The most aggravating thing about being an historioranter in the Age of the Decider is being forced to watch as he – B.A. History, Yale, 1968 – purposefully and willfully ignores every lesson the study of the past teaches us. George Bush’s possession of that document is a slap in the face of learned people everywhere; the idea that he is possessed of some sort of "long vision" that enables him to see past the colossal failures of his presidency to a future in which Iraqis erect statues in his honor simply ludicrous. By any measure, he’s the worst President in our history, and he achieved that status precisely because he has repudiated everything his undergrad degree represents.
The story of Crassus at Carrhae, the subject of tonight’s historiorant, is a lesson the Preznit shoulda had long ago. Step on into the Cave of the Moonbat, pull up a rock, and hear some of what those Ivy League professors failed to ensure he knew before they obsequiously conferred upon him the first of many undeserved honors that would, in the end, curse us all with his tragically inept brand of leadership.
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Like our Mr. Bush, Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of those guys who thought that power, regardless of how it was gained, was its own justification – a kind of social Darwinism that’s been a refuge of the insufferably arrogant for millennia. There are significant differences between them, of course: whereas the young George was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and yet became a failure in every business endeavor he attempted, Crassus used his own fortunate birth to scrounge up the money to buy silver mines as well as the slaves to work them (part of a larger slave-trading arm of his commercial empire), and developed a business model based on conveniently showing up at the scene of structural fires and purchasing the still-burning buildings from their distraught owners.
Another significant difference was that Crassus had the balls to actually take the field against the enemies of the Republic, but the two of them did somehow manage to draw similar lessons from their early military experiences. So it was that Crassus made himself out to be a great commander based on his role in putting down the revolt of Spartacus (i.e. an untrained, ill-equipped army of escaped slaves, trapped and besieged when Crassus bought off the pirates who were supposed to help them escape), even as George W. Bush has come to believe that his heroic defense of the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong trumps the assembled wisdom of nearly his entire general staff.
Prideful, conniving, and armed with a ruthlessness born of megalomania, Crassus overcame a few setbacks (like his rival, Gnaeus Pompeius "Pompey" Magnus, claiming credit for defeating Spartacus) to climb Rome’s political ladder. Along with Gaius Julius Caesar and the aforementioned Pompey, he was a member of the First Triumvirate (60 BCE), and 5 years later, was named Governor of Syria. Ever jealous of any contemporary who threatened to gather more ovations and Senatorial favors than he, Crassus set about using his position and opinion of his own military brilliance to attempt to match the empire-enlarging successes of Pompey in Spain and, especially, Caesar in Gaul. Like so many puffed-up would-be conquerors before and since, Crassus set his sights on making Mesopotamia a province.
" Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated...If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle."
At the time of the Battle of Carrhae, the area which now encompasses much of Iraq, Syria, and southeastern Turkey was under control of the Parthians, whose empire also encompassed all of modern Iran and significant patches of the countries around it.
The Parthians were nomadically indigenous to the Iranian Plateau in Central Asia, and wanted little to do with the Hellenism being imposed by the Alexandrian hangover states of the Seleucids (to the southwest; moonbatified here) and Greco-Bactria (to the southeast; moonbatified here). Their rise to power began under King Arsaces around 250 BCE, with an assertion of independence from the decaying Seleucid Empire in a remote part of what’s now Turkmenistan. Over the next two centuries, they simultaneously conquered all of the Seleucid Empire up to the Tigris, dominated the Silk Road from the borders of China to borders of Rome, and isolated Greco-Bactria, which was not to re-emerge in the western consciousness until Rudyard Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King.
In many ways, the Parthian worldview was the polar opposite of Rome’s. Adapting their nomadic, independent roots to the administration of their empire, Parthian government was highly decentralized – the empire suffered the sacking of its main capitol at Ctesiphon (downstream from modern Baghdad) on at least three occasions, but survived because it could rebuild and fight from other centers of power. Eighteen vassal kings owed their fealty to a single "King of Kings," but had a basically free hand in administration, defense, and expansion of their territories.
Parthian roots were further reflected in the composition of their armies, which consisted almost entirely of mounted troops. Most were lightly armed, lightly armored, highly potent horse archers, but those nobles who could afford the pricetag came suited up as cataphracts. These heavily armored horses and riders were the tanks of their day, and represented an entirely new tactical challenge for any Roman general who would fight them.
"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."
Eager to be adulated by the citizens of Rome, Crassus picked the Parthians for an enemy, then sought personal glory at their expense. From a strictly theoretical standpoint, he chose his enemies well: had he managed to actually bring Parthia to heel, the deed likely would have eclipsed Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the eyes of Rome – such was the reputation of the Parthians already. In 54 BCE, he set out at the head of an enormous and powerful army to find his own Alesia in the Fertile Crescent, then, ignoring the advice of his generals, garrisoned much of it in towns around western Mesopotamia. He again chose to blow off his advisors when he elected not to strike at an unprepared Ctesiphon late in the campaigning season, and instead gave his enemy vital time to prepare while he wintered in luxury in Syria.
Crassus’ decision-making skills didn’t improve with time: when he set out for Parthian territory the next spring, he ignored the advice of an Armenian ally who was recommending that Crassus take to the mountains and strike at Parthia from the north (this would have been a good move, since the terrain – already allied territory – would’ve hampered the effectiveness of the vaunted Parthian cavalry). His final bout of Decideritis came when he went with the counsel of a locally-hired guide over that of one of his most experienced offices, and charged off into the desert near the town of Carrhae (modern Harran, Turkey; about 40 km south of Sanliurfa – commonly called just plain old "Urfa" – which was known as Edessa back in the day).
"We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either."
He could have advanced down the Euphrates, keeping the river between he and the Parthians, but the aforementioned guide – his name was probably Abgar, chief of Edessa, but you can just call him "Curveball" – told him that an easy target lay just a few miles out into the desert, and Crassus bought it (he should have, as the Parthians had bought and paid for Abgar’s services). When his forty thousand or so troops (about 35,000 legionary heavy infantry, 4000 light infantry, and 1000 Gallic light cavalry on loan from Caesar) were just a few miles from the Parthian army, Crassus incredibly watched his erstwhile ally ride off on some silly pretext, with promises that Abgar would now stir up dissention in the Parthian ranks still ringing in his reddening ears.
But Crassus wasn’t finished with the boneheadedness:
Most of the commanders were of the opinion that they ought to remain there that night, and to inform themselves as much as possible of the number of the enemies, and their order, and so march against them at break of day; but Crassus was so carried away by the eagerness of his son, and the horsemen that were with him, who desired and urged him to lead them on and engage, that he commanded those that had a mind to it to eat and drink as they stood in their ranks, and before they had all well done, he led them on, not leisurely and with halts to take breath, as if he was going to battle, but kept on his pace as if he had been in haste, till they saw the enemy, contrary to their expectation, neither so many nor so magnificently armed as the Romans expected.
Plutarch, Life of Crassus, via Canadian Association of Ancient and Mediaeval Archery
"Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake."
The Parthian commander, Surena, bided his time, allowing Crassus’ own ambitious stupidity to do his work for him. Having read somewhere that getting flanked was bad, Crassus eschewed the advice of his subordinates and instead of advancing across a long, broad front, redeployed his infantry into a square, overlapping-shield formation known as a testudo ("tortoise"). Traditionally, the testudo was a great defense against cavalry charges, but as far as offensive use...well, not so much.
Nevertheless, the legionaries formed up their shield walls and advanced. When they came within sight of the Parthian host, they were initially cheered, for the enemy looked far weaker than they’d heard. There were only about 10,000 horsemen on the other side of the field, and judging by the ragged furs they were all wearing, there were none of the famously invincible cataphracts arrayed against them, only fast-but-killable horse archers.
Suckers. Once the Romans were inconveniently far from the last source of water they’d crossed, the Parthians unleashed a little psychological warfare. From Plutarch:
For the Parthians do not encourage themselves to war with cornets and trumpets, but with a kind of kettle-drum, which they strike all at once in various quarters. With these they make a dead, hollow noise, like the bellowing of beasts, mixed with sounds resembling thunder, having, it would seem, very correctly observed that of all our senses hearing most confounds and disorders us, and that the feelings excited through it most quickly disturb and most entirely overpower the understanding.
ibid.
The drumming went on for a while, and...
When they had sufficiently terrified the Romans with their noise, they threw off the covering of their armour, and shone like lightning in their breastplates and helmets of polished Margianian steel, and with their horses covered with brass and steel trappings.
ibid.
Caught in an easily-encircled formation, Crassus waited with his men for the onslaught of the heavy cavalry, which quickly came – with Surena boldly at its head. Accustomed to repelling this style of attack, the legions held their ground – but when the dust of the apparently-retreating cataphracts cleared, it became apparent to them that they were now in danger of being surrounded by both armored cavalrymen and deadly horse archers.
"Nine-tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pond, and that is the test of generals."
When you don’t do any research on your enemy, and have contempt for him as a barbarian anyway, you’re going to have trouble when he starts yanking out homegrown battle tactics on the field. The Parthians had fought plenty of infantry in their time, and though the Romans were the best foot soldiers around, the horsemen had developed means of fighting enemy infantry without exposing themselves to a whole lot of danger. It also didn’t hurt that Surena traveled with an enormous logistical apparatus:
When he traveled about the country on his own affairs, he was always accompanied by a baggage train of 1,000 dromedaries; 200 wagons carried his harem; 1,000 armored cavalry and still more light armed cavalry acted as his escort. The total number of his cavalry, his vassals, and his slaves came to at least 100,000 men.
Plutarch of Chaeronea, Life of Crassus; tr. John Dryden
The horse archers charged to just outside javelin range, firing arrows with enough force to pin arms to shields or run through two men at a time, then wheeled and galloped off as another wave of mounted archers approached. During this "galloping off" phase, the riders would deliver a last, "Parthian shot" by turning in their saddles and firing 180 degrees to their direction of travel; yet another tactic the Romans had neither seen nor developed a coutermeasure. A foray by a few light infantry skirmishers was quickly driven back to the marginal safety of the testudos, and Crassus began to realize that his only hope of victory might lay in his opponent eventually running out of ammunition.
That’s when he noticed the camels. Surena had converted his baggage train into a logistics column, and now the dromedaries plodded forward laden with bundles of arrows. Safely distant behind their own lines, they resupplied the horse archers between wave attacks, and so were able to keep up a constant series of missile assaults upon the Romans.
Weird Historical Sidenote: During their charges, the Parthians unfurled banners of silk, whose shimmering suppleness shocked and awed the Romans. It was likely the first time many –perhaps any – of them had seen silk in action, and the stories about those banners, as told by the few survivors who made it back to Europe, piqued the interest of the Roman commercial set and spurred increased trade along the Silk Road.
"Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation."
With his troops under unrelenting fire and increasingly in danger of being surrounded, Crassus ordered his son, Publius, to head up a troop surge. Publius gathered up a few cohorts of infantry and the Gallic cavalry, and headed off across the desert to where there enemy was feint-retreating in front of them. Drawn in by the classic ruse, Publius and his lightly-armored Gauls were soon cut off from their infantry support:
The horse thus pushing on, the infantry stayed a little behind, being exalted with hopes and joy, for they supposed they had already conquered, and now were only pursuing; till when they were gone too far, they perceived the deceit, for they that seemed to fly now turned again, and a great many fresh ones came on. Upon this they made a halt, for they doubted not but now the enemy would attack them, because they were so few. But they merely placed their cuirassiers to face the Romans, and with the rest of their horse rode about scouring the field, and thus stirring up the sand, they raised such a dust that the Romans could neither see nor speak to one another, and being driven in upon one another in one close body, they were thus hit and killed, dying, not by a quick and easy death, but with miserable pains and convulsions; for writhing upon the darts in their bodies, they broke them in their wounds, and when they would by force pluck out the barbed points, they caught the nerves and veins, so that they tore and tortured themselves. Many of them died thus, and those that survived were disabled for any service, and when Publius exhorted them to charge the cuirassiers, they showed him their hands nailed to their shields, and their feet stuck to the ground, so that they could neither fly nor fight.
Canadian Association of Ancient and Mediaeval Archery
Publius tried to make a fight of it (the Gauls resorted to slipping underneath enemy horses and slicing their bellies open) but in the end he found himself surrounded on a small hillock with a few surviving members of his sally force. Here he continued the theme of bad tactical decision-making:
tying their horses to one another, and placing them in the midst, and joining all their shields together before them, they thought they might make some defence against the barbarians. But it fell out quite contrary, for when they were drawn up in a plain, the front in some measure secured those that were behind; but when they were upon the hill, one being of necessity higher up than another, none were in shelter, but all alike stood equally exposed, bewailing their inglorious and useless fate.
ibid.
Succumbing finally to the hopelessness of it all, he ordered a servant to kill him, and so died before the rest of his band was either killed or captured. Upon discovering the body of Crassus’ son, the Parthians sliced off his head, mounted it on a spear, and rode directly for the now-advancing Roman lines.
"All celebrated people lose dignity upon closer view."
The failure of his surge idea became apparent to Crassus when he saw his son’s head being displayed as a trophy before his army – all interest in warfare, glory, and the welfare of his men left him as the magnitude of his error became clear. He tried to give a little speech about revenge, but...
While Crassus thus spoke exhorting them, he saw but few that gave much heed to him, and when he ordered them to shout for battle, he could no longer mistake the despondency of his army, which made but a faint and unsteady noise, while the shout of the enemy was clear and bold.
Plutarch of Chaeronea, Life of Crassus; tr. John Dryden
The Parthians announced they’d give Crassus one night to mourn his son, and left the despondent triumvir to be consoled by his advisors and generals, whose careers (and now very lives) depended on surviving the debacle created by their leader’s poor judgment. Plutarch reports:
But the Romans had a sad night of it; for neither taking care for the burial of their dead, nor the cure of the wounded, nor the groans of the expiring, every one bewailed his own fate. For there was no means of escaping, whether they should stay for the light, or venture to retreat into the vast desert in the dark.
ibid.
With self-preservation being what it is – the most important of the driving forces in the lives of men like Crassus and G.W. Bush – Crassus allowed himself to be talked into a dead-of-night cut-and-run. Regrettably, the redeployment would not involve the wounded, who were to be left to the fates and the vultures. This did not sit well with the men who were literally pinned to the desert floor by three-foot-long, barbed arrows:
...before long, when the disabled men found they were left behind, strange confusion and disorder, with an outcry and lamentation, seized the camp, and a trembling and dread presently fell upon them, as if the enemy were at their heels...The Parthians, although they perceived their dislodgment in the night, yet did not pursue them, but as soon as it was day, they came upon those that were left in the camp, and put no less than four thousand to the sword and with their light horse picked up a great many stragglers.
ibid.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Crassus skulked back to the town of Carrhae, where he bought some time by agreeing to parlay with the Parthians on what they promised would be pretty favorable terms. He then cut yet another deal with a loudmouthed traitor, and snuck out of the town that night with several hundred men and under the withering gaze of most of the townsfolk. A few hours later, another column of Romans marched out, with the purpose of trying to rescue their general from his own stupidity.
Crassus’ proclivity for trusting the wrong people reared its ugly head once again that night, for the guide led him into rough, broken terrain that slowed his escape to a snail’s pace. Morning found Crassus trapped on a hill, with much of the Parthian host arrayed on the plain before him, and the way-too-small relief column only now approaching.
At this moment the Suren rode forward to offer a parley over terms of peace and forgive their lives. It is not clear whether Crassus accepted voluntarily, or under pressure from his men. But he and Octavius, with a small group, went down to meet the Iranians, who mounted Crassus upon a horse, to take him away for the signing of the treaty. Octavius, by mistake suspected a foul play, seized the bridle of the horse, and, when a scuffle broke out, drew his sword. In the melee that followed, all the Romans in the party were slain; and their leaderless troops either surrendered or scattered, though very few were successful in making good their escape.
cais-soas.com
Crassus’ head was apparently severed (some reports say molten gold was poured down the mouth), and was delivered to the King of Kings – who promptly used it in a Bacchanal ceremony, debasing even further a head whose post-Carrhae journey had heard the taunting songs of Seleucid singing women and seen the hated barbarians forcing his captured lieutenants to dress in women’s clothing.
All tolled, Roman losses are estimated at around 20,000 killed, and 10,000 captured and enslaved. Parthian casualties are described as "light."
Epilogue
Without a third, moderating force to balance the rivalry of Pompey and Caesar, Rome was virtually assured of going through a factional civil war; it did, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon a few years later. In a sense, then, the blunders of Crassus at Carrhae led directly to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire...
Surena was a bit too successful for his own good: the king had him executed shortly after Carrhae. The Romans, bunged up with their own internal wars, didn’t come around again for another thirty years, and it was an entire generation later (20 CE) that Augustus finally managed to negotiate the return of the battle standards that had fallen into Parthian hands at Carrhae. This was such a big deal to Roman honor that an Arch was constructed to honor Augutus’ achievement.
The Roman Army, for which Carrhae was the worst defeat since Hannibal handed their asses to them at Cannae in 216 BCE (about the same span of time as the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the present), never really did figure out a good way of confronting heavy horse units on open ground. Fortunately for them, not many of their enemies could mass cavalry in numbers great enough to be a threat, but when they faced such foes - as at Adrianople in 378 CE - they tended not to fare as well as they did against infantry alone.
The Parthian Empire continued to tangle with the Romans for the next two and a half centuries, but despite their advantages in the horse department, they were never able to make much headway in taking lands from the legions. In large part, this was because they weren’t much good at besieging cities – much more the hit-and-run type – while the decentralized nature of their politics allowed for a lot of ebb-and-flow on the Roman border.
Later Roman commanders did a better job of picking the ground on which fights would occur, which somewhat blunted the enemy’s cavalry, and different emperors did manage to capture parts of western Parthia, though these were generally only temporary gains - Hadrian lost what Trajan captured - or turned into bigger hassles than they were worth (after northern Mesopotamia was captured by Marcus Aurelius, it turned into a money pit when he found he could not safely withdraw the garrisons he’d set up during the conquest).
Parthia itself decayed during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, a victim of its own decentralized nature. Over time, the power of regional kings came to rival that of the King of Kings, and when Septimius Severus (counterattacking after yet another declaration of war upon Rome) thoroughly sacked Ctesiphon in 198 CE, the empire was brought to its knees. By the 220’s, regional kings were asserting their independence, and when one of them – the Persian vassal king Ardasir – revolted outright, the result was the overthrow of the Parthians and the establishment of the Sassanid Dynasty, which went on to control Iran and most of modern Iraq until the arrival of Islam around 650 CE.
And perhaps the oddest epilogue of all:
Seventeen years later another small event was recorded, but its significance, too, went unnoticed by historians for centuries. In 36 B.C. a Chinese force attacked and captured a Central Asian town, Li-chien, some 3,700 miles east of Rome. It had been held by another band of barbarians, the Huns, but in the town the Chinese captured 145 foreign mercenary soldiers. There were three peculiar aspects to this town. The name, Li-chien, was one of the Chinese names later applied to the Roman Empire. It was protected by wooden stockades, a Roman technique. Its soldiers employed the testudo formation of overlapping shields.
silk-road.com
Weird Historical Sidenote: If these were indeed Roman soldiers, then the event described above likely represents the first direct contact between the people of Rome and Han China.
"History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
The Decider is not the only empire-minded dumbass to advocate for a surge of troops in Iraq; in fact, empire-minded dumbasses have been doing exactly that for thousands of years. A handful of non-dumbasses have been successful – Ashurbanipal, Alexander, and the Mongol Horde spring to mind – but the vast majority have bungled in some way or another. In joining that latter list, George W. Bush finds himself in the company of some otherwise pretty august personages – one which includes triumvirs of Rome and CB, DSOs of the British Empire.
Invading Iraq with underwhelming numbers and tactics not suited for the battle at hand is a stupid decision, whether you’re talking about 20,000 American soldiers or 30,000 Roman legionaries - the men who followed Crassus learned that the hard way. But you know our History Major Chief Executive: he never met an historical maxim he wouldn’t mockingly disparage. "Never fight a land war in Asia," says the Yale professor, only to smile when the future Preznit replies, "Hell, I’ll fight two at the same time!"
Uber-interested speleohistorians can find entrances to the Cave of the Moonbat at Daily Kos, Progressive Historians, Never In Our Names, and The Impeach Project