The second half of the novel is related by its Gallic narrator from within the ranks of Crassus ' doomed army en route to do battle with Parthia.

* Peace treaty between Rome and Parthia, in which the captured eagles of Marcus Licinius Crassus and Mark Antony are returned.

At the end of their joint consular year, Crassus would have the influential and lucrative governorship of Syria, and use this as a base to conquer Parthia.

Crassus, a member of the First Triumvirate and the wealthiest man in Rome, had been enticed by the prospect of military glory and riches and decided to invade Parthia without the official consent of the Senate.

Rejecting an offer from the Armenian King Artavasdes II to invade Parthia via Armenia, Crassus marched his army directly through the deserts of Mesopotamia.

The war in Parthia resulted from political arrangements intended to be mutually beneficial for Crassus, Pompeius Magnus, and Julius Caesar — the so-called First Triumvirate.

The Spanish provinces would go to Pompeius ; Crassus arranged to have Syria, with the transparent intention of going to war with Parthia.

Plutarch notes that Caesar wrote to Crassus from Gaul, endorsing the plan to invade Parthia — an indication that he regarded Crassus's military campaign as complementary and not merely rivalrous to his own.

The Roman legions had easily crushed the numerically superior armies of other eastern powers such as Pontus and Armenia, and Crassus expected Parthia to be an easy target.

With the aid of Hellenic settlements in Syria and support of about 6, 000 cavalry from Artavasdes, the Armenian king, Crassus marched on Parthia.

* VII: The Tribune's Curse ( 55 BC ) — Decius investigates the murder of a tribune who curses Crassus on his way to Parthia.

During Mark Antony's expedition ( 36 BC ) to Armenia and Parthia, to avenge Crassus ' death ( 17 years earlier ) he was proconsul of Syria.

Artavasdes was an ally of Rome, but when Orodes II of Parthia invaded Armenia following his victory over the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, he was forced to join the Parthians.

* SPQR VII: The Tribune's Curse: Commissioned to track down ( and later solve the murder of ) the rogue tribune Gaius Ateius Capito, after his sacrilegious cursing of Crassus on his departure for Syria ( and his war on Parthia ).

** Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives dies in Parthia.

Meanwhile Crassus is killed fighting with his legions in Parthia, leaving Pompey sole master.

Only the year before he had blocked the senatorial award of a triumph to Marcus Licinius Crassus, despite the latter's acclamation in the field as Imperator and his eminent merit by all traditional criteria-barring only full consulship.

During the fighting, Spartacus attempted to kill Crassus personally, slaughtering his way toward the general's position, but he succeeded only in killing two of the centurions guarding Crassus.

Crassus was honored only with an ovation ( less than a triumph ), even though the danger to Rome and the destruction to Roman lives and property merited much more.

The king of Armenia, Artavazdes II, offered Crassus the aid of nearly forty thousand troops, ten thousand cataphracts and thirty thousand infantrymen, on the condition that Crassus invaded through Armenia so that the king could not only maintain the upkeep of his own troops but also provide a safer route for his men and Crassus '.

Crassus ' death in 53 and the absence of Caesar in Gaul left Pompey as the only effective power in the state.

Roman sources view the Battle of Carrhae not only as a calamity for Rome and a disgrace for Marcus Crassus, but also as a tragedy for cutting short Publius Crassus's promising career.

The only cognomina which occur on coins are Crassus, Macer, Murena, Nerva, and Stolo.

Although the western territories to the south of the Tagus River were only conquered after the victory of Licinius Crassus in the year 93 BC, very few traces of the native languages persist in modern Portuguese.

This was only a relative poverty, but it proves the integrity of his father, who obviously did not profit much, if at all, from the proscription period when less scrupulous characters, most notoriously Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gaius Curio pater, made enormous fortunes from the confiscated properties of Sulla's Marian victims.

With the help of current Consul Crassus he manages, yet only just and by getting himself into unbelievable levels of debt ( and by defeating a rebel army on the verge of attacking Rome ), to obtain the rank.

* Marcus Licinius P. f. P. n. Crassus Agelastus, grandfather of the triumvir, he was said to have obtained his surname because he never laughed.

Afterwards, the tribunate was restored to its former power during the consulship of Crassus and Pompey.

Crassus and Pompey had been colleagues in the consulship in 70 BC, when they had legislated the full restoration of the tribunate of the people ( the dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla had stripped the office of all its rights except the ius auxiliandi, the right to rescue a plebeian from the clutches of a patrician magistrate ).

* 54 BCE Crassus loots the temple, confiscating all its gold, after failing to receive the required tribute ( according to Josephus ).

It wasn't until the rule of Octavian, when Marcus Licinius Crassus, the grandson of the Caesarian Triumvir and then proconsul of Macedonia, finally stabilized the region with a campaign beginning in 29 BC Moesia was formally organized into a province some time before 6 AD, when the first mention of its governor, Caecina Severus, is made.

As the Spartan army makes its last stand in the city ruins, the Spartan fights his way to the Roman headquarters in an abandoned temple, slays Crassus, and destroys the weapon, taking Crassus ' enchanted sword and shield in the process.

Crassus ' legions were mainly infantry men and were not prepared for the type of swift, cavalry-and-arrow attack that the Parthian troops were particularly adept at ; the same type of attack that Genghis Khan later utilised to great effect.

Crassus refused the offer and decided to take the direct route through Mesopotamia, and capture the great cities in the region.

A great number of Jews had reached Sicily after Pompey's 63 BC sacking of Jerusalem, and additionally by Roman Proconsul Crassus, who is traditionally said to have sold more than 30, 000 Jewish slaves on the island.

Interlocutors, primarily Crassus and Antonius, posit that the ideal orator: needs a wealth of knowledge ( Crassus ); would have the rhetorical ability to “ first win people over, second, to instruct them, and third, to stir their feelings ” ( Antonius ; similar to Aristotle ’ s ethos, logos, pathos ); is a master of invention, style ( includes correct Latin, clarity, distinction, and appropriateness ) and eloquence ; uses natural ability and have a willingness to imitate a great teacher for the sake of effectually perfecting the natural ability and not for the cloning of the teacher.

Crassus received Syria as his province, which promised to be an inexhaustible source of wealth.

Plutarch's life of Crassus is clearly the main source, but it does make use of some other classical sources.

* 96 BC-94 BC-Publius Licinius Crassus Dives ( father of Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives ) Governor of Hispania Ulterior, leads a military expedition to the Northwest and finds the source mines of Tin.

Crassus Mucianus met with defeat against Aristonicus, and while retreating, he was overtaken by the enemy and stabbed to death ; according to one source, he deliberately refused to reveal his identity to avoid the humiliation of being captured alive.

Crassus personally killed their king, Deldo, in combat, a feat which qualified him for Rome's highest military honour, spolia opima, but Augustus refused to award it on a technicality.

These achievements granted him unmatched military power and threatened to eclipse the standing of Pompey, who had realigned himself with the Senate after the death of Crassus in 53 BC.

Crassus began his public career as a military commander under Lucius Cornelius Sulla during his civil war.

Crassus used Syria as the launchpad for a military campaign against the Parthian Empire, Rome's long-time Eastern enemy.

The Colline Gate was one of the entrances into Rome through the Servian Walls ; Crassus and his troops ensured Sulla's victory, including destruction of the surviving Samnite troops and any other military opposition.

During that decade, Crassus was Caesar's patron in all but name, financing Caesar's successful campaign to become Pontifex Maximus, despite all but abandoning his post as the priest of Jupiter or flamen dialis, and his efforts to win command of military campaigns.

Crassus is depicted as a vain man with poor military judgement.

In Ancient Rome returning military commanders ( such as Marcus Licinius Crassus after his defeat of Spartacus ) whose victories did not quite meet the requirements of a triumph but which were still praiseworthy were celebrated with an ovation instead, from the Latin ovo, " I rejoice ".

Other modern historians tend to view envy and rivalry as his motivation, since Crassus ’ s long-faded military reputation had always been inferior to that of Pompeius, and after five years of war in Gaul, to that of Caesar.

In 87 BC, the son as either a military tribune or praefectus equitum commanded the cavalry troop that killed the elder son of P. Licinius Crassus, consul in 97 BC and father of the future triumvir.

* Lucius Pompeius, a military tribune in 171 BC, in the army of Publius Licinius Crassus ( consul 171 BC ), who was in the war against King Perseus of Macedon

To allow himself unprecedented military control of a province after his first six months as Consul, Caesar forms the First Triumvirate with Crassus and Pompey, the old Consuls.