The trouble was with a powerful people called the Parthians, coming from that part of Asia, east of the Euphrates, from which the Persians had come long ago. They were a warlike nation, fighting on horseback, lightly clad in mail; and their mode of fighting was like that of the Persians of old--to come galloping down upon the enemy, to shower arrows, discharged from horseback, upon him, to gallop off again, turning in the saddle and shooting as they went, and then to reform, to come back again, and repeat the same tactics until the enemy's formation was broken up. Really it was very like the fighting of the Persians, which, as we saw, was broken by the solid Greek phalanx. But these Parthians prevailed in several battles against the Roman legions. They had defeated a Roman army under the command of that Crassus who was one of the triumvirate. Of these three, Cæsar was the only one who was alive after Pompey's murder in Egypt. Cæsar met the Parthian forces and defeated them very heavily. He drove them back over the Euphrates; and the Euphrates we have to look on as the boundary, eastward, of the Roman power. The Romans did not try to press farther. They had enough, and more {202} than enough, work on their hands in making good the conquests they had gained. Cæsar returned to Rome, victorious; but still he had enemies, in the shape of armies in the field, under commanders appointed by the Senate. There were some such forces in Africa. Thither Cæsar went and made an end of them. Still there were others in Spain, and there, at length, he seems to have put out the last spark of opposition by a victory in the battle of Munda in 45 B.C. He had crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. What he had accomplished in those four years is wonderful. Victorious in Greece, Egypt, Syria, Africa, Spain. All enemies had gone down before him. He was elected "dictator for life" of the Roman Commonwealth. {203} CHAPTER XV TROUBLES IN THE EAST We have seen that in the year 190 B.C. a new thing happened in Asia Minor--Roman legions appeared there for the first time in history. It was an appearance which was a sign of what was sure to come, that Rome, when it pleased her to do so, would conquer all that country. Conquer it all, and subdue it to her own power, in course of time she did. The last people that she succeeded in perfectly subduing were the Jews. Judæa, at the date of the arrival in Asia of the legions, was held as a province of the kingdom of Syria by one of the dynasty of Seleucus.