The legionaries knew what to expect from the Parthians.
Cassius, the late Liberator, had been Crassus’s quaestor at Carrhae and had led
ten thousand survivors of the Carrhae disaster back to safety in Syria in 53
B.C. One or two centurions now in Ventidius’s army would have been among those
survivors, and they would have briefed their comrades on Parthian cavalry
tactics. The horse archers would charge, firing arrows as they came. Fifty feet
from the Roman front line they would turn right, and, riding along the front
line, they would continue firing before turning away at the completion of their
attack run. They would always turn right, because the Parthian always fired his
bow from his left. The Gallicans would have been warned not to relax when the
horse archer turned away—he was expert at turning in the saddle and firing
behind him as he withdrew. This was the famous Parthian Shot. Once the horse
archers had softened up the Romans, the heavy cavalry would advance and engage
them with their lances. In his Daily Orders, General Ventidius had issued
specific orders on how he wanted his men to counter the Parthian tactics. Now
the legionaries waited impatiently to employ those tactics.
The Parthians, milling at the bottom of the hill with rising
excitement as their drums pounded, had expected Ventidius’s legions to come
down the hill to meet them. But the legionaries were as immobile as statues.
The Parthians were brimming with confidence. Many of them had fought at
Carrhae. Then, there had been ten thousand of them, against forty thousand
Romans. Here, the Roman legions numbered only twenty-five thousand to thirty
thousand men, while they themselves had almost as many cavalry as at Carrhae.
And here the legions were led by an old man of no military repute, an old man
whom the Romans themselves called “the mule-driver.” Victory seemed assured. As
the drums continued to beat behind them, their commander gave an order and the
first waves of the thousands of Parthian horses archers urged their horse forward
and began to make their way up the slope.
On the hilltop, astride a horse, General Ventidius issued an
order of his own. His trumpeter blew “Ready.” All through the battle lines,
sixty cohort trumpets repeated the signal. Legionaries in the front line
planted one javelin in the ground in front of them, took a grip on a second
with their right hand, and planted their feet in a throwing stance as the first
horsemen came up the hill toward them.
The Parthian archers came with bows ready and several arrows
in hand, riding in a vast, loose wedge formation, which, ironically, was one of
the formations the Roman legions used against cavalry attack. One hundred yards
from the Roman front line the horsemen kicked their steeds into a gallop. The
thousands of horse archers charged, the leading riders firing as they came. The
charge made the ground vibrate beneath the feet of the legionaries. Holding
their positions, the Romans raised their shields to receive the showers of
arrows. Parthian bows had such fire-power that at close range their arrows
could pin a legionary’s foot to the ground or pass through a shield the
thickness of a man’s hand.
And then trumpets were signaling “Loose.” The Roman front
line launched their javelins down the hill. “Loose” was sounded a second time.
A second wave of javelins flew. Then “Close order” sounded, and the legionaries
of the front line closed the gaps between them. It was methodical, it was
machinelike.
Fifty yards from the Roman lines, as a plague of javelins
landed in the earth just ahead of them, the first horse archers were turning
right and running along the battlefront, firing as they went. Then they were
arcing away. Suddenly General Ventidius’s standard dipped and his trumpet
sounded. Roman trumpets behind the front line blared the same signal in unison:
“Charge.” It was a command the legionaries had been expecting. With a roar, the
front line dashed forward. The downhill run increased their speed and their
impetus. With a clash of metal, leather, wood, and flesh they collided with
surprised horse archers on the run. The two sides were suddenly locked
together. Legionaries bent and slashed with their swords, hamstringing enemy
horses. Riders were cut down, knocked flying by shields, or pulled from their
steeds. In some instances, Roman legionaries lifted small Parthian riders from
the backs of their horses and threw them back down the hillside into riders
behind them.
Desperately, Parthians cast aside bows, which were useless
at close quarters, and reached for their short swords. But without shield or
armor, every horse archer was prey to the crushing Roman onslaught and
death-dealing legionary swords. As horsemen at the front were taking the brunt
of the Roman charge, those behind began to panic and attempted to turn back.
Riders who did manage to turn crashed into cavalry coming up behind them,
spilling many of their comrades from their saddles, then overrunning them. In
their panic, Parthian cavalry killed and maimed as many of their own men as did
the Roman legionaries.
In minutes, the hillside was a scene of slaughter and
mayhem. Most of the heavy cataphracts coming up behind couldn’t get to the
Romans for the sea of horse archers being pushed back down on the hill toward
them, and even when they did, it was in a close-quarters melee in which many
noblemen were soon unhorsed. Blind with terror as the unstoppable Roman legions
came slicing down the hill, surviving Parthian horsemen galloped off down the
valley. In their desire to escape, they rode away from the camp of their ally
Labienus, not toward him, and into Cilicia.
Now General Ventidius ordered his entire force forward. He
personally led the cavalry in chasing isolated Parthians toward Labienus’s
camp. His troopers wanted to give chase as far as it took to kill every
Parthian, but Ventidius called a halt outside the enemy’s infantry camp. The
Roman general could see Quintus Labienus on the camp wall with his men. And it
was the traitor Labienus whom Ventidius wanted. As his cavalry mopped up on the
battlefield, the general waited outside Labienus’s camp with his legions in
battle order, inviting him to come out and fight.
During the afternoon Labienus was seen to form his greatly
outnumbered troops in battle order inside his camp. But the gates never opened.
Unlike his father, who had nerves of steel and courage to spare, young
Labienus’s nerve failed him, and he didn’t venture out to fight. Night fell,
with the young man cringing in his camp. Setting up pickets around the camp,
Ventidius marched his victorious army back up to their own hilltop camp.
During the night, deserters slipped over the walls of
Labienus’s camp and came up the hill to Ventidius’s entrenchments. When they
were brought to General Ventidius at his praetorium, his headquarters tent,
they revealed that morale in Labienus’s camp had sunk to rock bottom and that
Labienus himself was planning to break his troops out of his camp in groups in
the darkness of the early morning. The deserters knew where and when most of
these breakouts were to occur, and based on this information Ventidius sent
detachments of legionaries to set up ambushes for Labienus’s men.
The information proved correct. And in the early hours of
the next day the vast majority of Labienus’s Roman troops ran straight into the
waiting ambushers and were killed or captured. Labienus’s own escape plan had
not been made known, and he was able to slip by the waiting troops and
disappear into the wilds of Cilicia wearing local peasant clothing.
The next day, after conducting an assembly at which numerous
legionaries were presented with bravery decorations, as was the Roman custom
following a victory, General Ventidius ordered his cavalry commander, General
Silo, to take most of his cavalry east. Silo was to ride as far as the Cilician
Gates, the narrow pass in the Taurus Mountains through which ran a military
highway built on Julius Caesar’s orders and that led all the way to Antioch in
Syria. While Silo set off to secure the pass, Ventidius marched the legions
down to the city of Tarsus, where he arrested Labienus’s lackeys and took over
administration of the province.
A price was put on Labienus’s head, and this naturally
attracted bounty hunters. The governor of the island of Cyprus at this time,
appointed by Mark Antony, was Demetrius, one of Julius Caesar’s former
freedmen. Later that same year, learning from informants where Labienus was
hiding in Cilicia, Demetrius crossed to the mainland, tracked Labienus down,
and arrested him. We hear no more of young Quintus Labienus, briefly lord of the
Roman East. Undoubtedly he was executed.
But well before Labienus was captured, General Ventidius
received a desperate dispatch from his cavalry general. Silo was surrounded by
Parthians at the Cilician Gates. Ventidius promptly dropped everything and marched
with the legions to relieve Silo. The Cilician Gates pass had acquired its name
from the wooden gates that had once blocked the way here. The gates were gone,
but a sizable garrison of Parthian cavalry under Prince Pacorus’s deputy
Pharnapates was now in place here. That garrison, bolstered by cavalrymen who
had escaped from the Battle of Mount Amanus, had fallen on Silo’s unwary
mounted column as it approached. Even though they outnumbered the Parthians,
the Roman cavalrymen were no match for them and were soon in dire straits.
Surrounded, their only hope was to hold out until General Ventidius arrived.
Fortunately for Silo, the arrival of Ventidius and the
legions took his Parthian attackers completely by surprise. Coming up behind
them, Ventidius’s legions slaughtered a large number of the Parthians,
including Pharnapates, their commander. This battle, the Battle of the Cilician
Gates, secured the pass. When news of Ventidius’s victories in Cilicia reached
Pacorus in Syria, where he had set himself up as regent, the Parthian prince
collected his remaining troops and withdrew across the Euphrates into Parthia
to regroup.
In the spring, the 3rd Gallica marched into Syria with
General Ventidius and the rest of his legions. But to their surprise they
weren’t welcomed wholeheartedly by the people of Syria. Prince Pacorus, it
turned out, had made himself very popular during his time in Syria because of
his mildness and his justice. The Syrians, said Cassius Dio, came to hold
Pacorus in as much affection as the greatest kings who had ever ruled them.
Certainly no Roman governor had engendered as much affection in the twenty-five
years since Pompey the Great had made Syria a province of Rome.
It soon became apparent to General Ventidius that if Pacorus
led another Parthian army across the Euphrates, many in Syria would throw their
support behind him. Ventidius set his mind to ridding Rome of the threat posed
by the dashing prince.
The 3rd Gallica Legion was going against the Parthians
again. It was now 38 B.C., and a year had passed since the legions had defeated
Labienus and Pharnapates in Cilicia. And now wily old General Ventidius had
lured Prince Pacorus into a trap.
Following his 39 B.C. victories, Ventidius had raised two
new legions in Syria on Antony’s authority, partly from Labienus’s former men
but mostly from new Syrian levies. As the winter of 39-38 B.C. had arrived, he
sent all eight of his legions into winter camp around Syria and Cilicia. Early
in 38 B.C., Ventidius had learned that Pacorus was assembling another Parthian
army east of the Euphrates to again invade Syria. Having ascertained from spies
that a Syrian noble named Channaeus was in contact with Pacorus, Ventidius
wined and dined Channaeus. During their intimate conversations Ventidius seemingly
let it slip that he was afraid that Pacorus would cross the Euphrates at a
point in southern Syria where it was flat and suited to cavalry, rather than at
nearby Zeugma once again—where the hilly terrain was suited to Roman infantry.
That information had been duly passed to Pacorus, who, in the spring, took the
bait and led his army many miles south, crossing the Euphrates into Syria just
where General Ventidius wanted him to cross.
Ventidius had meanwhile summoned his legions. By invading in
the south, Pacorus had given Ventidius valuable weeks in which to assemble his
forces. Once Pacorus crossed the river, he pushed north without encountering
resistance. Weeks into the invasion, entering the Cyrrhestica district of
Syria, his scouts reported General Ventidius’s legions camped ahead, on the
slopes of Mount Gindarus. Determined to destroy Ventidius, Pacorus marched to
the mountain.
Ventidius, at assembly that morning, told his legionaries
that Pacorus and his cavalry had fallen into his trap. Today, he said, Mars,
god of war, would smile on them. The usual prebattle animal religious sacrifice
had produced auspicious omens. Today the legions would destroy the Parthians.
It was the will of the gods, for this was exactly the same day on which,
fifteen years before, Marcus Crassus had died at the hands of the Parthians at
Carrhae. Feeling that the foolish Parthians, lured into Ventidius’s trap, had
no chance of victory, and that, as the Romans said, “Fools must be taught by
the result,” the legions confidently formed in battle order on the slopes
outside their camp.
The Parthians were full of bravado and rushed to the attack.
Whether this charge was spontaneous or on Pacorus’s rash order we are not to
know. Once again, Ventidius had claimed the high ground. Up the slope charged
the Parthian horse archers. And once again, at the crucial moment General
Ventidius ordered his legions to charge. Down the slope rushed the men of the
3rd Gallica and the other legions.
It was a repeat of the slaughter at the Battle of Mount
Amanus. Horse archers, caught in close-quarters combat with the legionaries,
were slaughtered. Others, driven back down the slope and panicking, crashed
into companions in their desperation to escape, and fell or fled. Only the
cataphract heavy cavalry, led by Pacorus himself, held their ground at the
bottom of the hill. The legions swept down around them like a river at the
flood. Vastly outnumbered by twenty or thirty to one, the nobles of the heavy
cavalry were surrounded. But instead of sending his infantry against the
well-armored Parthians, General Ventidius held the legionaries back and sent in
his slingers.
Roman forces in the East used slingers from Crete and parts
of Greece to great effect. These slingers, trained since childhood to protect
sheep and goat herds from predators by using their slings, were deadly accurate
with stones and lead bullets over remarkable distances, often up to several
hundred yards. Their slingshot in fact had a greater effective range than
Parthian arrows. But that was not a factor, now that the enemy horse archers
had been put to flight. On high ground, Ventidius’s slingers were able to stand
off and rain missiles down on the Parthians and their horses without any fear
of return fire. The air was filled with clouds of projectiles, which came at
the Parthians with a speed approaching that of modern-day rifle
bullets—thousands of them.
The men of the 3rd Gallica and the other waiting legionaries
watched with fascination. They heard the sound of slingshots in the air, like
the hum of swarms of bees. They heard the rattle and clatter as the projectiles
hit Parthian armor, heard cavalrymen cry out in pain and horses whinny in
panic. And they watched the antics of the targets trying to avoid being hit.
Laughter rolled through the Roman ranks. To the legionaries, this was as
entertaining as watching a gladiatorial contest, but much more satisfying. Not
only was this barrage disconcerting to the haughty Parthians, the slingshot
also could take out an eye, human or equine, or cause bloody facial wounds.
Horses reared and bucked. Riders swayed and ducked. And then suddenly Roman
trumpets were sounding, the barrage lifted, and with a cheer the legions were
charging in for the kill.
Made obvious by his standard, his large entourage, and his
expensive armor, Prince Pacorus attracted the focus of the attack. Dragged from
his horse, he went down under a crush of blows. His bodyguards fought
desperately to save him, but when it was clear their prince was dead, they
fought to prevent his body from falling into Roman hands. The legionaries
pressed in. And then a cheer rang out from the legions as the last Parthian
bodyguard also fell dead over his master’s corpse. With the flash of a sword,
Pacorus’s head was severed. A centurion held the prince’s bloodied head aloft,
bringing another triumphant, bloodthirsty roar from the men of the 3rd Gallica
and their fellow legionaries.
Only now, when their commander was dead, did some of the
Parthian nobles attempt to fight their way out of the encirclement. A few
managed to bulldoze their way through atop ironclad steeds. Some turned south,
following the retreating horse archers who were fleeing back toward the
Euphrates crossing. Others galloped north; they would ride all the way to the
mountainous, landlocked kingdom of Commagene. There they would seek asylum from
its king, elderly Antiochus I, who was related by marriage to Parthia’s
king—his daughter was Orodes’s wife, and their children his grandchildren.
Ventidius had anticipated that some Parthians would attempt
to escape back the way they had come. He had regretted that so many had managed
to get away after Mount Amanus, and this time he was prepared. To the south,
Roman cavalry and infantry lay in wait, knowing what route enemy escapees could
be expected to take. Cutting the fleeing Parthians off from the crossing across
the Euphrates, they surprised and destroyed them.
Following a victory assembly, Ventidius dispatched the head
of Prince Pacorus on a tour of Syria, to prove to Syrian leaders who had
wavered in their loyalty to Rome that the Parthian royal was dead. The grim
message had the desired effect. Syrian nobles rushed to congratulate the Roman
general and vow their undying loyalty to Mark Antony and the Senate and people
of Rome. It would be hundreds of years before a Syrian noble again challenged
Roman authority in the province. The men of Ventidius’s legions, meanwhile,
shared the rich booty from Pacorus’s baggage train, stripped the dead Parthians
naked to sell their equipment to the traders who followed the legions wherever
they went, and enjoyed the praise and awards lavished on them by their general.
Just a few weeks later, Ventidius received orders from Mark
Antony in Athens, to send troops to reinforce King Herod in Judea. For two years
Herod had battled the high priest Antigonus. Herod had gained control of
Galilee with a sizable force of Galileean volunteers, but Antigonus had shut
himself up inside Jerusalem with a large number of armed Jews. Now, too,
General Ventidius learned that King Antiochus of Commagene was sheltering
Parthian nobles who had escaped after the Battle of Mount Gindarus.
So Ventidius ordered the legions to prepare to march once
more. The two newly recruited legions and a thousand cavalry were sent south to
support Herod. The remainder of the Roman army—Ventidius’s six original legions
and most of the cavalry and auxiliaries—was heading north, in pursuit of the
escapees, and invading Commagene. Ventidius was going to ram home the point
that Roman authority was once more stamped on the region.
