The unfortunate expedition of Crassus against the Parthians furnishes us with a second testimony to the valour of the Scythian hordes. Expelled or emigrating from Scythia Proper, that tribe long dwelt to the eastward of the Caspian Sea, and successively obeyed the Mede, the Persian, and the Macedonian dynasties, until at length they shook off the yoke of the last, and planted a new race upon the throne of Cyrus. The motives of avarice and ambition which led Crassus to the fatal enterprise in which he fell, are well known. From the first he was marked out for destruction by superstitious terrors: as he quitted Rome he was solemnly devoted by a tribune to the infernal gods; ill–omened prodigies attended the passage of the Euphrates, and even the exhortations of the general were so equivocally worded, that, instead of raising, they damped the courage of his soldiers. Instead of penetrating through the friendly country of Armenia, where the mountains would have protected him from the enemy’s cavalry, and the king had promised not only a large reinforcement, but to provide food for the consumption of the Romans, Crassus was induced, by the treachery of a pretended friend, to plunge into the deserts of Mesopotamia, the region of all others best adapted to the operations of his enemies. We shall not detain the reader with the particulars of his advance, which for some time was unopposed; but when he was fairly involved in that inhospitable region, the enemy was not long in making his appearance.