Antony

To the Parthians in their parallel array, the discipline of the Romans seemed to beggar description, and they watched them marching past at equal distances from one another, without confusion, and in silence, brandishing their javelins. But when the signal was given, and the Roman horsemen wheeled about and rode down upon them with loud shouts, they did indeed receive their onset and repel them, although their foes were at once too close for them to use their arrows; when, however, the legionaries joined in the charge, with shouts and clashing of weapons, the horses of the Parthians took fright and gave way, and the Parthians fled without coming to close quarters.

Antony pressed hard upon them in pursuit, and had great hopes that he had finished the whole war, or the greater part of it, in that one battle. His infantry kept up the pursuit for fifty furlongs, and his cavalry for thrice that distance; and yet when he took count of those of the enemy who had fallen or had been captured, he found only thirty prisoners and eighty dead bodies. Despondency and despair therefore fell upon all; they thought it a terrible thing that when victorious they had killed so few, and when vanquished they were to be robbed of so many men as they had lost at the waggons.

On the following day they packed up and started on the road to Phraata and their camp. As they marched they met, first a few of the enemy, then more of them, and finally the whole body, which, as though unconquered and fresh, challenged and attacked them from every side; but at last, with difficulty and much labour, they got safely to their camp.

Then the Medes made a sally against their mound and put its defenders to flight. At this Antony was enraged, and visited those who had played the coward with what is called decimation. That is, he divided the whole number of them into tens, and put to death that one from each ten upon whom the lot fell.[*](See the Crassus, x. 2.) For the rest he ordered rations of barley instead of wheat.

The war was full of hardship for both sides, and its future course was still more to be dreaded. Antony expected a famine; for it was no longer possible to get provisions without having many men wounded and killed. Phraates, too, knew that his Parthians were able to do anything rather than to undergo hardships and encamp in the open during winter, and he was afraid that if the Romans persisted and remained, his men would desert him, since already the air was getting sharp after the summer equinox.

He therefore contrived the following stratagem. Those of the Parthians who were most acquainted with the Romans attacked them less vigorously in their forays for provisions and other encounters, allowing them to take some things, praising their valour, and declaring that they were capital fighting men and justly admired by their own king.