Despite the lateness of the season he acted with his customary decisiveness. Braving the floods of the Euphrates, he struck eastwards. His target was Tigranocerta, a city that the Armenian king had not only lovingly built from scratch, but honoured with his own royal name. At the news that his showpiece capital was under siege, Tigranes came storming to its relief. This was exactly what Lucullus had been banking on, despite the fact that he was now further from Rome than any Roman general in history, and that his legions were, as usual, vastly outnumbered. Tigranes himself, when he saw the
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