Crassus

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.

There were with him four cohorts of men-at-arms, a few horsemen all told, and five lictors. With these he got back into the road, with great difficulty, when the enemy at once pressed upon him, and since he was about twelve furlongs short of a junction with Octavius, he took refuge on another hill, not so difficult for cavalry nor yet so strong a position, but one that lay below Sinnaca and was connected with it by a long ridge running through the midst of the plain. His danger was therefore to be seen by Octavius.

And Octavius ran first with a few men to bring him aid from the higher ground; then the rest of his men, reproaching themselves with cowardice, plunged forward, and falling upon the enemy and sweeping them from the hill, enveloped Crassus round about, and covered him with their shields, boldly declaring that no Parthian missile should smite their imperator until they had all died fighting in his defence.