How Horse Archers Actually Beat the Roman Legion

Early summer, 53 B.C. On a dry, flat plain in northern Mesopotamia, near a town the Romans called Carrhae, a Roman army of seven legions stood in a hollow square while some ten thousand Parthian horsemen rode round it and shot. The Romans could not catch them, could not hide from them, and could not wait them out: behind the Parthian lines stood a train of camels loaded with fresh arrows. On the battle map we follow how one of the most powerful armies in the world was destroyed: the legion and the Parthian horse side by side, Crassus's march away from the Euphrates, the square at the Balissus, the drums and the hidden cataphracts, the arrow storm, Publius's charge and the last stand on the sandy hill, the night retreat, the parley where Crassus was killed - and then, fifteen years later, how Publius Ventidius Bassus took Surena's three advantages away at Gindarus and beat the Parthians on the same day of the year. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro: the square and the arrows 0:54 Two ways of war: the legion and the Parthian horse 1:56 Crassus goes east 2:48 Surena 2:59 Move 1: the square 3:57 Move 2: the arrows 4:37 Move 3: the son 5:46 Move 4: the night 6:22 The truce and the death of Crassus 6:51 The cost 7:15 Fifteen years later: Ventidius 7:28 Gindarus, 38 B.C. 8:27 How it worked: three things A NOTE ON THE SOURCES Carrhae is told above all by Plutarch (Life of Crassus, 16-33), writing about 150 years later, and by Cassius Dio (Book 40); Ventidius's campaign by Dio (Book 49) and Plutarch (Life of Antony, 33-34). The hollow square of twelve cohorts a side, the Balissus, the hidden armour and the drums hung with bells, the feint of the cataphracts, the camels loaded with arrows, Publius's charge, the Gauls, the sandy hill, the abandoned wounded, the guide Andromachus, the truce and the scuffle in which Crassus was killed (Plutarch names Pomaxathres), the 20,000 dead and 10,000 prisoners, and the mock triumph at Seleucia with Gaius Paccianus all come from Plutarch. The army sizes are approximate: Plutarch gives seven legions, nearly 4,000 cavalry and as many light troops; modern estimates put the Romans at about 40,000 and the Parthians at about 10,000 horsemen, roughly one in ten of them cataphracts. "Surena" was the Romans' name for the head of the House of Suren; his own name is not known, and no portrait of him survives, so his coin on the battlefield is a drachm of his king, Orodes II. The prisoners were settled in Margiana (Pliny, Natural History 6.47); the eagles were returned to Augustus in 20 B.C. That Gindarus was fought on the anniversary of Carrhae is Dio's. The film shows one sprite for about 25 men, compresses the marches and the night, and lays the armies out for clarity; the exact battlefield is not known. SOURCES Plutarch, Life of Crassus and Life of Antony (translated by Bernadotte Perrin) Cassius Dio, Roman History, Books 40 and 49 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 6 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.4 (Ventidius) Gareth C. Sampson, The Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae and the Invasion of the East (2008) Rose Mary Sheldon, Rome's Wars in Parthia (2010) Kaveh Farrokh, Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War (2007)