Numbers

The First Triumvirate

• Gaius Julius Caesar
• Marcus Licinius Crassus
• Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus "Pompey"

How It's Used

"When Pompey returned to Rome in 62 B.C. the Senate refused to ratify his acts or reward his soldiers. Pompey was thus driven to conclude an agreement with two men who had done their best to undermine his position in Rome while he had been away: Crassus and Caesar. In 60 B.C. these three formed what is known as the First Triumvirate, agreeing to support one another's plans despite the opposition of the Senate. Pompey's veterans provided the military core of the Triumvirate's strength; but both Crassus and Caesar were not slow to acquire commands for themselves: Caesar in Gaul, Crassus in the east. Pompey remained in Italy, exercising general control over the Roman state; but at the same time he governed Spanish provinces in absentia, thus keeping a personal army at his command."

"Ambition drove the politics of Rome, and military success ensured the recognition of a triumphal procession through the city. While fighting a campaign against the great eastern enemy, the Parthians, Marcus Licinius Crassus died on this day in 53BC. Crassus was one member of the first Triumvirate which included Julius Caesar, and was the consul who put down the slave rebellion of Spartacus. Even by consular levels, his wealth was huge—much of it won by the cheap purchase of buildings on fire, which his personal fire brigade would put out once a deal had been struck."

"In 1966, encouraged by the experience of the journalist and MP Vernon Bartlett, Grant and his wife moved to Italy, where he bought a 16th-century house from Paolo Rossi, the Minister for Education. It was situated near Lucca, where Pompey, Crassus and Caesar met in 56 BC to hammer out differences which had grown up during the First Triumvirate; it was also convenient for Etruscan remains and for the amphitheatre (dating from 79-95 AD) nearby."

"It may well irritate some of the proud custodians of China's cultural heritage that it was foreigners who first promoted the theory of the Roman settlement. Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese at Oxford University, raised it in a lecture delivered to the China Society in London in 1955. According to Dubs, the journey to Gansu began in 53BC when Crassus, who together with Julius Caesar and Pompey formed Rome's First Triumvirate, decided to make up for his lack of military glory by going to war with the dreaded Parthians.

"Crassus's legions were no match for the Parthian archers, nimble horsemen who could loose their arrows off even as they turned. Of the 42,000 Romans who set out, 20,000 were killed and 10,000 were captured in the battle of Carrhae, in modern Turkey; it was one of the most spectacular losses of Roman military history. According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman prisoners were used by the Parthians as guards on their eastern frontier in what is today Turkmenistan. From there, Dubs conjectured, some escaped and joined the Huns as mercenaries. In 36BC, Chinese troops on a punitive venture defeated the Hun ruler Zhizhi in today's Uzbekistan. Among their captives they found 145 Romans. Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu.

"If only there were proof. Dubs's theory rests mainly on tantalising hints found in ancient Chinese historiography, none of which refers specifically to Romans."

"There's the rub. Republics are hard to sustain, requiring as they do a continual infusion of Virtue and commitment to selfless, incorruptible public service -- as difficult then as now. The Roman Republic began its attenuated transition to empire following the death of Caesar and war among the First Triumvirate (all colorfully retold in the HBO series). And, wouldn't you know, it all came to grief over the Middle East. Marc Antony, sent to Egypt to obtain grain for famine-stricken Romans, fell for the seductive Cleopatra."

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