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After Spain, the most immediate frontier difficulty was with Parthia; and there Augustus won his greatest victory. At Carrhae the Parthians had routed Crassus and taken the Roman eagles. Rome was responsible for the provinces of Asia; and she was nominally at war with Parthia, so those provinces were in trim to be overrun at any time.
The Arab prince Abgarus, who commanded the desert of Edessa and Carrhae and thereby the usual route from the Euphrates to the Tigris, had arrived in the camp of the Romans to assure them in person of his devotedness. The Parthians had appeared to be wholly unprepared. The Euphrates Crossed
There were with Publius two Greeks that lived near there at Carrhae, Hieronymus and Nicomachus; these men urged him to retire with them and fly to Ichnae, a town not far from thence, and friendly to the Romans.
Passing Litarbi, and then Hiapolis, he crossed the river by a bridge of boats in the vicinity that place, and proceeded by Batnee to the important city of Carrhae, once the home of Abraham. Here he halted for a few days and finally fixed his plans.
Only the squadron of Gaius Cassius, which had been broken off from the main army on the retreat from Carrhae, and some other scattered bands and isolated fugitives succeeded in escaping from the Parthians and Bedouins and separately finding their way back to Syria.
Prominent among them was Atargatis, whose cult seems to have touched the Italian mainland first at Puteoli. In B.C. 54 the army of Crassus on its Eastern expedition, which was destined to come to such a tragic end in the terrible defeat at Carrhae, visited and plundered the sanctuary of the goddess in Syria.
And at last Cassius himself returned to Carrhae, and his guides, the Arabians, advising him to tarry there till the moon was got out of Scorpio, he told them that he was most afraid of Sagittarius, and so with five hundred horse went off to Syria.
Varguntinus, the lieutenant, while it was yet dark, had broken off from the main body with four cohorts which had strayed out of the way; and the Parthians, encompassing these on a small hill, slew every man of them excepting twenty, who with their drawn swords forced their way through the thickest, and they admiring their courage, opened their ranks to the right and left, and let them pass without molestation to Carrhae.
Thus the stain was not wiped from the shield of Roman honour, nor was the reputation of Rome restored in the east; but the Parthian invasion of Western Asia was over, and the Euphrates boundary was, for the time being at least, retained. Impression Produced in Rome by the Defeat of Carrhae In Rome meanwhile the periodical volcano of revolution was whirling upward its clouds of stupefying smoke.
Only the squadron of Gaius Cassius, which had been broken off from the main army on the retreat from Carrhae, and some other scattered bands and isolated fugitives succeeded in escaping from the Parthians and Bedouins and separately finding their way back to Syria.
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