After his capture of Ctesiphon he felt a wish to sail down into the Red Sea.  This is a part of the ocean and has been so named [Footnote:  [Greek:  erythra] from Erythras, who was said to have been drowned in it (as if in English we should invent a King Redd).] from some person formerly ruler there.  Mesene, the island in the Tigris of which Athambelus was king, he acquired without difficulty. [And it remained loyal to Trajan, although ordered to pay tribute.] But through a storm, and the violence of the Tigris, and the backward flow from the ocean, he fell into danger.  The inhabitants of the so-called palisade of Spasinus [they were subject to the dominion of Athambelus] received him kindly.

[Sidenote:—­29—­] Thence he came to the ocean itself, and when he had learned its nature and seen a boat sailing to India, he said:  “I should certainly have crossed over to the Indi, if I were still young.”  He gave much thought to the Indi, and was curious about their affairs.  Alexander he counted a happy man and at the same time declared that he himself had advanced farther.  This was the tenor of the despatch that he forwarded to the senate, although he was unable to preserve even what territory had been subdued.  On its receipt he obtained among other honors the privilege of celebrating a triumph for as many nations as he pleased.  For, on account of the number of those peoples regarding which communications in writing were being constantly forwarded to them, they were unable to understand them or even to name some of them correctly.  So the citizens of the capital prepared a trophy-bearing arch, besides many other decorations in his own forum, and were getting themselves in readiness to meet him some distance out when he should return.  But he was destined never to reach Rome again nor to accomplish anything deserving comparison with his previous exploits, and furthermore to lose even those earlier acquisitions.  For, during the time that he was sailing down the ocean and returning from there again, all his conquests were thrown into tumult and revolted.  And the garrisons placed among the various peoples were in some cases driven out and in others killed.

[Sidenote:—­30—­] Trajan ascertained this in Babylon. [Footnote:  The Tauchnitz reading, [Greek:  en ploio] will not fit the context.  Just below [Greek:  ithous] (Bekker) has to be read for [Greek:  mythous].] He had taken the side-trip there on the basis of reports, unmerited by aught that he saw (which were merely mounds and stones and ruins), and for the sake of Alexander, to whose spirit he offered sacrifice in the room where he had died.  When, therefore, he ascertained it, he sent Lusius and Maximus against the rebels.  The latter perished after a defeat in the field; but Lusius was generally successful, recovering Nisibis, besieging Edessa, plundering and burning.  Seleucia was also captured by Erucius Clarus and Julius Alexander, lieutenants, and was burned.  Trajan, in fear that the Parthians, too, might begin some revolt, decided to give them a king of their own.  And when he came to Ctesiphon he called together in a great plain all the Romans and likewise all the Parthians that were there at the time.  He mounted a lofty platform, and, after describing in lofty language what he had accomplished, he appointed Parthamaspates king of the Parthians and set the diadem upon his head.