n earlier time,(4) practically shown
how ready they were to shake off the intolerable foreign yoke
and to receive the Romans as deliverers, almost as countrymen.
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

Accordingly (701) the Euphrates was crossed (near Biradjik).
To reach the Tigris from this point they had the choice
of two routes; either the army might move downward along the Euphrates
to the latitude of Seleucia where the Euphrates and Tigris
are only a few miles distant from each other; or they might
immediately after crossing take the shortest line to the Tigris
right across the great Mesopotamian desert. The former route
led directly to the Parthian capital Ctesiphon, which lay opposite
Seleucia on the other bank of the Tigris; several weighty voices
were raised in favour of this route in the Roman council of war;
in particular the quaestor Gaius Cassius pointed to the difficulties
of the march in the desert, and to the suspicious reports arriving
from the Roman garrisons on the left bank of the Euphrates
as to the Parthian warlike preparations. But in opposition to this
the Arab prince Abgarus announced that the Parthians were employed
in evacuating their western provinces. They had already packed up
their treasures and put themselves in motion to flee to the Hyrcanians
and Scythians; only through a forced march by the shortest route
was it at all possible still to reach them; but by such a march
the Romans would probably succeed in overtaking and cutting up at least
the rear-guard of the great army under Sillaces and the vizier,
and obtaining enormous spoil. These reports of the friendly Bedouins
decided the direction of the march; the Roman army, consisting
of seven legions, 4000 cavalry, and 4000 slingers and archers,
turned off from the Euphrates and away into the inhospitable plains
of northern Mesopotamia.

The March in the Desert

Far and wide not an enemy showed himself; only hunger and thirst,
and the endless sandy desert, seemed to keep watch at the gates
of the east. At length, after many days of toilsome marching, not far
from the first river which the Roman army had to cross,
the Balissus (Belik), the first horsemen of the enemy were descrie