Crassus

The interpreter gave this message, and when it was reported to Crassus, he accepted the invitation. A little while afterwards there came from the Barbarians some Arabs, who knew Crassus and Cassius well by sight, having been in their camp before the battle. When these men saw Cassius on the wall, they said that Surena proposed a truce, and offered them safe conduct if they would be friends of the king and leave Mesopotamia; for this he saw was more advantageous to both parties than any resort to extreme measures.

Cassius accepted the proposal, and asked that time and place be fixed for a conference between Surena and Crassus. The men said that this should be done, and rode away.

Now Surena was delighted that the men were where he could besiege them, and when day came, he led his Parthians up against the city. With many insults they ordered time Romans, if they wished to obtain a truce, to deliver Crassus and Cassius into their hands in fetters.

The Romans were distressed to find themselves deceived, and telling Crassus to abandon his distant and vain hopes of aid from the Armenians, prepared for flight, of which none of the men of Carrhae were to know beforehand. But Andromachus, the most faithless of men, learned of it, for Crassus not only confided the secret to him, but made him the guide for the journey. Accordingly, everything was known to the Parthians, for Andromachus reported to them all the details.

But since it is not the custom, and so not easy, for the Parthians to fight by night, and since Crassus set out by night, Andromachus, by leading the fugitives now by one route and now by another, contrived that the pursuers should not be left far behind, and finally he diverted the march into deep marshes and regions full of ditches, thus making it difficult and circuitous for those who still followed him.

For there were some who conjectured that the, twisting and turning of Andromachus boded no good, and therefore did not follow him. Cassius, indeed, went back again to Carrhae, and when his guides, who were Arabs, urged him to wait there until the moon had passed the Scorpion, he said that he feared the Archer[*](Sagittarius, the sign of the zodiac following Scorpio.) even more than the Scorpion, and rode off into Syria with five hundred horsemen.

And others, too, employing trusty guides, reached a hill country called Sinnaca, and established themselves in safety before day came. These were about five thousand men, and they were led by Octavius, a brave man. But day found Crassus a prey to the wiles of Andromachus in the difficult places and the marsh.