Marcus Crassus
Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 – 53 BC) was the late Roman Republic’s wealthiest man and one of its leading figures. He used his wealth to amass power, sponsoring politicians, including Julius Caesar whose political rise he financed, and with Caesar and Pompey the Great, entered into a power-sharing agreement known as “The First Triumvirate“, which effectively made the trio the masters of the Roman Republic.
As an ally of Sulla, Crassus started on the road to fabulous wealth by buying the confiscated properties of executed enemies of the state in rigged auctions for a fraction of their value, even arranging to have the names of those whose property he coveted added to the lists of the proscribed, slated for execution and confiscation of property.
By the 70s BC, Crassus was Rome’s richest man, and he leveraged his wealth into power by entering a power-sharing agreement with Caesar and Pompey. However, Crassus also craved military glory such as that enjoyed by his partners – unlike them, Crassus’ main military accomplishment had been to defeat Spartacus’ slave rebellion, which paled in comparison to Pompey’s and Caesar’s deeds.
To win glory of his own, Crassus decided to invade Parthia, a newly established wealthy kingdom encompassing Persia and Mesopotamia, which did not seem a difficult nut to crack: a decade earlier, Pompey had easily defeated other eastern kingdoms, other kingdoms in the east, and there was little reason to assume the Parthians would be any tougher.
With an army of 50,000, he went to war against Parthia in 53 BC, but things went wrong from the start when his guide, secretly in Parthian pay, took Crassus on an arid route that left his army parched and exhausted by the time they reached the town of Carrhae in today’s Turkey, where they encountered a Parthian army of 1000 armored heavy cavalry and 9000 horse archers. Although they greatly outnumbered the Parthians, the Romans were demoralized by the rigors of the march and by Crassus’ uninspiring leadership.
Archers whittled the Romans with arrows from a safe standoff distance, retreating whenever the Romans advanced. Morale plummeted as casualties mounted, and Crassus finally ordered his son to drive off the horse archers with the Roman cavalry and an infantry detachment. The Parthians feigned retreat, Crassus’ son rashly pursued, and was slaughtered with all his men. The Parthians returned, taunting the Roman army and Crassus with his son’s head mounted on a spear.
Crassus retreated, abandoning thousands of his wounded. The Parthians invited him to parley, offering safe retreat in exchange for Roman territorial concessions. Crassus was reluctant, but his army threatened to mutiny if he did not negotiate. The parley went badly, violence broke out, and Crassus was killed. To mock his greed, the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat. Out of his 50,000 man army, only 10,000 made it back to Roman territory.