Who won the Battle of Carrhae?
Parthia won. In 53 BC the Parthian general Surena destroyed the army of the Roman triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus near Carrhae, modern Harran in southeastern Turkey. Ancient figures put the Roman toll at about 20,000 dead and 10,000 captured. Crassus and his son Publius were among the dead.1
In the spring of 53 BC Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the three men who then dominated Roman politics, crossed the Euphrates to conquer the Parthian empire. Soon most of his army was dead or in chains, his son had been killed, and he himself was killed at a meeting with the Parthian commander. The eagles of his legions went to the Parthian king, and Rome did not get them back until the reign of Augustus.2
This is the story of Carrhae from both sides: Crassus' ambitions, the answer of the Parthian king Orodes II and his young general Surena, how horse archers with a camel train of arrows beat the best infantry of the age, how many died, and why the battle still matters. It sits among the greatest battles of ancient Rome and the greatest battles of the Persian empires, and our guide to the military history of ancient Rome places it in Rome's long duel with Iran.
Why was the Battle of Carrhae fought?
In 60 or 59 BC Crassus formed the political alliance later called the First Triumvirate with Pompey and Julius Caesar. In 55 BC he was consul for the second time with Pompey, and Syria was assigned to him as his province while he was already planning a Parthian war. Pompey and Caesar had their victories. Crassus wanted his own, and in the judgment of the historian Velleius Paterculus he knew no limit in his appetite for money or glory.3
There was no Parthian provocation. Dio says Crassus attacked although the Parthians had given him no cause and he had no mandate for war, expecting the new king Orodes to be easy prey. At Rome tribunes of the plebs tried in vain to hold him back, and their curses followed him as he left for Syria.4
The Parthians saw it differently, and not only as one man's greed. The Iranian historian A. Shapur Shahbazi argues that a clash had been coming for a century: Lucullus had approached the Parthian frontier, Pompey had sent troops into a Parthian dependency, and the governor Gabinius had backed a pretender, Mithradates III, against his brother Orodes. Orodes II had only just won that civil war, with the decisive help of the great Sūrēn clan, and had Mithradates killed late in 55 BC.5
Crassus reached Syria in the spring of 54 BC and spent that year in northern Mesopotamia. He scattered the small force of the satrap Silaces near Ichnae, took over Greek towns such as Nicephorium, stormed Zenodotium after its people killed Roman soldiers, left garrisons and went back to Syria for the winter. Dio and Debevoise both judge that the pause gave the Parthians time to prepare. When Orodes' envoys came to ask why he had invaded, Crassus said he would answer in Seleucia, and the eldest envoy held out his palm and said hair would grow there before Crassus saw Seleucia.6
Who was Surena?
"Surena" is not a personal name, and his own has not come down to us. Rawlinson took the word for a title, while modern Iranists such as the Polish scholar Marek Jan Olbrycht read it as the name of a great Parthian noble house, the Sūrēn, which Olbrycht traces to the Dahae of eastern Iran. The clan held the hereditary right to place the diadem on each new Parthian king, and Surena had just crushed the revolt of Seleucia for Orodes, being, in Plutarch's account, the first man on its wall.7
He was not yet thirty. Plutarch, writing from a Roman point of view, dwells on his painted face and his baggage of 200 wagons of concubines, but also makes him second only to the king in rank. His army was his own: some 10,000 horsemen raised from his vassals and dependants, among them 1,000 in heavy armor.8
How big were the armies at Carrhae?
Plutarch gives Crassus seven legions, about 4,000 cavalry and about as many light troops. Olbrycht reckons the whole army at about 42,000 men. The late writer Florus speaks of eleven legions. Among the cavalry were Gallic horsemen sent by Caesar with Crassus' son Publius.9
Orodes split his forces. He went himself into Armenia to punish its king Artavasdes II, Rome's ally, and left Surena to face Crassus with cavalry alone. Shahbazi divides Surena's 10,000 into about 1,000 cataphracts, armored lancers on armored horses, and 9,000 horse archers with powerful composite bows, and he reckons the Parthians were outnumbered about four to one. Overtoom stresses how the mobile Parthian force outmaneuvered a much larger army.10
The key was supply. Plutarch says Surena traveled with 1,000 baggage camels, and during the battle the archers refilled their quivers from camels laden with arrows. Shahbazi takes the thousand camels as the arrow train, while Olbrycht writes more cautiously of hundreds of camels carrying arrows and probably spears. Archers who could not run out of arrows were, as Shahbazi quotes W. W. Tarn, something new in war.11
Why did Crassus march into the open plain?
Artavasdes of Armenia came to Crassus' camp with 6,000 horsemen and, by Plutarch's account, promised 10,000 armored cavalry and 30,000 foot if Crassus invaded through Armenia, where hills would blunt the Parthian horse. Crassus refused and crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma in the spring of 53 BC, meaning to march through Mesopotamia. His quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus urged him to keep to the river, where boats could carry supplies, or to halt in a garrisoned town.12
Instead Crassus listened to an Arab chieftain, named by Dio as Abgarus, ruler of Osroene around Edessa. He told the Romans the Parthians were fleeing and led them away from the river into open country. The Roman sources call him a Parthian agent, and Dio even has his men attack the Romans from behind during the battle. Debevoise doubts the charge, noting that W. W. Tarn thought Abgarus innocent, and points out that the country was not trackless desert but rolling land with villages and water holes.13
How was the Battle of Carrhae fought?
The Romans reached the Balikh river south of Carrhae. The officers wanted to camp, but Crassus, urged on by Publius, let the men eat standing in their ranks and pushed on. When the enemy appeared, the army was formed in a hollow square, twelve cohorts to a side.14
Surena hid the size of his army behind a screen of horsemen and had the armored men cover their mail. Then the Parthians beat their great drums, threw off their coverings and showed their steel, and the horse archers rode around the square and shot into it from every side. Roman light troops sent out against them were driven back into the square.15
The legionaries hoped the archers would empty their quivers. In Plutarch's account they then saw camels coming up with fresh arrows. The Parthians shot while riding away and turned in the saddle to shoot again, the "Parthian shot." Dio tells it differently: in his version the Parthians did run short of arrows and broke their lances, and only nightfall and their own exhaustion saved the Romans.16
How did Publius Crassus die?
To stop the Parthians from closing the circle, Crassus sent Publius out with 1,300 horsemen, among them Caesar's Gauls, 500 archers and eight cohorts. The Parthians fell back, Publius chased them far out of sight of the main army, and then the cataphracts turned on him while the archers surrounded his men. The Gauls grabbed the long lances and dragged riders down, or slipped under the horses to stab them, but they had no armor to speak of and were too few.17
Publius, wounded, fell back to a low hill, where his men were shot down. He refused to flee and had his shield bearer kill him, and most of his officers killed themselves. About 500 were taken alive. Estimates of the detachment run from about 5,500 men (Shahbazi) to about 6,000 (Mommsen). The Parthians cut off Publius' head, put it on a lance and rode back to show it to his father.18
How did Crassus die?
The attack on the main army went on until dark. That night Crassus, crushed by grief, gave no orders, so his officers led the able-bodied men away toward Carrhae and left about 4,000 wounded behind. The Parthians killed them the next morning and caught four cohorts that had lost their way.19
Carrhae's garrison took in the survivors, but the town could not be held. Crassus left by night for the Armenian hills with a guide from Carrhae, Andromachus, who according to Plutarch was in Parthian pay and led the column astray. Cassius turned back and reached Syria with 500 horsemen. Octavius got about 5,000 men to the hill town of Sinnaca, while Crassus was caught on a low hill nearby.20
Surena then rode up and offered a truce. Crassus' own soldiers forced him to go down to talk. Surena offered him a horse to ride to the Euphrates and sign a treaty there. Octavius, fearing that his general was being carried off, drew a sword and killed a groom, and in the fight that followed Crassus, Octavius and the other officers were killed. Plutarch names a Parthian, Pomaxathres, as the killer, while Dio says it is uncertain whether an enemy or one of his own men killed Crassus to save him from capture.21
Was it a trap? Roman writers said so. Debevoise judged that the whole affair may have been a tragic misunderstanding, since a Roman struck the first blow, and Olbrycht leaves open that the Parthians may not have meant to kill Crassus but had no scruples once the fighting began. Florus, writing more than a century later, adds that the Parthians poured molten gold into the dead man's mouth to mock his greed.22
How many Romans died at Carrhae?
Plutarch gives the total as 20,000 killed and 10,000 taken prisoner, and modern historians accept roughly that order: Schippmann writes that about half of an army of some 40,000 perished, 10,000 were captured and about 10,000 escaped. The ancient accounts give no figure for Parthian losses.23
The prisoners were settled far to the east in Margiana, the oasis of Merv. Velleius tells of one of Crassus' captured soldiers who, years later, saved Mark Antony's army with his advice.24
When was the Battle of Carrhae fought?
The year, 53 BC, is certain, but the day is not. The poet Ovid, in his calendar poem the Fasti, sets the loss of Crassus' eagles, his son and his own life under 9 June. That is a date of the Roman calendar of the time, which had drifted well ahead of the seasons. Mommsen took 9 June to be the day of Crassus' death, while Groebe argued in 1907 that it was the day of the battle, and Kurt Regling, accepting him, converted it to 6 May in the Julian calendar, placing Crassus' death a few days later, no later than 12 May.25
Debevoise and Shahbazi follow that reckoning and put the arrival at the Balikh and the battle on 6 May, while Schippmann says only the beginning of May. Shahbazi warns that reading Ovid's Roman date as a summer day overstates the heat the Romans faced.26
What happened after the Battle of Carrhae?
Orodes had meanwhile made peace with Artavasdes, and the two kings sealed it with the marriage of Orodes' son Pacorus to Artavasdes' sister. They were watching a performance of Euripides' Bacchae when Crassus' head was brought in. Surena, for his part, held a mock triumph in Seleucia with a prisoner dressed as Crassus.27
The victor did not enjoy it for long. Orodes had Surena put to death soon afterward, out of jealousy according to the ancient account. Olbrycht suggests the king wanted to free himself from an overmighty patron. Orodes himself was murdered in 37 BC by his son Phraates IV.28
Parthian raiders crossed into Syria soon after the battle, and in 51 BC a larger force under Pacorus reached Antioch, but Cassius, now in charge of the province, held on and routed the invaders. The Roman war of revenge was slow to come, and Mark Antony's invasion in 36 BC ended in a costly retreat.29
In 20 BC Phraates IV handed back the standards taken from Crassus and from two later Roman forces. Augustus treated it as a victory: "The Parthians I compelled to restore to me the spoils and standards of three Roman armies," he wrote, and he laid them in the Temple of Mars Ultor. Tiberius received them, and a Parthian handing a standard to a Roman officer is the central scene on the breastplate of the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Vatican Museums.30
Who won the Battle of Carrhae, and why did it matter?
Parthia won outright. In Rome Carrhae was ranked with the worst defeats in its history: Mommsen set it beside the Allia, Cannae and Arausio, and Velleius Paterculus later called the loss of Varus' legions in AD 9 the worst Roman defeat abroad since Crassus' disaster in Parthia. Jona Lendering argues that the Roman excuses, treachery and the desert, hide a simpler truth: the Parthians had more and better troops and better supplies. Nikolaus Overtoom, writing about Parthian warfare, likewise rejects the idea that Carrhae was a freak result and sees in it a long Parthian tradition of mobile war.31
The consequences were large on both sides. With Crassus dead only Pompey and Caesar were left of the three, and their rivalry ended in civil war and the battle of Pharsalus. For Iran, Shahbazi writes, Carrhae stopped Roman expansion, fixed the Euphrates as the frontier and made Parthia Rome's equal for centuries, while Rome slowly built up its own cavalry in answer. Our guide to horse archers follows that tradition, from the steppe to Carrhae and beyond.32
Where was the Battle of Carrhae fought?
The battle is named after Carrhae, the Greek and Latin form of Harran, an old city in upper Mesopotamia that is now a small town in southeastern Turkey. The fighting took place on the open plain of the Balikh valley south of the town. Mommsen put the first clash about thirty miles south of Carrhae, toward Ichnae.33
Crassus had crossed the Euphrates far to the west at Zeugma, near modern Birecik, and after the battle the survivors fled north from Carrhae toward Sinnaca and the Armenian hills, where the Parthian horse could not follow so easily.34
