Bernat Roca

In 53 BC, the richest man in Rome led an army of around 40,000 men into the desert to conquer Parthia. Within days, most of them were dead or captured, his son's head was on a spear, and a legend would later claim the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat. Marcus Licinius Crassus had everything a Roman could want except one thing. He was the wealthiest man in the Republic and one third of the alliance that ran it, along with Pompey and Julius Caesar. But Pompey had conquered the East and Caesar was conquering Gaul. Crassus's biggest military claim to fame was crushing Spartacus, and even that Pompey had partly stolen credit for. He was in his sixties and wanted a war of his own. Parthia had done nothing to Rome. Plenty of Romans opposed the war. As Crassus left the city, a tribune reportedly stood at the gate and called down curses on him. Chance one: take the Armenian offer. The king of Armenia, Artavasdes, showed up with thousands of cavalry and offered many more, along with infantry. He gave Crassus one piece of advice. Come through Armenia. The country was hilly and rough, terrible ground for Parthian horsemen. Crassus said no, thanks, and chose the direct route through the flat plains of Mesopotamia. Chance two: stay by the river. One of his officers, Gaius Cassius Longinus, urged him to march along the Euphrates. The river would keep the army supplied with water and protect a flank. Crassus instead trusted a local Arab chieftain who guided the army away from the river and out into open, waterless country. Plutarch says the man was working for the Parthians the whole time. Once the trap was set, he rode off. Waiting near the town of Carrhae was Surena, a young Parthian noble who showed up with a force built for exactly this ground: around 10,000 mounted archers and about 1,000 cataphracts, heavy cavalry in armor down to their horses. He also brought something Crassus never imagined. A camel train loaded with arrows. The Romans formed a giant square. The Parthians rode around it and shot into it. The legionaries locked shields and waited for the enemy to run out of arrows. They didn't. Every time the archers emptied their quivers, they rode back to the camels and came back full. Men were pinned to the ground through their feet. Hands were nailed to shields. Chance three: don't take the bait. Crassus sent his son Publius, a talented officer who'd served under Caesar in Gaul, with cavalry and infantry to break out. The Parthians fled. Publius chased. It was a feigned retreat. Once he was far enough from the main army, the Parthians turned and surrounded him. Publius died, and the Parthians rode back past the Roman square with his head on a spear. That night the army abandoned around 4,000 wounded men and slipped away to Carrhae. The Parthians killed the wounded the next morning. Surena then offered to talk. Crassus didn't trust him, but his own exhausted soldiers threatened him until he agreed to go. At the meeting, a fight broke out and Crassus was killed. Around 20,000 Romans died and another 10,000 were taken prisoner. Many of the captives were reportedly marched to the far eastern edge of the Parthian empire and settled there as frontier troops. Plutarch says Crassus's head was used as a prop in a performance of a Greek tragedy at the Parthian court. The molten gold story comes later, from Cassius Dio, and he reports it as something that was said, not something he could confirm. It stuck anyway, because it fit too well. Rome lost its eagle standards too. It took more than thirty years and a diplomatic deal under Augustus to get them back. And Crassus's death broke the triumvirate. With him gone, there was nothing standing between Caesar and Pompey but each other. A few years later, Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The officer who got out of Carrhae alive, Cassius, would end up one of the men who stabbed Caesar to death on the Ides of March. The richest man in Rome went looking for glory and ended up helping kill the Republic instead.