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Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic

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Allen M. Ward's book is on the life and political impact of Marcus Licinius Crassus during the Late Republic. Crassus was a venerated member of the Roman nobilitas who was always a behind-the-scenes power broker in Rome and never really in agreement with his fellow patricians. He had a distinguished place in having served the consulship twice and as Censor once over the course of his life: the highest offices of state a Roman could attain. Modest and friendly yet wealthy and ambitious, he chose to remain mostly in the civil sphere as a court advocate instead of pursuing commands abroad: his service under Sulla, his command against Spartacus' slave revolt, and his Parthian expedition were the limits of his military posts. His father and older brother had perished under Marius' sanguinous siege and massacre of Rome itself and he became a strong ally of Sulla from whom he profited immensely. Sulla's proscriptions gave him much real estate and he had ties with the equestrian class in state contracts for tax farming: his father had also left him interests in Spain where he had much clientelae and several mines.

Distancing himself from the conservative retrenchment of Sulla's regime early on, Crassus came to follow more moderate positions by promoting poor patricians and wealthy plebeians to political offices by lending them money and, at the opportune time, asking them for political favors instead of interest as payment. Crassus following this traditional Roman custom of not levying interest with an ability to call the debt in full whenever he pleased was an extremely effective bargaining chip in getting the political results he wanted. Censors could strike someone out of political office if they were judged to be insolvent by a court enforcing a debt and a dependant political upstart would be willing to do anything to avoid the overwhelming pecuniary demands of such an influential a patron to the likes of Crassus. The debt-burdened Caesar realized that with his own creditors when Crassus bailed him out of a huge debt of 800 talents/19,200,000 sesterces just prior to the commencement of his Spanish governorship: a post of which Crassus probably needed help as his interests in Spain were most likely in jeopardy to Pompey's recent political encroachments there to primarily settle veterans and expand his clientelae. Senatorial power plays such as the latter often made Crassus a bitter enemy of Pompey The Great and Cicero. Crassus therefore saw much potential in Caesar to keep them in check.

Through incessant political machinations, Crassus and Caesar were the main force behind the formation of the First Triumvirate with a deflated Pompey at Luca in 56 B.C. Crassus' political zenith came soon after in 53 B.C. when he was campaigning in Parthia serving the proconsulship in the East he had won after very dirty consular elections involving bribery, political trials, hired mobs, and violence. Despite his strong political position in Rome, his poor knowledge of the immense Parthian empire and his overconfidence in his ten legions would cost him dearly. Cavalry was what he needed most to protect the flanks of such a large infantry and yet he was accompanied only by a slim auxilliary cavalry contingent of 4000 Gauls on loan from Caesar along with a small contingent of treacherous Nabatean horse/camel men on loan from Pompey. He and his eldest son perished in the parched valleys and hills near Cahrrae in modern western Iraq/eastern Syria after he and his army were enveloped by Parthian heavy cavalry and horse archers. The archers had a limitless supply of arrows from nearby camel caravans and simply turned in circles around the legions while decimating their ranks. More than half of his army would be dead or captured while the rest would withdraw in tatters to the sole remaining leadership of Cassius Longinus, the future tyranicide, who had stayed behind in Syria.

The death of Crassus death created a major political vacuum in Rome with the untying of his clientelae and political dependants such as senators, equestrians, tribunes, etc. Unable to wield the influential legacy of his father, the young Marcus Crassus followed Caesar instead as with many others who would mostly go either to Caesar or Pompey: polarizing the Pompeiian and Caesarian factions against each other leading to the Civil War and the end of the Republic. A great stigma was therefore attached to Crassus' memory and even Roman policy in the East. Fearing a devastating loss to the likes of Crassus, all emperors until Trajan mostly limited their diplomacy in the East in small commitments to none at all. Augustus himself was happy just to bring the old captured standards received from Parthia as a diplomatic gesture back to Rome.

By meticulously retracing classical references with a strong emphasis on Plutarch as well as Cicero's letters and trials, Ward reveals the biases and how they have been propagated by even modern scholars. He also adds new facts and paradigms as to Crassus in the political sphere. Ward demonstrates Crassus was no different in his methods than most of his noble and patrician contemporaries seeking public office and overseas appointments. Overall, Ward reviews the character and motives of one of Rome's wealthiest and most influential politicians by following the ups and downs of his political career. The book offers keen insight as to how Crassus used his wealth and political influence to establish alliances and so leverage his interests against those of his political opponents. Finally, Ward also criticizes the conclusions of previous writers such as Munzer and Syme identifying Publius as the younger son and Marcus as the older: he is of the contrary opinion and his supporting arguments are far more cogent than those of Syme or Munzer.

An erroneous presumption in this work and many others referring to Crassus is that he was a plebeian when historical evidence is conclusive in showing that he was a patrician. The conclusive evidence that Crassus was a patrician can be derived by his service as consul with Pompey The Great in 70 and 55 B.C. The laws of the consulship required that one candidate be a patrician and another a plebeian and nothing indicates that any exceptions were ever made to that rule. Patrician lineage had to originate from the earliest days of Rome such as with Caesar claiming that the Iuli clan originated from Aeneas' son Iulius. Pompey was from Picenum which was a comparatively new region to have received the Latin rights granted by Rome; also, his father served as a tribune. The Licinii clan was an Etruscan one which originated as a patrician clan during the earliest days of Rome when it was a monarchy. Since only plebeians could serve as tribunes, Pompey was certainly one as well. In comparison, there is no evidence that any members of Crassus' immediate family ever served in the tribunate. All of the facts indicate that Crassus was a patrician and not a plebeian contrary to Ward's conclusion and popular opinion.

In conclusion, there being perhaps only three concise studies of this most intriguing of Roman statesmen two of which are biased, this is one of those three books and is a must have for anyone who is interested in Crassus specifically or the Late Republic in general. I wouldn't recommend this work as an introductory text on Roman history as its depth and scope would already require some basic knowledge of the subject. It is indispensable to any one who wants to advance their knowledge on the politics of the Late Roman Republic.