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.
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