When Tiberius heard of this, he decided to establish a treaty of friendship with Artabanus. Artabanus gladly welcomed the suggestion of a meeting with the representatives of Rome. He and Vitellius came together on the Euphrates; they met halfway along a bridge which had been thrown over the river, each attended by his guards. When they had discussed the terms of treaty, Herod the tetrarch entertained them at a banquet in a luxurious marquee erected in the middle of the bridge. Soon afterward Artabanus sent his son Darius as a hostage to Rome with many gifts, including a man seven cubits tall, a Jew by race, Eleazar by name, surnamed ‘the giant’ because of his height.

Then Vitellius returned to Antioch and Artabanus to Babylon. determined to be the first to report to the emperor the news about the hostages, so he sent couriers and wrote a letter so detailed that there was nothing for the legate to add. Vitellius had indeed also written a letter, but the emperor gave him to understand that he knew the whole story already, because Herod had given him full information. Vitellius was greatly annoyed, thinking that Herod had done him a greater injury than uas actually the case; and he cherished a secret grudge against him until he had an opportunity of gratifying it after Gaius became emperor.⁶⁷

Indeed, according to Suetonius⁶⁸, and Dio Cassius,⁶⁹ Gaius had already become emperor when this treaty between Rome and Parthia was concluded. Tacitus says nothing about the treaty in his account of the principate of Tiberius; whether he dated it in the principate of Gaius must remain uncertain in view of the lacuna in his Annals at this point.

It might be thought that the treaty was concluded after the death of Tiberius, but before the news of his death reached Syria; this is excluded, however, by Josephus’s account of Tiberius’s receiving the letter from Antipas. Another solution might be to suppose that Josephus’s story really relates to an earlier meeting between Vitellius and Tiridates⁷⁰ and that he was mistaken in referring it to the treaty-making encounter between Vitellius and Artabanus. But in a matter where Josephus’s personal interests were not engaged, and in a context where the circumstantial details so strongly favour his account of the affair, there is no reason for doubting his accuracy. Dr. E. Mary Smallwood has argued,⁷¹ with a high measure of probability, that Josephus’s whole section here on Parthia, including the conference on the Euphrates, belongs chronologically before his account of Vitellius’s earlier visit to Jerusalem (following his despatch of Pilate to Rome), which she shows to have taken place towards the end of A.D. 36 rather than, as Josephus has it,⁷² at the Passover of that year.

⁵⁹ Ant. xviii 109 ff.

⁶⁰ Ant. xviii 116.

⁶¹ Cf. Psalms of Solomon ii 30 ff.

⁶² Ant. xviii 122. During this visit (presumably after the Passover ceremonies were concluded) Vitellius removed Jonathan the son of Annas from the high-priesthood and replaced him by his brother Theophilus.

⁶³ Tacitus, Annals vi 50.

⁶⁴ There was an intercalary Adar in this year.

⁶⁵ The death of Galba was known at Alexandria in 27 days (WILCKEN, Griecbische Ostraka, i 802). Gaius’s letter to Petronius bidding him commit suicide took three months to reach Syria, owing to stormy weather; the news of Gaius’s death (on January 24, A.D. 41) arrived 27 days earlier (Josephus, BJ ii 203); we do not know how much later than Gaius’s letter it was despatched. We have particularly detailed information about the arrival at Carnuntum on the Danube of news of Didius Julianus’s successful bid for the imperial succession on March 29, A.D. 193; it arrived in time for Septimius Severus to be proclaimed emperor at Camuntum on April 9; having been carried 735 Roman miles within eleven days. On this see C. W. J. ELIOT, ‘New Evidence for the. Speed of the Roman Imperial Post’, The Phoenix ix, 1955, pp. 76 ff.; see also W. M. RAMSAY, ‘Roads and Travel’, HDB v, 1909, pp. 375 E.; L. FRIEDLÄNDER, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, 1910, ii, p. 22; A. M. RAMSAY, ‘The Speed of the Roman Imperial Post’, JBS xv, 1925, pp. 60 ff. Whether news was carried by land or sea might make little difference in this regard, as the average speed of an ancient ship in normal conditions was between four and five knots; the imperial post by land could maintain an average of nearly five Romanmiles an hour.

⁶⁶ Tacitus, Annals vi 31 ff.

⁶⁷ Josephus, Ant. xviii 101-105.

⁶⁸ Gaius, 14.

⁶⁹ Hist. lix 27.

⁷⁰ Tacitus, Annals vi 37 ff.

⁷¹ E. M. SMALLWOOD, ‘The Date of the Dismissal of Pontius Pilate from Judaea’, JJS v, 1954, pp. 12 ff. For a dating of the treaty some months later see A. GARZETTI, ‘La data dell’ incontro all’ Eufrate di Artabano III e L.Vitellio legato di Siria’, Studi A. Calderini e R. Paribeni I, 1956, pp. 211 ff., summarized by L. H. FELDMAN, Studies in Judaica i, 1963, p. 43.