← Back to the front page

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

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

19. Would Caesar Have Conquered Parthia?

In 38 BC, Mark Antony invaded Parthia with a larger force than Caesar had planned to use, numbering over 100,000 legionaries, 24,000 auxiliaries, and 10,000 cavalry. He met with disaster. However, neither Crassus nor Mark Antony were in Caesar’s league as generals, while Caesar was Caesar – an all-time great military mind.

Parthia was not invulnerable to a Roman army led by a great commander. A century and a half later, the emperor Trajan did exactly what Caesar had planned, conquering Dacia, then successfully invading and defeating Parthia, seizing its capital city of Ctesiphon, annexing Mesopotamia, and dictating a highly favorable peace treaty. It is not inconceivable that Caesar could have accomplished the same in the 40s BC. He never got the opportunity: three days before he was to leave Rome for the Parthian campaign, Caesar was assassinated.

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.