PLUTARCH’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF CARRHÆ

[1Sidenote: [53 B.C.]]

2The enemies seemed not to the Romans at the first to be so great a number, neither so bravely armed as they thought they had been. For, concerning their great number, Surenas had of purpose hid them, with certain troops he sent before; and to hide their bright armours he had cast cloaks and beasts’ skins upon them, but when both the armies approached near the one to the other, and that the sign to give charge was lift up in the air: first they filled the field with a dreadful noise to hear. For the Parthians do not encourage their men to fight with the sound of a horn, neither with trumpets nor hautboys, but with great kettle-drums hollow within, and about them they hang little bells and copper rings, and with them they all make a noise everywhere together, and it is like a dead sound, mingled as it were with the braying or bellowing of a wild beast, and a fearful noise as if it thundered, knowing that hearing is one of the senses that soonest moves the heart and spirit of any man, and makes him soonest beside himself.

3The Romans being put in fear with this dead sound, the Parthians straight threw the clothes and coverings from them that hid their armour, and then showed their bright helmets and cuirasses of Margian tempered steel, that glared like fire, and their horses barbed with steel and copper. The bowmen drew a great strength, and had big strong bows, which sent the arrows from them with a wonderful force. The Romans by means of these bows were in hard state. For if they kept their ranks, they were grievously wounded: again if they left them, and sought to run upon the Parthians to fight at hand with them, they saw they could do them but little hurt, and yet were very likely to take the greater harm themselves. For, as fast as the Romans came upon them, so fast did the Parthians fly from them, and yet in flying continued still their shooting: which no nation but the Scythians could better do than they, being a matter indeed most greatly to their advantage. For by their flight they best did save themselves, and fighting still they thereby shunned the shame that their flying would have brought down upon them.

4The Romans still defended themselves, and held it out, so long as they had any hope that the Parthians would leave fighting, when they had spent their arrows or would join battle with them. But after they understood that there were a great number of camels laden with quivers full of arrows, where the first that had bestowed their arrows fetched about to take new quivers: then Crassus, seeing no end of their shot, began to faint, and sent to Publius his son, willing him in any case to charge with desperate power upon the enemies, and to give an onset, before they were compassed in on every side.

5But they, seeing him coming, turned straight their horse and fled. Publius Crassus seeing them fly, cried out, “These men will not abide us,” and so spurred on for life after them. They thought all had been won, and that there was no more to do, but to follow the chase: till they were gone far from the army, and then they found the deceit. For the horsemen that fled before them suddenly turned again, and a number of others besides came and set upon them. Whereupon the Romans halted, thinking that the enemies, perceiving they were so few, would come and fight with them hand to hand. Howbeit they set out against them their men at arms with their barbed horse, and made their light horsemen wheel round about them, keeping no order at all: who galloping up and down the plain, whirled up the sand hills from the bottom with their horses’ feet, which raised such a wonderful cloud of dust, that the Romans could scarce see or speak one to another.

6For they, being shut up into a little room, and standing close one to another, were sore wounded with the Parthians’ arrows, and died of a cruel lingering death, crying out for anguish and pain they felt: and turning and tormenting themselves upon the sand, they brake the arrows sticking in them. Again, striving by force to pluck out the forked arrow heads, that had pierced far into their bodies through their veins and sinews: thereby they opened their wounds wider, and so cast themselves away. Many of them died thus miserably martyred: and such as died not, were not able to defend themselves.

7Then when Publius Crassus prayed and besought them to charge the men at arms with their barbed horse, they showed him their hands fast nailed to their targets with arrows, and their feet likewise shot through and nailed to the ground: so as they could neither fly nor yet defend themselves. Thereupon himself encouraging his horsemen, went and gave a charge, and did valiantly set upon the enemies, but it was with too great disadvantage, both for offence and also for defence. For himself and his men with weak and light staves brake upon them that were armed with cuirasses of steel, or stiff leathern jackets. And the Parthians in contrary manner with mighty strong pikes gave charge upon these Gauls, which were either unarmed or else but lightly armed.

8[Illustration: A PARTHIAN PEASANT]

9Yet those were they in whom Crassus most trusted, having done wonderful feats of war with them. For they received the Parthians’ pikes in their hands, and took them about their middles, and threw them off their horse, where they lay on the ground, and could not stir for the weight of their harness: and there were divers of them also that, lighting from their horse, lay under their enemies’ horses’ bellies, and thrust their swords into them. Their horse flinging and bounding in the air for very pain threw their masters under feet, and the enemies one upon another, and in the end fell dead among them. Moreover, extreme heat and thirst did marvellously cumber the Gauls, who were used to abide neither: and the most part of their horse were slain, charging with all their power upon the men at arms of the Parthians, and so ran themselves in upon the points of their pikes.

10At length, they were driven to retire towards their footmen, and Publius Crassus among them, who was very ill by reason of the wounds he had received. And seeing a sand hill by chance not far from them, they went thither, and setting their horse in the midst of it, compassed it round with their targets, thinking by this means to cover and defend themselves the better from the barbarous people: howbeit they found it contrary. For they that were behind, standing higher, could by no means save themselves, but were all hurt alike, as well the one as the other, bewailing their own misery and misfortune, that must needs die without revenge or declaration of their valiancy. There were two Grecians who counselled P. Crassus to steal away with them.

11But Publius answered them, that there was no death so cruel as could make him forsake them that died for his sake. When he had so said, wishing them to save themselves, he embraced them, and took his leave of them: and being very sore hurt with the shot of an arrow through one of his hands, commanded one of his gentlemen to thrust him through with a sword, and so turned his side to him for the purpose. It is reported Censorinus did the like. But Megabacchus slew himself with his own hands, and so did the most part of the gentlemen that were of that company.

12And for those that were left alive, the Parthians got up the sand hill, and fighting with them, thrust them through with their spears and pikes, and took but five hundred prisoners. After that, they struck off Publius Crassus’ head, and thereupon returned straight to set upon his father Crassus, who was then in this state. Crassus the father, after he had willed his son to charge the enemies, retired the best he could by a hill’s side, looking ever that his son would not be long before he returned from the chase. But Publius seeing himself in danger, had sent divers messengers to his father, to advertise him of his distress, whom the Parthians intercepted and slew by the way: and the last messengers he sent, escaping very hardly, brought Crassus news that his son was but cast away, if he did not presently aid him, and that with a great power. These news were grievous to Crassus in two respects: first for the fear he had, seeing himself in danger to lose all; and secondly for the vehement desire he had to go to his son’s help. Thus he saw in reason all would come to nought, and in fine determined to go with all his power to the rescue of his son.

13But in the meantime the enemies were returned from his son’s overthrow, with a more dreadful noise and cry of victory than ever before: and thereupon their deadly sounding drums filled the air with their wonderful noise. The Romans then looked straight for a hot alarm. But the Parthians that brought Publius Crassus’ head upon the point of a lance, coming near to the Romans, showed them his head, and asked them in derision if they knew what house he was of, and who were his parents: for it was not likely (said they) that so noble and valiant a young man should be the son of so cowardly a father as Crassus.

14The sight of Publius Crassus’ head killed the Romans’ hearts more than any other danger they had been in at any time in all the battle. For it did not set their hearts on fire as it should have done with anger and desire of revenge: but far otherwise, made them quake for fear, and struck them stark dead to behold it. Yet Crassus’ self showed greater courage in this misfortune than he before had done in all the war beside. For riding by every band he cried out aloud: “Our ancestors in old time lost a thousand ships, yea in Italy divers armies and chieftains for the conquest of Sicilia: yet for all the loss of them, at the length they were victorious over them by whom they were before vanquished. For the empire of Rome came not to that greatness it now is at by good fortune only, but by patience and constant suffering of trouble and adversity, never yielding or giving place unto any danger.”

15Crassus, using these persuasions to encourage his soldiers for resolution, found that all his words wrought none effect: but contrarily, after he had commanded them to give the shout of battle, he plainly saw their hearts were done, for their shout rose but faint, and not all alike. The Parthians on the other side, their shout was great, and lustily they rang it out. Now when they came to join, the Parthians’ archers on horseback compassing in the Romans upon the wings shot an infinite number of arrows at their sides. But their men at arms, giving charge upon the front of the Romans, battled with their great lances, compelled them to draw into a narrow room, a few excepted, that valiantly and in desperate manner ran in among them, as men rather desiring so to die than to be slain with their arrows, where they could do the Parthians almost no hurt at all. So were they soon despatched, with the great lances that ran them through, head, wood, and all, with such a force that oftentimes they ran through two at once.

16Thus when they had fought the whole day, night drew on, and made them retire, saying they would give Crassus that night’s respite, to lament and bewail his son’s death. So the Parthians, camping hard by the Romans, were in very good hope to overthrow him the next morning. The Romans on the other side had a marvellous ill night, making no reckoning to bury their dead, nor to dress their wounded men, that died in miserable pain; but every man bewailed his hard fortune, when they saw not one of them could escape, if they tarried till the morning. But Crassus went aside without light, and laid him down with his head covered, because he would see no man, showing thereby the common sort an example of unstable fortune; and the wise men, a good learning to know the fruits of ill counsel and vain ambition, that had so much blinded him that he could not be content to command so many thousands of men, but thought (as a man would say) himself the meanest of all, and one that possessed nothing, because he was accounted inferior unto two persons only, Pompey and Cæsar.

17Notwithstanding, Octavius, one of his chieftains, and Cassius the treasurer, seeing him so overcome with sorrow and out of heart that he had no life nor spirit in him, they themselves called the captains and centurions together, and sat in council for their departure, and so agreed that there was no longer tarrying for them. Thus of their own authority at the first they made the army march away without any sound of trumpet or other noise.

18But immediately after, they that were left hurt and sick, and could not follow, seeing the camp remove, fell a-crying out and tormenting themselves in such sort that they filled the whole camp with sorrow, and put them out of all order with the great moan and loud lamentation; so that the foremost rank that first dislodged fell into a marvellous fear, thinking they had been the enemies that had come and set upon them. Then turning oft, and setting themselves in battle array, one while loading their beasts with the wounded men, another while unloading them again, they were left behind.[d]

19After getting dangerously entangled in marshy ground, Crassus had almost reached the mountains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the horse which was to convey him to the meeting with the enemy’s general, the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely ten thousand out of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia; twenty thousand had fallen and ten thousand captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of Margiana.

20[Sidenote: [53-40 B.C.]]

21The token of victory, the hand and head of Crassus, reached Orodes in Armenia just as he had made peace with Artavasdes and betrothed his eldest son Pacorus to the daughter of the Armenian king. The Roman disaster was due primarily to the novelty of the Parthian way of assault, which took them wholly by surprise, and partly also to bad generalship; but the Romans always sought a traitor to account for a defeat, and in the present case they threw the blame partly on Andromachus of Carrhæ, who really did mislead Crassus in his retreat, and was rewarded by the Parthians with the tyranny of his native town, but had no great influence on the disaster; and partly on Abgar, whose advice was no doubt bad, but not necessarily treacherous.

22Surenas, the victor of Carrhæ, whose fame was now too great for the condition of a mere subject, was put to death a little later, the victim of Orodes’ jealousy; the victory itself was weakly followed up. Not till 52 B.C. was Syria invaded, and then with forces so weak that Cassius found the defence easy.

23Orodes avoided a threatened breach with his son Pacorus, by associating him in the empire; but the Parthians took little advantage of the civil wars that preceded the fall of the Roman Republic. They occasionally stepped in to save the weaker party from utter annihilation, but even this policy was not followed with energy, and Orodes refused to help Pompey in his distress because the Roman would not promise to give him Syria. Labienus was with Orodes negotiating for help on a larger scale when the news of Philippi arrived, and remained with him till 40 B.C., when he was at last sent back to Syria, together with Pacorus and a numerous host. The Roman garrisons in Syria were old troops of Brutus and Cassius, who had been taken over by Antony; those in the region of Apamea joined Labienus; Antony’s legate Decidius Saxa was defeated, and fled from the camp afraid of his own men.

24[Sidenote: [43-36 B.C.]]

25Apamea, Antioch, and all Syria soon fell into the hands of the Parthians, and Decidius was pursued and slain. Pacorus advanced along the great road and received the submission of all the Phœnician cities save Tyre. Simultaneously the satrap Barzaphranes appeared in Galilee; the patriots all over Palestine rose against Phasael and Herod; and five hundred Parthian horse appearing before Jerusalem were enough to overthrow the Roman party and substitute Antigonus for Hyrcanus. The Parthian administration was a favourable contrast to the rule of the oppressive proconsuls, and the justice and clemency of Pacorus won the hearts of the Syrians. Meantime Labienus had penetrated Asia Minor as far as Lydia and Ionia. The Roman governor Plancus could only hold the islands; most of the cities opened their gates to Labienus, the “Parthicus imperator.”

26But Rome even in its time of civil divisions was stronger than Parthia; in 39 B.C. Ventidius Bassus, general for Antony, suddenly appeared in Asia and drove Labienus and his provincial levies before him without a battle as far as the Taurus. Here the Parthians came to Labienus’ help, but, attacking rashly and without his co-operation, they were defeated by Ventidius and Labienus’ troops were involved in the disaster; Phranipates, the ablest lieutenant of Pacorus, fell, and the Parthians evacuated Syria. Before Ventidius had completed the resettlement of the Roman power in Syria and Palestine, and while his troops were dispersed in winter quarters, the Parthians fell on him again with a force of more than twenty thousand men and an unusually large proportion of free cavaliers in full armour.

27A battle was fought near the shrine of Hercules at Gindarus in Cyrrhestica, on the anniversary, it is said, of the defeat of Crassus (9th of June, 38 B.C.); the Parthians were utterly routed and Pacorus himself was slain. His head was sent round to the cities of Syria which were still in revolt, to prove to them that their hopes had failed. There was no further resistance save from Aradus and Jerusalem.

28Orodes, now an old man and sorely afflicted by the death of his favourite son, nominated his next son, Phraates, as his colleague, and the latter began to reign by making away with brothers of whom he was jealous, and then strangling his father, who had not concealed his anger at the former crime (37 B.C.). The reign of Orodes was the culminating point of Parthian greatness, and all his successors adopted his title of king of kings, “Arsaces Euergetes.” It was he who moved the capital westward to Seleucia, or rather to Ctesiphon (Taisefún), its eastern suburb.