Antony and Cleopatra (37 page)

Antony pressed on, leading the combined army into Media. The king of this region was also called Artavasdes, like the king of Armenia. Antony targeted the royal city of Phraata – the location of which is not now identifiable – which contained his treasury and the royal household with his wives and children. Its capture would have been a serious blow to the king's prestige and perhaps forced Artavasdes of Media to defect. Phraates IV, like all Parthian monarchs, ruled a disparate collection of lesser kings and powerful aristocrats, who might readily change sides if it no longer seemed in their interest to support him.
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Boldness, speed of movement and surprise were hallmarks of Antony's style of war-making, but he must already have been aware that they were harder to achieve on a grand scale. The Parthians had long since realised that the threat to Mesopotamia was a feint. Phraates ordered his army to re-form in Media. It would take time for them to move there, and longer still to prepare sufficient supplies to support them. Artavasdes of Media was the first to bring his own forces to meet the attack on his lands, but he was soon joined by other contingents. Then Phraates himself arrived and, although it was not the custom for a Parthian king to lead his army in person, he closely supervised the campaign.

Phraata was deep inside Media and Antony's column made frustratingly slow progress through country that lacked good roads. This was in spite of the fact that the Romans kept to the plains around the river – favourable ground for the Parthian cavalry if these put in an appearance. Most awkward of all were the 300 wagons carrying the siege train and heavy baggage. Draught oxen are slow, plodding along at no more than 2-2.5 mph for at best seven or eight hours a day, and will be lucky to make 60 miles in a week if they are to be kept fit enough to continue working. Wheeled transport tends to become even more difficult to move if the terrain is even a little broken. At every obstacle a traffic jam would develop, taking hours to sort out and more time for the waiting vehicles and troops to catch up.
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The heavy train could not move any faster, so Antony decided to leave it behind and press on with the bulk of the fighting troops and only lighter equipment and limited food supplies. He would hurry to Phraata and perhaps be able to terrify the defenders into submission or take the city by a sudden assault. Two of his least experienced legions and some allied contingents were left to guard the train as it followed behind at its own pace. In Gaul, Caesar had routinely led out the best of his legions, leaving raw troops to guard his heavy baggage and stores. Yet the latter had always been left in a strongly fortified camp or behind the walls of a town. They had never been allowed to wander on their own with such weak protection, even in Gaul, where the enemy was far less mobile than the Parthians. This was a second, even greater gamble.
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Antony reached Phraata, but the defenders failed to be overawed by the size of his army. He was forced to begin a formal siege, setting the soldiers to building a mound that was intended to be higher than the wall and allow them to shoot down at the defenders. The Romans seem to have brought some light artillery with them and had plenty of soldiers armed with missiles. Yet progress was slow and until the heavy equipment arrived there was little prospect of taking the city.

Phraates'scouts located the Roman heavy train and reported on the weakness of its escort. Seizing the opportunity, Phraates despatched a strong force of cavalry to intercept it. By this time the convoy was probably only a few days away from the main Roman force. The escort's commander sent word to Antony asking for rescue. He may also have hoped for assistance from Artavasdes of Armenia's contingent, but in the aftermath of the campaign the king was accused of failing to offer support. The Parthians attacked and quickly overwhelmed the two legions. Such a large convoy would have been difficult to protect for a force of this size. The Roman escort was wiped out and its commander killed. King Polemo of Pontus – one of the monarchs whose power Antony had greatly increased in the last years – was amongst the prisoners. The siege equipment was burnt, the transport animals, vehicles and supplies carried off or destroyed.

When he heard of the threat, Antony took a strong force away from the siege of Phraata and force-marched it to rescue the baggage train. He arrived to find only corpses and the ash and debris of destruction. Phraata continued to hold out and without the irreplaceable siege train there was very little prospect of taking it. Capitulation seemed extremely unlikely, now that a substantial Parthian army was operating in the area. More immediately, Antony had also lost the greater part of his reserves of food. Foraging parties were extremely vulnerable unless sent out in great strength. Casualties began to mount as a succession of small columns were caught and destroyed by the Parthian horse archers. Artavasdes of Armenia had already decided to lead his own contingent home.
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Antony decided to take yet another gamble. Leaving only a skeleton force to protect his siege lines, he led ten legions, three cohorts of praetorian guard and all his cavalry on a march through the surrounding countryside. At the very least, they were to gather food and forage, but the hope was that the Parthians would be drawn into fighting a battle. A clear battlefield victory could easily change the course of the campaign, forcing King Phraates to retreat or seek terms and perhaps breaking the will of the defenders of the city of Phraata.
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A strong Parthian force was soon shadowing the Roman column on the first day of its march. The enemy did not attack, impressed by the discipline of Antony's men, each formation keeping in place to offer mutual support. The Roman commander pretended to retreat, marching his men close in front of the wide crescent formed by the enemy, who continued simply to observe. Orders had been issued for the units in the column to wheel into line and attack as soon as Parthians were close enough for the legionaries to charge them. Trumpets sounded to give the signal and the Roman army surged into the attack, the legionaries shouting and banging their weapons against their shields to frighten the enemy horses. The onslaught panicked the enemy, but as the Parthian horsemen fled it proved difficult for the Romans to catch them. Perhaps the order had been given too soon. More probably the enemy cavalry were difficult to catch unless they were strongly committed to an attack, as in the battles against Ventidius. The Romans killed eighty men and captured a mere thirty.

Antony had failed to get the decisive battle he needed. On the next day he led his troops back to Phraata and the enemy showed their continued confidence by harassing the Roman column every yard of the way. In the meantime – or perhaps just after his dispirited men had returned – the defenders of the city launched a sally. The legionaries stationed as outposts panicked and the enemy was able to reach the Roman mound and do some damage to the siege works. Antony ordered the units involved to be decimated, executing one in ten and feeding the survivors with a ration of barley rather than wheat. As supplies grew shorter, this last measure may have extended to the army as a whole.
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It was now well into autumn and the Romans were making no progress in the siege. Food was running short for both sides and Phraates realised that he would soon find it difficult to keep the semi-feudal contingents within the Parthian army together. Like Antony before him, he now chose to deceive his opponent. Attacks on Roman foraging parties were deliberately reduced. Parthian patrols were encouraged to talk to their opponents – perhaps especially the allied contingents – praising their courage and speaking of the king's desire for an end to hostilities. It was just what the Romans and their commander wanted to hear. An embassy was sent to the Parthian camp. Dio provides a vivid portrait of Phraates sitting on a golden throne to receive them, all the while toying with a strung composite bow – a symbol of continuing hostilities. An unstrung bow was a sign of peace. A renewed plea for the return of Crassus'standards and prisoners was brusquely refused, but the Romans were assured that if they now retreated, then they would not be pursued. The truce was limited. The defenders of Phraata sallied out again and destroyed the Roman siege works and there were further attacks on foragers.

Perhaps Antony and his senior officers believed, or wanted to believe, the king's pledge. In many ways it did not matter. If Phraata had fallen they might have captured enough food to supply the troops and spend the winter in Media. It had not, and an undefeated enemy army hovered menacingly around them. Staying where they were offered no prospect of success and a strong chance of utter disaster. The decision was made to retreat to Armenia. Antony was unwilling to make a speech informing the army of the new orders and instead delegated the task to Domitius Ahenobarbus, the former ardent Republican whose son was now betrothed to Antony's elder daughter by Octavia. Given the size of the army, it is likely that the speech had to be made several times, unless it was simply addressed to a gathering of the centurions and other officers, who then passed the essence on to their men. Many of the soldiers were moved by their commander's evident shame about his bad decisions. Antony remained popular.
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Withdrawing in the face of the enemy is one of the more difficult manoeuvres for any army. When that enemy is far more mobile, the risk of serious loss, even disaster, becomes all the greater. Antony decided not to use the same route taken during the advance. A Mardian, who had managed to survive the massacre of the heavy train, advised him that the country was too open. It would be better to stick closer to the hill country, passing villages and fields not already stripped bare. The man had already given proof of loyalty and now willingly submitted to riding in chains and under escort as he guided the column.

The Mardian may have been right to say that King Phraates had no intention of giving the Romans safe passage, or perhaps Antony's change of route made him suspect treachery. On the third day's march there were signs that the enemy had deliberately broken a dam and flooded one section of road. Antony re-formed the army into an
agmen quadratum –
a rectangular formation where the remaining baggage was kept in the middle and surrounded on all sides by formed troops ready to deploy into battle order. They were in the process of doing this when the first Parthian patrols appeared.

The enemy cavalry were soon streaming into the attack, trying to overwhelm the Romans before they could complete the new deployment. Antony's light infantry engaged them, but were eventually forced to withdraw behind the shelter of his legionaries. Finally, a formed charge by Gallic auxiliary cavalry drove off the main body of Parthians. There were no more attacks for the remainder of the day. Overnight, Antony and his officers made sure that the whole army was familiar with its places in the new formation. Strict orders were given for any cavalry counter-attack to be limited, so that no unit could be lured away from the main army and isolated –the fate of Crassus'son Publius and his Gallic horsemen at Carrhae.
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For four days the Romans kept to the plan. Progress was slow, for the formation was cumbersome, but although there was a steady trickle of casualties, they were able to inflict similar losses on the enemy. Horse archers relied on speed to make themselves less of a target and that reduced the effective range of their bows if they wanted to hit an enemy formation, let alone an individual. Archers and slingers on foot had a longer effective range than bowmen on horseback. Sling bullets had the added advantage that they were difficult to see in flight and could cause concussion if they struck a helmet, making even armour no certain protection.
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There was frustration at the slow pace and passive defence, prompting an officer named Flavius Gallus to ask permission to form a special force of skirmishers and cavalry. Antony was persuaded by the promise that he would hurt the enemy more seriously. On the next day Gallus achieved a local success at the rear of the column, but then followed up until he was too far away from the nearest legionaries to gain any support. As his men and horses grew tired, the Parthians closed around him, but Gallus remained confident or simply stubborn and refused the order to withdraw. Reinforcements were sent up in dribs and drabs by Canidius Crassus, not enough to make any real difference and so just adding to the scale of the potential disaster. Eventually, a counter-attack by the
Third
Legion and the arrival of Antony himself leading troops from the advance guard, drove the enemy back and allowed the detachment to return to the safety of the army. Gallus had four arrows in his body and would die in the coming days.

Arrows were more likely to wound than to kill outright, and the action had substantially added to the number of wounded men in the army. Plutarch says 5,000 wounded were rescued and 3,000 men killed. Antony visited the injured, tearfully taking their hands, as soldiers asked him not to worry and assured him that things would work out as long as he was in charge. Dramatic displays of emotion were quite acceptable in Roman society and he had been with the army long enough to win their affection and trust. When he made a formal speech to the troops on the next day, the response was enthusiastic, with some of the troops who had been beaten ‘begging him' to decimate them. Dio claims that many men were ready to desert and only held back because they had seen the Parthians shoot down anyone who tried to surrender. Phraates' men did not have enough food to take too many prisoners, so there may have been a practical reason for this as well as the desire to spread terror.
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The Parthians were even more encouraged by their success and their army had grown as Phraates sent the royal troops to join the next attacks. Plutarch says there were 40,000 men in the enemy camp, but it seems unlikely that the Romans had an accurate count either at the time or later. With their mobility, and the need of the Romans to stay in formation, the Parthians could always be sure of a local superiority in numbers whenever they attacked. They were surprised to see the column once again marching in good order. Even so they quickly began to launch probing attacks, which grew larger and more frequent as the day progressed. At one point, the horse archers drew so close to some legionaries that the latter formed the famous testudo – front rank kneeling behind their shields and those in the rear holding their overlapping shields over their heads. The movement in the ranks as they took up the formation was seen as a sign of disorder and imminent flight. The enthusiastic horse archers charged home, for fleeing infantry were at the mercy of men on horseback. They were surprised when the legionaries proved steady and eager to fight at close quarters. More than usual were caught and killed when the horse archers turned to flee.
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