The Parthians made to charge, but instead they surrounded the Roman square. Crassus ordered his light troops to attack, but the Parthians rode away, shooting arrows as they fled. Crassus ordered his son Publius to attack with a detachment. The Parthians wheeled about and rode off. Publius pursued, but after ‘fleeing’ for a distance, the ‘fugitives’ were joined by more troops. The Romans halted, to find cataphracts in their front and horse archers riding around on all sides. Publius then charged the cataphracts. It was an unequal struggle. The survivors retreated to a hillock, shot up by the horse archers, and then cut down by the cataphracts. Publius committed suicide. Seeing his head on a spearpoint, Crassus’ men lost heart. The Parthians returned to the attack, this time adding charges by their cataphracts to the arrows of their horse archers. Fighting in this manner continued until nightfall, when the Romans were at last able to retreat, the Parthians being ill-equipped to fight at night.
#
These Parthians were in origin the Parni, a tribe of the semi-nomadic Dahae who lived north of Hyrcania and provided the Achaemenid Persians with horse archers. By the middle of the first century BC, they had taken control of Persia and Mesopotamia, establishing themselves as a landowning military aristocracy. Its king, of the Arsacid line, was the feudal superior of his nobles, including the seven great Pahlavi families that dominated entire regions. The Parthians developed an all-cavalry army, the nobles being cataphracts, their retainers horse archers. Having large grazing lands, the Parthians were able to adopt the steppe nomad practice of bringing along herds of horses as re-mounts, giving their armies excellent strategic mobility.
The Parthians had come into contact with the Romans during the latter’s conquest of Anatolia and Armenia during the first half of the first century BC. Relations were at first good, but soon soured due to high-handed Roman behaviour. It was not long before the Romans were tempted to intervene in Parthian affairs, and in 54 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus took command of the province of Syria with the goal of invading Parthia. Crassus had no casus belli; he simply needed military victories to cement his family’s political position in Rome. He was accompanied on the campaign by his son Publius, who had served with Caesar in Gaul, conquering Aquitania. He brought 1000 crack Gallic horse to Syria, where he was one of his father’s chief officers.
By the autumn of 54 BC, Crassus was ready to lead his seven Roman legions on campaign. He crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma and conquered Parthian Mesopotamia as far as the river Balissos (modern Balikh), taking Carrhae (modern Harran), Zenodotium, Nicephorium, Ichnae and probably Batnae. The Parthians were currently distracted by a civil war, and the local satrap, Sillaces, was no opposition. Crassus left 7000 infantry and 1000 cavalry to garrison the cities and returned to Syria for the winter. The Parthians harassed the cities during the winter, but recaptured none of them. In the next year’s campaign, Crassus aimed to drive into Mesopotamia. Artavasdes, king of Armenia, urged Crassus to invade Parthia through his territory, where he would enjoy the shelter of the hilly country against the Parthian cavalry, and have the assistance of 10,000 Armenian cataphracts. Because he had left garrisons in northwestern Mesopotamia, Crassus felt he had to return to relieve them. He nevertheless expected Artavasdes and his cavalry to join him there.
Gaius Cassius Longinus, another of Crassus’ commanders (and one of the future assassins of Julius Caesar), advised him to proceed down the Euphrates, thus ensuring that he always had the river as a supply route and flank guard. Instead, Crassus crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma. He followed a caravan trail shown him by Abgar, the Roman client king of Edessa, and set out in pursuit of what he thought was a retreating Parthian army. He and his men came to, and crossed, the stream of the Balissos – not a strong current but still flowing in May. His army endured a forced march throughout the day and then had to prepare for an encounter with the Parthian army somewhere south of Carrhae.
The Parthian troops came from the personal following of the head of one of the seven great Pahlavi clans, the Surenas, who ruled Seistan as their fief. We do not know his name, the Greeks and Romans calling him Surena; we do know he was not yet 30 years old, but already the second most powerful man in the kingdom and a noted warrior. He was accon1panied by a train of 10,000 people, including servants, concubines and the drivers of 1000 camels, but also, more importantly, 1000 cataphract lancers and a larger number of horse archers, perhaps as many as 6000. The local satrap, Sillaces, and his following were also present. Most of the Parthian Army had followed the king, Orodes, into Armenia instead; Crassus would receive no help from Artavasdes.
When word reached Crassus that the enemy was ahead, he first followed Cassius’ advice and formed his army in one long, thin line with his cavalry stationed on both flanks, in order to keep the Parthians from getting around him easily. But then he changed his mind, formed his army into a square and advanced. As the Greek biographer Plutarch describes it, the square had 12 cohorts of 500 legionaries on each side, each cohort having a squadron of cavalry stationed with it to aid in local counterattacks. Since Crassus had 7 legions, 4000 cavalry and 4000 light troops, there should have been 70 cohorts present, but 14 of them had probably been left in the Mesopotamian garrisons the year before, while the remaining 8 cohorts were probably kept within the square as a reserve, along with the light troops and Publius’ 1000 Gallic horse. The other 3000 cavalry were divided into the support squadrons for the cohorts, and would have numbered about 60 men each.
Although Crassus had not led an army since 70 BC, when he played a major role in the defeat of Spartacus, he did have reason to feel confident. The Romans had encountered cataphracts and horse archers on a number of occasions in the past 1SO years, and had emerged triumphant. That these victories had involved large infantry armies and particular terrains would not have seemed important to a Roman. Moreover, the oncoming Parthians appeared few and weak, for Surena had deployed his men in column so that only the head of the force showed, and ordered his cataphracts to cover their armour with skins and robes.
When they neared the Romans, however, Surena gave a signal. His musicians sounded their great kettle drums, and his cataphracts threw off their coverings to reveal gleaming bronze and steel. The Parthians then made to charge the 112 Romans, but seeing the surprise had not noticeably shaken the enemy’s composure, they broke ranks and seemed to disperse. Before Crassus realized what was happening, they had ridden around and surrounded the legionary square. He ordered his light-armed troops to charge, only to see them driven back into the square by a shower of arrows. Plutarch wrote:
‘The Parthians, taking position at a distance from each other, began to fire their arrows from all sides at once, not with accurate fire (for the close-packed ranks of the Romans would not allow even someone who wished to do so to miss his man), but giving strong and violent impacts from bows that were strong, large, and so very curved that they could send off missiles with great force.’
By this point composite bows had ‘ear laths’ stiff, straight tips made of bone, which acted as levers to increase the force of the bow beyond that of the Scythian model. Plutarch says their arrows fractured armour and tore their way through every covering. If they kept their ranks, the Romans were wounded in great numbers, while if they charged and tried to come to close quarters, the Parthians rode away and turned in the saddle to shoot as they fled, making the proverbial ‘Parthian shot’.
As long as they could hope the enemy would run out of arrows and then depart, or fight at close quarters, the Romans held out and made futile local counterattacks. But when they saw that many of Surena’s camels were laden with arrows, from which the Parthians took a fresh supply, it became clear there would be no end to the ordeal. Crassus then sent messages to his son, in command of the right wing, and ordered him to force an engagement, since the enemy was especially numerous on that side and threatened an encirclement. Publius accordingly took his 1000 Gallic horse, 300 other cavalry, 500 archers and the 8 cohorts nearest him (their places presumably taken by the reserve cohorts) and led them all to the charge. This had worked for Alexander at Gaugamela, where the Persians had fought as a large, formed army. Here the Parthians wheeled about and rode off. Shouting that they did not stand their ground, Publius pursued. But after ‘fleeing’ for a long distance, the seeming fugitives wheeled back about and were joined by additional troops. The Romans halted, to find cataphracts in their front and horse archers riding around on all sides in loose formation, firing incessantly and raising so much dust that the Romans could barely see. Victims of the ancient steppe nomad tactic of the feigned retreat, many of the legionaries were killed and most of the rest incapacitated.
Publius then led his cavalry in a vigorous charge against the cataphracts. It was an unequal struggle, Publius’ men ’striking with small, weak spears against breastplates of rawhide and steel, but the Gauls’ lightly equipped and unprotected bodies being struck by kontoi’, as Plutarch says. Nevertheless the Gauls worked wonders:
‘ …for they laid ahold of the kontoi, and grappling with the men pulled them from their horses, although it was hard to move them owing to the great weight of their armour. Many of them got off their own horses and, crawling under those of the enemy, stabbed them in the belly; these would rear up in their anguish and die trampling upon their riders and enemies mixed together. But the Gauls suffered most of all from the heat and thirst, to which they were unaccustomed, and most of their horses were destroyed by being driven against the kontoi of the enemy.’
The survivors were forced back upon the legionaries, taking with them a badly wounded Publius. They all retreated to a hillock, only to be shot up by the horse archers, then charged by the cataphracts. Only 500 men survived to be taken prisoner. Publius committed suicide, as did the other Roman notables present.
Meanwhile, Crassus had started to move forward, coming to his son’s aid, but presently he and his army beheld Publius’ head being carried forward on spearpoint by the Parthians. Although Crassus put on a brave front, his men lost heart. Now the Parthians returned to the attack, this time adding the charges of their cataphracts to the arrows of their horse archers. Some men dared to attack the cataphracts, but did little damage and were quickly killed, for the kontoi struck with such force, Plutarch claims, that they could often penetrate two men’s bodies at once. Fighting in this manner continued until nightfall.
Retreat and Slaughter
The rest of the story may be summed up quickly. The Romans retreated by night, when the Parthians were ill-equipped to fight, leaving behind some 4000 wounded to be slaughtered by the enemy. Most of the Roman survivors made it to Carrhae, although four cohorts lost their way and were destroyed. Surena moved up to blockade the city, and the Romans tried to withdraw, again by night. Many escaped, over 10,000 in all, but Crassus was intercepted and killed, his head being carried to Armenia by Sillaces as a present for the king, who had just reached an agreement with Artavasdes. The two monarchs, enjoying a production of Euripides’ Bacchae at a banquet, saw Crassus’ head used as a prop in the play. As many as 20,000 other Romans met their ends in the desert, with 10,000 others being captured and enslaved.
#
Fortunately for the Romans, the all-cavalry Parthian armies were poor at siege warfare, and had a difficult time operating in forests and mountainous terrain, so their counter-invasions of Syria were easily repulsed and the war petered out. Over the decades, the Romans learned to cope with the Parthians. Roman shield-bearing cavalry could harass cataphracts with javelins while using their greater speed and agility to evade a countercharge, and chase away horse archers if there were not enough cataphracts to protect them. At short range, horse archers were at a disadvantage, lacking the shields western cavalrymen carried to protect themselves against missiles. A short, controlled charge could keep the horse archers out of effective range, but as the fate of Publius showed, it did not do to pursue the enemy too far. In addition, since a horse that has been ridden all day must rest and graze at night, Parthian camps were vulnerable to Roman night attacks, making close blockades of Roman cities dangerous for the Parthians and causing them to camp far from enemy forces. It was also useful to increase the number of missile-armed infantry in the army, particularly slingers, whose heavy stones and lead shot could injure even cataphracts. Crassus had too few light troops, and too many of them were javelin-throwers, to judge from the charge he ordered. The legionary square remained in use, with caltrops thrown down to maim the cataphracts’ horses. Finally, the Romans raised their own alae of horse archers, adding cataphracts in the third century AD.
