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every inch of his retreat, and inflicted on him the most serious
damage. The sufferings of the Roman army during this time, says a modern
historian of Rome, were unparalleled in their military annals. The
intense cold, the blinding snow and driving sleet, the want sometimes
of provisions, sometimes of water, the use of poisonous herbs, and the
harassing attacks of the enemy's cavalry and bowmen, which could only be
repelled by maintaining the dense array of the phalanx or the tortoise,
reduced the retreating army by one-third of its numbers. At length,
after a march of 300 Roman, or 277 British, miles, they reached the
river Araxes, probably at the Julfa ferry, and, crossing it, found
themselves in Armenia. But the calamities of the return were not yet
ended. Though it was arranged with Artavasdes that the bulk of the army
should winter in Armenia, yet, before the various detachments could
reach their quarters in different parts of the country, eight thousand
more had perished through the effects of past sufferings or the severity
of the weather. Altogether, out of the hundred thousand men whom Antony
led into Media Atropatene, less than seventy thousand remained to
commence the campaign which was threatened for the ensuing year. Well
may the unfortunate commander have exclaimed as he compared his own
heavy losses with the light ones of Xenophon and his Greeks in these
same regions, "Oh, those Ten Thousand! those Ten Thousand!"

On the withdrawal of Antony into Armenia a quarrel broke out between
Phraates and his Median vassal. The latter regarded himself as wronged
in the division made of the Roman spoils, and expressed himself with so
much freedom on the subject as to offend his suzerain. He then began
to fear that he had gone too far, and that Phraates would punish him by
depriving him of his sovereignty. Accordingly, he was anxious to obtain
a powerful alliance, and on turning over in his mind all feasible
political combinations it seems to have occurred to him that his late
enemy, Antony, might be disposed to take him under his protection. He
doubtless knew that Artavasdes of Armenia had offended the Roman leader
by deserting him in the hour of his greatest peril, and felt that, if
Antony was intending to revenge himself on the traitor, he would be glad
to have a friend on the Armenian border. He therefore sent an ambassador
of rank to Alexandria, where Antony was passing the winter, and boldly
proposed the a