In 53 B.C. a Roman army confronted a force one quarter its strength yet suffered Rome’s bloodiest defeat in more than a hundred years. The Battle of Carrhae pitted 40,000 Roman soldiers against an army of a mere 10,000 of the Parthian Empire on the sands of Mesopotamia. The humiliating loss rippled through Rome and crumbled the fragile foundation of the Republic; from this rubble rose the Roman Empire. And the disaster of Carrhae, and the folly leading to it, would write a bloody epitaph of the Roman commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus.
This script was written by Scott Crawford, a writer living in Beijing, China. Scott is now completing a novel which portrays the Battle of Carrhae and chronicles a captured legionary’s fight for survival.
