← Back to the front page

A Sports Dispute Started the Cuban Missile Crisis and Other Odd Facts

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

20. One of Ancient History’s Greatest What Ifs: What If Julius Caesar Had Invaded Parthia?

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC, just days before he was scheduled to leave Rome and head to the east, to lead an invasion of Parthia. It was to be a massive endeavor with the largest force he had ever led: 16 legions and 10,000 cavalry, in addition to support troops. As a preliminary, Caesar planned to first invade and conquer the kingdom of Dacia, roughly modern Romania, which he calculated could be accomplished by the end of 44 BC.

The following spring, he would move on to Parthia. However, Parthia was no pushover, as evinced by the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, where a Parthian cavalry force of 10,000 had all but annihilated a much larger Roman army of roughly 50,000, led by Caesar’s colleague, Crassus. So it was not a foregone conclusion that Caesar could have conquered Parthia.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.