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49The course of the battle was as follows: First, all the trumpeters together at a signal sounded the attack, then the soldiers and all the multitude raised a shout, while some clashed their spears against their shields and others struck stones against the bronze implements. 2The mountains surrounding the valley took up and gave back the din with most frightful effect, so that the barbarians, hearing them suddenly in the night and in the wilderness, were terribly alarmed, thinking they had encountered some supernatural phenomenon. 3Meanwhile the Romans from the heights were hurling stones, arrows, and javelins upon them from every side, inevitably wounding some by reason of their numbers; and they reduced them to the direst extremity. For the barbarians were not drawn up for battle, but for the march, and both men and women were moving about in the same place with horses and camels and all sorts of baggage; 4some were riding on chargers, others in chariots or in the covered waggons and carriages, in indiscriminate confusion; and as some were being wounded already and others were expecting to be wounded they were thrown into confusion, and in consequence the more easily slain, since they kept huddling together. 5This was what they endured while they were still being assailed from a distance. But when the Romans, after exhausting their long-distance missiles, charged down upon them, the outermost of the enemy were slaughtered, one blow sufficing for their death, since the majority were unarmed, and the centre was crushed together, as all by reason of the danger round about them moved thither. 6So they perished, pushed about and trampled upon by one another without being able to defend themselves or show any daring against the enemy. For they were horsemen and bowmen for the most part, and were unable to see before them in the darkness and unable to carry out any manoeuvre in the narrow space. When the moon rose, the barbarians rejoiced, thinking that in the light they would certainly beat back some of the foe. 7And they would have been benefited somewhat, if the Romans had not had the moon behind them and as they assailed them, now on this side and now on that, caused much confusion both to the eyes and hands of the others. For the assailants, being very numerous, and all of them together casting the deepest shadow, baffled their opponents before they had yet come into conflict with them. 8The barbarians, thinking them near, would strike vainly into the air, and when they did come to close quarters in the shadow, they would be wounded when not expecting it. Thus many of them were killed and no fewer taken captives. A considerable number also escaped, among them Mithridates.
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