Battle of Carrhae (53 BC): Parthia Destroys Crassus's Army

The Battle of Carrhae was fought in late spring 53 BC near the town of Carrhae, modern Harran in south-eastern Turkey, between a Roman army under Marcus Licinius Crassus and a Parthian force led by the general known as Surena. Mounted archers and heavily armoured cavalry surrounded and destroyed the slow-moving legions, and Crassus himself was killed during a parley soon afterwards. It was one of the worst defeats in Roman history and set the Euphrates as the frontier between Rome and Parthia for generations.

Background: Rome meets Parthia

By the middle of the 1st century BC, Rome had absorbed most of the eastern Mediterranean. Pompey’s campaigns of the 60s BC had ended the Seleucid kingdom and turned Syria into a Roman province, bringing Rome face to face with the Parthian Empire across the Euphrates.

Parthia was ruled by the Arsacid dynasty, founded two centuries earlier (see Arsaces I and the Founding of the Parthian Empire). It controlled the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia, including rich cities such as Seleucia on the Tigris. Relations with Rome had been cautious rather than hostile, and earlier agreements had treated the Euphrates as a rough boundary.

In the 50s BC Parthia was weakened by a dynastic war between two brothers, Orodes II and Mithridates IV. Orodes won, largely thanks to his leading noble commander, the Surena, who recaptured Seleucia for him. Mithridates was executed around 54 BC. To ambitious Romans, Parthia looked divided and vulnerable.

Causes: the ambition of Crassus

Marcus Licinius Crassus was perhaps the richest man in Rome. With Pompey and Julius Caesar he formed the informal political alliance known as the First Triumvirate, which dominated Roman politics from 60 BC.

Crassus had crushed the slave revolt of Spartacus in 71 BC, but he lacked the great foreign conquests of his partners. Pompey had triumphed in the East, and Caesar was winning fame in Gaul. A war against Parthia promised Crassus both glory and enormous wealth.

In 55 BC Crassus and Pompey were consuls together. A law proposed by the tribune Gaius Trebonius gave Crassus the province of Syria for five years. Although the Senate never declared war on Parthia, it was widely understood that he intended to invade. Some tribunes opposed the plan, and one, Gaius Ateius Capito, is said to have publicly cursed Crassus as he left Rome in November 55 BC.

The campaign of 54–53 BC

Crassus reached Syria in 54 BC. That year he crossed the Euphrates, occupied several towns in northern Mesopotamia and left garrisons in them, but then withdrew to Syria for the winter. Ancient writers criticised the delay, which gave the Parthians time to prepare. During the winter he also raised money, and Josephus records that he took treasure from the Temple in Jerusalem.

In spring 53 BC Crassus set out again with seven legions, about 4,000 cavalry and about 4,000 light troops, a total usually estimated at 40,000 to 45,000 men. His cavalry included about 1,000 Gallic horsemen sent by Caesar and led by Crassus’s son Publius, who had served with distinction in Gaul.

The Armenian king Artavasdes II offered to support him if he advanced through the hills of Armenia, where Parthian cavalry would be less effective. Crassus chose instead the direct route across the open plains of northern Mesopotamia. His quaestor, Gaius Cassius Longinus, reportedly urged him to keep close to the Euphrates for supplies. According to Plutarch, an Arab chieftain named Ariamnes, secretly working for the Parthians, led the army away from the river into dry, open country.

The Parthian king Orodes divided his forces. He invaded Armenia himself with the main army, preventing Artavasdes from helping Rome. He left the defence of Mesopotamia to Surena with a smaller, all-cavalry force.

The battle

Surena’s army is usually estimated at about 10,000 horsemen. Around 1,000 were cataphracts, riders and horses clad in armour of iron and bronze scales who charged with long lances. The rest were lightly armoured horse archers using powerful composite bows. Surena had also arranged a train of about 1,000 camels carrying spare arrows, a crucial piece of planning.

The armies met on the plain south of Carrhae, near the Balikh river. Plutarch describes the Parthians first hiding their armour under cloaks, then revealing it suddenly amid the thunder of drums, to unnerve the Romans. The cataphracts threatened a charge, and Crassus formed his men into a large hollow square.

This was exactly what the horse archers wanted. They rode around the dense formation and shot volley after volley into it. Roman shields and armour could not stop all the arrows, and every time the legionaries advanced, the archers withdrew while still shooting. The Romans hoped the Parthians would run out of arrows, but the camel train kept them supplied.

The death of Publius Crassus

To break the pressure, Crassus sent his son Publius forward with about 1,300 cavalry, 500 archers and 8 cohorts of infantry. The Parthians fell back as if in flight, drawing Publius away from the main army. Then they turned on his detachment, surrounded it, and destroyed it with arrows and lance charges.

Publius was killed, or according to some accounts took his own life to avoid capture. The Parthians carried his head on a spear before the Roman lines, a blow that shattered morale.

Retreat and the end of Crassus

The fighting went on until nightfall. In the darkness the surviving Romans abandoned the battlefield and fell back to Carrhae, leaving behind about 4,000 wounded men, who were killed by the Parthians the next morning.

Carrhae could not be held for long. Crassus tried to slip away by night towards the Armenian hills, but his guide led his column astray. Cassius escaped to Syria with about 500 cavalry, and a legate named Octavius reached high ground with some 5,000 men.

Surena offered to negotiate. Crassus was reluctant, but his exhausted soldiers threatened mutiny if he refused. At the meeting a quarrel broke out over a horse offered to Crassus, fighting started, and Crassus and his officers were killed. Plutarch names a Parthian called Pomaxathres as the man who struck him down.

Key people

• Marcus Licinius Crassus (c. 115–53 BC): Roman general and politician, member of the First Triumvirate.
• Surena: Parthian commander from the powerful Suren family; his personal name is not recorded. According to Plutarch he was not yet 30, and he is remembered as one of the most gifted generals of antiquity.
• Publius Licinius Crassus: son of Crassus and former officer of Caesar in Gaul, killed leading the cavalry.
• Gaius Cassius Longinus: Crassus’s quaestor, who escaped and later defended Syria. He was one of the leaders of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
• Orodes II: king of Parthia (reigned c. 57–37 BC).
• Artavasdes II: king of Armenia, who switched to the Parthian side after the battle.

By the numbers

Consequences

Carrhae was a disaster on a scale few Romans had imagined. Most of an entire provincial army was gone, its standards in Parthian hands. According to Plutarch, the head of Crassus was taken to the Armenian court at Artashat, where Orodes was celebrating a marriage alliance with Artavasdes, and was used as a prop during a performance of Euripides’ play The Bacchae.

Pliny the Elder records that Roman prisoners were settled at Margiana, around the oasis of Merv in modern Turkmenistan, on the far eastern edge of the Parthian empire.

Surena did not long enjoy his triumph. Orodes, apparently jealous of his general’s prestige, had him put to death soon afterwards.

The Parthians raided Syria in 52 and 51 BC, but Cassius organised the defence and ambushed a Parthian force near Antigonea. The Euphrates frontier held.

In Rome the death of Crassus removed the third partner who had balanced Pompey and Caesar. Within four years, the rivalry between the two remaining men led to Caesar crossing the Rubicon and to civil war.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Parthians poured molten gold down Crassus’s throat. This story appears in Cassius Dio, writing more than 250 years later, as a symbolic punishment for greed. Plutarch, the fullest source, does not mention it, and it is generally regarded as legend.

Myth: Carrhae survivors founded a Roman town in China. In the 1950s the historian Homer Dubs suggested that Roman prisoners ended up at Liqian in Gansu. The idea attracts tourists and media attention, but there is no reliable archaeological or genetic evidence for it.

Myth: the Romans first saw silk at Carrhae. The later writer Florus mentions silk-embroidered Parthian banners, which inspired this claim. It is uncertain, and silk was probably already known in Rome by then.

Fact: logistics decided the battle. Horse archers alone would eventually have run out of arrows. Surena’s camel supply train allowed sustained shooting for a whole day.

Legacy

Carrhae shaped Roman policy in the East for centuries. Caesar was planning a great Parthian war when he was murdered. Mark Antony’s own invasion in 36 BC also ended in a costly retreat.

Augustus chose diplomacy instead. In 20 BC the Parthian king Phraates IV returned the captured standards and surviving prisoners. Augustus presented the deal as a triumph: it was celebrated on coins and on the breastplate of the famous statue known as the Augustus of Prima Porta.

Militarily, the battle showed how mobile cavalry armed with bows could defeat heavy infantry on open ground. Later Roman armies added more cavalry and archers, and the armoured cataphract became a model that Rome itself eventually adopted.

The Roman-Parthian rivalry continued until the Parthians were overthrown by the Sasanians in AD 224. Their successors inherited the same frontier and the same long struggle with Rome.

Timeline

• 60 BC: Crassus, Pompey and Caesar form the First Triumvirate.
• 55 BC: Crassus and Pompey are consuls; Crassus receives Syria for five years.
• 55 BC, November: Crassus leaves Rome for the East.
• 54 BC: Crassus crosses the Euphrates, garrisons towns in Mesopotamia and winters in Syria.
• 53 BC, spring: The Roman army marches into Mesopotamia; Orodes invades Armenia.
• 53 BC, May or June: Battle of Carrhae; Publius Crassus is killed and the army retreats to Carrhae.
• 53 BC, May or June: Crassus is killed at a parley with Surena a few days after the battle.
• 51 BC: Cassius defeats a Parthian raiding force in Syria.
• 20 BC: Augustus recovers the lost standards by agreement with Phraates IV.

Why it matters

Carrhae ended the career and life of one of Rome’s most powerful men, helped push the Republic towards civil war, and proved that Rome was not invincible in the East. It fixed the Euphrates as a lasting frontier between two great empires and made Parthia Rome’s most respected rival.