st the deep sand
at many places ordinary ditches and ramparts could hardly be formed
for the camp. Imagination can scarcely conceive a situation
in which all the military advantages were more on the one side,
and all the disadvantages more thoroughly on the other.

To the question, under what circumstances this new style
of tactics, the first national system that on its own proper ground
showed itself superior to the Roman, arose among the Parthians,
we unfortunately can only reply by conjectures. The lancers
and mounted archers were of great antiquity in the east, and already
formed the flower of the armies of Cyrus and Darius; but hitherto
these arms had been employed only as secondary, and essentially
to cover the thoroughly useless Oriental infantry. The Parthian armies
also by no means differed in this respect from the other Oriental ones;
armies are mentioned, five-sixths of which consisted of infantry.
In the campaign of Crassus, on the other hand, the cavalry
for the first time came forward independently, and this arm
obtained quite a new application and quite a different value.
The irresistible superiority of the Roman infantry in close combat
seems to have led the adversaries of Rome in very different parts
of the world independently of each other--at the same time
and with similar success--to meet it with cavalry and distant weapons.
What as completely successful with Cassivellaunus in Britain(6)
and partially successful with Vercingetorix in Gaul(7)--
what was to a certain degree attempted even by Mithradates Eupator(8)--
the vizier of Orodes carried out only on a larger scale
and more completely. And in doing so he had special advantages:
for he found in the heavy cavalry the means of forming a line; the bow
which was national in the east and was handled with masterly skill
in the Persian provinces gave him an effective weapon for distant combat;
and lastly the peculiarities of the country and the people
enabled him freely to realize his brilliant idea. Here, where
the Roman weapons of close combat and the Roman system of concentration
yielded for the first time before the weapons of more distant warfare
and the system of deploying, was initiated that military revolution
which only reached its completion with the introduction of firearms.

Battle near Carrhae

Under such circumstances the first battle between the Romans
and Parthians was fought amidst the sandy desert thirty miles
to the south of