sheer
audacity. But the troops inside were held ready, and at the proper
moment issued forth; the assailants found themselves in their turn
assailed, and, fighting at a disadvantage on the slope, were soon driven
down the declivity. The battle was renewed in plain below, where the
mailed horse of the Parthians made a brave resistance; but the slingers
galled them severely, and in the midst of the struggle it happened that
by ill-fortune Pacorus was slain. The result followed which is almost
invariable with an Oriental army: having lost their leader, the soldiers
everywhere gave way; flight became universal, and the Romans gained a
complete victory. The Parthian army fled in two directions. Part made
for the bridge of boats by which it had crossed the Euphrates, but was
intercepted by the Romans and destroyed. Part turned northwards into
Commagene, and there took refuge with the king, Antiochus, who refused
to surrender them to the demand of Ventidius, and no doubt allowed them
to return to their own country.

Thus ended the great Parthian invasion of Syria, and with it ended the
prospect of any further spread of the Arsacid dominion towards the
west. When the two great powers, Rome and Parthia, first came into
collision--when the first blow struck by the latter, the destruction of
the army of Crassus, was followed up by the advance of their clouds of
horse into Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor--when Apamsea, Antioch, and
Jerusalem fell into their hands, when Decidius Saxa was defeated and
slain, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Caria, Lydia, and Ionia occupied--it seemed
as if Rome had found, not so much an equal as a superior; it looked as
if the power heretofore predominant would be compelled to contract
her frontier, and as if Parthia would advance hers to the Egean or the
Mediterranean. The history of the contest between the East and the West,
between Asia and Europe, is a history of reactions. At one time one of
the continents, at another time the other, is in the ascendant. The time
appeared to have come when the Asiatics were once more to recover their
own, and to beat back the European aggressor to his proper shores
and islands. The triumphs achieved by the Seljukian Turks between
the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries would in that case have been
anticipated by above a thousand years through the efforts of a kindred,
and not dissimilar people. But it turned out that the effort made was
premature. While the Parthian warfar