But the objects thus accomplished, considerable as they were, did not seem to the indefatigable Emperor sufficient for one year.  Having settled the affairs of the North-east, and left garrisons in the chief Armenian strongholds, Trajan marched southwards to Edessa, the capital of the province of Gsrhoene, and there received the humble submission of Abgarus, who had hitherto wavered between the two contending powers.  Manisares, a satrap of these parts, who had a quarrel of his own with Chosroes, also embraced his cause, while other chiefs wavered in their allegiance to Parthia, but feared to trust the invader.  Hostilities were commenced by attacks in two directions—­southward against the tract known as Anthemusia, between the Euphrates and the Khabour; and eastward against Batnas, Nisibis, and the mountain region known as Gordyene, or the Mons Masius.  Success attended both these movements; and, before winter set in, the Romans had made themselves masters of the whole of Upper Mesopotamia, and had even pushed southwards as far as Singara, a town on the skirts of the modern Sinjar mountain-range.  Mesopotarnia was at once, like Armenia, “reduced into the form of a Roman province.”  Medals were issued representing the conqueror with these subject countries at his foot and the obsequious Senate conferred the title of “Parthicus” upon the Imperator, who had thus robbed the Parthians of two provinces.

According to some, the headquarters of Trajan during the ensuing winter were at Nisibis or Edessa, but the nexus of the narrative in Dio seems rather to require, and the other ancient notices to allow, the belief that he returned to Syria and wintered at Antioch, leaving his generals in possession of the conquered regions, with orders to make every preparation for the campaign of the next year.  Among other instructions which they received was the command to build a large fleet at Nisibis, where good timber was abundant, and to prepare for its transport to the Tigris, at the point where that stream quits the mountains and enters on the open country.  Meanwhile, in the month of December, the magnificent Syrian capital, where Trajan had his headquarters, was visited by a calamity of a most appalling character.  An earthquake, of a violence and duration unexampled in ancient times, destroyed the greater part of its edifices, and buried in their ruins vast multitudes of the inhabitants and of the strangers that had flocked into the town in consequence of the Imperial presence.  Many Romans of the highest rank perished, and among them M. Virgilianus Pedo, one of the consuls for the year.  The Emperor himself was in danger, and only escaped by creeping through a window of the house in which he resided; nor was his person quite unscathed.  Some falling fragments struck him; but fortunately the injuries that he received were slight, and had no permanent consequence.  The bulk of the surviving inhabitants, finding themselves houseless, or afraid