Mark Antony’s Persian Campaign

On June 9, 53 bc, hard-riding Parthian horse-archers from the Persian heartland lured a Roman infantry army into open country at Carrhae and surrounded it. Darting swiftly across the plains, the Parthians rained shield-piercing arrows onto the Roman lines. When the one-sided battle was over, 30,000 legionaries had been killed or captured. Among the dead was the Roman commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus.

Rome’s burning desire for revenge against the Persian kingdom had to be postponed while domestic disputes and civil wars were resolved. By 41 bc, Marcus Antonius (known to posterity by the name that William Shakespeare gave him, Mark Antony) was ready to take up the Parthian challenge. In that year Antony assembled an army and started off for the East. As he traveled he summoned Eastern client kings to meet with him and contribute financially and militarily to his cause. One of these was Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. She was 28 years old at the time — the age, Plutarch assures us, “when a woman’s beauty is at its most superb and her mind at its most mature.” They met at the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, and he famously fell in love with her.

Having fallen under Cleopatra’s spell, Antony accepted an invitation to winter at her palace in Alexandria. For the moment his plans for invading Parthia were put on hold. He left his Syrian garrison in the command of his appointed governor, L. Decidius Saxa, while he set off for Alexandria and the inviting arms of Cleopatra.

While Antony lingered in Egypt, an army led by the Parthian Crown Prince Pacorus and Roman deserter Quintus Labienus made a preemptive strike across the Euphrates River into Syria. Labienus’ father had fought for Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, but later backed Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) against him. Labienus the younger had favored Caesar’s Republican enemies, Marcus Junius Brutus and Caius Cassius Longinus, who had sent him to negotiate with the Parthians. With the collapse of the Republican cause, Labienus stayed on in Persia rather than submit to the tender mercies of the victorious Antony and Caesar’s adopted nephew and heir, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian). Now he had returned with a Parthian army at his back. He and Pacorus swept away all resistance before them and soon reached Antioch on the Mediterranean Sea. No Persian had been master of Antioch since Alexander the Great evicted them some 300 years before.

In February or March 40 bc, Antony received word of the Parthian invasion and sailed at once from Egypt to Tyre on the coast of Phoenicia. The news he received at Tyre could not have been worse. The Parthians had rolled over everything in their path. Many of Antony’s troops in Syria had been former Republicans who had once fought against him in the service of Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius. They either had willingly gone over to their fellow Republican Labienus in joining the Persian invaders or had put up only token resistance. The loyal governor Saxa continued his defense of Syria until he was killed. After Syria was taken, the Parthians split their forces. Half the army under Labienus poured into Asia Minor while the other half under Pacorus moved south into a welcoming Judea to install a popular client king, Antigonus, over the Jews.

At the same time Antony was learning about the disaster in the East, he received news of his wife, Fulvia. His principal defender in Rome, she had taken up arms against Antony’s rival, Octavian, who had defeated her. She was forced to flee the city. An ambitious aristocrat, so powerful in her time that she was the first woman ever to be depicted on a Roman coin, Fulvia had sought to obtain even more power and fame through her husband. It must have been humiliating for her to learn during that winter that Antony was preoccupied with his new Egyptian mistress. She hurried east to join her husband, but died on the way.

Too busy to grieve, the widower Antony had two choices: He could stay in the East and fight the rampaging Parthians or return to Rome to shore up his crumbling position. He decided that affairs in Rome had to be dealt with first. While packing for home he appointed an ambitious officer, Publius Ventidius Bassus, as his proconsul in the East. It would turn out to be an inspired choice.

Antony rushed home, but it was October 40 bc before he finally met with Octavian. Blaming everything on Fulvia, he soon patched things up with his former partner, who had a proposition for him: Octavian’s older half-sister had been recently widowed, and since Antony was now a widower, why not accept a marriage to cement their alliance? Antony accepted.

During this time of harmony between the two rivals, Antony sought to make a deal with Octavian to strengthen his hand against the Parthians. He proposed to turn over 120 of his formidable warships to take part in Octavian’s war against Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey the Great, who controlled Sicily and Sardinia as well as the seas of the western Mediterranean. In exchange for the ships, Antony was to receive 20,000 troops recruited in northern Italy to augment his forces in the East. But while Antony kept his part of the bargain, Octavian did not.