this industry of ours in the forum.