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[6]
While Taxiles was yet speaking, the first eagle came in sight, as Lucullus wheeled towards the river, and the cohorts were seen forming in maniples with a view to crossing. Then at last, as though coming out of a drunken stupor, Tigranes cried out two or three times,
‘Are the men coming against us?’ And so, with much tumult and confusion, his multitude formed in battle array, the king himself occupying the centre, and assigning the left wing to the king of the Adiabeni, the right to the king of the Medes. In front of this wing also the greater part of the mail-clad horsemen were drawn up.
As Lucullus was about to cross the river, some of his officers advised him to beware of the day, which was one of the unlucky days—the Romans call them
‘black days.’ For on that day Caepio and his army perished in a battle with the Cimbri.1 But Lucullus answered with the memorable words:
‘Verily, I will make this day, too, a lucky one for the Romans.’ Now the day was the sixth of October.
1 B.C. 105. Cf. Camillus, xix. 7.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 2.
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