Pompeius wishing to confirm him in this disposition made
an expedition against Petra, wherein he did not altogether escape
censure from most people. For they considered that this was evading
the pursuit of Mithridates, and they urged him to turn against him who
was his old antagonist and was fanning his flame and preparing
according to report to lead an army through the country of the
Scythians and Paeonians[294] against Italy. But Pompeius thinking it
would be easier to crush the forces of Mithridates in the field than
to overtake him when he was flying, did not choose to exhaust himself
to no purpose in a pursuit, and he contrived to find other occupations
in the interval of the war and he protracted the time. Fortune,
however, settled the difficulty; for when he was at no great distance
from Petra, and had already pitched his camp for that day and was
exercising himself with his horse around the camp, letter-bearers rode
up from Pontus with good tidings. This was manifest at once by the
points of their spears, for they were wreathed with bay. Pompeius at
first wished to finish his exercises, but as the men called out and
entreated him, he leapt from his horse and taking the letters advanced
into the camp. But as there was no tribunal[295] and there had not
been time to make even the kind of tribunal that is used in the camp,
which they are accustomed to form by digging out large lumps of earth
and putting them together upon one another, in their then zeal and
eagerness they piled together the loadings of the beasts of burden and
raised an elevated place.
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