More than sixty years old, Crassus had relatively little war experience. After desultorily securing friendly towns in Osroene during his first year in the East (54 B.C.), the next year he made the unforgivable error of underestimating his enemy by offering battle on flat plains tailor-made for Parthia’s cavalry.

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The Parthian forces were led by a brilliant tactician known to us only as the Suren, that is, first lord of the nobility. Some argue that he was the hero of later Persian legend, Rustam. The Suren commanded about ten thousand cavalrymen, specialists in the rapid desert fighting by which the Parthians made their mark. Some were cataphracts, that is, mailed heavy cavalrymen armed with spears; others were light-armed bowmen able to fire in continuous volleys. These archers were masters of the famous Parthian shot, an arrow shot by a horseman who pivoted on his mount during retreat. Together, cataphracts and bowmen could deliver a devastating one-two punch: After the bowmen had forced the Romans into massing their ranks defensively, the cataphracts with their thrusting spears would charge. Rome’s response should have been to fight in the hills and to parry with a very large cavalry force.

The battle, fought about twenty miles south of Carrhae in June 53 B.C., was a disaster, costing the Romans perhaps three-fourths of the nearly forty thousand men they had committed to the battle, including legionnaires, cavalrymen, and light-armed troops. Ten thousand men were captured and deported to central Asia. The eagles of seven Roman legions ended up in Parthian hands. Carrhae took its place, alongside Cannae (216 B.C.), the Allia (ca. 390 B.C.), the Caudine Forks (321 B.C.), and Arausio (105 B.C.), in the select pantheon of great Roman defeats.

Although he survived the battle, during the Roman retreat a few days later Crassus was captured and killed. His corpse was mutilated, and his head is supposed to have made its way to Seleucia, where it was presented to the Parthian king. So much for Crassus’ boast to a Parthian ambassador that he would dictate terms in Seleucia.

Vengeance now became a leitmotif of Roman policy, and not merely for psychological reasons, although the Battle of Carrhae and its aftermath made Parthia’s new status as a great power on a par with Rome all too clear. After Carrhae, Parthia moved its border westward to the Euphrates, opposite Roman Syria. Meanwhile, farther north, Armenia defected to the Parthian camp. The security of its empire required that Rome act. It is therefore small wonder that Mark Antony, who inherited Julius Caesar’s plan of invading Parthia through the ‘back door,’ via Armenia into Media Atropatene, undertook an eastern expedition in 36 B.C.

Antony’s greatest achievement in the East was diplomatic rather than military. By deftly negotiating a network of client states from Egypt to Armenia to share the burden of defending Rome’s eastern border, Antony unknowingly laid the foundation for a long-term diplomatic settlement. A brilliant general who was a seasoned veteran of foreign and domestic wars, Antony’s immediate goal, however, was victory on the battlefield. After recovering the legionary standards lost at Carrhae and the Roman prisoners who were still alive would come the re-establishment of Roman prestige in the East.

Antony supplied himself with sixteen legions for his eastern expedition, more than twice the size of Crassus’ force, as well as with cavalry and light-armed troops–a force of eighty thousand men. He was careful to march through mountainous territory, thereby denying the Parthian cavalry favorable terrain, and he secured Armenian help before entering Media. Unfortunately, Antony underestimated the enemy. He had barely arrived in Media when the Parthians attacked his siege train and the two legions defending it, leaving ten thousand Roman soldiers dead. Moreover, his Armenian ally deserted him.

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