The Historians' History of the World 08

Phraates IV continued his reign in a series of crimes, murdering every prominent man among his brothers, and even his own adult son, that the nobles might find no Arsacid to lead their discontent. Many of the nobles fled to foreign parts, and Antony felt encouraged to plan a war of vengeance against Parthia. Antony had no hope of forcing the well-guarded Euphrates frontier; but since the death of Pacorus, Armenia had again been brought under Roman patronage, and he hoped to strike a blow at the heart of Parthia. Keeping the Parthians in play by feigned proposals of peace while he matured his preparations, he appeared in Atropatene in 36 B.C. with sixty thousand legionaries and forty thousand cavalry and auxiliary troops, and at once formed the siege of the capital Phraaspa. The Median king Artavasdes, son of Ariobarzanes, had marched to join Phraates, who looked for the attack in another quarter. Phraates had only forty thousand Parthians, including but four hundred freemen who never left the king, and probably ten thousand Median cavalry; but these forces were well handled, and the two kings had reached the scene of war before Antony was joined by his baggage and heavy siege-train, and opened the campaign by capturing the train and cutting to pieces its escort of seventy-five hundred men under the legate Oppius Statianus. Antony was still able to repel a demonstration to relieve Phraaspa; but his provisions ran short, and the foraging parties were so harassed that the siege made no progress. As it was now October, he was at length forced to open negotiations with Phraates.

The Parthians promised peace if the Romans withdrew; but when Antony took him at his word, abandoning the siege-engines, he began a vigorous pursuit, and kept the Romans constantly on the defensive, chastising one officer who hazarded an engagement by a defeat which cost the Romans three thousand killed and five thousand wounded. Still greater were the losses by famine and thirst and dysentery; and the whole force was utterly demoralised and had lost a fourth part of its fighting men, a third of the camp-followers, and all the baggage when, after a retreat of twenty-seven days from Phraaspa to the Araxes by way of Mianeh (276 miles), they reached the Armenian frontier. Eight thousand more perished of cold and from snow-storms in the Armenian mountains; the mortality among the wounded was terrible; the Romans would have been undone had not Artavasdes of Armenia allowed them to winter in his land.

The failure of the expedition was due partly to the usual Roman ignorance of the geographical and climatic conditions, partly to a rash haste in the earlier operations; but very largely also (as in the case of Napoleon’s Russian campaign) to the lack of discipline in the soldiers of the Civil War, which called for very severe chastisement even during the siege of Phraaspa, and culminated at length in frequent desertions and in open mutiny, driving Antony to think of suicide. The Romans laid the whole blame on Artavasdes, but without any adequate reason. At the same time, the disaster of Antony following that of Crassus seemed to show that within their own country the Parthians could not safely be attacked on any side, and for a century and a half Roman cupidity left them alone.

Media and Armenia fell before the Parthians; the Romans who were still in the country were slain, and Artaxes II was raised to the Armenian throne (30 B.C.). In the very next year, however, the course of the Parthian affairs led Artaxes to make his peace with Rome. Phraates’ tyranny had only been aggravated by his successes, and open rebellion broke out in 33 B.C. We have coins of an anonymous pretender dated March to June 32 B.C. To him succeeded Tiridates II, whose rebellion was at a climax during the war of Actium. Phraates was taken by surprise and fled, slaying his concubines that they might not fall a prey to his victor. Tiridates seated himself on the throne in June, 27 B.C., and Phraates wandered for some time in exile till he persuaded the Scythians to undertake his cause. Before the great host of the Scythians Tiridates retired without a contest. In June, 26 B.C., as the coins prove, Phraates again held the throne. In 10 or 9 B.C. Phraates took the precaution of sending his family to Rome so that the rebels might have no Arsacid pretender to put forward, keeping only and designating as heir his youngest son by his favourite wife Thea Musa Urania, an Italian slave girl presented to him by Augustus. This was mainly a scheme of Urania’s, and she and her son crowned it by murdering the old tyrant.

ANARCHY IN PARTHIA

[9 B.C.-40 A.D.]