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Marcus Licinius Crassus (; 115–53 BC) was a ancient Rome general and statesman who played a key role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He was often called "the richest man in Rome".Wallechinsky, David & Irving Wallace. " Richest People in History Ancient Roman Crassus". Trivia-Library. The People's Almanac. 1975–1981. Web. 23 December 2009."Often named as the richest man ever, a more accurate conversion of sesterce would put his modern figure between $200 million and $20 billion." Peter L. Bernstein, The 20 Richest People Of All Time
Crassus began his public career as a military commander under Sulla during his civil war. Following Sulla's assumption of the Roman dictator, Crassus amassed an enormous fortune through property speculation. Crassus rose to political prominence following his victory over the slave revolt led by Spartacus, sharing the Roman consul with his rival Pompey the Great.
A political and financial patron of Julius Caesar, Crassus joined Caesar and Pompey in the unofficial political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Together, the three men dominated the Roman political system, but the alliance did not last long, due to the ambitions, egos, and jealousies of the three men. While Caesar and Crassus were lifelong allies, Crassus and Pompey disliked each other and Pompey grew increasingly envious of Caesar's spectacular successes in the Gallic Wars. The alliance was restabilized at the Luca Conference in 56 BC, after which Crassus and Pompey again served jointly as consuls. Following his second consulship, Crassus was appointed as the Roman governor of Roman Syria, which he used as the launchpad for a military campaign against the Parthian Empire. Crassus' campaign was a disastrous failure, ending in his defeat at the Battle of Carrhae and death in its aftermath.
Crassus' death permanently unraveled the alliance between Caesar and Pompey, since his political influence and wealth had been a counterbalance to the two great leaders. Within four years of Crassus' death, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and began a civil war against Pompey and the optimates.Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 2.3–4
There were three main branches of the house of the Licinii Crassi in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC,deducible from their common gentilicium and cognomen, while Cic. Scaur. fragment at Ascon.27G=23C explicitly states that the homonymous consulars who both took their own lives, P. Crassus Dives Mucianus (consul in 131 BC) and P. Crassus (consul in 97 BC), belonged to the same stirps and many mistakes in identifications and lines have arisen owing to the uniformity of Roman nomenclature, erroneous modern suppositions, and the unevenness of information across the generations. In addition, the Dives cognomen of the Crassi Divites means rich or wealthy, and since Marcus Crassus, the subject here, was renowned for his enormous wealth, this has contributed to hasty assumptions that his family belonged to the Divites. But no ancient source accords him or his father the Dives cognomen; Plutarch says his great wealth was acquired rather than inherited, and that he was raised in modest circumstances.Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 1.1; 2.2
Crassus' grandfather of the same name, Marcus Licinius Crassus (praetor c. 126 BC), was facetiously given the Greek nickname Agelastus (the unlaughing or grim) by his contemporary Gaius Lucilius, the inventor of Roman satire, who asserted that he smiled once in his whole life. This grandfather was son of Publius Licinius Crassus. The latter's brother, Gaius Licinius Crassus (consul 168 BC), produced the third line of Licinii Crassi of the period, the most famous of whom was Lucius Licinius Crassus, the greatest Roman orator before Cicero and the latter's childhood hero and model. Marcus Crassus was also a talented orator and one of the most energetic and active advocates of his time.
Cinna's proscription forced Crassus to flee to Hispania.Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 4.1 He stayed in Spain from 87 to 84 BC. Here, he recruited 2,500 men (an understrength legion) from his father's clients settled in the area. Crassus used his army to extort money from the local cities to pay for his campaigns, even being accused of sacking Malaca.Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 6.1 After Cinna's death in 84 BC, Crassus went to the Roman province of Africa and joined Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's closest allies, but did not stay there for long because of disagreements with Metellus. He sailed his army to Greece and joined Sulla, "with whom he stood in a position of special honor."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 6.2 During Sulla's civil war, Crassus and Pompey fought a battle in the plain of Spoletium (Spoleto), killed about 3,000 of the men of Papirius Carbo, the leader of the Marian forces, and besieged Carrinas, a Marian commander.Appian, Bellum Civile, 1.90.1
During the decisive Battle of the Colline Gate, Crassus commanded the right flank of Sulla's army. After almost a day of fighting, the battle was going poorly for Sulla; his own center was being pushed back and was on the verge of collapse when he got word from Crassus that he had comprehensively crushed the enemy before him. Crassus wanted to know whether Sulla needed assistance, or whether his men could retire. Sulla told him to advance on the enemy's center, and used the news of Crassus' success to stiffen the resolve of his own troops. By the following morning, the battle was over, and the Sullan army emerged victorious, making Sulla the master of Rome. Sulla's victory, and Crassus' contribution to it, put Crassus in a key position. Sulla was as loyal to his allies as he was cruel towards his enemies, and Crassus had been a very loyal ally.
on 2023-10-31 Sulla's proscriptions ensured that his survivors would recoup their lost fortunes from the fortunes of wealthy adherents to Gaius Marius or Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Proscriptions meant that their political enemies lost their fortunes and their lives; that their female relatives (notably, widows and widowed daughters) were forbidden to marry, remarry or remain married; and that, in some cases, their families' hopes of rebuilding their fortunes and political significance were destroyed. Crassus is said to have made part of his money from proscriptions, notably the proscription of one man whose name was not initially on the list of those proscribed but was added by Crassus, who coveted the man's fortune.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 6.6–7 (trans. Perrin, 1916). "It is said that, in Bruttium, he actually proscribed a man without Sulla's orders, merely to get his property; and that, for this reason, Sulla, who disapproved of his conduct, never employed him again on public business."
Crassus' wealth is estimated by Pliny at approximately 200 million Sestertius. Plutarch, in his Life of Crassus, says the wealth of Crassus increased from less than 300 talents at first, to 7,100 talents. This represented 229 tonnes of silver, worth about US$167.4 million at August 2023 silver prices, accounted right before his Parthian expedition, most of which Plutarch declares Crassus got "by fire and war, making the public calamities his greatest source of revenue."
Some of Crassus' wealth was acquired conventionally, through slave trafficking, production from silver mines, and speculative real estate purchases. Crassus bought property that was confiscated in and by notoriously purchasing burnt and collapsed buildings. Plutarch wrote that, observing how frequent such occurrences were, he bought slaves "who were architects and builders." When he had over 500 slaves, he bought houses that had burnt and the adjacent ones "because their owners would let go at a trifling price." He bought "the largest part of Rome" in this way, buying them on the cheap and rebuilding them with slave labor.
The first ever Roman fire brigade was created by Crassus. Fires were almost a daily occurrence in Rome, and Crassus took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department, by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the firefighters did nothing while Crassus offered to buy the burning building from the distressed property owner, at a miserable price. If the owner agreed to sell the property, his men would put out the fire; if the owner refused, then they would simply let the structure burn to the ground. After buying many properties this way, he rebuilt them, and often leased the properties to their original owners or new tenants.Marshall, B. A., Crassus: A Political Biography (Adolf M. Hakkert, Amsterdam, 1976)
Crassus befriended Licinia, a Vestal Virgin, whose valuable property he coveted. Plutarch says "And yet, when he was further on in years, he was accused of criminal intimacy with Licinia, one of the vestal virgins, and Licinia was formally prosecuted by a certain Plotius. Now, Licinia was the owner of a pleasant villa in the suburbs, which Crassus wished to get at a low price, and it was for this reason that he was forever hovering about the woman and paying his court to her, until he fell under the abominable suspicion. And, in a way, it was his avarice that absolved him from the charge of corrupting the vestal, and he was acquitted by the judges. But he did not let Licinia go until he had acquired her property."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 1
Despite his great wealth, Crassus is said to have avoided excess and luxury at home. Family meals were simple, and entertaining was generous but not ostentatious; Crassus chose his companions during leisure hours on the basis of personal friendship as well as political utility.Plutarch, Crassus 3.1–2; for a perspective on the triumvir's positive characteristics, see T.J. Cadoux, "Marcus Crassus: A Revaluation," Greece & Rome 3 (1956) 153–161. Although the Crassi, as nobiles, would have displayed ancestral images in their atrium,On the ius imaginum, or right of nobiles to display ancestral images, see the article "Nobiles" in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius online; also P.A. Brunt, " Nobilitas and novitas," Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982), pp. 12–13, and R.T. Ridley, "The Genesis of a Turning-Point: Gelzer's Nobilität," Historia 35 (1986), pp. 499–502. The term ius imaginum is a modern coinage, and the notion that this display was constituted by a legal right was reexamined and refined by Harriet I. Flowers, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), especially pp. 53–59 online. they did not lay claim to a fictionalized genealogy that presumed divine or legendary ancestors, a practice not uncommon among the Roman nobility.T.P. Wiseman, "Legendary Genealogies in Late-Republican Rome," Greece & Rome 21 (1974), p. 162, in reference to Publius's Roman consul grandfather.
After rebuilding his fortune, Crassus' next concern was his political career. As a wealthy man in Rome, an adherent of Sulla, and a man who hailed from a line of consuls and praetors, Crassus' political future was apparently assured. His problem was that, despite his military successes, he was eclipsed by his contemporary Pompey the Great. Crassus' rivalry with Pompey and his envy of Pompey's triumph would influence his subsequent career.
During the Third Servile War, or Spartacus' revolt (73–71 BC), Crassus offered to equip, train, and lead new troops at his own expense, after several legions had been defeated and their commanders killed in battle. Crassus was sent into battle against Spartacus by the Senate. At first, he had trouble both in anticipating Spartacus' moves and in inspiring his army to strengthen their morale. When a segment of his army fled from battle, abandoning their weapons, Crassus revived the ancient practice of decimation – i.e. executing one out of every ten men, with the victims selected by drawing lots. Plutarch reports that "many things horrible and dreadful to see" occurred during the infliction of punishment, which was witnessed by the rest of Crassus' army.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 10.2–3 Nevertheless, according to Appian, the troops' fighting spirit improved dramatically thereafter, since Crassus had demonstrated that "he was more dangerous to them than the enemy."Appian, Bellum Civile, I.18–19. Loeb Classics Edition, 1913
Afterwards, when Spartacus retreated to the Bruttium peninsula in the southwest of Italy,Shaw, Brent D. Spartacus and the Slave Wars. New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. p. 178–79. Crassus tried to pen up the slave armies by building a ditch and a rampart across the peninsula of Rhegium in Bruttium, "from sea to sea." Despite this remarkable feat, Spartacus and part of his army still managed to break out. On the night of a heavy snowstorm, they sneaked through Crassus' lines and made a bridge of dirt and tree branches over the ditch, thus escaping.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 10.4–6
Some time later, when the Roman armies led by Pompey and Varro Lucullus were recalled to Italy in support of Crassus, Spartacus decided to fight rather than find himself and his followers trapped between three armies, two of them returning from overseas action. In this last battle, the battle of the Silarius river, Crassus gained a decisive victory, and captured six thousand slaves alive. During the fighting, Spartacus attempted to personally kill Crassus, slaughtering his way toward the general's position, but he succeeded only in killing two of the centurions guarding Crassus.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, Chapter XI. Translated by Aubrey Stewart & George Long. London: George Bell & Sons, 1892. Spartacus himself is believed to have been killed in the battle, although his body was never recovered. The six thousand captured slaves were Crucifixion along the Via Appia by Crassus' orders. At his command, their bodies were not taken down afterwards, but remained rotting along Rome's principal route to the south. This was intended as an object lesson to anyone especially slaves who might think of rebelling against Roman citizens and slave-owners.
Crassus effectively ended the Third Servile War in 71 BC. In Plutarch's account, Crassus "had written to the Senate that they must summon Lucullus from Thrace and Pompey from Spain, but he was sorry now that he had done so, and was eager to bring the war to an end before those generals came. He knew that the success would be ascribed to the one who came up with assistance, and not to himself."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 11.2 He decided to attack a splinter group of rebels, and after this, Spartacus withdrew to the mountains. Pompey had arrived from Hispania with his veterans and was sent to provide reinforcements. Crassus hurried to seek the final battle, which he won. Pompey arrived in time to deal with the disorganized and defeated fugitives, writing to the Senate that "indeed, Crassus had conquered the slaves, but that he himself had extirpated the war."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 11.7 "Crassus, for all his self-approval, did not venture to ask for the major triumph, and it was thought ignoble and mean in him to celebrate even the minor triumph on foot, called the ovation,"Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 11.8 nor did he wish to be honored for subduing slaves.
In Plutarch's account, Pompey was asked to stand for the consulship. Crassus wanted to become his colleague and asked Pompey for his assistance. As said in the Life of Crassus, "Pompey received his request gladly (for he was desirous of having Crassus, in some way or other, always in debt to him for some favor), eagerly promoted his candidature, and finally said in a speech to the assembly that he should be no less grateful to them for the colleague than for the office which he desired."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 12.1 In office, however, they did not remain friendly. They "differed on almost every measure, and by their contentiousness, rendered their consulship barren politically and without achievement."Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Crassus, 12.2 Crassus displayed his wealth by realizing public sacrifices to Hercules, entertaining the populace at 10,000 tables and distributing sufficient grain to last each family three months, an act that had the additional ends of performing a previously made religious vow of a tithe to the demigod Hercules and also to gain support among the members of the popular party.
In Appian's account, when Crassus ended the rebellion, there was a contention over honors between him and Pompey. Neither men dismissed their armies, with both being candidates for the consulship. Crassus had been praetor as the law of Sulla required. Pompey had been neither praetor nor quaestor, and was only 34 years old, but he had promised the plebeian tribunes to restore much of their power, that had been taken away by Sulla's constitutional reforms. Even when they were both chosen consuls, they did not dismiss their armies stationed near the city. Pompey said that he was awaiting the return of Metellus for his Spanish triumph; Crassus said that Pompey ought to dismiss his army first. In the end, Crassus yielded first, offering Pompey his hand.Appian, Bellum Civile, 1.121
Crassus attacked Parthia not only because of its great source of riches, but because of a desire to match the military victories of Pompey and Caesar. The king of Armenia, Artavasdes II, offered Crassus the aid of nearly 40,000 troops (10,000 and 30,000 infantrymen) on the condition that Crassus invade 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.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 19.1–3 Crassus refused, and chose the more direct route by crossing the Euphrates, as he had done in his successful campaign in the previous year.
Crassus received directions from the Osroene chieftain Ariamnes, who had previously assisted Pompey in his eastern campaigns.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 21.2 Ariamnes was in the pay of the Parthians and urged Crassus to attack at once, falsely stating that the Parthians were weak and unorganized. He then led Crassus' army into the desert, far from any water. In 53BC, at the Battle of Carrhae (modern Harran, in Turkey), Crassus' legions were defeated by a numerically inferior Parthian force. Crassus' legions were primarily heavy infantry, and not prepared for an attack by swift mounted archers, a tactic that Parthian troops had mastered. The Parthian horse archers devastated the unprepared Romans with hit-and-run tactics, feigning retreats as they shot to their rear.Richard Bulliet, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Columbia University Crassus refused his quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus' plans to reconstitute the Roman battle line, and remained in the testudo formation to protect his flanks until the Parthians eventually ran out of arrows. The Parthians brought camels carrying arrows to continuously resupply their archers, however, letting them relentlessly barrage the Romans until dusk. Despite taking severe casualties, the Romans successfully retreated to Carrhae, forced to leave many wounded behind to be slaughtered by the Parthians. Subsequently, Crassus' men, being near mutiny, demanded he parley with the Parthians, who had offered to meet with him. Crassus, despondent at the death of his son Publius in the battle, finally agreed to meet the Parthian general Surena. When Crassus mounted a horse to ride to the Parthian camp for a peace negotiation, his junior officer Octavius suspected a Parthian trap and grabbed Crassus' horse by the bridle, instigating a sudden fight with the Parthians that left all the Romans dead, including Crassus.Bivar (1983), p. 55 A story later emerged that, after Crassus' death, the Parthians poured molten gold into his mouth to mock his thirst for wealth.Cassius Dio, 40.27
Plutarch's biography of Crassus also mentions that, during the feasting and revelry in the wedding ceremony of Artavasdes' sister to the Parthian king Orodes II's son and heir Pacorus I in the Armenian capital of Artashat, Crassus' head was brought to Orodes II. Both kings were enjoying a performance of Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae when an actor of the royal court, named Jason of Tralles, took the head and sang these verses:
Crassus' head was thus used instead of a prop to represent [[Pentheus]] and carried by Agave.Bivar (1983), p. 56
Also according to Plutarch, Crassus was mocked by dressing up a Roman prisoner, Caius Paccianus, who resembled him, in women's clothing, calling him "Crassus" and " imperator", and leading him in a spectacular show of a final, satirical "triumphal procession", ridiculing the traditional symbols of Roman triumph and authority.Plutarch, Life of Crassus, p. 418: "That one of his captives who bore the greatest likeness to Crassus, Caius Paccianus, put on a woman's royal robe, and under instructions to answer to the name of Crassus and the title of imperator when so addressed, was conducted along on horseback."
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