Antony and Cleopatra by Colleen Mccullough

Author:Colleen Mccullough
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

This time the baggage train had set off for Artaxata, the capital of Armenia, almost the moment it had arrived in Carana, much to the wrath of Oppius Statianus, deprived of a rest, a bath, a woman, and a chance to talk to Antony. He had intended to give Antony a list of things he thought could well remain in Carana, thus cutting down the size of the train and perhaps speeding up its pace a little. But no, the orders came to keep on going, and take everything. The moment it reached Artaxata, it was to start the journey to Phraaspa. Again no rest, no bath, no woman, and no chance to talk to Antony.

Antony was edgy and anxious to start his campaign, convinced that he was stealing a march on the Parthians with his back-door approach. Oh, no doubt someone had warned them that Phraaspa would be the first Parthian city to come under assault—there were too many easterners and foreigners of all descriptions to keep a secret as big as this one—but Antony was relying upon his pace, which he intended be as headlong as any march Caesar ever commanded. A Roman army would be at Phraaspa months before it was expected.

So he didn’t linger in Artaxata, he marched as soon as possible in the straightest line he could. It was five hundred miles from Artaxata to Phraaspa, and in some ways the terrain was neither as rugged nor as high as the country they had traversed from Carana to Artaxta. But, Antony’s Median and Armenian guides told him, he was marching in the wrong direction for ease of passage. Every range, every fold, every furrow, ran east to west, and while it would have been much easier to march east of Lake Matiane—a huge body of water—the only pass through the mountains meant marching down its west side, a matter of crossing many ranges, up and down, up and down. At the south end of the lake the army had to strike east before turning to come down upon Phraaspa; a new range of peaks fifteen thousand and more feet high lay to the west.

Sixteen legions, ten thousand Gallic cavalry, fifty thousand foreign troops both horsed and on foot, and sixteen thousand Armenian cataphracts—one hundred and forty thousand men—began the march. More than fifty thousand of them were mounted. Not even Alexander the Great had commanded such a multitude, thought Antony exultantly, absolutely sure that no force on earth could beat him. What an adventure, what a colossal undertaking! He’d eclipse Caesar at last.

They encountered the baggage train disappointingly soon; it had not yet crossed the mountain pass to come down to Lake Matiane, so it had nearly four hundred miles to go. Though Canidius urged Antony to lessen his rate and stay within fairly easy distance of the baggage train, Antony refused. With some justice; if he kept his pace down to that of the baggage train, he would be too late at Phraaspa to take it before winter, even if it put up no serious resistance.

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