Octavius, never one to foment conflict, cleared his throat. “General, your oath is sacrosanct, but once we cross the Euphrates, Orodes will see this as an act of invasion, and if he hasn’t already, he surely will begin preparing his defenses. If we let this fighting season go by while we wait for your son to arrive, the Parthians will have a whole year to prepare to meet us on the field.”
Petronius scratched his beard, an eyebrow raising like a gull’s wing over his blue eye. “Could we not take Seleucia, Ctesiphon’s sister city across the Tigris, saving the actual surrender of Orodes for the arrival of Publius?”
“That would work,” Crassus laughed, “but my son made it clear that he actually wished to participate in the battle. And you must remember, gentlemen, Publius brings with him 1,000 Gallic horse; having seen them at close quarters I can tell you they will outweigh by far anything Orodes can cobble together by the time we cross the Euphrates when we head east for the second time next spring. Is that not right, Alexander?”
“Gentlemen, the day I witnessed their arrival in Rome, I promise you many a subligaculum required an extra washing.”
“Not yours, though, right Alexander,” said Vargunteius with a heaping of sarcasm.
“Vargunteius, you know I never wear them. I thought we agreed that would remain our little secret.”
As we were leaving the command tent, the legate who’d bitten off more than he could chew gripped me around the shoulder, knocked heads with me and said, “Nicely played, ya’ bastard.”
Marching northwest from the city, eight days later we arrived at Zeugma, a lovely little trading town where the wide, teal waters of the Euphrates, so broad and still that it seemed more meandering lake than river, were pinched narrow enough for a crossing. King Abgarus of Osrhoene had accompanied us with his escort of 300 cavalrymen. Like our own complement of 3,000 outriders, they ranged up and down our lines, providing scouting and flanking support. I saw little of the bejeweled, turbaned monarch with his twin waxed swords of hair quivering above his lip as he rode; he tended to stay toward the rear of the column. Crassus dismissed my repeated misgivings about Abgarus as irrelevant; he agreed the man was duplicitous, but as impotent as our enemy.
In Zeugma, Crassus shored up the existing bridge that had stood since Alexandros’ himself had crossed the ancient river on his travels East. Now it must withstand the passage of the greatest army that land had seen since those days. We marched east for three days across green valleys and fertile farmland until we came to the Balissos, a tributary of the great waterway. There, the garrison town of Carrhae welcomed us. There also, the King of Osrhoene begged permission to return to his capital. Ourha was only two days’ ride north, and Abgarus had pressing business at home, so he said. Crassus thanked the king over and over for his loyalty and assured him that his continued fealty would be well-rewarded.
To the north, the land sloped upwards into the mountains of Armenia. Here, then, at Carrhae, we stood at the border between those northern states allied with Roman and the great Parthian Empire. We turned south along the Balissos and began the war that for Crassus would begin and end not far from the very spot where he sat astride Eurysaces.
Chapter XXXII
54 BCE — Summer, Mesopotamia
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
It was Quintilis and we had received no communication from Tertulla since crossing the Euphrates.
•••
They threw the bodies over the city walls. One hundred legionaries from the first century of the first cohort of Legion V, executed in the style favored by the ancient Greeks: shot to death by a volley from Scythian archers. Except for the fact that the arrows were Parthian, it was an accurate reenactment. The town’s headman, Apollonius, was fond of irony.
•••
Having sent word to the Romans that he, too wished to rebel against the onerous Parthian yoke, but that his beloved city of Zenodotium had too few citizens to man the siege walls, Apollonius laid what he thought was a clever trap. Disappointed that the invaders had sent so few, he opened the gates and took what he could get. He had performed this seemingly insane act of defiance because he had assurances from the envoy of King Orodes that the royal armies would within hours be sweeping up from the south to repel these insolent Romans. In retrospect, Apollonius must have marveled at the speed with which the emissary and his party had galloped down the river road back to the capital. It was an irony he might have appreciated, were he not at the heart of it. No help was forthcoming.
A month earlier, Silaces, satrap of northwestern Parthia, his arm bandaged, his pride eviscerated, his future uncertain, kneeled before Orodes in his court. Silaces had been the first Parthian commander to engage the Romans when Crassus crossed at Zeugma, and his resistance had been demolished. But Orodes was magnanimous in his forgiveness. He asked many questions about the invaders, complimented Silaces on his survival, and wondered how he might devise his own.
The Parthian king needed to take the measure of this man Crassus. And then he thought of that strutting little tyrant Apollonius. Let us see, he thought, if with this Roman, we are dealing with reason or ruthlessness. And in the meantime, Orodes gave orders for the nobles to gather their men at arms and prepare for war. To the cavalry stationed at Hatra, more than halfway between the palace and the invaders, he gave orders to remain close by that formidable citadel, and to redouble its recruiting efforts.
Crassus, having reassembled his legions after the brief engagement with Silaces, was systematically marching south down the Balissos, installing cohort after cohort in all the major Parthian towns: Dabana, Ichnae, Callinieum, Nicephorium. When news of the betrayal reached him, he unleashed Legions IV, V and VI to swarm over Zenodotium like hornets from an overturned nest.
Melyaket and I arrived with the general to find the retribution well underway. Dominus had been polite but unimpressed with the Parthian’s offer of assistance, reminding the young man that treachery was a spy’s stock in trade. His trust would have to be earned with more ‘proof’ than what Crassus himself had already surmised, that King Abgarus was an unknown quantity. In the meantime, the general instead invited Melyaket to learn how discipline, training and technique made a Roman army indomitable, giving him free passage to roam among us as he pleased, with equal freedom to come and go so that he could convince his masters of the futility of anything but a negotiated surrender. Even Cassius had to admit that when it came to Rome’s legions, an informed adversary was a pliant adversary.
The first spectacle to insist on our unwilling attention was the sight of our men hauling the executed Romans to a growing pyre where they were being stacked with military precision. Several soldiers were stripping the armor off the dead, leaving them barefoot, but decent in their tunics. Their weapons, possessions, tags and any medals were carefully inventoried and carted off by Cassius’ people. Other legionaries were coming out of Zenodotium carrying ladders, for while each and every one of them were experts at building ramparts, they had no wish to trample upon their fallen brothers.
There were twice as many Romans here now as there were ever civilians of this small walled city. Crassus sat atop his horse on a small rise overlooking the town. He stood by as every shop, home and plaza was stripped of anything of value. Shrieks, shouts and laughter rose on the flame-lit smoke that was visible in the eastern quarter of the town. Ox cart drivers cracked their whips, following legionaries door-to-door to fill their loads and withdraw before the grey stench unnerved their beasts. Men who resisted were killed, men and women too old to work were killed, any child who couldn’t stand on its own was killed. Women and girls were raped in situ.