Battle of Carrhae

Dawn rose over the flats near Carrhae. To the east, Surena, a Parthian noble with a reputation for theatrical display and tactical cunning, arrayed horse archers in loose clouds and held back armored cataphracts like a bronze tide. To the west, Marcus Licinius Crassus formed roughly seven legions into dense blocks, shield rims touching, expecting to grind down an enemy who would stand and fight [1][2][18].

The Parthians refused that script. They began with a storm of arrows, the air alive with the whir and hiss of feathered shafts. When Roman cohorts tried to charge, the horsemen flowed back, circling beyond pilum range, then closed again. Deep camel trains fed the archers more arrows while the sky bleached white and the dust tasted bitter [1][18].

Publius Crassus, the general’s son, led a relief thrust with Roman cavalry and auxiliaries. He galloped out toward a promising ridge, only to be enveloped by riders who seemed to come from every direction. Plutarch and Dio record the awful end—Publius killed, his head displayed to demoralize the Romans, the field turning against the father as well as the son [1][2].

When the infantry formations had thinned and shields bristled with shafts, Surena sent in the cataphracts. Lamellar armor flashed like fish scales; the ground shook under iron-shod hooves. Cohorts bent and broke. “Crassus goes to war against the Parthians, is defeated and killed,” Cassius Dio summarizes, compressing a day of screams, trumpet calls, and dust into a single sentence [2].

By nightfall, the Roman army ceased to exist as a fighting force. About 20,000 died on that plain and 10,000 marched into captivity, their future in lands beyond the Tigris. Survivors staggered to Carrhae’s walls and then toward Syria, the bronze eagles lost to an enemy that never offered a gate to batter [1][19].