Parthian War under Lucius Verus

The diarchy’s division of labor quickly found its test. In 162, Lucius Verus departed for the East to face Parthia. Antioch became his headquarters; Ephesus, Tarsus, and Laodicea felt the weight of imperial logistics as legions and auxiliaries moved through [2]. The clatter of nails on sandals echoed in colonnades; bronze helmets flashed under a hot blue sky.

Cassius Dio sketches the campaign’s outline with terse confidence: Seleucia burned; the royal palace at Ctesiphon fell to Roman hands and was destroyed [2]. The achievements mattered strategically and symbolically. Mesopotamian cities learned that Rome could still project decisive force beyond the Euphrates. The Tigris, green-brown and wide, carried the reflection of black smoke.

Verus’s command style differed from Marcus’s temperament but worked within the shared plan. He delegated effectively to experienced generals—Avidius Cassius among them—and kept up morale in an army far from home. Antioch’s theaters, baths, and markets absorbed the imperial court’s needs, while the empire’s grain from Alexandria and Cyprus fed the masses [2].

The campaign’s sensory memory is all hard edges and bright colors: purple standards snapping in dry winds, the glint of spearheads in long files, the crackle of fires in Seleucia’s streets. Roman siege engines thumped. Orders traveled down lines in Latin and Greek.

Back in Rome, Marcus steadied civil affairs. The mint struck aurei that carried imagery of Victory and Annona, tying the eastern successes to secure logistics for the city [6][9]. Senators heard steady reports; the people saw the same calm distributions of grain under the Porticus Minucia.

By 166, victory was secure enough for soldiers to begin the long journey back. They carried more than donatives and stories. In their lungs and blood, they carried a pathogen. What the empire had sent east in manpower returned west as disease [2][12][15]. The war’s end became the plague’s beginning.