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Updated: May 26, 2025
If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns, he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier of Orodes had won over Crassus and Juba over Curio, and he could at least endlessly protract the war.
These intrigues seem, to have first caused the war to languish, and then produced the recall of the expedition. Orodes summoned Pacorus to return to Parthia before the plot contrived between him and the Romans was ripe for execution; and Pacorus felt that no course was open to him but to obey.
Thus perished Orodes, after a reign of eighteen years the most memorable in the Parthian annals. Reign of Phraates IV. His cruelties. Flight of Monceses to Antony. Antony's great Parthian Expedition, or Invasion of Media Atropatene. Its Complete Failure. Subsequent Alliance of the Median King with Antony. War between Parthia and Media. Rebellion raised against Phraates by Tiridates.
Notwithstanding the failure of these negotiations and the imprisonment of his envoy Hirrus, when a few months later, having lost the battle of Pharsalia, the unhappy Roman was in need of a refuge from his great enemy, he is said to have proposed throwing himself on the friendship, or mercy, of Orodes.
After a preliminary trial of strength in the years B.C. 522 and 51, Pacorus, the son of Orodes, in B.C. 40, crossed the Euphrates in force, defeated the Romans under Decidius Saxa, and carried fire and sword over the whole of the Syrian presidency. Having taken Apamea and Antioch, he marched into Phoenicia, ravaged the open country, and compelled all the towns, except Tyre, to surrender.
At any rate, he ruled so harshly and cruelly that within a few years of his accession the Parthian nobles deposed him, and, recalling Orodes from his place of exile, set him up as king in his brother's room. Mithridates was, it would seem, at first allowed to govern Media as a subject monarch; but after a while his brother grew jealous of him, and deprived him of this dignity.
While the general of King Orodes was thus successful against the Romans in Mesopotamia, the king himself had in Armenia obtained advantages of almost equal value, though of a different kind.
His head was sent to Orodes, the Parthian king, who ordered molten gold to be poured into his mouth, a ghastly commentary on his thirst for wealth. Pompey left Spain to take care of itself, and remained in Rome, where he sought to add to his popularity by building a great stone theatre, large enough to hold forty thousand people, where for many days he amused the people with plays and games.
Many disturbances resulted from this action of his: the Aradii, islanders, would not yield any obedience to the messengers sent by him to them after the money and also killed some of them, and the Parthians, who had previously been restless, now assailed the Romans more than ever. Their leaders were Labienus and Pacorus the latter the son of King Orodes, and the former a child of Titus Labienus.
Phraates, jealous of some of his brothers, who were the sons of a princess married to Orodes, whereas his own mother was only a concubine, removed them by assassination, and when the ex-monarch ventured to express disapproval of the act added the crime of parricide to fratricide by putting to death his aged father.
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