11-01-2008, 10:05 PM
But Caesar was blessed with a totally obscene luck, so.............
His piety in prayer must have great. Crassus needed some tips in praying to the gods from Caesar! Cearsar only ran into real trouble when he decided he was one of the gods!
I don't go with the incredible lethality of archery either. If that was the case. After blowing Crassus away, Surena would have marched on the rest of Rome's middle eastern possessions. Possibly leaving them the European continent because he thought they were funny.
In which case the Romans would have abandoned the legionarie in favor of horse archers. Although horse archers must have had something going for them. They were used throughout the iron age. And the Romans made increasing use of them in later centuries.
One source quotes Surena as having 6-8 thousand horse archers and 1000 cataphracts. And Crassus as having 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. It appears Crassus had the strategic advantage in shear numbers.
One would wonder if Surena was even expecting to win decisively. And if his mission was simply to slow Crassus down via harassment.
It appears that Crassus was initially in the position to afford losses and still have plenty of manpower.
The more I look at it. The more it appears the failure of Crassus. He failed to act quickly enough to bolster morale and discipline. His army lost it's order on the march and became strung out. And ended up in a position that was indeed very vulnerable to Surena's horse archers.
The main question is not whether Crassus could have originally adopted a better strategy. But what do you do, when he found himself in the position he was? I don't think his position was hopeless, he had the surplus of manpower.
I believe most of the horse archers came from the Suren Kingdom. And were nominally Parthian allies.
[/quote][/code]
His piety in prayer must have great. Crassus needed some tips in praying to the gods from Caesar! Cearsar only ran into real trouble when he decided he was one of the gods!
I don't go with the incredible lethality of archery either. If that was the case. After blowing Crassus away, Surena would have marched on the rest of Rome's middle eastern possessions. Possibly leaving them the European continent because he thought they were funny.
In which case the Romans would have abandoned the legionarie in favor of horse archers. Although horse archers must have had something going for them. They were used throughout the iron age. And the Romans made increasing use of them in later centuries.
One source quotes Surena as having 6-8 thousand horse archers and 1000 cataphracts. And Crassus as having 30,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry. It appears Crassus had the strategic advantage in shear numbers.
One would wonder if Surena was even expecting to win decisively. And if his mission was simply to slow Crassus down via harassment.
It appears that Crassus was initially in the position to afford losses and still have plenty of manpower.
The more I look at it. The more it appears the failure of Crassus. He failed to act quickly enough to bolster morale and discipline. His army lost it's order on the march and became strung out. And ended up in a position that was indeed very vulnerable to Surena's horse archers.
The main question is not whether Crassus could have originally adopted a better strategy. But what do you do, when he found himself in the position he was? I don't think his position was hopeless, he had the surplus of manpower.
I believe most of the horse archers came from the Suren Kingdom. And were nominally Parthian allies.
[/quote][/code]
Steven.
