campaign in Mesopotamia.[1] The latter fought an engagement at Sura (Sūriyyah)[2] above Circesium and then threw a pontoon bridge across the Euphrates in much the same manner as would a modern military engineer. Pontoons were collected back of the lines and brought forward above the point to be bridged. They were then floated downstream one by one and anchored at the desired point. The planks which the boats carried were used to join them to the bank or to similar pontoons farther out in the stream. Protection was given to the engineers by archers from a tower mounted on the pontoon nearest the opposite bank.[3] Once across the river Cassius turned southward along the stream, took Dausara and Nicephorium (Rakka),[4] and then won a bloody engagement near Dura-Europus,[5] which thenceforward
- ↑ The events of these campaigns are known only from scattered references, largely geographical in character. That Priscus was in charge of the Armenian war and Cassius of the Mesopotamian conquest we can be certain.
- ↑ Lucian Quomodo hist. 29; PW, art. "Sura"; A. Poidebard, La trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie; le limes de Trajan à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1934), pp. 83 f.
- ↑ Dio Cass. lxxi. 3.
- ↑ Fronto Epist. ii. 1 (Loeb, II, p. 132); PW, art. "Dausara." There is also a Dausara near Edessa; see Steph. Byz. (Dindorf, p. 148). Victories in "Arabia" are mentioned by Vul. Gall. Avidius Cassius 6. 5.
- ↑ Lucian Quomodo hist. 20 and 28. On the identification of this Europus with Dura see F. Cumont, Fouilles de Doura-Europos, p. lii and notes. A dedicatory inscription to Verus was found at Dura; see Cumont, op. cit., p. 173 and p. 410, No. 53.
