Marcus Licinius Crassus

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Marcus Licinius Crassus bigraphy, stories - Generals

Marcus Licinius Crassus : biography

115 BC –

Marcus Licinius Crassus (Latin: M·LICINIVS·P·F·P·N·CRASSVSIn English: "Marcus Licinius Crassus, son of Publius, grandson of Publius") (ca. 115 BC – 53 BC) was a Roman general and politician who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Amassing an enormous fortune during his life, Crassus is considered the wealthiest man in Roman history, and among the richest men in all history.

Crassus began his public career as a military commander under Lucius Cornelius Sulla during his civil war. Following Sulla’s assumption of the dictatorship, Crassus amassed an enormous fortune through real estate speculation. Crassus rose to political prominence following his victory over the slave revolt led by Spartacus, sharing the Consulship with his rival Pompey the Great.

A political and financial patron of Julius Caesar, Crassus joined Caesar and Pompey in the unofficial political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Together the three men dominated the Roman political system. The alliance would not last indefinitely due to the ambitions, egos, and jealousies of the three men. While Caesar and Crassus were lifelong allies, Crassus and Pompey disliked each other and Pompey grew increasingly envious of Caesar’s spectacular successes in the Gallic Wars. The alliance was re-stabilized at the Lucca Conference in 56 BC, after which Crassus and Pompey again served jointly as Consuls. Following his second Consulship, Crassus was appointed as the Governor of Roman Syria. Crassus used Syria as the launchpad for a military campaign against the Parthian Empire, Rome’s long-time Eastern enemy. Crassus’ campaign was a disastrous failure, resulting in his defeat and death at the Battle of Carrhae.

Crassus’ death permanently unraveled the alliance between Caesar and Pompey. Within four years of Crassus’ death, Caesar would cross the Rubicon and begin a civil war against Pompey and the Optimates.

Syrian governorship and death

Crassus received Syria as his province, which promised to be an inexhaustible source of wealth. It would have been had he not also sought military glory and crossed the Euphrates in an attempt to conquer Parthia. Crassus attacked Parthia not only because of its great source of riches, but because of a desire to match the military victories of his two major rivals, Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar. The king of Armenia, Artavazdes II, offered Crassus the aid of nearly forty thousand troops, ten thousand cataphracts and thirty thousand infantrymen, on the condition that Crassus invaded through Armenia so that the king could not only maintain the upkeep of his own troops but also provide a safer route for his men and Crassus’.Plutarch. Life of Crassus. . Crassus refused, and chose the more direct route by crossing the Euphrates. His legions were defeated at Carrhae (modern Harran in Turkey) in 53 BC by a numerically inferior Parthian force. Crassus’ legions were mainly infantry men and were not prepared for the type of swift, cavalry-and-arrow attack that the Parthian troops were particularly adept at; the same type of attack that Genghis Khan later utilised to great effect. The Parthians would get within shooting range, rain a barrage of arrows down upon Crassus’s troops, turn, fall back, and charge forth with another attack in the same vein. They were even able to shoot as well backwards as they could forwards, increasing the deadliness of their onslaught.Richard Bulliet, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Columbia University Crassus refused his quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus’s plans to reconstitute the Roman battle line, and remained in the testudo formation thinking that the Parthians would eventually run out of arrows.

Subsequently Crassus’ men, being near mutiny, demanded he parley with the Parthians, who had offered to meet with him. Crassus, despondent at the death of his son Publius in the battle, finally agreed to meet the Parthian general; however, when Crassus mounted a horse to ride to the Parthian camp for a peace negotiation, his junior officer Octavius suspected a Parthian trap and grabbed Crassus’ horse by the bridle, instigating a sudden fight with the Parthians that left the Roman party dead, including Crassus.Bivar (1983), p. 55. A story later emerged that, after Crassus’ death, the Parthians poured molten gold into his mouth as a symbol of his thirst for wealth.Cassius Dio 40.27 Or, according to a popular but historically unreliable account that it was by this means that he was put to death.