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Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 6:44 PM
With the close of the year came disquieting rumours that the Parthians
had again broken their bounds and were ravaging Armenia, from which they
had driven Rhadamistus, who, having often possessed himself of the kingdom
and as often been thrust out of it, had now relinquished hostilities. Rome
with its love of talking began to ask how a prince of scarce seventeen
was to encounter and avert this tremendous peril, how they could fall back
on one who was ruled by a woman; or whether battles and sieges and the
other operations of war could be directed by tutors. "Some, on the contrary,
argued that this was better than it would have been, had Claudius in his
feeble and spiritless old age, when he would certainly have yielded to
the bidding of slaves, been summoned to the hardships of a campaign. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire,
at least, and Seneca were known to be men of very varied experience, and,
as for the emperor himself, how far was he really short of mature age,
when Cneius Pompeius and Caesar Octavianus, in their eighteenth and nineteenth
years respectively, bore the brunt of civil wars? The highest rank chiefly
worked through its prestige and its counsels more than by the sword and
hand. The emperor would give a plain proof whether he was advised by good
or bad friends by putting aside all jealousy and selecting some eminent
general, rather than by promoting out of favouritism, a rich man backed
up by interest."
Amidst this and like popular talk, Nero ordered the young recruits
levied in the adjacent provinces to be brought up for the supply of the
legions of the East, and the legions themselves to take up a position on
the Armenian frontier while two princes of old standing, Agrippa and Antiochus,
were to prepare a force for the invasion of the Parthian territories. The
Euphrates too was to be spanned by bridges; Lesser Armenia was intrusted
to Aristobulus, Sophene to Sohaemus, each with the ensigns of royalty.
There rose up at this crisis a rival to Vologeses in his son Vardanes,
and the Parthians quitted Armenia, apparently intending to defer
hostilities.
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