Julius Caesar: The Last Dictator

Of the three informal "triumvirs" who helped bring an end to the Republic, somehow Marcus Crassus, unlike Pompey the Great and Caesar, stays in the shadows. There are many authenticated or attributed busts of Caesar and Pompey that have survived but none of Crassus. Legendary for his wealth, he issued coins but - following the long tradition that would not be broken until Caesar - none of them bear his living image, but only those of gods. Similarly, Plutarch inexplicably leaves large gaps in his crucial biography. This may be due to the fact that, in this era of titans, Crassus was the moneyman and behind-the-scenes intriguer, not the adored general or the genius who survived. Perhaps it is because, four years before the great civil war, he died leading a great army in one of Rome's greatest military defeats at Carrhae. Perhaps Crassus is less visible because the sheer glamour of his two greatest contemporaries surpassed him in his own lifetime, as it has ever since. Crassus always maneuvered for power, money and glory; he never had as much of any of them as he desired.

Marcus was the son of a former Consul and Censor (97 and 89 BC), Publius Licinius Crassus. He came from a respectable, well-established plebeian family. His father fought in the Social War under Lucius Julius Caesar. Although probably originally of Gaius Marius' party, Crassus pere fought against Marius and Cinna and defended Rome in 87 in the turbulent struggles between Marius' party and Sulla's. The elder Crassus was either killed or committed suicide after the complete and brutal victory of the Marians. His eldest son, Publius, also died. The remaining son, Marcus, escaped with a few followers to Spain, where he had lived during his father's governorship. Plutarch says Crassus - in his late '20's - went into hiding in a large cave along the seashore, near lands belonging to one Vibius Paciacus. Once he learned the identity of his uninvited guest, Vibius bade his slave leave one meal daily outside the cave near the cliff. Plutarch carefully describes the cave and the two young slave girls supplied to the young men by their thoughtful host. Interestingly, Plutarch - who got his story from the now-vanished histories of Fenestella - said one of the Spanish girls in old age loved to tell the tale of her briefly intimate contact with Roman history in general, and the famous Crassus in particular.

Crassus hid in his cave for eight months; when he learned that Cinna was dead and Sulla's star on the rise, he raised a body of 2,500 men and eventually joined Sulla in the east. When Sulla landed in Italy, he sent Crassus to raise an army among the Marsi, who asked him for a escort through enemy territory. Sulla allegedly was angry, saying "I give you an escort - your father, your brother, your friends, and your relations who have been put to death without law or justice, and whose murderers I am going to punish." Crassus raised the necessary troops and thereafter showed an "most active spirit" in all Sulla's campaigns.

Crassus served with Pompey the Great during Sulla's major campaigns in 83-82 BC. Crassus was vital to Sulla's victory in the the momentous battle of the Colline Gate in 82, in which he commanded the right wing of Sulla's army. Now that Sulla was essentially master of Rome, the spoils soon became available to his protégés. In the proscriptions that followed - in which informers were paid handsome bounties to denounce traitors, whose lives and properties were then forfeited - Crassus began restoring the family fortunes, buying up the property of the condemned, cheaply. Without consulting Sulla, he is said to have added a man's name to the proscription lists in Bruttium solely because he wanted his property. This allegedly caused caused a breach with the Dictator when he discovered it (although others of Sulla's intimates were cashing in the same way). A well-established tale in his own time told how Crassus would show up at the site of a burning building, bargain for the property at garage-sale prices, then have his own men promptly put out the blaze. If the owner wouldn't sell, Crassus and his slaves stood there and watched the house burn. While Crassus was increasing his fortune, Pompey's military standing bloomed, much to the moneyman's disgust. "On one occasion when someone said: 'Pompey the Great is coming,' Crassus merely laughed and asked 'As great as what?' Giving up, therefore, all attempts to equal Pompey in military matters, Crassus devoted himself to politics." Plutarch, Life, 7 (p. 120).

Crassus followed the normal cursus honorum in the next ten years, building his clientele: "...by taking pains, by helping people in the law courts or with loans, or in the canvassing and questioning which has to be done and undergone by candidates for office, he acquired an influence and a reputation equal to that which Pompey had won by all his great military expeditions." (Plutarch). Whereas Pompey was somewhat arrogant and high-handed in the way he treated his clients, Crassus worked hard both at being accessible and helpful to his increasing number of clients, including the humblest. As Plutarch notes, this meant that Pompey, when actually in Rome, frequently found Crassus more influential in day-to-day political life than he was.

Crassus had worked his way up to serving as praetor when the revolt of Spartacus and other ex-gladiators flamed into a general slave insurrection, an event that gave Crassus his greatest success in a career which longed for - but did not achieve - military glory. Rome had initially sent a praetor, Claudius Glaber, against the growing hordes of gladiators, escaped slaves and camp followers holed up with Spartacus near Mt. Vesuvius. To Rome's dismay and surprise, Spartacus' despised slave army quickly routed the soldiers and went on to defeat two legionary cohorts. By 72 BC, almost 70,000 slaves had joined the rebellion. Spartacus' forces then separately defeated the legions of the two Consuls near Picenum and also at Mutina in northern Italy. This was by no means the first serious slave revolt in Republican history, but it was becoming the most dangerous. Historians estimate that Spartacus now had over 100,000 men, women and children with him. Having failed to escape across the Alps, his army had returned to southern Italy.

Pompey was in Spain, fighting the great Marian general, Sertorius, and was unavailable. In the autumn of 72, the Senate gave Crassus imperium to head the war against Spartacus. He was given six new legions, plus the remnants of the four consular legions. In a legatine battle with the slave hordes, two of Crassus' legions were initially defeated. Crassus used the feared and rarely used tactic of decimation to punish the weakest troops - all the soldiers drew lots and a tenth of the cohort - those with the marked lots - was beaten to death by fellow legionaries. Crassus then defeated Spartacus in battle. The slave leader began a retreat to Rhegium in hopes of transporting his army to Sicily but found himself blocked by additional forces under Lucullus.

To complete the campaign, the Senate called back Pompey and his legions from Spain. By 71, Spartacus - increasingly cornered by the veteran legions - attempted to break out for the port of Brundisium, from which he hoped to escape Italy. He fought a great battle with Crassus' army near Lucania; his army was largely destroyed and his body was never found in the mounds of the dead. Mopping up operations proceeded to hunt down and destroy the rebel remnants. Crassus then made another effective and brutal decision: with approximately 6,000 captives, he decided to make an example that would never be forgotten as a warning against future slave revolts. All 6,000 men were crucified at short intervals along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome and left to rot.

Crassus probably became friendly with one of his young military tribunes, Julius Caesar, during the year-long campaign. He had shown that he was an effective military leader capable of remarkable ruthlessness - the decimation of his own soldiers and the salutary example of what happened to captives falling into his hands. One wonders if Caesar - who in Gaul became notorious for equal ruthlessness to the vanquished - learned from his commander.

Pompey, who arrived with his extra legions at the tale end of the Spartican campaign, managed to capture 5,000 survivors of Crassus' battles fleeing north of Rome. He tried to take credit for concluding the campaign, which infuriated Crassus. Crassus was apparently somewhat sensitive about his achievement; putting down an army of slaves (even in such extraordinary numbers and led by an unusually gifted slave general) was not viewed in the same light as Pompey's achievements in putting down a foreign enemy. Crassus was only eligible for an Ovation, not a Triumph - although Pompey demanded and received one for his achievements against the respectable Spanish "barbarians."

The two men overcame their differences - since each was, in a different way, a hero of the hour - and ran for the Consulship in 70 BC. Pompey was returned as Senior Consul, Crassus as Junior. They then set about dismantling some of the most significant (and reactionary) reforms instituted by their one-time patron, Sulla. Although Sulla's administrative reforms were largely retained, the two men returned the powers formerly belonging to the Tribunes of the people, including the venerated, and increasingly anarchic, power of the tribunician veto.

Following his consular year, while Pompey went on to the great commands against the pirates and against Mithridates, which kept him almost entirely in the east from 67 to 61 BC. Crassus remained in Rome, increasing his influence and his fortune. Crassus was a solid patron of the knights, the largely plebeian merchant-financiers who continually chafed against their second-class political position and rights. He was also (at least outwardly) sympathetic to the continual efforts of northern Italians (like the Transpadenes) to force the Senate to give them full Roman citizenship rights and intrigued to annex the incomparably wealthy kingdom of Egypt. Crassus also loaned money to up-and-coming young men, one of whom was Caesar. He served briefly as Censor in 65. With so many clients who were bound to support his interests, Crassus sought in Rome the kind of day-to-day influence Pompey's military successes could not buy:

	" .people thought of him as a man willing to take trouble and to help others. Another thing which made him popular was the courteous unaffected way in which he greeted people and spoke to them. However humble and obscure a man might be, Crassus, on meeting him, would invariably return his greeting and address him by name. He is said to have been well read in history and also to have been something of a philosopher, attaching himself to the doctrines of Aristotle. "
	Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 3 (p. 116).

Although there were rumors that Crassus (like Caesar) was involved in the Catilinarian Conspiracy of 63, Crassus was also instrumental in giving Cicero information to foil the conspiracy. Many believe that both Crassus and Caesar were involved in the early stages of Catiline's efforts but drew back when its lack of success became manifest and when Catiline started demanding the abolition of debt, a common revolutionary ploy that would have hit Crassus particularly hard. Crassus was known to change his political principles to suit his fortunes. It is known that, when Caesar left Rome in 62 to return to Spain, so deeply in debt that his creditors threatened to arrest him, Crassus stood surety for part of the debt. Caesar was able to recoup his fortunes in Spain to some extent, but continued friendly relations with Crassus for his help at a critical moment in his career.

The Mediterranean world at the time of Spartacus, 71 BC.

Crassus, who took his patron's duties toward clients seriously, became involved in 62 with efforts by the Roman tax gatherers to rescind their Asian contracts. Rome had no bureaucracy to handle taxation in the Republic; contracts to gather taxes were bought by bankers and merchants who then promised a certain return to the state (retaining anything additional as their own profit). Unfortunately, the knights had overestimated the available income in the war-torn eastern provinces. They were now trying to renegotiate their contracts with Rome. Crassus supported the effort, which was quashed by Cato and others in the Senate. At the same time, Pompey - having returned in glory from his successful Eastern campaigns and reorganization of provinces - found himself equally spurned in his efforts to obtain free public lands to reward his soldiers, which the Senate delayed. The third ingredient in what would eventually be dubbed the "First Triumvirate" was Julius Caesar, returned from Spain and determined to become Consul in for 59 BC., elections being held in 60. A former supporter of Pompey, Caesar yet managed to straddle both Pompey's and Crassus' camps. A deal was struck - which almost all historians credit to the younger Caesar - by which both Pompey and Crassus would support Caesar in his bid for the Consulship in return for Caesar's legislation as Consul giving them what they wanted.

As Consul, Caesar forced through legislation remitting one third of the sum owed by the Asian tax collectors - called publicani - for their contracts (thus satisfying Crassus) as well as the first of two vast land-grant reforms (for Pompey's veterans). The Triumvirate was largely a secret from the Senate; it was not until, in the face of Senate opposition, both Pompey and Crassus appeared with Caesar in the Forum to argue for the land-reform bill that their alliance became common knowledge. Cato later said that their alliance was the greatest deathblow to the Republic.

After the completion of Caesar's spectacularly controversial consulate, he departed to govern Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul and began his legendary conquests; Pompey and Crassus returned to their political maneuverings against each other. Crassus was the unseen patron of the trouble-making Tribune, Publius Clodius; Pompey supported the anti-Clodians under the control of Clodius' enemy, Titus Annius Milo. The triumvirate was beginning to unravel until Caesar - having met with Crassus at Ravenna in 56 - held a meeting with both men at Luca in which the triumviral agenda was renewed. It was the reverse of the intrigues of 60; this time, Pompey and Crassus, in spite of their mutual dislike, agreed to run for the Consulship again in 55, after which they would pass laws extending Caesar's term in Gaul for another five years, and grant themselves profitable military provinces in their post-consular year. It was agreed that Pompey would receive the provinces of Spain for five years, while Crassus - who continued to long for military success on a par with his colleagues - would receive his proconsular command in Syria. He would thus be in position to lead a great Roman campaign against its major remaining enemy in the East, Parthia. Both men won, although at a cost of bribery, corruption and street violence seldom equaled since the Sullan-Marian controversies of 30 years before.

Disaster in Parthia

It is said that Crassus - normally not a vain or boastful man - became so at the prospects of military glory finally opening up before his dazzled imagination. Crassus left for Syria with his armies in late 55. Much of 54 was taken up with squeezing the Asian provinces for money, both for the armies and for Crassus himself, although there were some early successes. Many coins which are identified with Crassus were issued in the east to help pay his legions. Assisted by his son, P. Licinius Crassus (who had served Caesar with distinction in Gaul), Crassus crossed the Euphrates in 53, moving into unfamiliar territory. His army comprised 30,000 men, almost entirely infantry with some 1,00 Gallic cavalry.

Thereafter, disaster approached near the walled city of Carrhae. Crassus was promised the support and armies of two allies, Artavasdes of Armenia and the king of Osroene, both of whom deserted him. An Arab chieftain, Ariamnes (previously bought by the Parthians) also misled Crassus as to the extent of the enemy armies and their location. The Parthian king, Hyrodes (or Orodes) was actually campaigning in Armenia, leaving behind his general, Surena, to attack the Romans with diminished forces. Surena only had 10,000 horse archers and perhaps 1,000 of the great armored heavy cavalry, called cataphracts, the ancient world's version of the tank. Tragically, Crassus was convinced of Ariamnes' honesty, against the advice of senior staff members who distrusted the Arab's suggestions.

Predictably, Crassus, quick-marching his legions through Syria en route to Carrhae, (modern Harran, an ancient biblical city), soon ran up against the enemy armies where he had been told they weren't. Ariamnes and his 6,000 cavalry melted away. Crassus' legions concentrated. With him were many young officers including his son, Publius, and Cassius Longinus (later murderer of Caesar). The Romans drew up in format of many individual hollow squares, twelve men to a side: so close together that their shields overlapped to provide outstanding defensive protection. The Parthian forces disguised their most feared weapon - the cataphracts - and it was not, at first, obvious that Crassus' much larger army was in deep trouble Consoling his men that the Parthian arrows would soon run out, Crassus did not know that Surena had laid on an almost inexhaustible reserve of arrows for his famed horse archers.

In the ensuing battle, Crassus' son Publius was killed trying to stop an attack against the army's rear; his head was speared on a spike and carried to where his father could see it. Crassus was devastated. As night fell, convinced by his young legates, he began a sickening retreat with the remnants of his army, leaving thousands of wounded on the field who were finished off by the enemy. The survivors crowded into Carrhae. The retreat continued the next night; his native guides led the Romans into marshy country in which they could not maneuver and in which forces were scattered and unable to join each other. Surena sent messengers summoning Crassus to a parley and hinted at a truce; when Crassus hesitated to answer the summons - having been betrayed so often by the natives - his own soldiers forced him to go:

Meeting the enemy, Crassus was brutally killed and his head and hand taken with the victorious Parthians to the king. Crassus and the remaining soldiers fled and eventually brought the grim details back to Rome. In all, 20,000 legionaries were dead and an additional 10,000 were taken prisoner and never returned. The legionary standards were gleefully captured by the enemy.

There is a macabre footnote to the death of Marcus Crassus. Surena took the head and hand and sent them to Hyrodes in Armenia; he and the army proceeded back to Seleucia in procession in which a Roman prisoner, wearing women's clothes, pretended to be Crassus led along on horseback in triumph. He was followed by "the courtesans and singing women of Seleucia, singing all sorts of vulgar and obscene songs on the theme of the effeminacy and cowardice of Crassus." Plutarch, 33. Worse indignity was to come. In Armenia, Hyrodes had made peace with Crassus' erstwhile ally, Artavasdes. The new allies feasted and held dramatic performances of Greek literature. A Greek actor, Jason of Tralles, was performing before the two kings (performing a scene from Euripedes' Bacchae) when the head of Crassus was brought in. Jason immediately donned women's clothes and, pretending to be a frenzied Bacchante in the play, used Crassus' head as a prop in the performance.

Crassus' death is poignant for a number of reasons. One of the most successful plutocrats in Roman history, he still hungered for the military glory of his colleagues, Caesar and Pompey. Instead, he would be remembered as the man responsible for one of Rome's greatest military disasters. More significantly, his death severed the bonds between Pompey and Caesar, already strained by the death of Pompey's wife (and Caesar's daughter), Julia, in 54. It is possible that Civil War would have resulted if Crassus had lived, but his death certainly made it inevitable.

The legionary standards Crassus lost at Carrhae were not returned to Rome until 20 BC, when Augustus received them from the Parthians (along with those lost by L. Decidius Saxa in Syria in 40 BC and Marc Antony in 36 BC). The defeated standards were placed in the temple of Mars Ultor; Augustus, celebrating their return, was voted a triumphal chariot which was also kept in the temple. One of the few images remaining of Crassus' death is on the coins showing a kneeling Parthian returning his lost standards to Rome.

In the end, Crassus was remembered for his wealth and greed, although in his own lifetime Pompey was actually richer. Ironically, Cassius Dio, two centuries later passed along a legend about his end even then considered as fact:

"Crassus was among the fallen, either killed by one of his own men to prevent his being captured alive, or by the enemy when he had been severely wounded . . . there is a tradition which says that the Parthians in mockery poured molten gold into his mouth. For in spite of his great wealth, he was obsessed by money that he pitied as poor anyone unable to support an enrolled legion out of his own pocket." Dio, 40.27 (2).