XXXVII. In the fort Kænum[276] Pompeius found also private writings of Mithridates, which he read through with some pleasure as they gave him a good opportunity of learning the man's character. They were memoirs,[277] from which it was discovered that he had taken off by poison[278] among many others his son Ariarathes and Alkæus of Sardis because he got the advantage over the King in riding racehorses. There were registered also interpretations of dreams,[279] some of which he had seen himself, and others had been seen by some of his women; and there were lewd letters of Monime[280] to him and his answers to her. Theophanes says that there was also found an address of Rutilius[281] in which he urged the King to the massacre of the Romans in Asia. But most persons with good reason suppose this to be a malicious story of Theophanes, perhaps invented through hatred to Rutilius, who was a man totally unlike himself, or perchance to please Pompeius, whose father Rutilius in his historical writings had shown to be a thoroughly unprincipled fellow. XXXVIII. Thence Pompeius went to Amisus,[282] where his ambition led him to reprehensible measures. For though he had abused Lucullus greatly, because while the enemy was still alive, he published edicts for the settlement of the countries and distributed gifts and honours, things which victors are accustomed to do when a war is brought to a close and is ended, he himself, while Mithridates was still ruling in the Bosporus[283] and had got together a force sufficient to enable him to take the field again, just as if everything was finished, began to do the very things that Lucullus had done, settling the provinces, and distributing gifts, many commanders and princes, and twelve barbarous kings having come to him. Accordingly he did not even deign when writing in reply to the Parthian,[284] as other persons did, to address him by the title of King of Kings, and he neglected to do this to please the other kings. He was also seized with a desire and a passion to get possession of Syria and to advance through Arabia to the Erythræan sea,[285] that in his victorious career he might reach the ocean that encompasses the world on all sides; for in Libya he was the first who advanced victoriously as far as the external sea, and again in Iberia he made the Atlantic sea the boundary of the Roman dominion; and thirdly, in his recent pursuit of the Albani he came very near to reaching the Hyrkanian sea. Accordingly he now put his army in motion that he might connect the circuit of his military expeditions with the Erythræan sea; and besides, he saw that Mithridates was difficult to be caught by an armed force, and was a harder enemy to deal with when flying than when fighting.