About the same time the envoys of Vologeses, who had been sent, as I have related, to the emperor, returned without success, and the Parthians made open war. Nor did Pætus decline the challenge, but with two legions, the 4th and 12th, the first of which was then commanded by Funisulanus Vettonianus and the second by Calavius Sabinus, entered Armenia, with unlucky omen. In the passage of the Euphrates, which they crossed by a bridge, a horse which carried the consul's official emblems, took fright without any apparent cause and fled to the rear. A victim, too, standing by some of the winter-tents, which were being fortified, broke its way through them, when the work was but half finished, and got clear out of the entrenchments. Then again the soldiers' javelins gleamed with light, a prodigy the more significant because the Parthian foe fights with missiles.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. reprinted 1942.
