Corbulo, however, notwithstanding his successes thought he must use his good fortune with moderation, and sent Vologeses a message of remonstrance against the violence done to a Roman province, and the blockade of an allied and friendly king and of Roman cohorts."He had better give up the siege, or he, Corbulo too would encamp in his territory, as on hostile ground." Casperius, a centurion selected for this mission, had an interview with the king at the town Nisibis, thirty-seven miles distant from Tigranocerta, and with fearless spirit announced his message.With Vologeses it was an old and deep conviction that he should shun the arms of Rome.Nor was the present going smoothly with him.The seige was a failure; Tigranes was safe with his troops and supplies; those who had undertaken the storming of the place had been routed; legions had been sent into Armenia, and other legions were ready to rush to the attack on behalf of Syria, while his own cavalry was crippled by want of food.Ahost of locusts, suddenly appearing, had devoured every blade of grass and every leaf.And so, hiding his fear and presenting a more conciliatory attitude, he replied that he would send envoys to the Roman emperor for the possession of Armenia and the conclusion of a lasting peace.He ordered Moneses to leave Tigranocerta, while he himself retired.
Many spoke highly of these results, as due to the king's alarm and the threats of Corbulo, and as splendid successes.Others explained them as a secret understanding that with the cessation of war on both sides and the departure of Vologeses, Tigranes also was to quit Armenia."Why," it was asked, "had the Roman army been withdrawn from Tigranocerta? Why had they abandoned in peace what they had defended in war? Was it better for them to have wintered on the confines of Cappadocia in hastily constructed huts, than in the capital of a kingdom lately recovered? There had been, in short, a suspension of arms, in order that Vologeses might fight some other foe than Corbulo, and that Corbulo might not further risk the glory he had earned in so many years.For, as I have related, he had asked for a general exclusively for the defence of Armenia, and it was heard that Caesennius Paetus was on his way.And indeed he had now arrived, and the army was thus divided; the fourth and twelfth legions, with the fifth which had lately been raised in Moesia and the auxiliaries from Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia, were under the command of Paetus, while the third, sixth, and tenth legions and the old soldiery of Syria remained with Corbulo.All else they were to share or divide between them according to circumstances.But as Corbulo could not endure a rival, so Paetus, who would have been sufficiently honoured by ranking second to him, disparaged the results of the war, and said repeatedly that there had been no bloodshed or spoil, that the sieges of cities were sieges only in name, and that he would soon impose on the conquered tribute and laws and Roman administration, instead of the empty shadow of a king.
About the same time the envoys of Vologeses, who had been sent, as Ihave related, to the emperor, returned without success, and the Parthians made open war.Nor did Paetus decline the challenge, but with two legions, the 4th and 12th, the first of which was then commanded by Funisulanus Vettonianus and the second by Calavius Sabinus, entered Armenia, with unlucky omen.In the passage of the Euphrates, which they crossed by a bridge, a horse which carried the consul's official emblems, took fright without any apparent cause and fled to the rear.A victim, too, standing by some of the winter-tents, which were being fortified, broke its way through them, when the work was but half finished, and got clear out of the entrenchments.Then again the soldiers' javelins gleamed with light, a prodigy the more significant because the Parthian foe fights with missiles.
Paetus, however, despising omens, before he had yet thoroughly fortified his winter-camp or provided for his corn supply, hurried his army across Mount Taurus, for the recovery, as he gave out, of Tigranocerta and the ravaging of the country which Corbulo had left untouched.Some forts too were taken, and some glory as well as plunder had been secured, if only he had enjoyed his glory modestly, and his plunder with vigilance.While he was overrunning in tedious expeditions districts which could not be held, the supplies which had been captured, were spoilt, and as winter was now at hand, he led back his army and wrote a letter to the emperor, as if the war was finished, in pompous language, but barren of facts.
Meanwhile Corbulo occupied the bank of the Euphrates, which he had never neglected, with troops at closer intervals.That he might have no hindrance in throwing a bridge over it from the enemy's cavalry, which was already scouring the adjoining plains with a formidable display, he launched on the river some vessels of remarkable size, linked together by beams, with towers rising from their decks, and with catapults and balistas he drove off the barbarians.The stones and spears penetrated their host at a range beyond the reach of the opposing volleys of arrows.The bridge was then completed, and the hills facing us were occupied by our auxiliary infantry, then, by the entrenchments of the legions, with such rapidity and such a display of force that the Parthians, giving up their preparations for the invasion of Syria, concentrated all their hopes on Armenia.
