The marble triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius…

Verus’ journey continues by ship through the Aegean and the southern coasts of Asia Minor, lingering in the famed pleasure resorts of Pamphylia and Cilicia, before arriving in Antioch.

It is not known how long Verus' journey east took; he might not have arrived in Antioch until after 162.

Statius Priscus, meanwhile, must have already arrived in Cappadocia; he will earn fame in 163 for successful generalship.

Lucius spends most of the campaign in Antioch, though he wintered at Laodicea and summers at Daphne, a resort just outside Antioch.

He takes up a mistress named Panthea, from Smyrna.

The biographer calls her a "lowborn girlfriend", but she is probably closer to Lucian's "woman of perfect beauty", more beautiful than any of Phidias and Praxiteles' statues.

Polite, caring, humble, she sings to the lyre perfectly and speaks clear Ionic Greek, spiced with Attic wit.

Panthea reads Lucian's first draft, and criticizes him for flattery.

He had compared her to a goddess, which frightens her—she does not want to become the next Cassiopeia.

She has power, too: she makes Lucius shave his beard for her.

Critics declaim Lucius' luxurious lifestyle.

He has taken to gambling and enjoys the company of actors.

He makes a special request for dispatches from Rome, to keep him updated on how his chariot teams are doing.

He brings a golden statue of the Greens' horse Volucer around with him, as a token of his team spirit.

Fronto defends his pupil against some of these claims: the Roman people need Lucius' bread and circuses to keep them in check.

This, at least, is how the biographer has it.

The whole section of the vita dealing with Lucius' debaucheries (HA Verus 4.4–6.6) is an insertion into a narrative otherwise entirely cribbed from an earlier source.

Some few passages seem genuine; others take and elaborate something from the original.

The rest is by the biographer himself, relying on nothing better than his own imagination.

Lucius faces a heavy task.

Fronto describes the scene in terms recalling Corbulo's arrival one hundred years before.

The Syrian soldiers, having turned soft during the east's long peace, spend more time at the city's open-air bars than in their quarters.

Under Lucius, training is stepped up.

Pontius Laelianus orders that their saddles be stripped of their padding.

Gambling and drinking are sternly policed.

Fronto writes that Lucius was on foot at the head of his army as often as on horseback.

He personally inspects soldiers in the field and at camp, including the sick bay.

Lucius sends Fronto few messages at the beginning of the war, but does send Fronto a letter apologizing for his silence.

He will not detail plans that could change within a day, he writes.

Moreover, there is little thus far to show for his work.

Lucius does not want Fronto to suffer the anxieties that have kept him up day and night.

One reason for Lucius' reticence may have been the collapse of Parthian negotiations after the Roman conquest of Armenia.

Lucius' presentation of terms is seen as cowardice.

The Parthians are not in the mood for peace.

Lucius needs to make extensive imports into Antioch, so he opens a sailing route up the Orontes.

Because the river breaks across a cliff before reaching the city, Lucius orders that a new canal be dug.

After the project is completed, the Orontes' old riverbed dries up, exposing massive bones—the bones of a giant.

Pausanias says they were from a beast "more than eleven cubits" tall; Philostratus says the it was "thirty cubits" tall.

The oracle at Claros declares that they are the bones of the river's spirit.

The legions I Minervia and V Macedonica, under the legates M. Claudius Fronto and P. Martius Verus, serve under Statius Priscus in Armenia, earning success for Roman arms during the campaign season of 163, including the capture of the Armenian capital Artaxata.

Verus takes the title Armeniacus, despite having never seen combat, at the end of the year; Marcus declines to accept the title until the following year.

When Lucius is hailed as imperator again, however, Marcus does not hesitate to take the title Imperator II with him.

The army of Syria is reinforced by II Adiutrix and Danubian legions under X Gemina's legate Geminius Marcianus.

The Parthians, while  Statius Priscus is occupied in Armenia in 163, intervene in Osroene, a Roman client in upper Mesopotamia, just east of Syria, with its capital at Edessa.

They depose the country's leader, Mannus, and replace him with their own nominee, who will remain in office until 165. (The Edessene coinage record actually begins at this point, with issues showing Vologases IV on the obverse and "Wael the king" (Syriac: W'L MLK') on the reverse.)

In response, Roman forces are moved downstream, to cross the Euphrates at a more southerly point.

On the evidence of Lucian, the Parthians still hold the southern, Roman bank of the Euphrates (in Syria) as late as 163 (he refers to a battle at Sura, which is on the southern side of the river).

Before the end of the year, however, Roman forces have moved north to occupy Dausara and Nicephorium on the northern, Parthian bank.

Soon after the conquest of the north bank of the Euphrates, other Roman forces move on Osroene from Armenia, taking Anthemusia, a town southwest of Edessa.

Occupied Armenia is reconstructed on Roman terms.

A new capital, Kaine Polis ("New City" in Greek), replaces Artaxata in 164.

Detachments from Cappadocian legions are attested at Echmiadzin, beneath the southern face of Mount Ararat, four hundred kilometers east of Satala.

It would have meant a march of twenty days or more, through mountainous terrain, from the Roman border.

A new king is installed: a Roman senator of consular rank and Arsacid descent, C. Iulius Sohaemus.

He may not even have been crowned in Armenia; the ceremony may have taken place in Antioch, or even Ephesus.

Sohaemus is hailed on the imperial coinage of 164 under the legend Rex armeniis Datus: Verus sits on a throne with his staff while Sohamenus stands before him, saluting the emperor.

There is little movement in 164; most of the year is spent on preparations for a renewed assault on Parthian territory.

Roman forces, perhaps led by Martius Verus and the V Macedonica, move on Mesopotamia in 165.

Edessa is reoccupied and Mannus reinstalled.

His coinage resumes, too: 'Ma'nu the king' (Syriac: M'NW MLK') or Antonine dynasts on the obverse, and 'King Mannos, friend of the Romans' (Greek: Basileus Mannos Philorōmaios) on the reverse.

The Parthians retreat to Nisibis, but this city too is besieged and captured.

The Parthian army disperses in the Tigris; their general Chosrhoes swims down the river and makes his hideout in a cave.

Lucius makes another trip to Ephesus in the middle of the Roman-Parthian war, perhaps in autumn 163 or early 164, to be married to Lucilla, the second daughter and third child of his adopted brother, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Roman Empress Faustina the Younger.

Lucilla's thirteenth birthday is in March 163; whatever the date of her marriage, she is not yet fifteen.

Marcus had moved up the date: perhaps stories of Panthea had disturbed him.

Lucilla is accompanied by her mother Faustina and M. Vettulenus Civica Barbarus, the half-brother of Lucius' father.

Marcus may have planned to accompany them all the way to Smyrna (the biographer says he told the senate he would); this did not happen.

Marcus only accompanies the group as far as Brundisium, where they board a ship for the east.

Marcus returns to Rome immediately thereafter, and sends out special instructions to his proconsuls not to give the group any official reception.

Lucilla, who becomes Lucilla Augusta, will bear three of Lucius' children in the coming years.

Emperor Huan, perhaps finally fed up with the eunuchs' excess, in 165, demotes Ju, the only one remaining of the original five who had helped him overthrow Liang Ji six years earlier.

Several other corrupt eunuchs are also demoted or deposed, but their powers are soon restored.

For the rest of Huan's reign, there will be a cyclical rising and falling of the eunuchs’ power after conflicts with officials, but each time the eunuchs prevail, becoming more powerful than before.

Emperor Huan, apparently tired of Empress Deng and of her disputes with his favorite, Consort Guo, deposes and imprisons her later in this year.

She dies in anger, and several of her family members are executed.

He wants to bestow the empress title upon another consort, Tian Sheng, but officials oppose this measure because she is of lowly birth, and recommend that he instead elevate Consort Dou Miao, the daughter of Dou Wu, a Confucian scholar and a descendant of Dou Rong, who had contributed much to the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Emperor Huan does not favor Consort Dou, but yields to pressure and names her empress.

Avidius Cassius, marching down the Euphrates in 165, defeats the Parthians at Dura-Europus, which city the Romans incorporate into the province of Syria.

A descendent of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Cassius is the son of Gaius Avidius Heliodorus, a noted orator who was Prefect of Egypt from 137 to 142 under Hadrian, and wife Junia Cassia Alexandria.

He was born in the town of Cyrrhus in Syria, although he once called Alexandria his 'paternal city'.

It is assumed that Cassius began his career during the reign of Antonius Pius.

Possibly elected as a quaestor in 154, it is assumed that the young vir militaris had been stationed in the final years of Pius’s reign as a legatus in one of the legions stationed along the Danube in Moesia Inferior, watching over the Sarmatians.

Certainly by 161, he was noted as a legatus in the legions.

A strict disciplinarian as the Legatus (General) of Legio III Gallica, he quickly comes to prominence under the emperor Marcus Aurelius during the Parthian War.