Parthia

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 7.26 §3 some Parthian accident should arise

  A renewed Parthian invasion of Syria (a live threat since Crassus's defeat at Carrhae in 53 BC) might force Caesar and Pompey to compose their quarrel against the common foreign enemy; Cicero clutches at this faint hope of averting civil war.

• Ad Atticum 8.11 §7 Would it were something like the Parthian affair

  Cicero wishes Caesar's rapid advance might end as disastrously for him as Crassus's invasion of Parthia did in 53 BC, when Crassus and his army were destroyed at Carrhae.

• Ad Familiares 8.5 §1 if the Parthian moves at all

  After the Roman disaster at Carrhae (53 BC) a Parthian counter-invasion of Syria and Cilicia was the standing fear of Cicero's governorship; his single under-strength army could not have held the passes.

• Ad Familiares 12.19 §2 suspicion of a Parthian war

  The Parthian empire beyond the Euphrates was Rome's great eastern rival; after the disaster at Carrhae (53 BC) a Parthian invasion of Syria was a standing danger for any governor there.

• Ad Familiares 15.4 §3 the Parthians had crossed into Syria

  The Parthian empire beyond the Euphrates was Rome's great eastern rival; their invasion of Syria after the disaster at Carrhae (53 BC) is the looming menace behind Cicero's whole governorship and this dispatch.

• Ad Familiares 15.9 §3 Parthians

  After Carrhae in 53 BC, Parthian raids across the Euphrates into Roman Syria and the kingdoms east of Cilicia were a recurring threat. The discreet line here --- Cicero will not write to a consul about Parthian news, lest the letter be read as official --- is characteristic of the proconsular reserve.

• Eleventh Philippic §35 the noblest leaders of the Parthians

  Cassius had famously rallied the survivors of Crassus's disaster at Carrhae (53 BC) and repelled a Parthian invasion of Syria in 51 BC, the deeds Cicero adduces to prove his fitness for the eastern command.