Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 255 - The Battle of Carrahae

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

Crassus attempts to go to war to build his own resume. He ignores everyone's advice and marches his legions into the most predictable defeat on earth. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Plutarch. Crassus. Mary T. Boatwright. The Romans: From Village to Empire Roman-Persian Wars: The Battle of Carrhae

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello, and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me today is my long-suffering producer, Tom. Tom, how are you doing? Hello, Joe. I'm very welcome. I'm very happy to be in the vape zone, as we are now calling this podcast. It's the disposable vape zone. That is the sound that everybody heard of me dropping my vape onto the table while I was doing the introduction to this podcast,

because I am a professional um i uh before i we get started i do have to say this morning i annihilated my toilet and not the way that people think i broke it um i have a very everyone involved in this pod in this podcast like breaking toilets recently this is the first time i've done it uh like this like this i've never seen a toilet like this before until i remember it's called they call it like a unitas here i don't know what it'd be called anywhere else but it's like the the entire system is contained in the back of the toilet and you cannot take the top off like it's like locked into place uh which i learned today is that you're not supposed to take the top off uh because by the reservoir was not filling and you know in the u.s you're like oh reservoir is that filling gonna take this fucker off and mess with something on

the inside uh so i take it off and immediately i break it like the entire the entire pump system comes undone and i'm just just like, oh, shit. Oh, fuck. I got to put this back together. And I managed to put it all back together. And it works, but not very well. I'm just like, this happened on my way to the gym this morning. I was like, I am not.

It flushes. The reservoir fills. So I broke it. But did I really? Did I really break the toilet? You broke it better. You broke it but did i really did i really break the toilet you broke it better yeah broke it better yeah i i i i invented a new toilet which is still not great um but this is the thing that like freaks me out it's like obviously in bars and stuff you have like a lot of toilets where

the cistern is like built into the wall so like you can't like mess around with it but like people who have that in their houses like you're gonna have to get a plumber out you're probably gonna have to like re-toilet after like half if you don't have like a piece cut out to get in at the toilet i'm like how long do you expect this thing to work for all the way up until like taco night or something i don't know that is just like supreme confidence in ceramics where i'm i have to commend it yeah i don't know that is just like supreme confidence in ceramics where i'm i have to commend it yeah i don't know i i i am not uh jealous of plumbers who have to deal with that shit uh no pun intended um when i was getting out of the army they had this program they set

you up like apprenticeships or whatever and obviously i did not end up taking any of these but you can like go and like see if one of them appeals to you and uh because for whatever reason i wasn't there when they signed up for like the cool apprenticeships or like the ones that are like appealing to people uh the one that was left was like plumber uh and i'm not saying that the shit talk plumber is like obviously it's a very important job and you know etc but it's not something i would ever see myself doing mostly because i am not gonna do manual labor i did i say this is someone who did manual labor in the army for like 10 years uh i fucking hate it i'm not good at it um and I will quit. The only reason why I made it that long in the army is because you're legally not allowed to quit. But I went for like one day to this apprenticeship and like, oh, yeah, you're going to go like this, this call with us. I was like, okay, that's fine.

Let's look like I want to see how this goes. And someone's like, this is like stuff that doesn't really exist anymore as far as I know. But they had their entire septic system, like in their backyard, like pipes under their yard. And it had exploded. Um, God had created this backyard swamp of human waste.

Um, and I'm like, yep, I'm done here. I'm good. You guys have fun with this. I hope, I hope you make all the money in the world,

but it's not for me. So like that's super common in Ireland to have to have the septic tank like in the back garden but it's really funny because anyone who's irish who's listening to this who like grew up outside the city will know this thing so obviously it gets like quite cold in the winter like we don't we have two seasons in ireland wet and dry but when there's like it's quite cold if you're like looking out the back kitchen window and someone in a in the houses after taking a dump and flushes it you just see the steam coming out of the exhaust pipe for the septic tank uh the one in michigan that at when i was growing up we had to have like someone had to come empty the tank every once in a while. And likewise,

it had exploded at one point. Though it had exploded because my brother and I were children and stuffed something down the toilet. And like my mom is like, oh wow, this house is old. So, you know, these things happen. And the plumber's like,

actually we found this like hockey figurine down there that probably caused this and i was like mark did it that wasn't me wayne gretzky blocked your toilet yeah yeah uh he's truly the goat at fucking up uh my mom's pipes but like you know i got i got a i gotta shout out to plumbers you know i don't want to respect the tradesmen i would argue that plumbers and electricians are like the two most essential tradesmen because they are if like something goes wrong in your house plumbing and electrics are just the two things you just do not want to fuck with no though like especially electricity that's like one thing like it happens here like i had some electrical problems in my apartment and my landlord's like oh i know a guy who can work on electric electric stuff i'll send him over like i noticed you did not use the term electrician that that sentence is the start of probably about three months of

misery for so many people he he fixed it but he shocked the piss out of himself like six or seven times doing it and i was like man like i was like so where did you like did you go to school if he's like no no i taught myself like yeah i could tell i mean yeah yeah yeah and like like this is the thing like basic carpentry stuff unless it's it's not structural you can kind of figure out how to do most of it. Like, if it's structural, you should probably call in someone. But if it's like, oh, the leg on, like, one of my countertops is, like, broken, I can probably fix that with some wood glue myself and, like, figure it out. But, like, if you have just, like, sinks and toilets overflowing or, or like just a socket that you plug something in

you get a mild shock you just call in a professional shout out the unions yeah union makes us strong they're like these jobs are incredibly important they are however not for me god bless you for doing them yeah if if we hit a certain goal on the patreon i'm gonna unionize against joe so uh i'm gonna have shocks represent me as my union rep when i negotiate with joe plot twist the patreon gets it high i can afford to hire mckinsey they'll just put your face on the home page like you raytheon you're right beside pete budaj like making canadian children starve subscribe to the lines led by ducky's patreon and i will personally increase the bread prices in canada

um if you support the patreon enough joe can afford a moab yeah i know where that motherfucker's going um now before i say something that has to be bleeped tom we have a podcast um and on that podcast i'm not good at segues today uh we love to talk about the roman military getting its ass beat um and you know a good old-fashioned roman ass whooping is i think when a foundational story of the show and i understand that a roman ass beating probably means something much worse if you Google search it or like with safe search off or put in like the urban dictionary. We've talked a lot about these over the years from to the book forest to Hannibal tap dancing on robes so hard they reverted back to human sacrifice temporarily. Now for this episode and pretty much all of our other Rome episodes, not counting our entire side series, the Romecast, available on Patreon.

See, that plug was smooth. Sometimes you just got to stop and admire that. Yeah, you made that one work. As for someone who's not good at segues, intros, or any other part of the beginning or the end of a show, nailed that one. It's all downfield from here. But we have to go back to the Roman Republic,

specifically the First Triumvirate, a three-headed clusterfuck of government consisted of ganius pompius magnus known famously as pompey the great gaius julius caesar and marcus lincinius crassus a form of government that worked so well you might recognize it in like lebanon uh despite caesar becoming the most famous roman for most people listening i'm assuming at and at the time pompey was definitely more famous than than caesar was he was the greatest general in rome though caesar was young and he was quickly catching up crassus on the other hand was a notorious legendary historical piece of shit um he kind of sort of invented the concept of a fire brigade but he did it in a protection racket um okay he was the richest man in rome and that is how he became that way uh so his fire brigade would show up if your house

is on fire so your house your farm whatever is on fire it'd be like wow that sucks it'd be a shame if it burned all the way down i'll buy it from you for fifty thousand dollars and we'll put the fire out so you're left with a choice do i let my house burn all the way to the ground at which point it's worth nothing or do i sell immediately to crassus and then he puts the fire out and then the property is his um he made so much money doing this i like that in the u.s it seems like you're about three steps away from doing this i mean in depending on where you live um i say this is someone who was a firefighter once upon a time in most places the fire department does not work this way it is a civil and public service however i have heard horror stories from more rural areas where like oh you didn't pay your

fire department tax or whatever and they'll like park out front and watch this shit burn um i don't know how prevalent that is anymore uh but I've heard stories in like the mid 2000s of that happening in some more out of the way places. Oh my God. Yeah. It's like, it's like if libertarians control the fire department, like,

Oh, I see your house is on fire. You're only subscribed to the silver package. We can't rescue your kids until you upgrade to platinum. Please download the app. Your house is more than 13 years old we're not going to save it this life-saving rescue is brought to you by cheetos dangerously cheesy but uh it's funny because on my own show um check out beneath skin pod um see we see that's two that's two good plugs already um we're by the time this is we've finished

our four-part series about the history of japan and in one of the episodes when we're talking about edo period tokyo um edo essentially had a huge problem with houses burning down because everything was just made with timber paper fabric thankfully that never happened again and essentially the fire brigades in eddo were just like brawling gangs of guys so like they would show up to put out a fire and their main method was like okay we're just going to chop your house down so it doesn't burn all the houses around it yeah there's like loads of evidence there's loads of evidence of these like firemen like two groups of them like showing up to the same scene and then just fighting outside over who gets to chop down the house dudes rock and then and then like

drinking in like bars and stuff like late into the night and then just having street brawls okay but that does track with my experience in the fire department. At least that last part. Some things never change. Yeah. I return to tradition, except it is when the guys from the other firehouse you don't like show up to the same call, you just start beating the fuck out of them.

You just turn hoses on each other. Now, Crassus, despite his immense, nearly incalculable wealth, did not have nearly as much martial glory as the other two. So at the ripe age of 60, he began planning and 60 is old as shit for Rome. He is elderly. He began to plan ways to fluff up this record. Crassus's first real glory came when he put down Spartacus' rebellion Though he lost quite a few times before he put that rebellion down

And had to reintroduce the practice of decimation onto his legions In order to get them to actually fight For people who are unaware, decimation is a lot pulling of One out of every ten soldiers in a group of ten Is to be executed by the other nine normally by being beaten to death um and we actually did a series about the spartacus rebellion a while ago you can go listen to it we talk about a lot more but and like decimation comes up on the show more frequently than it should like it's that joke like you know if i had a nickel for every time we talked about

decimation on this show i I'd have five nickels. But that's still kind of weird that's happened so many times. Five nickels more than you would have had otherwise. Yeah. I mean, it's happened recently in history, as recent as World War II and a few other ones since then, from what I've heard. Though Spartacus was quite terrifying to Rome at the time. Beating him was not exactly considered a flex because it was just a slave rebellion.

While this is happening, Pompey had been given a formal triumph because he had taken part in the conquest of Iberia. While Crassus has only given an ovation, which according to Plutarch, Roman citizens actually thought it was pathetic that crassus took the ovation uh because he had only killed some slaves he had not retaken any territory for rome he hadn't conquered a you know a major enemy he hadn't taken over iberia nothing like that like the one thing

that like overriding thought i have while hearing about this guy for the first time is imagine how much of a dickhead you have to be to be remembered as a dickhead thousands of years later. A dickhead slumlord who started a mafia-based fire department. Amazing. Incredible. Sounds like the Roman

Rudy Giuliani. Though I'm not sure if Crassus fucked his cousin, which Rudy Giuliani did do. I didn't know that. Married her even. Yeah. That's some Jerry Lee Lewis shit. Yeah.

Oh, God. Now, this episode is about 18 years after that. Rome and Parthia are not exactly friends during this era. The Parthians are easily to be considered Iranian. are not exactly friends during this era. The Parthians are easily to be considered Iranian. They're inheritors of the old Persian Empire that had been destroyed by Alexander the Great.

The Parthians were not really at war with Rome exactly, but they were not friends. Both Sulla and Pompey had previous tours of duty in the East and had negotiated with them on friendly terms. As friendly as terms can be

between two regional powers uh as friendly as rome negotiates with anybody they consider their inferior right um though parthia's power was expanding and they're growing large enough that rome was starting to get annoyed uh with their continued existence it was also pressing pressing on lands that Rome considered to be within their sphere of influence. And wouldn't you know it, there happened to be a succession crisis unfolding in Parthia, which led directly to the region kind of exploding, drawing Rome further in because they saw an opening. In 57 BC, King Phrates III was murdered by his sons arodes the second and mithridates the fourth who then promptly began trying to kill one another over the throne arodes one setting mithridates running across the border into roman controlled syria seeking help from the roman pro

council there this is just like when a greek cafe owner retires at like 55 and his two large sons fight over who gets to take it ah who could forget the secession crisis of athens heroes down the street now obviously the pro council wanted to get involved because placing a king that was very uh you know favorable to the romans and the parthian throne would be a huge win, not only for him personally, but also Rome. Eventually, these plans fell apart. However, that particular pro-council's replacement was Marcus Crassus, who immediately began fucking with Parthia directly. He allied with Mithridates, and he helped him invade one of the Parthian client kingdoms in 54. That plan failed pretty hard.

Mithridates is executed. This also created something of a power vacuum because it made Rome look weak. So weak, in fact, that the Roman client kingdom of Armenia quickly said, oh, we're going to go with the Parthians now because it seems like the Romans are on the way out. Armenia does this quite a few times. Yeah. Armenia, really the a few times. Yeah, Armenia really the weapon of choice. Look, man, it's like

winds blowing east this time. I guess I'm with Rome. Oh, fuck. He's like licking the fingers, sticking up like we're going to be with Parthia this week. So many, many years later, with Parthia even stronger and still undergoing a bit of internal strife that any large, growing, decentralized empire tends to do.

Crassus found a way to finally elevate himself using military conquest, as his last real victory had been well over a decade ago. After all, despite their regional strength, everyone assumed that with the full weight of the Roman military, Parthia would be crushed quite easily. The legions had previously done so against regional powers like Pontus and Armenia once again, while hardly breaking a sweat. So Crassus assumed that the hardest part of the war would just be

walking over there to do it. To be fair, it was a long walk. I mean, I feel like we have a classic case of a Roman hubris coming up, but I'm going to let you prove me wrong or right. Oh, absolutely. And even funnier was Rome itself was against this war. Parthia and Rome actually had an active treaty. So the Senate and even citizens who care enough to pay attention were pretty openly against the war. have to pay attention were pretty openly against the war cicero called it a war without justification and even though none of this matters because roman democracy is a fucking joke the tribune of the plebs uh publicly like placed a curse on him uh which is which is pretty funny we need

people in the senate placing curses on people more often in my opinion uh but this is just like this is really just like you're like at a party or something and like your friend is just adamantly confident that they can jump from the balcony into a bush like and not get hurt and everyone is like dude we're three floors up you are blackout drunk this is not a good idea please just stop it's fine bro i know to tuck and roll i'll be fine and then it's like you so go fund me for his hospital bills upcoming you know um now this also was portended by bad weather people began to believe this entire invasion was like a giant bad omen for rome but crassus and his army specifically and one of these things ended up being very very true um and crassus

really should have listened because as soon as his invasion force set off from a roman port it ran into a storm and lost several ships and thousands of men i i'm gonna try and count how many points during the procession of this battle that they could have just cut their losses and ran home and to be like okay, we're cutting their losses. We're not going to pursue this. So we're at one now. He could have turned around in so many different ways. He's even given a better way to go on this campaign by a Roman ally, and he just wasn't listening to them.

And on November 14th, 55 BC, Crassus assembled 50,000 men. This is seven legions, and he paid for it all himself like he wanted all this to be on him and that ended up being not the way that he intended in a little bit he started his invasion and he was joined by Publius Crassus who was aid to Caesar's very famous campaign in Gaul he was a rising political

star in Rome but more importantly he was Crassus' son again this will end up being a mistake nepotism never political star in Rome, but more importantly, he was Crassus' son. Again, this will end up being a mistake. Nepotism never gets old. Well, you know what else isn't going to get old? Publius Crassus. Crossing the Euphrates, he occupied

and garrisoned a few nearby towns, all of them surrendered to Romans voluntarily, largely without a fight, with the exception of one town in particular. Plutarch reported that Crassus took it by storm, plundered the goods, and then sold all of the inhabitants into slavery, which was normal Roman doctrine at the time.

He then required his army to salute him as Imperator, which is quite funny because he had not taken over shit yet um he had fought one minor battle against mostly unarmed people but yeah now he's like i want you to call me imperator this is just like pure lying about your uh job history on linkedin i love it yeah i i mean everybody lies on their resume a little bit. Not many people lie to make themselves. Actually,

a lot of people lied to themselves to make them seem like a military genius or to get like a talking head job or something. Like how, how many public figures in us politics are, we're like, they were in the Marines or they were special forces, but in reality they spent like three months filing paperwork yeah uh it's it's quite there was someone running for senate or i think it's house

of representatives actually uh running against ilhan omar and like she was uh like i have a strong 15 year career of being in the u.s military and and they'd only made it to the rank of E4. And I was like, man, I would not be flexing about that. Yeah, like how to suck at your job, but suck at it consistently. That's right. Now, he eventually went into winter quarters and came out of them in 53,

at which point the king of Parthia sent an emissary. The king's message that was, if Crassus' armies was sent by the king of Parthia sent an emissary the king's message that was if Crassus' armies was sent by the people of Rome Parthia would have no mercy on them but if the invasion was just Crassus' private adventure for his own profit, which it was

the king would take pity on Crassus, allow the army to depart without being fought Crassus promptly told the emissary to fuck off, and the emissary walked away laughing. Two. We're on two now. At this point, the kingdom of Armenia had once again joined Rome. Fickle Armenians.

Now, with the king of Armenia, Ardivestus, rode with Crassus bringing thousands of his own soldiers Ardivestas had previously grown up in the area and fought the Parthians multiple times he had fought the Romans as well and he tried to point out that Crassus man listen

your plan is going to force you to march directly through the desert and that seems like a bad idea not only is that like on its face value very stupid don't march through the desert there's no water there it's also hostile territory like he'd be marching through enemy territory all the way to parthia and king artivestis is like look if we just like dip north a bit we can cut through armenia you can supply through there and it's friendly.

It'll take a little longer, but when the other option is, again, marching 50,000 men through the desert, this is a much better idea. Also, the Armenian terrain is not flat, it's quite mountainous, and the Parthians depend on cavalry for fighting. So, they won't be able to deploy their cavalry against you very well there again crassus said no like what what was his justification of not like not choosing the better option um generally if i was to spitball here is that he because it made him in his opinion it would make him seem like secondary to King Artivestus like I'm in command I will make the choices even if they're very very stupid like once

again like we recently did an episode about who was it the fucking the crusaders getting their ass handed to them by Saladin because they did the exact same thing marching through the middle of a desert yeah like don't like march through the desert don't try and do without any water

like i just do not know why the fuck these people don't learn somehow this will not be the only time he says fuck water in the situation for god's sake all advice from the king of armenia was completely ignored which was a very very stupid idea this is because crassus had never fought the parthians before well king artivestes had and furthermore crassus didn't actually seem to care all that much about learning about his enemy he knew absolutely nothing about the parthians he knew nothing about how they fought and they could not have fought more differently than romans for instance the Parthians. He knew nothing about how they fought. And they could not have fought more differently than Romans. For instance, the Parthians barely used infantry. If they did use infantry, it would be like local militias they would raise up or mercenaries.

Most of their strength came from their horsemen. And specifically, their heavy cavalry called cataphracts. Anybody who's played rome total war is probably like ah i know that word uh the cataphracts wore scale body armor with articulated plating on their arms and legs uh they were armed with long lances as their primary weapon and they could very easily be thought of as like an early cousin to a medieval knight. But probably most famously, specifically in this case for Parthia, is their horse archers.

They would charge at an enemy, fire off a volley, and then retreat in a loop and constantly run in a circle, doing this over and over and over again. The enemy would think that when they veer off, they're retreating. So they would chase them, leading to the Parthians circling around doing the same thing

over and over. This is where the term Parthian shot comes from. It is a constant hit and run attack on an open battlefield. And like, what is the Roman... They have 50,000 troops.

What is cavalry? Almost entirely infantry. Yeah. Oh my God. And specifically the Parthian tactics are great against the infantry based army. So at this point, and actually for a lot of Rome's existence, the bulk of their cavalry force would come from auxiliaries like the Armenians in this example. And they did have their own cavalry, but it was never considered great. They always kind of saw it as an afterthought.

And in this case, none of their cavalry are Roman. Most of them are Armenian. Some of them are others. And Armenians aren't exactly known for having great cavalry either. They're just dudes on horses. So ignoring advice

and marching through the desert, Crassus advanced on the town of Zagouma and then Selassia, which was on the Euphrates River. He then crossed the river and it was again advised by the king of Armenia, bro, we should probably keep the river to our flank. This is a good idea. Uh, not only is it a water source, which again, we're in the middle of the desert, gonna need that. But, you know, if you have something the size of the Euphrates River to one side, you cannot be surrounded also, so at

this point we are two points at which he could have turned around and just be like you know, this is a dumb idea and we're at four points of him completely ignoring tactical advice that probably would have made him win this battle. Yeah, and he of course ignores this advice as well

um instead he's like listen here kangar divestas you swarthy fuck this local tribal leader who i just met is great friends with me he's saying all these nice things about me and he told me that there's only a small parthian army up ahead led by a guy named General Serena, which should have been a key because Serena was by far the best general in Parthian history. And he's a guy who required 200 entire wagons to transport all of his concubines when he went on the campaign. Like this just really reminds me of a situation I was in a while ago where, and this is because when I drink, I love just talking to anyone, was out and looking for, you know, a nightclub to go to. And the person I was with was like, oh, we should go to this place because it like,

I've heard it's really good. It looks cool on Google. Let's go to that. And I was like, no, this guy I met at the bar said we should go to this place he said it's really really good and ended up like walking for 25 minutes whereas the other place was like five minutes away and the place we ended up going was shit yeah yeah that'll happen should have listened to the the armenian king at the local pub yeah um now that that's that'll be just be us next week. Yeah, that's right. Now, obviously,

I shouldn't have to point this out, but that tribal leader was a fucking spy and he was being used to lure Crassus into a Parthian trap. So, of course, Crassus hired that tribal leader

to be their guide to the open Mesopotamian desert, away from the river, and through deep sand and burning sun. As this happened, the Parthian king once again invaded Armenia, which meant King Ardivestes had to fuck off to protect his

kingdom and could no longer send reinforcements to the Romans. At every single point, he is ignoring best practices both militarily and just like in intelligence yeah just i'm doing the worst thing possible basic self-preservation skills these poor roman soldiers marching in their like tiny thin leather sandals just their feet burning on the sand going oh oh oh oh oh fuck shit uh and so art of essays makes it back to armenia which isn't too far away he then sends a message back to the uh back to crassus telling

like i'm begging you for the love of god get the fuck out of the desert and come to armenia now not only to get like the to defeat the parthians there, but again, they could then use Armenia for transit. Now, according to Plutarch, at this point, Crassus was suspicious of King Ardivestes. He's like, you know, he keeps trying to get me to come to Armenia very often. This must be some kind of Parthian plot

and that the king was betraying him. So he vowed right then and there he would burn Armenia to the ground when he was done with Parthia. And it turned out Crassus might be the only man in history to make that threat and not actually be able to carry it out uh the tribal leader who was guiding the robins through the desert just vanished one night uh leaving the entire army stranded and completely lost near the town of Karhai. Karhai?

Karahi? I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce it, but it's also the name of the battle. I looked up three different pronunciation guides, and all three pronounced differently. So Karai. I'm going with Karai. That is my educated guess. Crassus took

solace in the fact that the Parthians nearby were, again, only a small force and were kind of far away. Then the Roman scouts returned. Well, some of them returned. Most of them had been killed. They reported that the Parthian army was nearby and large, about 10,000 men, and was coming for them. Now, this is actually a small military in comparison. They outnumbered two to one, just about. Crassus panicked, not sure what to do, and he had no idea how to form

his men up correctly and began randomly switching up between different formations, between standard line formations, and then settling on a square formation, having no idea exactly where the Parthians were. And then once he formed up in a square formation, he idea exactly where the Parthians were and then once he formed up in a square formation he had them just march in a direction blindly he's just like you know march in a square square is the strongest shape you know like

nothing can defeat a square what about a triangle fuck on accident he did actually pick the right formation because the square formation is best for fighting off cavalry formations but he didn't do that on purpose and then as a stroke of good luck

the only good luck the Romans will have they accidentally found a river and soldiers were able to get water for the first time in days this is where every officer in Crassus' army came to him and said, look, we should stay here.

The Parthians are coming for us. Our scout said they're attacking us. We should just wait for them. However, Crassus' son convinced his dad that, no, Romans attack. We need to advance on them and not wait for them because defending and drinking water For survival is for pussies

So that is exactly What they did the downfall of so Many men is their large son like It's like Kyle Rittenhouse Looking Roman is like no You know waters for gays No we attack real Roman just marched blindly off into the

Fucking desert I mean it's Probably you know if we look at gays. No, we attack. Real Romans just march blindly off into the fucking desert. I mean, it's probably, you know, if we look at the continuity of Rome, that's actually quite, you know, a through line of doing the stupidest shit possible. I mean, at this point, imagine that you're Serena, right? He's like, they can't possibly keep doing this. Oh, oh god,

they're really, they're going through with it again. I can't imagine, like, imagine being, like like a parthian scout just like off in the distance on some ridge somewhere and just like looking at all these romans like do like marching away from the water and you're just like are are they fucking with us like are they like are they gonna like march forward to draw us in and then march back towards the water like or are they actually this dumb? The most sunburned Italians

you've ever seen just getting lost wandering through the desert. You hear the faintest sound of Eurotrash dubstep like the Romans are coming. You just hear the loudest sound of sexual harassment coming from over the horizon.

They're not dying of thirst. They're dying because they haven't found a woman to harass verbally in days. Crassus is getting them to march because he has a scarecrow in a sexy dress at the front of the formation. They're trying to whistle their cracked dry lips at it and just failing. They're trying to whistle their cracked dry lips at it and just failing. Now, the Romans were still in the square formation. And that is when the two sides eventually met when Serena opened the battle. Because again, the Romans had no idea where they were.

Serena ordered his cataphracts to charge attempting to break the Roman square and they also began playing incredibly loud war drums that Plutarch said were so loud that Roman commanders had a hard time passing orders to the men to their left and right once again incongruent with the

Italians right now they're just playing like really drum heavy Eurotrans like Serena like with one hand in the air dramatically like drop the beat just it just sounds like a 100 ad uh eurovision coming over the horizon you just like one guy playing a flute oh god we've we've made two armies i just fucking hate at this point um now the the square formation did hold uh because it was meant to do this exact thing um so serena ordered a

withdrawal now this was kind of intelligent uh now when he ordered a withdrawal it wasn't like a broken like they weren't routing but he ordered his commanders to make it look like that's what happened. Like when you're pulling them in back from the square, look like you're running away in confusion or whatever. I don't know how you do that. I guess you do the Team America thing with your hands over your head. I'm not entirely sure. So when they pulled back, the Romans believed that they were broken.

Instead, they actually swung around and got behind the Roman formation, cutting off their way of escape. Then, the horse archers moved in. Now, the Romans attempted to immediately counter the horse archers with a cavalry charge of their own, which was met with a hail of arrows and broke them,

sending them running back towards their own square formation. This ended up they trampled over their own which was met with a hail of arrows and broke them sending them running back towards their own square formation this ended up they trampled over their own men ran into their own spears it's just incredible stuff um it turns out when you're when you're riding a several hundred pound furry war monster that's getting pelted with arrows you kind of lose control of it because the horses have more self-preservation skill than Romans. Now, the Romans were now trapped in these squares. Trapped. They could not

pull back because there's horses behind them. They were now surrounded by horse archers who were just raining arrows down on them like they might as well have an arrow machine gun. The square formation is not a formation made for flexible agile movement and they

were packed so close together the Parthian archers didn't really have to aim. They could just like aim for the fucking block of Italians over there. Aim for the big square. Yeah. The sand runs thick with olive oil imagine just being

the guy that's like bang square in the middle of the square he's like all right i might be safe for like a little while i just need to hold my shield above my head and no one will hit me but like slowly people are it's like those uh the simulator videos that i send you of like you know one super orc versus 10,000 Romans see that is what the Romans needed they need a super orc they didn't have Uruk-hai pits in Rome yet now this is exactly

what Serena had planned for the square not the Uruk-hai his men were burning through arrows like they're just thousands of arrows are being fired every minute but he'd set up an entire logistic system with runners donkeys camels and thousands of men all in place to simply run arrows to the front um so that is incredible like that that's how you win a battle is like not like oh we're going to march

away from the water it's like i'm gonna think of some sort of logistics delivery system it's like you know amazon next day delivery for your arrows that you can like shoot into some romans yeah and more specifically this directly countered carassus's original plan how to get out of the situation when he was trapped like well they have to run out of arrows eventually. And Serenna, high on a mountaintop, is like, bitch, no, I don't. It's like, you know, someone is sitting on top of you, just punching you in the face

and you just have to think. It's like, they have to get tired at some point. They have to take a break at some point. It worked for Homer. Yeah. Until it didn't. Until it didn't. Yeah. Now, Crassus eventually did see like wow these arrows are actually never running out so he ordered his son and 6 500 men to charge out

and attempt a breakout this went as exactly as well as you can think uh the romans charge the parthian horsemen reeled back filling the romans with hope that they had retreated forcing them to charge faster pulling them further away from the main body of troops and the parthians wrote back around surrounding them and cut off creastus's son's detachment from the rest of the roman army and then begin hammering with arrows once again like if you have no like i think from a tactical perspective if you have been like how long have they been under halo fire of arrows at this stage before they broke out it's had to have been fucking hours so like for hours they have hours worth of arrows and you think okay now they've

run out you know i think that's a and we're gonna break out into towards a formation that they can flank us on and surround us like that's just not really well it's crass so it's not really great tactics from the gecko but still i feel like that is just a next level tactical misjudgment we have them right where they want us stupid stupid like a fox stupid like a fox with eight arrows stuck in its face these romans are more arrow than people at this point fucking loads of romans running around like the painting of the execution of saint sebastian i mean kind of like uh with at this point like publius attempted to order another breakout from

this point only to see that his force had been hit with so many arrows his men's hands were nailed to their shields and their feet were pinned to the crowd oh my god like this is at this stage yeah like definitely the parthians were definitely there's like a kid up on the hill like some soldier son he's like oh do you want to take a shot at the romans you know i'm just kind of tired you want to do this yeah like it's take your kid to work day because like oh we're just going to destroy these dudes so easily it's like okay this like seven year old Iranian kid is just like firing arrows

they invented the NHL line shift change because their archers were getting so tired like we need a new fresh seven in there let's go however the lone Roman bright spot of the entire battle happened within this trapped detachment publius's forces had celts and gulls in its ranks and they

fought like motherfuckers the celts decided on the spot like we're gonna come up with i mean they're not gonna win of course but they they they came up with a tactic that was so smart in comparison to what the rest of the Roman forces were doing. That's considered revolutionary. These guys in all this horse armor, they look awfully heavy. What if we made them come down here with us? so they would grab on to the cataphracts long lances and pull them off their horses jump

on them in large groups and frantically beat and stab them to death I mean look that sounds very Celt like I'm not gonna lie you're gonna see that like next weekend in Dublin it's just same thing it's just gonna happen except it's gonna be like a dude

getting pulled off like standing on a traffic bollard and just get the shit kicked out of them now the gulls had dismounted and they laid down on the ground as the horses charged towards them and then when they got close they'd spring up and disembowel the parthian horses this is it this is the thing is like and it's similar who to how like pikes became used like way later for like dealing with cavalry is like you have a horse charging at you if you can like move slightly out of the way or get a pike in around any stirrups any armor you can just pull a dude off yeah i mean people standing up tall on horses are and like cataphracts horses also

have armor on them but their stomachs don't have any. So the gull's like, I have this revolutionary new idea. I'm going to lay down. I'm tired. I'm just going to take a quick nap. I got you. Surprise, motherfucker.

Look, I'm in favor of anything that disembowels horses. I don't like horses. They got weird teeth. I don't like them. disembowels horses. I don't like horses. They got weird teeth. I don't like them. This podcast does not endorse horse torture and disembowelment. This message has been brought

to you by our legal counsel. Though, like I said in the end, that didn't matter. After being shot with arrows for hours and weakened, the heavy horse cataphracts were sent in to finish them off. Cornered and wounded, Publius ordered his aid to kill him before the Parthians get their hands on him. And he did.

Now, this is completely separate from Crassus. And Crassus had no idea what was going on over there. He didn't actually know what had even happened to the other detachment. Completely cluelessess he had no idea his son was dying horribly they were not with an eye shot and every messenger he sent out in that direction were of course hit with like

an unholy amount of arrows before they even got close however you mean the messenger that sent out is like you just know you're about to get like absolutely like shish kebab with like arrows and he's like now you just like run over there tell those guys you know what's going on come back you'll be fine yeah like i know this didn't work for the last four messengers but

giuseppe i got faith in you buddy let's go hey it's a why it's a Y, it's a me, I gotta deliver the message. Oh no, the arrows! He's just like flying over the sand in like a little Vespa scooter with his helmet on. I deliver the message. He gets hit with like six arrows and cocaine comes out. No, I was gonna say just Dior Sauvage like bleeds out of him. Now, Crassus had no idea what was happening with his son but the parthians were nice enough to inform crassus themselves of the fate of his son by launching his severed head towards the line via catapult um and aced they carry it over to that point by uh carrying at the point of a spear. So it's like, huh.

Well, I guess I need a new one. My question is, does he realize now how screwed he is and try something different? No, there's really nothing else he can... Like, the Parthians won this battle the second they'd cut them off. Crassus managed to keep his shit together despite having his son's severed head thrown at him. He tried to rally his army, but after being shot at for hours, his own army seemed

to just not care anymore. They all seemed to just be resigned to their fate of eventually getting their skull ventilated with an arrow. I don't get paid enough gold and salt for this shit. I'm going home. Where's my Union rep?

I need local Legion representative 63 or whatever. Oh, this is the representative for local Cavalry Legion 63. We need to negotiate the terms of this advance. Somehow he comes up still wearing a Union branded

windbreaker even though it's like 53 BCc just rock it up in like a roman legionnaire like letterman jackets like uh have you got the uh appropriate charging uh paperwork done okay do you have the forms from everyone involved uh this is going to cost you some overtime you know it's after 5 p.m come on guys what are we doing here crassus i would show you the cba but i currently have an arrow lodged in my throat at one point crassus tried to rally his men around the name of his dead son to like get them to cheer his name and nobody even answered fuck that guy's kid fuck your son you asshole i want to go home if this guy was as much of an idiot and an asshole as he seems i can't imagine his son was that liked either he couldn't have been i mean

he was raised by crassus he has to be a massive prick well he was a massive prick himself now he's just a severed head um so like yeah but like anyone listening who has ever worked on a small business where one of the owner's kids worked with you you know exactly what this kid is like yeah and you also probably wish you could also throw his severed head at your boss uh there was really no good way out of the situation so there wasn't even desertion it didn't seem like the because roman soldiers were pretty open to the idea of like chucking their shield down and making a and doing a runner if they if they had the opening but you know they were all looking at each other and be like you know something tells

me that the the the parthians aren't going to be super receptive to us running towards them at this point so we should just sit here and stick it out. I mean, we've actually talked about this before. I mean, some desertions did happen, and those men were immediately killed by the Parthians. Like during the 1812 French invasion of Russia and Napoleon's infamous retreat from Moscow and Russia as a whole, the Grand Army mostly died and splintered.

But the soldiers who stayed within military formations and no matter how miserable things went had the much higher rate of survival uh this concept of like staying around the flag etc etc so like the romans realized their only hope of survival was staying within their legion and fighting even if the situation was completely and utterly hopeless now the sun began to go down crassus wrapped himself in a cloak curled up in a ball on the ground and had a good old mental breakdown oh my god like i can't imagine just being a soldier and like witnessing this dude on the ground just like screaming his head off it's like what do what do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

And I'm like, what do you mean what do you want to do? You're supposed to be in charge. You're supposed to know what we're supposed to do. Are we all just going to fucking die now because you can't keep your shit together? Sir, I would complain but I currently have an arrow lodged directly down my urethra

and I'm just gonna go cut myself with a sword. Practicing sounding with a Parthian arrow. Now, Crassus, he's not doing so well. His officers walk over him, try to get him back into the world of the sane, but he refuses to move. He's literally just locked in the fetal position.

So the officers independently ordered all abled-bodied men to withdraw in the middle of the night and get back towards the town of karai this required them to abandon their wounded and when the wounded began to notice like what was happening like they began screaming having a pretty good idea what was about to happen to them should the parthians show up rather than face their wounded friends the romans forgot about this orderly withdrawal situation they were supposed to have and just ran away from the sound of their own dying men the parthians watched from the distance as the romans ran away making no attempts to chase them the next morning they calmly walked into the abandoned roman camp and murdered 4 000 wounded men who were still laying there um no the parthians did run into a group of roman soldiers who're like

walking wounded they weren't too bad off and like a small group like a couple dozen men back against the wall and began fighting them and they fought for so long that the parthians are really just like look actually you guys are good. You can go away. We're not going to execute you. You can just walk home. And the Romans are like, okay. Well, we're like several thousand miles away. We get like some water?

And the Parthians are like, yes. They got some water and we're allowed to walk away. Yeah, they're just like, I don't feel like honing my sword or like sharpening it later on just like get some water and fuck off yeah as the massacre in the camp was going on serena had already surrounded karai where the surviving roman army was hiding which included crassus who had seemed to finally snap out of it uh and take control of his army but there was no idea uh amongst the the group of officers still in charge that the

romans were actually going to be able to fight their way out of this one serena himself rode into the city road towards the city gates and demanded the delivery of crassus and chains with the precondition that like if you give us him we will talk to the rest of you and you'll all probably get to go home but but I want Crassus. Obviously, Crassus wasn't the biggest fan of this whole idea and refused. Instead, he told everybody, look, chill out. The king of Armenia is coming, and he's going to bring reinforcements. In reality, the king had already been defeated and had been retaken over by Parthia, so that was not going to happen. and had been retaken over by Parthia.

Uh, so that was not going to happen. Crassus, not sure what to do, uh, or any kind of best way out of the situation. He decided he needed to split what remained of his army into smaller groups. So they might be able to sneak away. Crassus took about 1500 men and hired another local guide.

Yes. This one was also a spy. Oh, yep. Yes, this one was also a spy. Yep. The guide then led him off into the middle of the night, marched them around in circles so they'd get lost, brought them into bad terrain, and then sent word to the Parthians of their location. The Parthians appeared and launched the attack,

certain to kill Crassus. Then a random group of Romans appeared who had been lost since the first battle. And like, just out of nowhere, like, oh, look, it's the general. And they ran over and saved him, despite the fact they had been lost for like a day and a half. They saved Crassus' life. Though at this point, Serena knew where Crassus was and sent out another messenger offering Crassus a truce. The terms would be if Crassus agreed to leave and go back to Rome, he'd be allowed to walk away scot-free. He would just have to meet with Serena and they'd sign the document so he could take it back to the Parthian king and be like, look, this is what happened.

king and be like look this is what happened Crassus refused but his officers and men had threatened to mutiny and send him to Serena in chains if he didn't knowing otherwise they were all going to die of course this was also a trap Crassus walked into the

Parthian camp and was immediately murdered they cut his head off poured molten gold down his throat in order to mock his notorious wealth and the head was used as a prop for a play performed from the king of Parthia like imagine being like a king at this stage

and you like you go about your day of like wine drinking cavorting like just like signing various documents and then like no other way like everyone would sit down to watch like tv like apm he just sits down it's like i wonder whose head is going to be used as a prop tonight

yeah i mean to be fair it probably looked sick as fuck because it's covered in gold like i mean like i'm trying to think like like do they dip it in gold or pour the gold over because i feel like if you pour the gold over it it might like waste a lot of gold like you know I don't want to be wasteful

you know it's still gold it's still worth something I think for a full accounting of coverage of gold you need a dip if listeners if you have ever covered your enemy's severed head in gold how did you do it right into the

show like or is it like making a candle where like they have to like dip it let it dry dip it again and just do that over several dips and it builds up cumulative layers of gold on the head maybe it's more like a candied apple situation where you dip it hair first so you can keep you know the the next stem as gold free. You're going to leave fingerprints on the gold when you play with it. It's not going to be perfect. When I dip my severed heads in gold,

I demand perfection. Now, the rest of the Romans didn't exactly fare much better. All of the groups that were running around were eventually caught and hunted down like animals. Out of an army of around 50,000, 20,000 were dead. Another 10,000 were captured and immediately pressed into slavery. Now, in the aftermath of the battle, Serena led his army back and captured all of the areas that the Romans had previously captured. And then he held a mock triumph to make fun of Crassus.

And a captured Roman soldier, who looked an awful lot like Crassus, was placed at the head of the army, forced to wear women's clothes for some reason, and then answer every time Serena was like, hey, Crassus. And he'd be like, yes, my lord. And then behind him, Serena's soldiers uh marched each of them carrying a severed roman head like like being a king i in like was this 56 ad like 50 i think 53 i believe yeah 53 ad it's just like kind of being like in a weird family guy episode. It's like you know, it's like, what can we do next? Yes. And like they're just doing improv comedy with like the severed limbs of their enemies.

He's doing prop comedy. He's doing the worst kind of comedy there ever is. What do you think, Crassus? He has his like hands stuck up his head and is moving the mouth. Gotta fist that throat hole. Work it like a puppet.

Now, after delivering Rome's greatest ever... One of Rome's greatest ever defeats, you would expect Serena would be welcomed home as a hero, have the king lavish him with riches, titles, lands, married into the royal family or something. Nope. He was immediately executed upon arrival. King Orotas was worried about him becoming too famous

and therefore a political threat to his power. Let this be a lesson to everybody who is listening. Never be too good at your job. That's why I do a relatively okay job producing this show. And I do a relatively okay job producing this show and i do a relatively bad job at podcasting um this is so that my co-host does not eventually attempt to murder me a few years later or erotis was also murdered by his son uh just like he had previously done to his father so everybody's getting murdered here now this battle also eventually tipped the scales back in Rome. The triumvirate

was an unwieldy form of government, obviously. However, the three-headed monster kind of kept itself in line, as there's always a third person to act as a foil to counterbalance the schemes of the other two. But now that Crassus was dead, it was

just Caesar and Pompey to fight for influence in Rome, which of course paved the way for the coming Roman Civil War that'd give birth to the Roman Empire at some point. Oh, small side note here. Of the 10,000 or so Roman POWs that survived the battle

and were sold off to local families, they got married off, became regular civilians, whatever, there is an absolutely wild conspiracy theory. I don't know if conspiracy theories work, but theory that exists without any evidence whatsoever. That is, they ended up in China, in the city of Likian, and fought for the Han Dynasty. The evidence of this boils down to the fact that one Chinese historian said that the tactics used by the Han vaguely resemble that of the Romans, specifically the Testudo formation. Though there is absolutely zero physical evidence, and this just seems like a very weird fanfic.

Like, do people realize letters and, you know, like, people traveled between these regions and like people talked about this stuff it's not like some like mystical thing that like a letter went from like one part of the world to the other to describe like this you know battle i'm just like what people just want to believe that the romans were everywhere not to mention the romans everywhere they went they left physical evidence like everywhere that their soldiers were stationed they carved dicks in the walls left material behind you name it uh yeah they definitely were not though to be fair one of crassus's ideas was to go to china uh via india of course that did not happen because he got his head dipped in gold in the middle of the desert yeah like the romans are the historical version of like English football fans.

Like anywhere they go, you know they've been there because of the amount of shit they leave behind. Sometimes just literal shit. Now, that is the hilarious death of Crassus and the Battle of Cori. Cori, I'm probably pronouncing it wrong.

Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you would like to ask us a question from the Legion, donate to the show, ask us via Patreon or on our Discord channel, and we will answer it on air. Today's question is, what do you do when you're not podcasting or producing? What do you do to you're not podcasting or producing like what do you do uh to let off stress i think we've had a question kind of similar to this before and i think people assume that we are

chained to our computers uh and don't do anything else um yeah like i go to the gym i play video games i like going out and drinking pints and listening to music like that's really it like I'm I'm very simple um I am and people who follow me might have seen this I am from my other podcast going to learn how to tattoo so I'm gonna be doing that um I'm also taking up a pottery class in April so you know I I mean I I think all of my hobbies are quite normal uh i'm i go to the gym uh almost every day if i don't i go i feel weird if i don't honestly um i obviously i write but i guess it doesn't count because that's also work um yeah i mean i have a i've probably the most normal social life that i've had in most of my life until very recently.

I mean, it's because you're not surrounded by hundreds of other people who also have extensive brain damage and are very bored. That does help. Yeah, going outside is nice. You should try it sometime. Get away from your computers if you can,

especially when you work on them all day you know uh but tom thank you so much for joining me again here on the show this is the area where you can plug uh your show i said show twice sounds stupid but plug your podcast uh beneath the skin it's a history of everything told through the history of tattooing and like i said earlier we've done by the time this comes out we've finished our four-part series on the history of japan we have loads of stuff like the history of you know crime and tattooing we've talked about like some artists throughout history it's good time and even if you don't know anything about tattooing that's totally fine the show is like history first and then you can learn about tattooing through it again thank you go listen

to beneath the skin everybody thank you so much for listening the show if you like what we do here consider supporting us via patreon uh you get episodes like this early um you get bonus episodes bonus series you get access to an entire series before everybody else discord access uh stickers uh all sorts of stuff i'm probably not even remembering any of it um and if you don't want to do that that's fine it's your money do it to what you please uh but leave us a review and wherever you listen to podcasts because it helps us immensely immensely and uh makes us feel good about ourselves because it's it's nice to feel nice to read nice things about the hard work that you do occasionally and until

next time dip your enemy's head in gold I don't know if I could say that but do it sustainably don't waste gold sustainable head dipping in gold