Altogether, out of the hundred thousand men whom Antony led into Media Atropatene, less than seventy thousand remained to commence the campaign which was threatened for the ensuing year.

Well may the unfortunate commander have exclaimed as he compared his own heavy losses with the light ones of Xenophon and his Greeks in these same regions, "Oh, those Ten Thousand! those Ten Thousand!" On the withdrawal of Antony into Armenia a quarrel broke out between Phraates and his Median vassal.

The latter regarded himself as wronged in the division made of the Roman spoils, and expressed himself with so much freedom on the subject as to offend his suzerain.

He then began to fear that he had gone too far, and that Phraates would punish him by depriving him of his sovereignty.

Accordingly, he was anxious to obtain a powerful alliance, and on turning over in his mind all feasible political combinations it seems to have occurred to him that his late enemy, Antony, might be disposed to take him under his protection.