Of this stock and blood was Stratonike. But she gave up this
place to Pompeius, and also brought him many presents, of which he
took only such as seemed suitable to decorate the temples and add
splendour to his triumph, and he told her she was welcome to keep the
rest. In like manner when the King of the Iberians sent him a couch
and a table and a seat all of gold, and begged him to accept them, he
delivered them also to the quaestors for the treasury.
XXXVII. In the fort Kaenum[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 Alkaeus 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.
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