Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/625

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 597 at a distance from the foe. Crassus retired at night, leav ing all who were badly wounded behind him, and reached Carrhie safely ; but his army was sadly demoralized, and he himself lost his head, and, though fairly secure at Carrhie, thought only of immediate retreat to Syria. 1 He marched by night northwards towards the mountains ; the several divisions lost one another and each sought only to shift for itself. The quaestor Cassius, one of Crassus s best officers, returned to Carrhae and thence regained Syria in safety. Crassus himself, after getting dangerously en tangled in marshy ground, had almost reached the moun tains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the horse which was to convey him to a meeting with the enemy s general the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely 10,000 men out of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia (Appian, B. C., ii. 18); 20,000 had fallen and 10,000 captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of Margiana. The token of victory, the hand and head of Crassus, reached Orodes in Armenia just as he had made peace with Artavasdes and betrothed his eldest son Pacorus to the daughter of the Armenian king. The Roman disaster was due primarily to the novelty of the Parthian way of assault, which took them wholly by sur prise, and partly also to bad generalship ; but the Romans always sought a traitor to account for a defeat, and in the present case threw the blame partly on Andromachus of Carrha?, who really did mislead Crassus in his retreat, and was rewarded by the Parthians with the tyranny of his native town (Nic. Dam., in Athen., vi. p. 252 D), 2 but had no great influence on the disaster, and partly on Abgar, whose advice was no doubt bad, but not necessarily treach erous,- 3 while the silence of the older account disposes of Dio s improbable assertion that the men of Orrhoene fell on the rear of the Romans. That the Parthians did not count Abgar their friend and punished him with deposi tion may be fairly inferred from the list 4 of kings of Edessa given by Dionysius of Telmahar, which shows that the reign of Abgar II. ended in 53, and was followed by a year of interregnum. Surenas, the victor of Carrhae, whose fame was now too great for the condition of a mere subject, was put to death a little later, the victim of Orodes s jealousy ; the victory vA 7 ars itself was weakly followed up. Not till 52 was Syria vith invaded, and then with forces so weak that Cassius found lomans. ^ Q (j e f ence easv _ j n j u py 5} (Sextilis, according to the old calendar) the attack was renewed with greater forces ; the Romans were still weak in troops, their harshness and injustice had alienated the provincials, and some districts as Judaea openly sympathized with the foe. Thus all the chances were still favourable to the Parthians, who indeed overran the open country, but were too unskilled in siege to take Antioch. As they drew off, Cassius stopped their way at Antigonia and inflicted on them a defeat in which Osaces, the real leader of their host under the young prince Pacorus, was mortally wounded (August 51). Pacorus wintered in Cyrrhestica, the Romans under the new pro consul Bibulus not venturing beyond the walls of Antioch ; 1 That lie waited for the new moon i.e., some twenty days, as Dio says seems to be a mistake. Perhaps it is clue to Dio himself ; at all events, the older account is preferable. 2 The Parthians leaned much on the despots of the Greek cities. Zenodotia, the only Mesopotamia!! town that Crassus had to storm, had a despot, Apollonius. 3 The alternative of a march along the Euphrates was also open to serious military objections. 4 It must be remembered that a correction of four years has to be applied to all the dates in this list. but, the satrap of Mesopotamia 5 having raised a revolt 53-38 B.C. against Orodes in the name of Pacorus, the latter was recalled by his father and Syria was entirely evacuated by May 50. Orodes avoided the threatened breach with his son by associating Pacorus in the empire ; 6 but the Parthians took little advantage of the civil wars that preceded the fall of the Roman republic. They occasionally stepped in to save the weaker party from utter annihilation, but even this policy was not followed vith energy, and Orodes refused to help Pompey in his distress because the Roman would not promise to give him Syria. The Pompeian Ccecilius Bassus was saved from Caesar s general Antistius Vetus by the sudden appearance of a Parthian force under Pacorus, which, however, retired when winter came on (December 45). In 43, again, Cassius had a force of mounted Parthian bowmen with him in Syria, but dismissed them when he marched to join Brutus and face the triumvirs. Labienus Avas with Orodes negotiating for help on a larger scale when the news of Philippi arrived, and remained with him till 40, when he was at last sent back to Syria, together with Pacorus and a numerous host. The Roman garrisons in Syria were old troops of Brutus and Cassius, who had been taken over by Antony ; those in the region of Apamea joined Labienus ; Antony s legate Decidius Saxa was defeated, and fled from the camp afraid of his own men. Apamea, Antioch, and all Syria soon fell into the hands of the Parthians, and Decidius was pursued and slain. Pacorus advanced along the great coast road and received the submission of all the Phoenician cities save Tyre. Simultaneously the satrap Barzaphranes appeared in Galilee; the patriots all over Palestine rose against Phasael and Herod (see ISRAEL, vol. xiii. p. 425) ; and five hundred Parthian horse appearing before Jerusalem were enough to overthrow the Roman party and substitute Antigonus for Hyrcanus. The Parthian administration was a favour able contrast to the rule of the oppressive proconsuls, and the justice and clemency of Pacorus won the hearts of the Syrians. Meantime Labienus had penetrated Asia Minor as far as Lydia and Ionia ; the Roman governor Plancus could only hold the islands ; most of the cities opened their gates to Labienus, the &quot; Parthicus Imperator,&quot; Stratonicea alone resisting and successfully standing a siege. But Rome even in its time of civil divisions was stronger than Parthia ; in 39 Ventidius Bassus, general for Antony, suddenly appeared in Asia and drove Labienus and his provincial levies before him without a battle as far as the Taurus. Here the Parthians came to Labienus s help, but, attacking rashly and without his co-operation, they were defeated by Ventidius, and Labienus s troops were involved in the disaster. Labienus himself escaped to Cilicia, but was captured and executed by the Egyptian governor of Cyprus. In the passes of the Amanus the Romans were again in danger, but Ventidius at length gained a decisive victory at Trapezon, north of the Orontes valley, where Phranipates, the ablest lieutenant of Pacorus, fell ; and the Parthians evacuated Syria. Before Ventidius had com pleted the resettlement of the Roman power in Syria and Palestine, and while his troops were dispersed in winter- quarters, the Parthians fell on him again Avith a force of more than 20,000 men and an unusually large proportion of free caA aliers in full armour. Ventidius, hoAvever, gained time to bring up legions from Cappadocia by de ceiving a dynast. of Cyrrhestica, who Avas Pacorus s spy. Then a battle Avas fought near the shrine of Hercules at Gindarus in Cyrrhestica, on the anniversary, it is said, of the defeat of Crassus (9th June 38), and the Parthians Avere 5 The name was Orondapates, corrupted to OpvoSaTravrrj in Dio, xl. 30. 6 So the coins show, Gardner, p. 41.