Alternate Caesar History

[Jona Lendering]

JFC Fuller, in "Julius Caesar : Man, Soldier, and Tyrant" addresses this very question on page 88 :

"...it took Caesar eight years to subdue Gaul, in extent but a fraction of the Persian empire, which under the Macedonian system was subdued by Alexander in nine."

Fuller has a point, but he is also wrong: we do not know whether the complete submission of the Parthian Empire would have been Caesar's goal. What he needed, was a victory that would allow him to present himself as a king, or would otherwise have given him sufficient credit to establish some kind of one-man rule. Recapturing the eagles lost by Crassus and seizing Ctesiphon may have been sufficient to reach his political aims.