Caesar (27 page)

At dawn Rome woke to bustle and hum, though all through the night the heavy wheeled carts drawn by oxen lumbered through the narrow streets delivering goods. Goods which at dawn were put on display or put to work in some factory or foundry, when Rome rose, yawning, to begin the serious business of making money. But on the fifth day of Milo's trial in Lucius Ahenobarbus's specially convened violence court, Rome cowered as the sun nudged upward into the sky. Pompey had literally closed the city. Within the Servian Walls no activity began; no snack bar opened its sliding doors onto the street to offer breakfast, no tavern rolled up its shutters, no bakery kindled the ovens, no stall was erected in any marketplace, no school set itself up in a quiet corner, no bank or brokerage firm tuned its abacuses, no purveyor of books or jewels opened his door, no slave or free man went to work, no crossroads college or club or brotherhood of any description met to while away the hours of a day off. The silence was stupendous. Every street leading to the Forum Romanum was cordoned off by sour, untalkative bands of soldiers, and within the Forum itself pila bristled above the waving plumes of the Syrian legion's helmets. Two thousand men garrisoned the Forum itself, three thousand more the city, on that freezing ninth day of April. Walking like somnambulants, the hundred-odd men and few women who were compelled to attend the trial of Milo assembled amid the echoes, shivering with cold, staring about twitchily. Pompey had already set up his tribunal outside the doors of the Treasury beneath the temple of Saturn, and there he sat dispensing fiscal justice while Ahenobarbus had his lictors collect the wooden balls from the vaults and brought out the lot jars. Mark Antony challenged the jurors for the prosecution, Marcus Marcellus for the defense; but when Cato's name was drawn, both sides nodded. It took two hours to choose the fifty-one men who sat to hear the summing-up. After which the prosecution spoke for two hours. The elder of the two Appius Claudiuses and Mark Antony (who had remained in Rome to act in this trial) each spoke for half an hour, and Publius Valerius Nepos for an hour. Good speeches, but not in Cicero's league. The jury leaned forward on its folding stools when Cicero walked forward to begin, his scroll in his hand; it was there merely for effect, he never referred to it. When Cicero gave an oration it seemed as if he were composing it as he went along, seamlessly, vividly, magically. Who could ever forget his speech against Gaius Verres, his defenses of Caelius, of Cluentius, of Roscius of Ameria? Murderers, blackguards, monsters, all grist for Cicero's undiscriminating mill. He had even made the vile Antonius Hybrida sound like every mother's ideal son.“ Lucius Ahenobarbus, members of the jury, you see me here to represent the great and good Titus Annius Milo.” Cicero paused, stared at the pleasurably expectant Milo, swallowed. “How strange it is to have an audience composed of soldiers! How much I miss the clangor of business as usual....” He stopped, swallowed. “But how wise of the consul Gnaeus Pompeius to make sure that nothing unseemly happened—happens....” He stopped, swallowed. “We are protected. We have nothing to fear, and least of all does my dear friend Milo have anything to fear....” He stopped, waved his scroll aimlessly, swallowed. “Publius Clodius was mad; he burned and plundered. Burned. Look at the places where our beloved Curia Hostilia, Basilica Porcia ...” He stopped, he frowned, he pushed the fingers of one hand into the sockets of his eyes. “Basilica Porcia—Basilica Porcia ... ”By this, the silence was so profound that the chink of a pilum brushing against a scabbard sounded like a building crashing down; Milo was gaping at him, that loathesome cockroach Marcus Antonius was grinning, the rising sun was reflecting off the oily bald pate of Lucius Ahenobarbus the way it did off snowfields, blindingly—oh, what is the matter with my mind, why am I seeing that?He tried again. “Are we to exist in perpetual misery? No! We have not since the day Publius Clodius burned! On the day Publius Clodius died, we received a priceless gift! The patriot we see here before us simply defended himself, fought for his life. His sympathies have always been with true patriots, his anger directed against the gutter techniques of demagogues....” He stopped, swallowed. “Publius Clodius conspired to take the life of Milo. There can be no doubt of it, no doubt of it at all— no doubt at all—no doubt, no doubt... no—doubt... ”Face twisted with worry, Caelius crossed to where Cicero stood alone. “Cicero, you're not well. Let me get you some wine,” he said anxiously. The brown eyes staring at him were dazed; Caelius wondered if they even saw him.“ Thank you, I am well,” said Cicero, and tried again. “Milo does not deny that a fight broke out on the Via Appia, though he does deny that he instigated it. He does not deny that Clodius died, though he does deny that he killed Clodius. All of which is quite immaterial. Self-defense is not a crime. Never a crime. Crime is premeditated. That was Clodius. That was premeditation. Publius Clodius. Him. Not Milo. No, not Milo.... ”Caelius moved back to him. “Cicero, take some wine, please!”

“No, I am well. Truly, I am well. Thank you.... Take the size of Milo's party. A carpentum. A wife. The eminent Quintus Fufius Calenus. Baggage. Servants galore. Is that the way a man plots to do murder? Clodius had no wife with him. Isn't that in itself suspicious? Clodius never moved without his wife. Clodius had no baggage. Clodius was unencumbersome—unencrumbed—unen—unencumbered.... ”Pompey was sitting on his tribunal hearing cases against the fiscus. Pretending the court of Ahenobarbus didn't exist. I never knew the man. Oh, Jupiter, he will kill me! He will kill me!"

Milo is a sane man. If it happened the way the prosecution alleges it happened, then we are looking at a madman. But Milo is not mad. It was Clodius who was mad! Everyone knew Clodius was mad! Everyone!"

He stopped, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. Fulvia swam before his gaze, sitting with her mother, Sempronia. Who was that standing with them? Oh, Curio. They were smiling, smiling, smiling. While Cicero died, died, died.“ Died. Died. Clodius died. No one denies that. We all have to die. But no one wants to die. Clodius died. Clodius brought it on himself. Milo didn't kill him. Milo is—Milo is ... ”For a hideous half hour Cicero battled on, stumbling, stopping, faltering, tripping over simple words. Until in the end, his vision filled by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus dispensing fiscal justice outside Saturn, he stopped for the last time. Couldn't start again. No one on Milo's side was angry, even Milo. The shock was too enormous, Cicero's health too suspect. Perhaps he had one of those frightful headaches with flashing lights? It wasn't his heart; he didn't have that grey look. Nor his stomach. What was the matter, with him? Was he having a stroke?Marcus Claudius Marcellus stepped forward. “Lucius Ahenobarbus, it is clear that Marcus Tullius cannot continue. And that is a tragedy, for we all agreed to give him our time. Not one of us has prepared an address. May I humbly ask this court and its jurors to remember the kind of oration Marcus Tullius has always given? Today he is ill; we will not hear that. But we can remember. And take to your hearts, members of the jury, an unspoken oration which would have shown you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the guilt in this sorry business lies. The defense rests its case.” Ahenobarbus shifted in his chair. “Members of the jury, I require your votes,” he said. The jury busied itself inscribing its little tablets with a letter: A for ABSOLVO, C for CONDEMNO. Ahenobarbus's lictors collected the tablets and Ahenobarbus counted them with witnesses peering over his shoulder.“ CONDEMNO by thirty-eight votes to thirteen,” Ahenobarbus announced in a level voice. “Titus Annius Milo, I will appoint a damages panel to assess your fine, but CONDEMNO carries a sentence of exile with it according to the lex Pompeia de vi. It is my duty to instruct you that you are interdicted against fire and water within five hundred miles of Rome. Be advised that three further charges have been laid against you. You will be tried in the court of Aulus Manlius Torquatus on charges of electoral bribery. You will be tried in the court of Marcus Favonius on charges of illegally associating with members of colleges banned under the lex Julia Marcia. And you will be tried in the court of Lucius Fabius on charges of violence under the lex Plautia de vi. Court closed.” Caelius led the almost prostrate Cicero away. Cato, who had voted ABSOLVO, crossed to Milo. It was very strange. Not even that showy termagant Fulvia was shrieking victory. People just melted away as if numbed.“ I'm sorry for it, Milo,” Cato said.“ Not as sorry as I am, believe me.”

“I fear you'll go down in the other courts as well.”

“Of course. Though I won't be here to defend myself. I'm leaving for Massilia today.” For once Cato wasn't shouting; his voice was low. “Then you'll be all right if you've prepared for defeat. I hope you noticed that Lucius Ahenobarbus issued no order to seal your house or garnish your finances.”

“I am grateful. And I'm prepared.”

“I'm thunderstruck at Cicero.” Milo smiled, shook his head. “Poor Cicero!” he said. “I think he's just discovered some of Pompeius's secrets. Please, Cato, watch Pompeius! I know the boni are wooing him. I understand why. But in the end you'd do better to ally yourself with Caesar. At least Caesar is a Roman.” But Cato drew himself up in outrage. “Caesar? I will die first!” he shouted, then marched away. And at the end of April a wedding took place. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus married the widow Cornelia Metella, twenty-year-old daughter of Metellus Scipio. The charges Plancus Bursa had threatened to bring against Metellus Scipio never eventuated.“ Don't worry, Scipio,” said the bridegroom genially at the wedding dinner, a small affair. “I intend to hold the elections on time in Quinctilis, and I promise that I'll have you elected as my junior consul for the rest of this year. Six months is long enough to serve without a colleague.” Metellus Scipio didn't know whether to kick him or kiss him.

Though he kept to his house for a few days, Cicero bounced back, pretended even inside his own mind that it had never happened. That Pompey was the Pompey he had always been. Yes, a headache had struck, one of those ghastly things which warped the mind, snarled the tongue. That was how he explained it to Caelius. To the world he explained that the presence of the troops had thrown him off—how could anyone concentrate in that atmosphere of silence, of military might? And if there were those who remembered that Cicero had endured worse things without being rattled, they held their tongues. Cicero was getting old. Milo had settled down to exile in Massilia, though Fausta had gone back to her brother in Rome. To Milo in Massilia went a couriered gift: a copy of the speech Cicero had prepared, amended to incorporate rings of soldiers and flowery references to the consul without a colleague.“ My thanks,” Milo wrote to Cicero. “If you'd actually had the gumption to deliver it, my dear Cicero, I might not at this moment be enjoying the bearded mullets of Massilia.”

from JANUARY until DECEMBER of 52 B.C.

Some years earlier, after Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus had completed their year in office together as consuls for the second time, they looked forward to very special proconsular governorships. Caesar's legate Gaius Trebonius had been a tribune of the plebs while they were still consuls, and had carried a law which gave them enviable provinces for a full five-year term; on their mettle because Caesar was proving the effectiveness of that five-year term in Gaul, Pompey took Syria and Crassus the two Spains. Then Julia, never fully well after her miscarriage, began to fail in health even more. Pompey couldn't take her with him to Syria; custom and tradition forbade it. So Pompey, genuinely in love with his young wife, revised his plans. He still functioned as curator of Rome's grain supply, which gave him an excellent excuse to remain in close proximity to Rome. If he governed a stable province. Syria was not that. Newest of Rome's territorial possessions, it bordered the Kingdom of the Parthians, a mighty empire under the rule of King Orodes, who cast wary glances at the Roman presence in Syria. Particularly if Pompey the Great was to be its governor, for Pompey the Great was a famous conqueror. Word traveled, and word had it that Rome was toying with the idea of adding the Kingdom of the Parthians to her own empire. King Orodes was a worried man. He was also a prudent and careful man. Thanks to Julia, Pompey asked Crassus to switch provinces with him: Pompey would take both the Spains, Crassus could have Syria. A proposition Crassus agreed to eagerly. Thus it was arranged. Pompey was able to stay in the vicinity of Rome with Julia because he could send his legates Afranius and Petreius to govern Nearer and Further Spain, while Crassus set off for Syria determined to conquer the Parthians. When news of his defeat and death at the hands of the Parthians reached Rome it created a furor, not least because the news came from the only noble survivor, Crassus's quaestor, a remarkable young man named Gaius Cassius Longinus. Though he sent an official dispatch to the Senate, Cassius also sent a more candid account of events to Servilia, his fond friend and prospective mother-in-law. Knowing that this candid account would cause Caesar great anguish, Servilia took pleasure in transmitting it to him in Gaul. Hah! Suffer, Caesar! I do.

I arrived in Antioch just before King Artavasdes of Armenia arrived on a State visit to the governor, Marcus Crassus. Preparations were well in hand for the coming expedition against the Parthians— or so Crassus seemed to think. A conviction I confess I didn't share once I had seen for myself what Crassus had gotten together. Seven legions, all under-strength at eight cohorts per legion instead of the proper ten, and a mass of cavalry I didn't feel would ever learn to work together well. Publius Crassus had brought a thousand Aeduan horse troopers with him from Gaul, a gift from Caesar for his bosom friend Crassus that Caesar would have done better to withhold; they didn't get on with the Galatian horsemen, and they were very homesick. Then there was Abgarus, King of the Skenite Arabs. I don't know why, but I mistrusted him and misliked him from the moment I met him. Crassus, however, thought him wonderful, and would hear nothing against him. It appears Abgarus is a client of Artavasdes of Armenia, and was offered to Crassus as a guide and adviser for the expedition. Along with four thousand light-armed Skenite Arab troops. Crassus's plan was to march for Mesopotamia and strike first at Seleuceia-on-Tigris, the site of the Parthian winter court; since his campaign was to be a winter one, he expected King Orodes of the Parthians to be in residence there, and expected to capture Orodes and all his sons before they could scatter to organize resistance throughout the Parthian empire. But King Artavasdes of Armenia and his client Abgarus of the Skenite Arabs deplored this strategy. No one, they said, could beat an army of Parthian cataphracti and Parthian horse archers on flat ground. Those mail-clad warriors on their gigantic mail-clad Median horses could not fight in the mountains effectively, said Artavasdes and Abgarus. Nor did high and rugged terrain suit the horse archers, who ran out of arrows quickly, and needed to be able to gallop across level ground to fire those fabled Parthian shots. Therefore, said Artavasdes and Abgarus, Crassus should march for the Median mountains, not for Mesopotamia. If, fighting alongside the whole Armenian army, he struck at the Parthian heartlands below the Caspian Sea and at the King's summer capital of Ecbatana, Crassus couldn't lose, said Artavasdes and Abgarus. I thought this was a good plan—and said so—but Crassus refused to consider it. He foresaw no difficulties in beating the cataphracti and horse archers on flat ground. Frankly, I decided that Crassus didn't want an alliance with Artavasdes because he would have had to share the spoils. You know Marcus Crassus, Servilia— the world does not hold enough money to satiate his lust for it. He didn't mind Abgarus, not a paramount king and therefore not entitled to a major share of the spoils. Whereas King Artavasdes would be entitled to half of everything. Quite justifiably.

Be that as it may, Crassus said an emphatic no. The flat terrain of Mesopotamia was more suited to the maneuvers of a Roman army, he maintained; he didn't want his men mutinying as the troops of Lucullus had done when they saw Mount Ararat in the distance and realized that Lucullus expected them to climb over it. Added to which, a mountain campaign in far-off Media would have to be a summer one. His army, said Crassus, would be ready to march early in April, the beginning of winter. He thought that asking the troops to delay until Sextilis would reduce their enthusiasm. In my view, specious arguments. I saw no evidence of enthusiasm among Crassus's troops at any time for any reason. Greatly displeased, King Artavasdes quit Antioch to go home; he had hoped, of course, to usurp the Parthian kingdom for himself through an alliance with Rome. But having been rejected, he decided to throw in his lot with the Parthians. He left Abgarus in Antioch to spy; from the time Artavasdes vanished, everything Crassus did was reported to the enemy. Then in March an embassage arrived from King Orodes of the Parthians. The chief ambassador was a very old man named Vagises. They look so odd, Parthian nobles, with their necks throttled by coiled golden collars from chin down to shoulders; their round, brimless, pearl-encrusted hats like inverted bowls on their heads; their false beards held on by golden wires around their ears; their gold tissue finery sparkling with fabulous jewels and pearls. I think all Crassus saw was the gold, the jewels and the pearls. How much more there must be in Babylonia!Vagises asked Crassus to abide by the treaties both Sulla and Pompeius Magnus had negotiated with the Parthians: that everything west of the Euphrates should be in the dominion of Rome, and everything east of the Euphrates in the dominion of the Parthians. Crassus actually laughed in their faces! “My dear Vagises,” he said through stifled guffaws, “tell King Orodes that I will indeed think about those treaties—after I've conquered Seleuceia-on-Tigris and Babylonia!”

Vagises said nothing for a moment. Then he held out his right hand, and showed its palm to Crassus. “Hair will grow here, Marcus Crassus, before you set foot in Seleuceia-on-Tigris!” he shrilled. My hackles rose. The way he said it was so eerie that it rang like a prophecy. You perceive that Marcus Crassus was not endearing himself to any of these eastern kings, who are very touchy fellows. If any but a Roman proconsul had laughed, the joker would have parted with his head on the instant. Some of us tried to reason with him, but the trouble was that he had Publius there, his own son, who adored him and thought his father could do no wrong. Publius was Crassus's echo, and he listened to his echo, not to the voices of reason. At the beginning of April we marched northeast from Antioch. The army was morose, and consequently slow. The Aeduan horse troopers had been unhappy enough in the fertile valley of the Orontes, but once we got into the poorer pasture around Cyrrhus, they began to behave as if someone had drugged them. Nor were the three thousand Galatians optimistic. In fact, our progress was more like a funeral procession than a march into everlasting glory. Crassus himself traveled apart from the army, in a litter because the road was too rough for a carriage. To give him his due, I doubt that he was entirely well. Publius Crassus fussed about him perpetually. It is not easy for a man of sixty-three to campaign, especially one who has not been to war for almost twenty years. Abgarus of the Skenite Arabs was not with us. He had gone ahead a month earlier. We were to meet him on the east bank of the Euphrates at Zeugma, which we reached at the end of the month. As this proves, a very leisurely march. At the beginning of winter the Euphrates is about as low and placid as it gets. I have never seen such a river! So wide and deep and strong! However, we should have had no difficulty crossing it on the bridge of pontoons the engineers put together, I must say, swiftly and efficiently. But it was not to be, like so much else on this doomed expedition. Violent storms came roaring out of nowhere. Afraid that the river would rise, Crassus refused to postpone the crossing. So the soldiers crawled on all fours while the pontoons bucked and pitched, the lightning flashed thick as hawsers in a dozen places at once, the thunder set the horses screaming and bolting, and the air became suffused with a sulfurous yellow glow, along with a sweet strange scent I associate with the sea. It was horrifying. Nor did the storms let up. One after another for days. Rain so hard that the ground dissolved into soup, while the river kept rising higher and the crossing continued nonetheless. You never saw a more disorganized force than ours was when everyone and everything were finally on the east bank. Nothing was dry, including the wheat and other food supplies in the baggage train. The ropes and springs in the artillery were swollen and flaccid, the charcoal for the smiths was useless, the tents may as well have been made from bridal fabric, and our precious store of fortification timber was split and cracked. Imagine if you can four thousand horses (Crassus refused to allow his troopers two mounts each), two thousand mules and several thousand oxen reduced to wild-eyed terror. It took two nundinae to calm them down, sixteen precious days which should have seen us well along the way to Mesopotamia. The legionaries were in little better condition than the animals. The expedition, they were saying among themselves, was cursed. Just as Crassus himself was cursed. They were all going to die. But Abgarus arrived with his four thousand light-armed infantry and horse. We held a council of war. Censorinus, Vargunteius, Megabocchus and Octavius, four of Crassus's five legates, wanted to follow the course of the Euphrates all the way. It was safer, there was grazing for the animals, and we'd pick up a bit more food as we went. I agreed with them, and was told for my pains that it was not the place of a mere quaestor to advise his seniors. Abgarus was against hugging the Euphrates. In case you do not know, it takes a great bend westward below Zeugma, which would admittedly have added many, many miles to the march. From the confluence of the Bilechas and the Euphrates on downward into Mesopotamia its course is fairly straight and in the right direction, southeast. Therefore, said Abgarus, we could save at least four or five days of marching if we headed due east from Zeugma across the desert until we came to the Bilechas River. A sharp turn south would then take us down the Bilechas to the Euphrates, and we'd be right where we wanted to be, at Nicephorium. With him as our guide, said Abgarus winningly, we couldn't get lost, and the march through the desert was short enough to survive comfortably. Well, Crassus agreed with Abgarus, and Publius Crassus agreed with tata. We would take the short cut across the desert. Again the four legates tried to persuade Crassus not to, but he wouldn't be budged. He'd fortified Carrhae and Sinnaca, he said, and these forts were all the protection he needed—though he didn't believe he needed any protection at all. Quite so, said friend King Abgarus. There would be no Parthians this far north. But of course there were. Abgarus had made sure of that. Seleuceia-on-Tigris knew every move we made, and King Orodes was a better strategist by far than poor, money-mad Marcus Crassus. I imagine, dearest Rome-bound Servilia, that you do not know a great deal about the Kingdom of the Parthians, so I should tell you that it is a vast conglomeration of regions. Parthia itself is to the east of the Caspian Sea, which is why we say the King of the Parthians, and not the King of Parthia. Under the sway of King Orodes are Media, Media Atropatene, Persia, Gedrosia, Carmania, Bactria, Margiana, Sogdiana, Susiana, Elymais and Mesopotamia. More land than is contained in the Roman provinces.

Each of these regions is ruled by a satrap who bears the title of the Surenas. Most of them are the sons, nephews, cousins, brothers or uncles of the King. The King never goes to Parthia itself; he reigns in summer from Ecbatana in the softer mountains of Media, visits Susa in the spring or the autumn, and reigns during winter from Seleuceia-on-Tigris in Mesopotamia. That he devotes his time to these most western regions of his huge kingdom is probably due to Rome. He fears us, whereas he does not fear the Indians or the Sericans, both great nations. He garrisons Bactria to keep the Massagetae at bay, as they are tribes, not a nation. It so happens that the Surenas of Mesopotamia is an extremely able satrap, and to him Orodes entrusted his campaign against Crassus. King Orodes himself journeyed north to meet with King Artavasdes of Armenia in the Armenian capital, Artaxata, taking enough troops with him to ensure that he was made very welcome in Artaxata. His son Pacorus went with him. The Pahlavi Surenas (for so he is properly called) remained in Mesopotamia to marshal a separate army to deal with us. He had ten thousand horse archers and two thousand mail-clad cataphracti. No foot at all. An interesting man, the Pahlavi Surenas. Barely thirty years old—my own age—and a nephew of the King, he is said to be very, very beautiful in a most exquisite and effeminate way. He has no congress with women, preferring boys between thirteen and fifteen. Once they are too grown for his taste, he drafts them into his army or his bureaucracy as esteemed officers. This is acceptable Parthian conduct. What worried him as he assembled his men was a fact well known to Crassus and the rest of us—a fact which, Abgarus assured us, would see us win comfortably. Namely that the Parthian horse archer runs out of arrows very quickly. Thus, despite his skill at shooting over his horse's rump as he flees the field, he is soon useless. The Pahlavi Surenas devised a scheme to rectify this. He marshaled enormous camel trains and loaded the camels' panniers with spare arrows. He then got together some thousands of slaves and trained them in the art of getting fresh arrows to the archers in the midst of battle. So that when he set out north from Seleuceia-on-Tigris to intercept us with his horse archers and his cataphracti, he also took thousands of camels loaded with spare arrows, and thousands of slaves to feed the arrows to the archers in an endless chain. How can I possibly know all this? I hear you ask. I will come to that in due time, but here I will simply say that I learned of it from a fascinating prince at the Jewish court, Antipater, whose spies and sources of information are absolutely everywhere. There is a crossroads on the Bilechas where the caravan route from Palmyra and Nicephorium meets the caravan route to the upper Euphrates at Samosata and the one which goes through Carrhae to Edessa and Amida. It was for this junction that the army set out to march across the desert. We had thirty-five thousand Roman foot, one thousand Aeduan horse and three thousand Galatian horse. They were terrified before they so much as started into the wilderness, and grew more terrified with each day that passed. All I had to do to ascertain this was to ride among them and listen with half an ear: Crassus was cursed, they were all going to die. Mutiny was never a risk, for mutinous troops are, to say the least, energetic. Our men were devoid of hope. They simply shuffled on to meet their doom like captives going to the slave markets. The Aeduan cavalry were worst. Never in their lives had they seen a waterless waste, a dun drear landscape without shelter or beauty. They turned their eyes inward and ceased to care about anything. Two days out, heading southeast for the Bilechas, we began to see small bands of Parthians, usually horse archers, sometimes cataphracti. Not that they bothered us. They would ride in fairly close, then spur off again. I know now that they were liaising with Abgarus and reporting back about us to the Pahlavi Surenas, who was camped outside Nicephorium, at the confluence of the Bilechas and the Euphrates. On the fourth day before the Ides of June we reached the Bilechas, where I begged Marcus Crassus to build a strongly fortified camp and put the troops into it for long enough to enable the legates and tribunes to try to put some stiffening into them. But Crassus wouldn't hear of it. He was fretful because we'd been on the march so long already; he wanted to reach the canals where the Euphrates and the Tigris almost marry before summer clamped down, and he was beginning to wonder if he was going to succeed. So he ordered the troops to take a quick meal and march on down the Bilechas. It was still early in the afternoon. Suddenly I became aware that King Abgarus and his four thousand men had literally disappeared. Gone! Some Galatian scouts came galloping up, shouting that the countryside was swarming with Parthians, but they had barely managed to attract anyone's attention when a storm of arrows came thrumming from every direction and the soldiers began falling like leaves, like stones—I have never seen anything as fast or as vicious as that hail of arrows. Crassus didn't do anything. He simply let it happen.“ It'll be over in a moment,” he shouted from beneath a shelter of shields; “they'll run out of arrows.” They did not run out of arrows. There were Roman soldiers fleeing all over the place, and falling. Falling. Finally Crassus had the buglers blow “form square,” but it was far too late. The cataphracti moved in for the kill, huge men on huge horses dark with chain mail. I discovered that when they advance at a trot—they are too big and ponderous to move at a canter—they jingle like a million coins in a thousand purses. I wonder did Crassus find it music to his ears? The earth shakes as they pound along. The dust rises in a huge column, and they turn and tread it up around them so that they come out of it rather than ride ahead of it. Publius Crassus gathered the Aeduan cavalry, who seemed suddenly to come to their senses. Perhaps a battle was the only familiar thing they had to cling to. The Galatians followed, and four thousand of our horsemen charged into the cataphracti like bulls with pepper up their nostrils. The cataphracti broke and fled, Publius Crassus and his horsemen behind them, into the dust fog. During this respite, Crassus managed to form his square. Then we waited for the Aeduans and the Galatians to reappear, praying to every God we knew. But it was the cataphracti who returned. They had Publius Crassus's head on a spear. Instead of attacking our square, they trotted back and forth along its sides brandishing that awful head. Publius Crassus seemed to look at us; we could see his eyes flash, and his face was quite unmarred. His father was devastated—there are no words to tell that story. But it seemed to give him something I had not seen him display since the campaign began. Up and down the square he went, cheering the men on, encouraging them to hold fast, telling them that his own son had purchased the precious moments they had needed with his life, but that the grief was Crassus's alone.“ Stand!” he cried, over and over. “Stand!”