For the third of these Mithridatic Wars, the Romans sent Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta, the consuls of 74 BC, to fight the king of Pontus.
In the spring of 67 BC most Roman troops had left Pontus for northern Mesopotamia, where Lucullus was laying siege to Nisibis, a treasure city of Tigranes.
The two long-serving Fimbrian legions, tired of campaigning, had refused to leave and fell easy prey to a vengeful Mithridates who suddenly returned from exile in Armenia.
Marcus Fabius Hadrianus, whom Lucullus had left in command of Pontus, resorted to arming slaves to fight alongside his legionnaires and auxiliaries to scrape together a sizeable defence force.
Mithridates tried to take Hadrianus' camp but was wounded twice, once in the face with an arrow or dart and then hit on the knee by a stone, probably fired by a sling.
[7] Plutarch and Appian claim Triarius wanted to defeat Mithridates before Lucullus could arrive and take the glory for himself, but this is in dispute.
The fight was long and brutal but eventually the Mithridatic troops drove the Romans back into a trench Mithridates had constructed in preparation for the battle and had then flooded to conceal it from sight.
The man ran up to the king as though delivering a message and stabbed him in the thigh, probably the only accessible point where Mithridates could be wounded, since he was armoured Armenian-style (see: Cataphract).
Fortunately, the king's physician (a Greek called Timotheus) was near and after a quick examination ordered him lifted above the throng of worried followers, so that they could see that their leader still lived.