Plutarch (Volume 5); The Lives (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: moon, though near her setting, gave light enough to distinguish objects. But it was a great disadvantage to the king's troops that the moon was so low, and on the backs of the Romans, because she projected their shadows so far before them, that the enemy could form no just estimate of the distances, but thinking them at hand, threw their javelins before they could do the least execution. The Romans, perceiving their mistake, advanced to the charge with all the alarm of voices. The enemy were in such a consternation that they made not the least stand, and, in their flight, vast numbers were slain. They lost above ten thousand men, and their camp was taken. As for Mithridates, he broke through the Romans with eight hundred horse, in the begin ning of the engagement. That corps, however, did not follow him far before they dispersed, and left him with only three of his people; one of which was his concubine Hypsicratia, a woman of such a masculine and daring spirit, that the king used to call her Hyp- sicrates. She then rode a Persian horse, and was dressed in a man's habit of the fashion of that nation. She complained not in the least of the length of the march; and besides that fatigue, she waited on the king, and took care of his horse, till they reached the castle of Inora, where the king's treasure and his most valuable movables were deposited. Mithridates took out thence many rich robes, and bestowed them on those who repaired to him after their flight. He furnished each of his friends too with a quantity of poison, that none of them, against their will, might come alive into the enemy's hands. From Inora his design was to go to Tigranes in Armenia; but Tigranes had given up the cause, hud set a price of no less than a hundred talents on his bead.He therefore changed hi...