Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [91]
Unfortunately, Antony made four bad mistakes. Because he had launched his attack in June, he could not afford setbacks or he would find himself campaigning in winter. He placed confidence in a senior Parthian defector, who was in fact spying for his king. To compound this error, Antony failed to impose garrisons and to take hostages from the Armenian king, Artavâzd. It may be that he had neither the time nor enough troops to do this, but the consequence was unfortunate.
Antony’s final mistake was to let his slow baggage train (with all the siege equipment for Phraata) travel at its own speed with a relatively light guard. The well-informed Parthians turned up out of the blue with a force of fifty thousand mounted archers, who set on fire all the siege equipment and destroyed it. The Armenian king and his forces defected.
This was a catastrophe, for it would no longer be possible to take Phraata, where Antony had intended to winter. He was forced to march back the way he had come, now through incessant snowstorms. More than twenty thousand men, one third of the army, were lost in the month it took to march to the comparative safety of Armenia, where the king saw no advantage in trying to impede the Roman retreat.
Antony was very upset and, rightly, blamed himself. He had all his silver plate cut up and distributed to the soldiers as an improvised bonus to keep them happy. Several times he prepared for suicide, asking his sword bearer to be his executioner. Like any good general, he went around the hospital tents to comfort the wounded; if Plutarch is right, his men realized that his need for comfort was as great as theirs. They “greeted him with cheerful faces and gripped his hand as he passed: they begged him not to let their sufferings weigh upon him, but to go and take care of himself.”
At last the battered army reached Syria. Messengers had been sent ahead to ask Cleopatra to bring money and clothing for the soldiers. The legions waited by the sea for the queen to arrive. Antony’s self-confidence was still at a low ebb and he started drinking heavily. Unable to bear the waiting, he kept jumping up and running to the shore to look for Egyptian sails.
Cleopatra took her time, but when she appeared she brought everything that was needed. Once the soldiers were fully supplied, their general returned to Alexandria, there to do some hard thinking about how to proceed.
At Rome, Octavian absorbed the news of his colleague’s discomfiture. He could see that from a strictly military perspective Antony had suffered only a setback—serious, certainly, but by no means a total disaster.
No records exist of Octavian’s secret intentions; it may be that like many politicians he was merely an intelligent opportunist, and did not cherish a long-term ambition to oust Antony and become sole master of the Roman world. However, the evidence of his behavior—his patience and pertinacity, his persistent reluctance to do more than a bare minimum to help his fellow triumvir, his ruthlessness with other competitors—suggests a covert plan.
Always the realist, though, Octavian knew better than to strike too soon. The correct approach, he decided, would be to accept his colleague’s account of his campaign at face value, and in no way to question it. So victory celebrations were staged, sacrifices conducted, and festivals held. On the face of it this was convenient for Antony, who, it was said, soon came to believe his own propaganda and convinced himself that in escaping from Media and Armenia he had won the day.
Octavian was aware that Antony would need to replace the men he had lost, but never allowed him to raise troops in Italy as he was entitled to do. He was also determined not to fulfill his promise in the Treaty of Tarentum to send Antony four legions in return for the ships he had received. He wrote to his colleague saying, with hidden but barbed sarcasm, that in the light of his resounding victory Antony ought to have no