ostilities
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 to enter their houses if they still stood, bivouacked during the
height of the winter in the open air, in th