camp. On hearing this Antony was both alarmed at his
boastfulness and ready to believe that a truce could be secured if he
himself should shift his position: hence he withdrew without destroying
any of his implements of siege but behaved as if in friendly territory.
[-28-] When he had done this and was awaiting the truce, the Medes
burned the engines and scattered the mounds, while the Parthians made
no proposition to him respecting peace but suddenly attacked him and
inflicted very serious damage. He found out that he had been deceived
and did not venture to employ any further envoys, being sure that the
barbarians would not agree to any reasonable terms, and not wishing to
cast the soldiers into dejection by failing to arrange a truce. Therefore
he resolved, since he had once started, to hurry on into Armenia. His
troops took another road, since the one by which they had come they
believed to have been blocked entirely, and on the way their sufferings
were unusually great. They came into unknown regions where they wandered
at random, and furthermore the barbarians seized the passes in advance of
their approach, digging trenches outside of some and building palisades
in front of others, spoiled the water-courses everywhere, and drove
away the flocks. In case they ever got a chance to march through more
favorable territory, the enemy would turn them aside from such places by
false announcements that they had been occupied beforehand, and caused
them to take different roads along which ambuscades had been previously
posted, so that many perished through such mishaps and many of hunger.
[-29-] As a result there were some desertions, and they would all have
gone over, had not the barbarians shot down before the eyes of the others
any who dared to take this course. Consequently the men refrained from
this, and from Fortune's hands obtained the following relief. One day
when they fell into an ambush and were struck with fast-flying arrows,
they suddenly made by joining shields the _testudo_, and rested their
left knees on the ground. The barbarians had never seen anything of the
kind before and thought that they had fallen from their wounds and needed
only one finishing blow; so they threw aside their bows, leaped from
their horses, and drawing their daggers came close to put an end to them.
At this the Romans rose to their feet, spread out the phalanx at a word,
and each one attacked the man nearest and facing him; thus they