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[101]
Mithridates made his escape through the cliffs with his attendants only, and fled. He fell in with a troop of mercenary horse and about 3000 foot who accompanied him directly to the castle of Simorex, where he had accumulated a large sum of money. Here he gave rewards and a year's pay to those who had fled with him. Taking 6000 talents he hastened to the head waters of the Euphrates, intending to proceed thence to Colchis. As his march was uninterrupted, he crossed the Euphrates on the fourth day. Three days later he put in order and armed the forces that had accompanied or joined him, and entered Chotene in Armenia. There the Choteneans and Iberians tried with darts and slings to prevent him from coming in, but he advanced and proceeded to the river Apsarus. Some people think that the Iberians of Asia were the ancestors of the Iberians of Europe; others think that the former emigrated from the latter; still others think they merely have the same name, as their customs and languages are not similar. Mithridates wintered at Dioscurias in Colchis, which city, the Colchians think, preserves the remembrance of the sojourn there of the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, with the Argonautic expedition. Mithridates here made no small plans, nor yet plans suitable for a fugitive, but conceived the idea of making the circuit of the whole Pontic coast, passing from Pontus to the Scythians around the sea of Azov and thus arriving at the Bosporus. He intended to take away the kingdom of Machares, his ungrateful son, and confront the Romans once more; wage war against them from the side of Europe while they were in Asia, and to put between them as a dividing line the strait which is believed to have been called the Bosporus because 10 swam across it when she was changed into a cow and fled from the jealousy of Hera.
