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CHAPTER V

THE STRUGGLE IN SYRIA

CRASSUS and Publius were dead, and the eagles of their legions decorated Parthian temples.^[1] But Roman armies had been destroyed before, and Rome still survived. The lesson may have made no immediate impression in popular thought and literature, but military men were cognizant of the danger.

M. Tullius Cicero was appointed proconsular governor of Cilicia and was assigned twelve thousand infantry and twelve hundred cavalry. Included in his instructions was a special charge to keep Cappadocia friendly,^[2] for the new king, Ariobarzanes III, was a doubtful quantity. From Brundisium Cicero wrote to Appius Claudius Pulcher, the governor of Cilicia whom he was to succeed, that the Senate had proposed raising troops in Italy for Cicero and Bibulus, the new governor of Syria, but that the consul Sulpicius had vetoed the measure. In a dispatch to the Senate Pulcher reported that he had dismissed many of his troops; but his legate privately contradicted the statement, and Cicero begged him not to reduce

1. Horace Epist. i. 18. 56–57 and Od. iv. 15. 6–8.
2. Plut. Cicero 36. 1. On Cicero's governorship see also G. d'Hugues, Une province romaine sous la république (Paris, 1876).

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