ith upon the Euphrates.
These orders were executed, but with difficulty. Winter had already set
in throughout the high regions; and in its retreat the army of Media
suffered great losses through the inclemency of the climate, so that
those who reached Syria were but a small proportion of the original
force. Alexander himself, and the army which he led, experienced less
difficulty; but disease dogged the steps of this division, and when its
columns reached Antioch it was found to be greatly reduced in numbers by
sickness, though it had never confronted an enemy. The three armies
of Severus suffered not indeed equally, but still in every case
considerably, from three distinct causes--sickness, severe weather, and
marked inferiority to the enemy. The last-named cause had annihilated
the southern division; the northern had succumbed to climate; the main
army, led by Severus himself, was (comparatively speaking) intact, but
even this had been decimated by sickness, and was not in a condition to
carry on the war with vigor. The result of the campaign had thus
been altogether favorable to the Persians, but yet it had convinced
Artaxerxes that Rome was more powerful than he had thought. It had shown
him that in imagining the time had arrived when they might be easily
driven out of Asia--he had made a mistake. The imperial power had proved
itself strong enough to penetrate deeply within his territory, to ravage
some of his best provinces, and to threaten his capital. The grand
ideas with which he had entered upon the contest had consequently to be
abandoned; and it had to be recognized that the struggle with Rome was
one in which the two parties were very evenly matched, one in which
it was not to be supposed that either side would very soon obtain any
decided preponderance. Under these circumstances the grand ideas were
quietly dropped; the army which had been gathered together to enforce
them was allowed to disperse, and was not required within any given time
to reassemble; it is not unlikely that (as Niebuhr conjectures) a peace
was made, though whether Rome ceded any of her territory by its terms is
exceedingly doubtful. Probably the general principle of the arrangement
was a return to the _status quo ante bellum_, or, in other words, the
acceptance by either side, as the true territorial limits between Rome
and Persia, of those boundaries which had been previously held to divide
the imperial possessions from the dominions of