When at length, in 718 {36 B.C.}, he escaped from the arms, not of Octavia, but of Cleopatra, and set the columns of the army in motion, a good part of the appropriate season of the year had already elapsed. Still more surprising than this delay was the direction which Antonius chose. All aggressive wars of the Romans against the Parthians, earlier and later, took the route for Ctesiphon, the capital of the kingdom and at the same time situated on its western frontier, and so the natural and immediate aim of operations for armies marching downward on the Euphrates or on the Tigris. Antonius too might, after he had reached the Tigris through northern Mesopotamia, nearly along the route which Alexander had traversed, have advanced down the river upon Ctesiphon and Seleucia. But instead of this he preferred to go in a northerly direction at first towards Armenia, and from that point, where he united his whole military resources and reinforced himself in particular by the Armenian cavalry, to the table-land of Media Atropatene (Aderbijân). The allied king of Armenia may possibly have recommended this plan of campaign, seeing that the Armenian rulers at all times aspired to the possession of this neighbouring land, and King Artavazdes of Armenia might hope now to subdue the satrap of Atropatene of the same name, and to add the latter’s territory to his own. But Antonius himself cannot possibly have been influenced by such considerations. He may have rather thought that he should be able to push forward from Atropatene into the heart of the enemy’s country, and might regard the old Persian court-residences of Ecbatana and Rhagae as the goal of his march. But, if this was his plan, he acted without knowledge of the difficult ground, and altogether underrated his opponents’ power of resistance, besides which the short time available for operations in this mountainous country and the late beginning of the campaign weighed heavily in the scale. As a skilled and experienced officer, such as Antonius was, could hardly deceive himself on such points, it is probable that special political considerations influenced the matter. The rule of Phraates was tottering, as we have said; Monaeses, of whose fidelity Antonius held himself assured, and whom he hoped perhaps to put into Phraates’s place, had returned in accordance with the wish of the Parthian king to his native country;[25] Antonius appears to have reckoned on a rising on his part against Phraates, and in expectation of this civil war to have led his army into the interior of the Parthian provinces. It would doubtless have been possible to await the result of this design in the friendly Armenia, and, if operations thereafter were requisite, to have at least the full summer-time at his disposal in the following year; but this waiting was not agreeable to the hasty general. In Atropatene he encountered the obstinate resistance of the powerful and half independent under-king,