War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
Barbara Tuchman
Persia’s temporary overrunning of much of the East had made it vital that Romans be alert to any future attack. This was accomplished by preemptive reconnaissance probes deep into Persian territory, a dangerous task complicated by the formerly Roman areas on the frontier still held by Persia.
The year was 276, the season late autumn, the time of planting before the winter rains. The region was the Roman province of Mesopotamia (northern Iraq), claimed also by Persia, a killing field where empires contended. It was a no-man’s land, three times within the century changing hands between Romans and Persians.
The Roman expeditionary force was returning at night from the river Hibero (Nahr Khabour).1 The proud and warlike Persians (Iranians) had evaded battle despite every effort to goad them into action. Their failure to respond was uncanny.
To strike when the foe was weary and off-guard en route to home was a Persian tactic. The night march escaped the heat of the day and, hopefully, the enemy’s notice. Their path was off the usual and most travelled route but through a labyrinth of hills bordering the vast desert stretching to Syria.
It was a region where agriculture had been born and science and magic commingled in seeking to dominate nature. Fertility of the fields was undertaken by careful observations of sun and stars to determine the calendar, by fasts and masochistic penances, ceremonial dances around bonfires, sexual couplings and human sacrifice. Sin, Baal and Mammon were fertility gods deemed devils by the writers of the Bible. Faiths had come, gone or endured. Judaism and Christianity absorbed the ancient calendar and many agriculture customs celebrating planting and harvesting.
The goal of the troops was safety behind the stone battlements of Carrhae (Kasr Karh), several days’ westwards.2
In 43BC,3 a Roman army in the region had suffered the worst disaster a Roman army would suffer in the East. Crassus, a civilian millionaire, a supporter of Mark Antony and Octavian in their rival hopes of becoming the first emperor, had won approval to lead an army invading Persia. He dreamt of being another Alexander. His colleagues knew his incompetence. No matter, following the advice of good officers he might be victorious. If he lost, they had one less rival for the throne.
Crassus proposed marching with legionnaires and additional auxiliary cohorts across the Syrian desert eastwards to Carrhae. His allies, Armenians and Arab tribesman, urged him to reconsider. A campaign in spring by way of the hill country would escape the summer heat and the cavalry that was Persia’s fame and Rome’s weakest arm. Crassus disregarded the advice. Sensing the outcome, the Armenian and Arab light infantry and superb horsemen never arrived.
In lockstep across a vast void of sand without a patch of greenery, each man carrying fifty pounds of armour and equipment, Crassus’ army had moved onwards. Near Carrhae, they were met by the Shah-I-Shah’s cavalry. Some 20,000 of Crassus’ soldiers were killed and 10,000 captured.
The night marchers were nearing Carrhae, returning from the east while Crassus had been approaching from the west. They would reach the desert the next day. Far deeper into enemy territory than Crassus’ force had ever ventured, they were also far fewer in number.
Strangely, scouts reported the villages in the area to be deserted, with the livestock unattended.
Officers spoke in low voices, the men forbidden to speak or light a torch.
Perhaps an auxiliary with a pebble in his shoe brooded that the official soothsayers who used dice, horoscopes, palms of hands, dreams and the guts of chickens to predict the fortune of army campaigns might better examine the calluses on infantrymen’s feet. That better determined the fate of empires. The soldiers were tired and anxious. The red dragon banners of the cavalry writhed as if alive in the night breeze.
Scouts reported a large camp of unidentified people on a hillcrest overlooking the route.
The Romans had no idea of the enemy’s strength or the whereabouts of the foe’s cavalry. Within minutes they might be detected, if they had not been already. It seemed vital to attack immediately.
Trumpeters blared the buriti, the Roman call to battle, the word mimicking its sound.
A survivor described what followed.
My lord Marcellus, we believe in the living God alone. And we have a custom of such a nature as I shall now describe, which has descended to us by the tradition of our brethren in the faith and has been regularly observed by us up to the present day. The practice is that every year we go beyond the bounds of the city, in company with our wives and children and offer up supplications to the only and invisible God, praying Him to send us rains for our fields and crops. Now when we were celebrating this observance at this usual time and in the wanted manner, evening surprised us as we lingered there and were still fasting, thus we were feeling the pressure of two of the most trying things men have to endure – namely, fasting and wont of sleep. But about midnight sleep enviously and inopportunely crept upon us …4
Accordingly at that hour a multitude of soldiers suddenly surrounded us, supposing us, as I judge, to have lodged ourselves in ambush there and to be persons with full experience and skill in fighting battles. And without making any exact inquiry into the cause of our gathering there, they threatened us with war, not in word, but at once by the sword. Though we were men who had never learned to do injury to anyone, they wounded us pitilessly with their missiles, and thrust us through with their swords. Thus they slew, indeed, about one thousand and three hundred men of our number and wounded another five hundred.5
It was an accident of war.
The captives numbered about 8,000,6 every one a civilian and most women and children.
And when the day broke clearly, they carried off the survivors amongst us as prisoners here, and that, too, in a way showing their utter lack of mercy towards us. They drove us before their horses, spurring us on by blows from their spears and impelling us forward by making the horses’ heads press upon us. And those who had sufficient powers of endurance did indeed hold out; but very many fell down before the face of their cruel masters and breathed out their life there … All of those whom on old age had come were sinking, one after the other, to the earth, overcome with their toils and exhausted by want of food.7
The proud soldiers nevertheless enjoyed this bloody spectacle of men continually perishing, as if it had been a kind of entertainment. They saw some stretched on the soil in hopeless prostration. Others, worn out by the fierce fires of thirst, the bonds of their tongues utterly parched, lost the power of speech. They beheld others with eyes ever glancing backwards, groaning over the fate of their dying little ones who were constantly appealing to their most unhappy mothers with their cries. The mothers themselves, driven frantic by the severities of the robbers, responded with wailing, which indeed was the only thing they could do freely. Those of them whose hearts were most tenderly bound up with their offspring chose voluntarily to meet the same premature death as their children. Those, on the other hand, who had some endurance were carried off as prisoners with us. Thus, after the lapse of three days, during which time we had never been allowed to have any rest, even in the night, we were conveyed to this place …8
The Romans bivouacked. Interrogation revealed the prisoners were farmers from villages several miles from the dry riverbed, the soldiers’ path. They were Christians following Jewish customs, people viewed as heretics or nonconformists by Jews and Christians alike, known as Ebionites or Jacobites, the followers of St James, although the document does not identify them.
It can be deduced that they had gathered to celebrate the feast of the planting, Succoth, when workers lived in the fields. That year the feast coincided with the beginning of the Sabbath at sundown. The festivities were joyous and prolonged. Forbidden by ritual law to walk more than a thousand paces on the Sabbath, they had spent the night outdoors, the men separated from the women. In accordance with tradition, on the last night of the feast all fires had been extinguished.
Their captors regarded the prisoners with bitterness. Roman soldiers, unless officers, scarcely had a private life. The Empire had reluctantly granted the privilege of legal marriage to auxiliaries after several centuries of denying it. Most had families. Indeed many had several. The army provided no funds for transfer of kin when a soldier was posted to a far distant region. Wives and children were left behind for ever and new households created.
The captive men were kept separated from the women and children, hostages to one another. The decision was made that the column would march by day to Carrhae, stealing more distance and time from any Persian force tracking them. In daylight the Romans could use cavalry and archers properly. Hopefully, the Persians were not ahead of them.
Prisoners stirred, pleading, surging against the guards, demanding information. Horsemen cantering their mounts pressed in upon the crowd and menaced with their lances.
A Roman soldier obeyed orders. Ordered to slit the gullets of the captives, he was supposed to do so without remorse. Ordered to aid them he was to do that, begrudgingly or otherwise. An officer solemnly warned that every prisoner lost would be that much less prize money from the sale of the slaves.
The dead were left unburied.
At dawn the troops struck tents and assembled in marching formation.
Officers trotted their mounts. Right arm extended, one saluted the praepositus and enquired loudly as daily morning ritual demanded, ‘Are the army and the Emperor well?’
‘The army and the Emperor are well!’ was the shouted reply. Drawing weapons and rattling them against their shields, the troops gave three cheers. The commander signalled, an officer gave the command to march and the column advanced.
Months earlier, rival contenders for the imperial crown, Florianus and Probus, had been confronting one another at Tarsus where an epidemic disease was ravaging Florianus’ troops and the population. Roman desert forces from North Africa to Syria supported Probus, an Illyrian (Albanian) born in Egypt. Probus, in keeping with his name (cautious), had waited until his enemy’s forces weakened and ultimately yielded with little bloodshed.
While the auxiliaries were defending the Empire, legionnaires were as usual playing politics to decide who became emperor. Half the army was composed of auxiliaries, the rest legionnaires. The auxiliaries were paid less, yet worked harder.
The captives plodded forwards. Riders harassed them, lance point and lashes of knotted rope persuading. The villagers had little food or water and had not been allowed to venture home to get any. The ordeal of the march continued.
Roman law forbid the enslavement of Roman citizens. The prisoners were Romans. Roman citizenship could not be lost by conquest by foreigners. A mistake had been made. It would be set right when they reached Carrhae. It was a hope or a mirage in the minds of the prisoners.
A trumpet blast announced a halt for midday.
Resumption of the march brought a sharper awareness of thirst and fatigue.
From level horizon to level horizon was silence and emptiness. The awesome isolation of the desert and its dazzling night sky made humans feel insignificant. Lightning could strike from a clear sky. Dust devils swirled and disappeared. Mirages distorted reality. The desert inspired introspection. It had left a profound mark upon Judaism and Christianity. It also made individuals more keenly aware of their dependence upon one another.
Messengers brought news of the death of the Persian Shah-I-Shah. Powerful lords were contending to succeed him, explaining the Persian failure to respond to the Romans.
On the third day, Carrhae stood before them, stone walls built on a bedrock terrace set back several hundred paces from Balikh tributary of the northern Euphrates. Smoke-blackened and cracked walls testified to the earthquake that had helped the Persians to take the town after the Emperor Valerian’s fall two decades earlier. Behind the town were green fields and higher ground.
Carrhae was also known as Caschar, Castra Carra, the biblical Harran. Abraham had sojourned there on his way from Ur to the promised land. Carrhae had been a mingling place for ages of many peoples. It was one of the few regions in the Empire that was predominantly Christian.
Alexander the Great had travelled this royal road, adding Greek to the region’s stew of languages and races. Romans, recognizing Carrhae’s strategic importance, had added to the town’s fortifications. In 217AD, the Emperor Caracalla, halting near Carrhae to relieve himself, was assassinated by his bodyguards, an ugly end to a murderous man. The assassin was killed shortly thereafter by those whose order he had obeyed.
Revived by water and a brief pause, the column filed between legionnaires saluting them, the grizzled campaigners contrasting with the polish of the garrison troops. They marched through the main gate to enter the plaza adjoining the many stepped hall of Marcellus, military-governor of the Roman province of Mesopotamia.
Clasping arms with the governor, the commander announced the expedition victorious. Considering that the victims were citizens of his province, the military-governor considered that was hardly the appropriate word.
In war, the unexpected is to be expected. The worse cruelties to prisoners of war often result not from calculated malice, but lack of foresight in planning for the number of captives – a task perhaps best handled by civilian government.
The fate of the prisoners was in the hands of the military-governor.