field fighting for Crassus, and others saved themselves by flying to the hill. The Parthians followed them, and told them that Crassus had paid the paine he deserved, and for the rest, that Surena bad them come down with safety. Then some of them yielded to their enemies; and others dispersed themselves when night came, and of them very few escaped with life. Others being followed and pursued by the natives, were all put to the sword. So as it is thought there were slain in this overthrow above twenty thousand men, and ten thousand taken prisoners.”[197] Not many years subsequent to this signal overthrow the Roman eagle again swooped upon Assyria, and was again compelled to wing back its disastrous flight to a more congenial soil and climate. Encouraged by the Syrian victories of his lieutenant Ventidius (the only Roman down to the time of Trajan who ever celebrated a triumph over the Parthians), and desirous to efface the stain upon the empire’s honour by extorting the restoration of the captured standards and prisoners, Antony led into Media an army of 100,000 men. But his enterprise, like those of his predecessors, proved barren alike of profit or renown: for if he could boast that the enemy, far from gaining any advantage over his veteran troops, were uniformly baffled and repulsed during a long and dangerous retreat, yet that retreat proved as calamitous as the advance had been useless; and the hardships of the desert were scarce less fatal to him than the Parthian arrows to Crassus.