This was a benefit to the world itself: for this Pompey deserved the everlasting thanks of all who dwelt on the coasts of the Mediterranean. Standing higher than ever in public opinion, he was in consequence of this popularity intrusted with the war against Mithridates. Nor had the Romans ever reason to rue this decision, though indeed they made victory much more easy for him than it had been for Lucullus, as he received considerable reinforcements. Mithridates lost in one battle all that he had regained, without the Roman arms having any great honour from it: he fled to Colchis, and from thence along the roots of mount Caucasus to the Bosporus. Pompey followed close at his heels, by what is now Erzerum, as far as Georgia and the neighbourhood of Tiflis, and the princes of that country did homage to Rome: one of the sons of Mithridates, named Machares, who held the kingdom of Bosporus as a fief, made a separate peace with the Romans; but when he heard that his father was approaching, he laid hands on his own life. Mithridates, who in his misfortunes, with eastern fury, freely vented his passions upon those around him, now became an object of hatred; his servants and children (of whom he had very many) trembled before him. Moreover, he had formed boundless plans: having still a great deal of money, he now conceived the vast design of going to Italy; and he wanted to stir up the Bastarnæ and other peoples on the banks of the Danube, to league themselves with him. When his soldiers heard of this, they could not but remark, that as yet none of his undertakings had been successful; and so they broke out into a mutiny at Panticapæum, being joined by Pharnaces the king’s son. The outbreak displayed all the dreadful features of an eastern insurrection; and therefore Mithridates put an end to his own life, thinking perhaps that his son would not rest until he knew his father to be dead. Pharnaces now made peace with Pompey, and he was not ashamed to send him his father’s body: Pompey, however, had it buried with kingly pomp. Pharnaces got the kingdom of the Bosporus and the neighbouring lands, as well as the country of the Cubanians; and this he kept until the later times of Cæsar: when, however, he ventured to mix himself up with the civil wars (_se inserere armis Romanis_ as Tacitus expresses it), he met with his ruin. Pompey now turned his arms against Tigranes, who was glad to obtain a shameful peace by paying a large sum of money, and by giving up all his possessions with the exception of Armenia: even of this he had to yield a part to a rebellious son, but it soon came back to him. Syria he had to renounce altogether: it was reduced _in formam provinciæ Romanæ_. Pompey went as far as Egypt, and made himself master of Syria and Phœnicia: one of his generals even reached the country of the Nabathæan Arabs, where he received the homage of the Arab king Haret. In Judæa, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus were contending for the