Tacitus: Annals: Book 15 [10]

Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames.

Earth's Ancient History

A Website dedicated to Ancient Times

This website is completely renovated to the newest PHP protocol

This old HTML website will still stay online for a few months but will not be updated

If you like to go to the new PHP website click HERE

The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 15 [10]
10. Paetus, ignorant of the impending danger, was keeping the 5th legion at a distance in Pontus; the rest he had weakened by indiscriminate furloughs, till it was heard that Vologeses was approaching with a powerful force bent on war. He summoned the 12th legion, and then was discovered the numerical feebleness of the source from which he had hoped for the repute of an augmented army. Yet even thus the camp might have been held, and the Parthian foe baffled, by protracting the war, had Paetus stood firm either by his own counsels or by those of others. But though military men had put him on his guard against imminent disasters, still, not wishing to seem to need the advice of others, he would fall back on some quite different and inferior plan. So now, leaving his winter quarters, and exclaiming that not the fosse or the rampart, but the men's bodies and weapons were given him for facing the foe, he led out his legions, as if he meant to fight a battle. Then, after losing a centurion and a few soldiers whom he had sent on in advance to reconnoitre the enemy's forces, he returned in alarm. And, as Vologeses had not pressed his advantage with much vigour, Paetus once again, with vain confidence, posted 3000 chosen infantry on the adjacent ridge of the taurus, in order to bar the king's passage. He also stationed some Pannonian troopers, the flower of his cavalry, in a part of the plain. His wife and son he removed to a fortress named Arsamosata, with a cohort for their defence, thus dispersing the troops which, if kept together, could easily have checked the desultory skirmishing of the enemy. He could, it is said, scarcely be driven to confess to Corbulo how the enemy was pressing him. Corbulo made no haste, that, when the dangers thickened, the glory of the rescue might be enhanced. Yet he ordered 1000 men from each of his three legions with 800 cavalry, and an equal number of infantry to be in instant readiness.
11. Vologeses meanwhile, though he had heard that the roads were blocked by Paetus, here with infantry, there with cavalry, did not alter his plan, but drove off the latter by the menace of an attack, and crushed the legionaires, only one centurion of whom, Tarquitius Crescens, dared to defend a tower in which he was keeping guard. He had often sallied out, and cut to pieces such of the barbarians as came close up to the walls, till he was overwhelmed with volleys of firebrands. Every foot soldier still unwounded fled to remote wilds, and those who were disabled, returned to the camp, exaggerating in their terror the king's valour, and the warlike strength of his tribes, everything in short, to the simple credulity of those who trembled with like fear. Even the general did not struggle against his reverses. He had indeed wholly abandoned all the duties of a soldier, and had again sent an entreaty to Corbulo, that he would come with speed to save the standards and eagles, and the name yet left to the unfortunate army; they meantime, he said, would hold to their fidelity while life lasted.
12. Corbulo, perfectly fearless, left half his army in Syria to retain the forts built on the Euphrates, and taking the nearest route, which also was not deficient in supplies, marched through the country of Commagene, then through Cappadocia, and thence into Armenia. Beside the other usual accompaniments of war, his army was followed by a great number of camels laden with corn, to keep off famine as well as the enemy. The first he met of the defeated army was Paccius, a first-rank centurion, then many of the soldiers, whom, when they pleaded various excuses for flight, he advised to return to their standards and throw themselves on the mercy of Paetus. "For himself," he said, "he had no forgiveness but for the victorious." As he spoke, he went up to his legions, cheering them and reminding them of their past career, and pointing the way to new glory. "It was not to villages or towns of Armenia, but to a Roman camp with two legions, a worthy recompense for their efforts, that they were bound. If each common soldier were to have bestowed on him by the emperor's hand the special honour of a crown for a rescued citizen, how wonderfully great the glory, when the numbers would be equal of those who had brought and of those had received deliverance." Roused by these and like words into a common enthusiasm, and some too were filled with an ardour peculiarly their own by the perils of brothers and kinsfolk, they hurried on by day and night their uninterrupted march.
13. All the more vigorously did Vologeses press the besieged, now attacking the legions' entrenchments, and now again the fortress, which guarded those whose years unfitted them for war. He advanced closer than is the Parthian practice, seeking to lure the enemy to an engagement by such rashness. They, however, could hardly be dragged out of their tents, and would merely defend their lives, some held back by the general's order, others by their own cowardice; they seemed to be awaiting Corbulo, and should they be overpowered by force, they had before them the examples of Candium and Numantia. "Neither the Samnites, Italian people as they were, nor the Carthaginians, the rivals of the Roman empire, were, it seemed, equally formidable, and even the men of old, with all their strength and glory, whenever fortune was adverse, had taken thought for safety." The general, although he was overcome by the despair of his army, first wrote a letter to Vologeses, not a suppliant petition, but in a tone of remonstrance against the doing of hostile acts on behalf of the Armenians, who always had been under Roman dominion, or subject to a king chosen by the emperor. Peace, he reminded him, was equally for the interest of both, and it would be well for him not to look only at the present. He indeed had advanced with the whole strength of his kingdom against two legions, while the Romans had all the rest of the world with which to sustain the war.
14. To this Vologeses replied nothing to the purpose, but merely that he must wait for his brothers Pacorus and Tiridates, that the place and time of their meeting had been fixed on as the occasion when they would decide about Armenia, and that heaven had granted them a further honour, well worthy of the Arsacids, the having to determine the fate of Roman legions. Messengers were then despatched by Paetus and an interview requested with the king, who ordered Vasaces, the commander of the cavalry, to go. Thereupon Paetus dwelt on the memories of the Luculli and Pompeii, and of all that the Caesars had done in the way of holding or giving away Armenia, while Vasaces declared that we had the mere shadow of possession and of bestowing, but the Parthians, the reality of power. After much arguing on both sides, Monobazus of the Adiabeni was called the next day to be a witness to the stipulations into which they had entered. It was agreed that the legions should be released from the blockade, that all the troops should quit Armenian territory, and that the forts and supplies should be surrendered to the Parthians, and when all this had been completed, Vologeses was to have full permission to send envoys to Nero.
15. Meanwhile Paetus threw a bridge over the river Arsanias, which flowed by the camp, apparently with the view of facilitating his march. It was the Parthians, however, who had required this, as an evidence of their victory; for the bridge was of use to them, while our men went a different way. Rumour added that the legions had been passed under the yoke, with other miserable disgraces, of which the Armenians had borrowed imitations. For they not only entered our lines before the Roman army began to retire, but also stood about the camp streets, recognizing and dragging off slaves or beasts of burden which we had previously captured. They even seized clothes and detained weapons, for the soldiers were utterly cowed and gave up everything, so that no cause for fighting might arise. Vologeses having piled up the arms and bodies of the slain in order to attest our defeat, refrained from gazing on the fugitive legions. He sought a character for moderation after he had glutted his pride. Seated himself on an elephant, he crossed the river Arsanias, while those next to his person rushed through it at the utmost speed of their horses; for a rumour had gained ground that the bridge would give way, through the trickery of its builders. But those who ventured to go on it found it to be firm and trustworthy.
16. As for the besieged, it appeared that they had such an abundance of corn that they fired the granaries, and Corbulo declared that the Parthians on the other hand were in want of supplies, and would have abandoned the siege from their fodder being all but exhausted, and that he was himself only three days' march distant. He further stated that Paetus had guaranteed by an oath, before the standards, in the presence of those whom the king had sent to be witnesses, that no Roman was to enter Armenia until Nero's reply arrived as to whether he assented to the peace. Though this may have been invented to enhance our disgrace, yet about the rest of the story there is no obscurity, that, in a single day Paetus traversed forty miles, leaving his wounded behind him everywhere, and that the consternation of the fugitives was as frightful as if they had turned their backs in battle. Corbulo, as he met them with his forces on the bank of the Euphrates, did not make such a display of his standards and arms as to shame them by the contrast. His men, in their grief and pity for the lot of their comrades, could not even refrain from tears. There was scarce any mutual salutation for weeping. The spirit of a noble rivalry and the desire of glory, emotions which stir men in success, had died away; pity alone survived, the more strongly in the inferior ranks.
17. Then followed a short conversation between the generals. While Corbulo complained that his efforts had been fruitless and that the war might have been ended with the flight of the Parthians, Paetus replied that for neither of them was anything lost, and urged that they should reverse the eagles, and with their united forces invade Armenia, much weakened, as it was, by the departure of Vologeses. Corbulo said that he had no such instructions from the emperor; it was the peril of the legions which had stirred him to leave his province, and, as there was uncertainty about the designs of the Parthians, he should return to Syria, and, even as it was, he must pray for fortune under her most favourable aspect in order that the infantry, wearied out with long marches, might keep pace with the enemy's untiring cavalry, certain to outstrip him on the plains, which facilitated their movements. Paetus then went into winter quarters in Cappadocia. Vologeses, however, sent a message to Corbulo, requiring him to remove the fortresses on the further bank of the Euphrates, and to leave the river to be, as formerly, the boundary between them. Corbulo also demanded the evacuation of Armenia by the garrisons posted throughout it. At last the king yielded, all the positions fortified by Corbulo beyond the Euphrates were destroyed, and the Armenians too left without a master.
18. At Rome meanwhile trophies for the Parthian war, and arches were erected in the centre of the Capitoline hill; these had been decreed by the Senate, while the war was yet undecided, and even now they were not given up, appearances being consulted, in disregard of known facts. And to hide his anxious fears about foreign affairs, Nero threw the people's corn, which was so old as to be spoilt, into the Tiber, with the view of keeping up a sense of security about the supplies. There was no addition to the price, although about two hundred ships were destroyed in the very harbour by a violent storm, and one hundred more, which had sailed up the Tiber, by an accidental fire. Nero next appointed three ex-consuls, Lucius Piso, Ducennius Geminus, and Pompeius Paulinus, to the management of the public revenues, and inveighed at the same time against former emperors whose heavy expenditure had exceeded their legitimate income. He himself, he said, made the state an annual present of sixty million sesterces.
19. A very demoralizing custom had at this time become rife, of fictitious adoptions of children, on the eve of the elections or of the assignment of the provinces, by a number of childless persons, who, after obtaining along with real fathers praetorships and provinces, forthwith dismissed from paternal control the sons whom they had adopted. An appeal was made to the Senate under a keen sense of wrong. Parents pleaded natural rights and the anxieties of nurture against fraudulent evasions and the brief ceremony of adoption. "It was," they argued, "sufficient reward for the childless to have influence and distinction, everything, in short, easy and open to them, without a care and without a burden. For themselves, they found that the promises held out by the laws, for which they had long waited, were turned into mockery, when one who knew nothing of a parent's solicitude or of the sorrows of bereavement could rise in a moment to the level of a father's long deferred hopes." On this, a decree of the Senate was passed that a fictitious adoption should be of no avail in any department of the public service, or even hold good for acquiring an inheritance.
Next: Book 15 [20]

Join my mailing list Mailing list Earth-history, or (and) sign my Guestbook

Please report broken links to the Webmaster.

Last modified: 2011-10-06

This is copyrighted information presented under the Fair Use Doctrine of the United States Copyright Act (section 107 of title 17) which states: 'the fair use of a copyrighted work...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.' In practice the courts have decided that anything which does not financially harm the copyright holder is fair use

This is a Non-Profit Web page, � 1998-2011 L.C.Geerts The Netherlands all rights reserved.

It is strictly forbidden to publish or copy anything of my book without permission of the author, permission is granted for the recourses, for personal use only.