Pharnaces Invades Cappadocia
In Asia king Pharnaces, once more treating the reference to Rome with contempt, sent Leocritus in
the course of the winter with ten thousand men
to ravage Galatia, while he himself at the beginning
of spring collected his forces and invaded Cappadocia.
When Eumenes heard of it, he was much enraged
at Pharnaces thus breaking through the terms
of the agreement to which he was pledged, but
was compelled to retaliate by acting in the same way.
Eumenes enters Cappadocia. |
When
he had already collected his forces, Attalus and
his brother landed from their voyage from Rome,
and the three brothers, after meeting and interchanging views, marched out at once with the army.
But on
reaching Galatia they found Leocritus no longer there; and
when Carsignatus and Gaesotorius, who had
before embraced the cause of Pharnaces, sent
them a message desiring that their lives might
be spared, and promising that they would do anything that
might be required of them, they refused the request on the
ground of the treachery of which they had been guilty, and
advanced with their full force against Pharnaces;
and having performed the distance from Calpitus to the river Halys in five days, they
reached Parnassus in six more, and being there
joined by Ariarathes, the king of the Cappadocians, with his own army, they entered the territory of the
Mocissians.
Calpitus in Galatia (?). Parnassus, a town on the Halys. |
Just as they had pitched their
camp, news came that the ambassadors from
Rome had arrived to effect a pacification.
Mocissus, N. of the Halys. |
When he heard this, Eumenes sent his brother Attalus to
receive them; while he devoted himself to doubling the number
of his troops, and improving them to the utmost: partly with a
view to prepare them for actual service, and partly to impress
the Romans with the belief that he was able to defend himself
against Pharnaces, and beat him in war.