18No sooner had he begun to assemble his forces from their winter quarters than envoys came to him from Arsaces27In subsequent passages called Hyrodes. with a wonderfully brief message. They said that if the army had been sent out by the Roman people, it meant war without truce and without treaty; but if it was against the wishes of his country, as they were informed, and for his own private gain that Crassus had come up in arms against the Parthians and occupied their territory, then Arsaces28In subsequent passages called Hyrodes. would act with moderation, would take pity on the old age of Crassus, and release to the Romans the men whom he had under watch and ward rather than watching over him. 2To this Crassus boastfully replied that he would give his answer in Seleucia, whereupon the eldest of the envoys, Vagises, burst out laughing and said, pointing to the palm of his upturned hand: “O Crassus, hair will grow there before thou shalt see Seleucia.”29Cf. Dio Cassius, xl. 16.
The embassy, accordingly, rode away to King Hyrodes, to tell him there must be war. But from the cities of Mesopotamia in which the Romans had garrisons, certain men made their escape at great hazard and brought tidings of serious import. 3They had been eyewitnesses both of the numbers of the enemy and of their mode of warfare when they attacked their cities, and, as is usual, they exaggerated all the terrors of their report. “When the men pursued,” they declared, “there was no escaping them, and when they fled, there was no taking them; and strange missiles are the precursors of their appearance, which pierce through every obstacle before one sees who sent them; and as for the armour of their mail-clad horsemen, some of it is made to force its way through everything, and some of it to give way to nothing.” 4When the soldiers heard this, their courage ebbed away. For they had been fully persuaded that the Parthians were not different at all from the Armenians or even the Cappadocians, whom Lucullus had robbed and plundered till he was weary of it, and they had thought that the most difficult part of the war would be the long journey and the pursuit of men who would not come to close quarters; but now, contrary to their hopes, they were led to expect a struggle and great peril. Therefore some of the officers thought that Crassus ought to call a halt and reconsider the whole undertaking. Among these was Cassius,30Caius Cassius Longinus, afterwards one of the assassins of Caesar. the quaestor. 5The seers, also, quietly let it become known that the omens for Crassus which came from their sacrifices were always bad and inauspicious. But Crassus paid no heed to them, nor to those who advised anything else except to press forward.