at great hazard, brought reports that caused much anxiety, having been
eye-witnesses of the numbers of the enemy, and of their mode of
attacking the cities; and, as is usual, they magnified everything
which they reported. "When the enemy pursued," they said, "no man
could escape from them, and when they fled, they could not be
overtaken; that strange missiles preceded the appearance of the enemy,
and before one could see who sent them, they pierced through
everything that they struck; and as to the arms of the mailed[61]
soldiers, some were made to push through every obstacle, and others to
give way to nothing." When the soldiers heard this their courage sank;
for they had been led to believe that the Parthians did not differ at
all from the Armenians and Cappadocians, whom Lucullus plundered and
robbed till he was weary, and they thought that the hardest part of
the war would be a long march, and the pursuit of men who would not
come to close quarters; but now, contrary to their hopes, they were in
expectation of a contest and great danger, so that some of the
officers thought that Crassus ought to stop, and again submit to their
deliberation the general state of affairs. Among these was Cassius[62]
the quæstor. The seers, also, in gentle terms showed that bad and
unfavourable signs were always prognosticated to Crassus by the
victims. But Crassus paid no attention to them, nor to those who
advised anything else except to move on.

XIX. But Crassus was in no small degree encouraged by Artabazes[63]
the king of the Armenians, who came to the camp with six thousand
horsemen. These were said to be the guards and attendants of the king;
and he promised ten thousand men clothed in mail and thirty thousand
infantry, who were to be maintained at his own cost. He attempted to
persuade Crassus to invade Parthia through Armenia; for, he said, the
army would not only have abundance of provision in its march through