d
seized both Paetus and his soldiers. Instead of holding out to the last,
the alarmed chief proposed negotiations, and the result was that he
consented to capitulate. His troops were to be allowed to quit their
entrenchments and withdraw from the country, but were to surrender their
strongholds and their stores. Armenia was to be completely evacuated
by the Romans; and a truce was to be observed and Armenia not again
invaded, until a fresh embassy, which Volagases proposed to send to
Rome, returned. Moreover, a bridge was to be made by the Romans over the
Arsanias, a tributary of the Euphrates, which, as it was of no immediate
service to the Parthians, could only be intended as a monument of the
Roman defeat. Paetus assented to these terms, and they were carried out;
not, however, without some further ignominy to the Romans. The Parthians
entered the Roman entrenchments before the legionaries had left them,
and laid their hands on anything which they recognized as Armenian
spoil. They even seized the soldiers' clothes and arms, which were
relinquished to them without a struggle, lest resistance should provoke
an outbreak. Paetus, once more at liberty; proceeded with unseemly haste
to the Euphrates, deserting his wounded and his stragglers, whom he left
to the tender mercies of the Armenians. At the Euphrates he effected a
junction with Corbulo, who was but three days' march distant when Paetus
so gracefully capitulated.

The chiefs, when they met, exchanged no cordial greeting. Corbulo
complained that he had been induced to make a useless journey, and
to weary his troops to no purpose, since without any aid from him the
legions might have escaped from their difficulties by simply waiting
until the Parthians had exhausted their stores, when they must have
retired. Paetus, anxious to obliterate the memory of his failure,
proposed that the combined armies should at once enter Armenia and
overrun it, since Volagases and his Parthians had withdrawn. Corbulo
replied coldly--that "he had no such orders from the Emperor. He had
quitted his province to rescue the threatened legions from their peril;
now that the peril was past, he must return to Syria, since it was quite
uncertain what the enemy might next attempt. It would be hard work for
his infantry, tired with the long marches it had made, to keep pace with
the Parthian cavalry, which was fresh and would pass rapidly through the
plains." The generals upon this parted. Paet