were on their retreat along the Orontes allured into an ambush by Cassius’ cavalry and there severely handled by the Roman infantry; prince Osaces was himself among the slain.  Friend and foe thus perceived that the Parthian army under an ordinary general and on ordinary ground was not capable of much more than any other Oriental army.  However, the attack was not abandoned.  Still during the winter of 703-704 Pacorus lay encamped in Cyrrhestica on this side of the Euphrates; and the new governor of Syria, Marcus Bibulus, as wretched a general as he was an incapable statesman, knew no better course of action than to shut himself up in his fortresses.  It was generally expected that the war would break out in 704 with renewed fury.  But instead of turning his arms against the Romans, Pacorus turned against his own father, and accordingly even entered into an understanding with the Roman governor.  Thus the stain was not wiped from the shield of Roman honour, nor was the reputation of Rome restored in the east; but the Parthian invasion of Western Asia was over, and the Euphrates boundary was, for the time being at least, retained.

Impression Produced in Rome by the Defeat of Carrhae

In Rome meanwhile the periodical volcano of revolution was whirling upward its clouds of stupefying smoke.  The Romans began to have no longer a soldier or a denarius to be employed against the public foe—­ no longer a thought for the destinies of the nations.  It is one of the most dreadful signs of the times, that the huge national disaster of Carrhae and Sinnaca gave the politicians of that time far less to think and speak of than that wretched tumult on the Appian road, in which, a couple of months after Crassus, Clodius the partisan-leader perished; but it is easily conceivable and almost excusable.  The breach between the two regents, long felt as inevitable and often announced as near, was now assuming such a shape that it could not be arrested.  Like the boat of the ancient Greek mariners’ tale, the vessel of the Roman community now found itself as it were between two rocks swimming towards each other; expecting every moment the crash of collision, those whom it was bearing, tortured by nameless anguish, into the eddying surge that rose higher and higher were benumbed; and, while every slightest movement there attracted a thousand, eyes, no one ventured to give a glance to the right or the left.

The Good Understanding between the Regents Relaxed

After Caesar had, at the conference of Luca in April 698, agreed to considerable concessions as regarded Pompeius, and the regents had thus placed themselves substantially on a level, their relation was not without the outward conditions of durability, so far as a division of the monarchical power—­in itself indivisible—­ could be lasting at all.  It was a different question whether the regents, at least for the present, were determined to keep together and mutually to acknowledge without reserve