A few days after they were again compelled to part, with the promise, however, of meeting again in the spring at Alexandria. Antony passed with his army into Armenia; Cleopatra returned to Egypt, passing through Apamea, Damascus, and Petrea. She desired to settle with the kings of Judea and Arabia the amount of the tribute which these rulers were to pay yearly for the portions of territory which Antony had bestowed. The king of Arabia promised three hundred talents (sixteen hundred and sixty thousand francs); the tribute of the king of the Jews was greater. This king was Herod, whom the protection of Antony had a few years before placed on the throne. He went to Damascus to meet Cleopatra. According to Josephus, Herod, who was remarkably handsome, repulsed the shameless advances of the queen, even proposing to put her to death whilst she was in his power in order to deliver Antony from her fatal influence; but his counselors dissuaded him from this crime, telling him that from that moment he would incur the terrible vengeance of Antony. Cleopatra had not been long in Alexandria when she received a message from Antony, dated at Leucocoma, a city on the seaboard of Syria. He entreated her to join him at once with money, stores, and clothing for his soldiers, who were destitute of everything. The war had been unsuccessful. By his too eager desire to rejoin Cleopatra in the spring, Antony had compromised the success of the campaign. When he reached Armenia, after a forced march of eight thousand stadia, he should have gone into winter quarters and not opened the campaign till the spring, with troops rested and refreshed, and at a favorable season. Too impatient to submit to this long delay, he entered Upper Media, and that his march might be more rapid he left behind all his siege machinery under the guard of one detachment. Chariots, towers, catapults, battering-rams eighty feet long—all were destroyed by the Parthian cavalry. Through the want of these batteries Antony failed in the attack on the city of Phraata. Threatened by an overwhelming force, he was compelled to retreat. It was midwinter, the legionaries had to march through the snow amid freezing squalls. Every morning many were found frozen to death. Provisions failed, they lost their way, and the formidable Parthian cavalry harassed the exhausted columns. In this terrible retreat, the remembrance of which may have occurred to Napoleon before crossing the Niemen, Antony recovered his energy and his qualities as a general; insensible to fatigue and hunger he was everywhere present; he was both imperator and centurion. Ever at the point where danger threatened most, in twenty-seven days he fought eighteen battles. Victor at night, the next day the struggle was renewed against fresh and ever-increasing forces. When Antony reached the coast of Syria his army was reduced from seventy thousand to thirty-eight thousand men. More fortunate than Crassus, however, the