The Historians' History of the World 08

The sight of Publius Crassus’ head killed the Romans’ hearts more than any other danger they had been in at any time in all the battle. For it did not set their hearts on fire as it should have done with anger and desire of revenge: but far otherwise, made them quake for fear, and struck them stark dead to behold it. Yet Crassus’ self showed greater courage in this misfortune than he before had done in all the war beside. For riding by every band he cried out aloud: “Our ancestors in old time lost a thousand ships, yea in Italy divers armies and chieftains for the conquest of Sicilia: yet for all the loss of them, at the length they were victorious over them by whom they were before vanquished. For the empire of Rome came not to that greatness it now is at by good fortune only, but by patience and constant suffering of trouble and adversity, never yielding or giving place unto any danger.”

Crassus, using these persuasions to encourage his soldiers for resolution, found that all his words wrought none effect: but contrarily, after he had commanded them to give the shout of battle, he plainly saw their hearts were done, for their shout rose but faint, and not all alike. The Parthians on the other side, their shout was great, and lustily they rang it out. Now when they came to join, the Parthians’ archers on horseback compassing in the Romans upon the wings shot an infinite number of arrows at their sides. But their men at arms, giving charge upon the front of the Romans, battled with their great lances, compelled them to draw into a narrow room, a few excepted, that valiantly and in desperate manner ran in among them, as men rather desiring so to die than to be slain with their arrows, where they could do the Parthians almost no hurt at all. So were they soon despatched, with the great lances that ran them through, head, wood, and all, with such a force that oftentimes they ran through two at once.

Thus when they had fought the whole day, night drew on, and made them retire, saying they would give Crassus that night’s respite, to lament and bewail his son’s death. So the Parthians, camping hard by the Romans, were in very good hope to overthrow him the next morning. The Romans on the other side had a marvellous ill night, making no reckoning to bury their dead, nor to dress their wounded men, that died in miserable pain; but every man bewailed his hard fortune, when they saw not one of them could escape, if they tarried till the morning. But Crassus went aside without light, and laid him down with his head covered, because he would see no man, showing thereby the common sort an example of unstable fortune; and the wise men, a good learning to know the fruits of ill counsel and vain ambition, that had so much blinded him that he could not be content to command so many thousands of men, but thought (as a man would say) himself the meanest of all, and one that possessed nothing, because he was accounted inferior unto two persons only, Pompey and Cæsar.

Notwithstanding, Octavius, one of his chieftains, and Cassius the treasurer, seeing him so overcome with sorrow and out of heart that he had no life nor spirit in him, they themselves called the captains and centurions together, and sat in council for their departure, and so agreed that there was no longer tarrying for them. Thus of their own authority at the first they made the army march away without any sound of trumpet or other noise.

But immediately after, they that were left hurt and sick, and could not follow, seeing the camp remove, fell a-crying out and tormenting themselves in such sort that they filled the whole camp with sorrow, and put them out of all order with the great moan and loud lamentation; so that the foremost rank that first dislodged fell into a marvellous fear, thinking they had been the enemies that had come and set upon them. Then turning oft, and setting themselves in battle array, one while loading their beasts with the wounded men, another while unloading them again, they were left behind.d

After getting dangerously entangled in marshy ground, Crassus had almost reached the mountains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the horse which was to convey him to the meeting with the enemy’s general, the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely ten thousand out of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia; twenty thousand had fallen and ten thousand captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of Margiana.

[53-40 B.C.]