ambiguous attitude of the ruler the retreat could alone be directed. A hostile army of 40,000 horsemen, in spite of the given promise, accompanied the returning force, and, with the marching off of the Armenians, the Romans had lost the best part of their cavalry. Provisions and draught animals were scarce, and the season of the year far advanced. But in the perilous position Antonius recovered his energy and his martial skill, and in some measure also his good fortune in war; he had made his choice, and the general as well as the troops solved the task in a commendable way. Had they not had with them a former soldier of Crassus, who, having become a Parthian, knew most accurately every step of the way, and, instead of conducting them back through the plain by which they had come, guided them by mountain paths, which were less exposed to cavalry attacks—apparently over the mountains about Tabreez—the army would hardly have reached its goal; and had not Monaeses, paying off in his way his debt of thanks to Antonius, informed him in right time of the false assurances and the cunning designs of his countrymen, the Romans would doubtless have fallen into one of the ambushes which on several occasions were laid for them.

Difficulties of the retreat.The soldierly nature of Antonius was often brilliantly conspicuous during these troublesome days, in his dexterous use of any favourable moment, in his sternness towards the cowardly, in his power over the minds of the soldiers, in his faithful care for the wounded and the sick. Yet the rescue was almost a miracle; already had Antonius instructed a faithful attendant in case of extremity not to let him fall alive into the hands of the enemy. Amidst constant attacks of the artful enemy, in weather of wintry cold, without adequate food and often without water, they reached the protecting frontier in twenty-seven days, where the enemy desisted from following them. The loss was enormous; there were reckoned up in those twenty-seven days eighteen larger engagements, and in a single one of them the Romans counted 3000 dead and 5000 wounded. It was the very best and bravest that those constant assaults on the vanguard and on the flanks swept away. The whole baggage, a third of the camp-followers, a fourth of the army, 20,000 foot soldiers, and 4000 horsemen had perished in this Median campaign, in great part not through the sword, but through famine and disease. Even on the Araxes the sufferings of the unhappy troops were not yet at an end. Artavazdes received them as a friend, and had no other choice; it would doubtless have been possible to pass the winter there. But the impatience of Antonius did not tolerate this; the march went on, and from the ever increasing inclemency of the season and the state of health of the soldiers, this last section of the expedition from the Araxes to Antioch cost, although no enemy hampered it, other 8000 men. No doubt this campaign was a last flash of what was brave and capable in the character of Antonius; but it was politically his overthrow all the more, as at the same time Caesar by the successful termination of the Sicilian war gained the dominion in the West and the confidence of Italy for the present and all the future.

Last years of Antonius in the East.The responsibility for the miscarriage, which Antonius in vain attempted to deny, was thrown by him on the dependent kings of Cappadocia and Armenia, and on the latter so far with justice, as his premature marching off from Praaspa had materially increased the dangers and the losses of the retreat. For the plan of the campaign, however, it was not he who was responsible, but Antonius;26 and the failure of the hopes placed on Monaeses, the disaster of Statianus, the breaking down of the siege of Praaspa, were not brought about by the Armenian. Antonius did not abandon the subjugation of the East, but set out next year (719)35 B.C. once more from Egypt. The circumstances were still even now comparatively favourable. A friendly alliance was formed with the Median king Artavazdes; he had not merely fallen into variance with his Parthian suzerain, but was indignant above all at his Armenian neighbour, and, considering the well-known exasperation of Antonius against the latter, he might reckon on finding a support in the enemy of his enemy. Everything depended on the firm accord of the two possessors of power—the victory-crowned master of the West and the defeated ruler in the East; and, on the news that Antonius proposed to continue the war, his legitimate wife, the sister of Caesar, resorted from Italy to the East to bring up to him new forces, and to strengthen anew his relations to her and to her brother. If Octavia was magnanimous enough to offer the hand of reconciliation to her husband in spite of his relations to the Egyptian queen, Caesar must—as was further confirmed by the commencement, which just then took place, of the war on the north-east frontier of Italy—have been still ready at that time to maintain the subsisting relation.

The brother and sister subordinated their personal interests magnanimously to those of the commonwealth. But loudly as interest and honour called for the acceptance of the offered hand, Antonius could not prevail on himself to break off the relation with the Egyptian queen; he sent back his wife, and this was at the same time a rupture with her brother, and, as we may add, an abandonment of the idea of continuing the war against the Parthians. Now, ere that could be thought of, the question of mastery between Antonius and Caesar had to be settled. Antonius accordingly returned at once from Syria to Egypt, and in the following year undertook nothing further towards the execution of his plans of Oriental conquest; only he punished those to whom he assigned the blame of the miscarriage. He caused Ariarathes the king of Cappadocia to be executed,27 and gave the kingdom to an illegitimate kinsman of his, Archelaus. The like fate was intended for the Armenian. If Antonius in 72034 B.C. appeared in Armenia, as he said, for the continuance of the war, this had simply the object of getting into his power the person of the king, who had refused to go to Egypt. This act of revenge was ignobly executed by way of surprise, and was not less ignobly celebrated by a caricature of the Capitoline triumph exhibited in Alexandria. At that time the son of Antonius, destined for lord of the East, as was already stated, was installed as king of Armenia, and married to the daughter of the new ally, the king of Media; while the eldest son of the captive king of Armenia executed some time afterwards by order of queen Cleopatra, Artaxes, whom the Armenians had proclaimed king instead of his father, took refuge with the Parthians. Armenia and Media Atropatene were thus in the power of Antonius or allied with him; the continuance of the Parthian war was announced doubtless, but remained postponed till after the overcoming of the western rival. Phraates on his part advanced against Media, at first without success, as the Roman troops stationed in Armenia afforded help to the Medians; but when Antonius, in the course of his armaments against Caesar, recalled his forces from that quarter, the Parthians gained the upper hand, vanquished the Medians, and installed in