ORODES DEFEATS THE ROMANS
A Parthian embassy appeared in Syria in the spring to remonstrate against the faithlessness of Rome, but at the same time the Parthians were ready for war. Surenas, with Silaces, satrap of Mesopotamia, was pressing the Roman garrisons, and prepared to confront Crassus with an army wholly composed of cavalry, while Orodes in person invaded Armenia. In the spring of 53 B.C., Crassus and his son Publius crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma with seven legions and eight thousand cavalry and light troops, making up a total of forty-two or forty-three thousand men, and was persuaded by Abgar of Orrhoene to leave the river and march straight across the plains to Surenas. Surenas kept the mass of his troops concealed by a wooded hill, showing only the not very numerous vanguard of cataphracts till the Romans were committed to do battle. The Roman cavalry charged the enemy to prevent a threatening flank movement, and were drawn away from the mass of the army by the favourite Parthian manœuvre of a simulated flight.c
So vivid a picture of the ferocity of this battle is given in Plutarch’s Life of Crassus, that we may well quote it here.a
PLUTARCH’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF CARRHÆ
[53 B.C.]
The 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.
The 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.
The 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.
But 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 alclass="underline" 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.
For 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.
Then 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.
A Parthian Peasant
Yet 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.