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The Nazi Scheme to Bombard New York City With Rockets and Other Unfinished Military Plans

Khalid Elhassan January 16, 2020 32 min

South Vietnam - United States — American troops in South Vietnam. USA Today

9. Could Caesar Have Conquered Parthia?

According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar wanted to first conquer Dacia, then Parthia, before moving against the Scythians. Wikimedia

Parthia was no pushover. In 53 BC, a Parthian cavalry force of 10,000 all but annihilated a bigger Roman army of roughly 50,000, led by Caesar’s fellow Triumvir, Crassus. In 38 BC, Mark Antony invaded Parthia with an even larger force than that which 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 an all time military great. And Parthia was vulnerable to a Roman army led by a gifted general. In the 2^nd century AD, the emperor Trajan did what Caesar had planned, conquering Dacia, then invading and defeating Parthia, seizing its capital city of Ctesiphon, annexing Mesopotamia, and dictating a highly favorable peace treaty. Caesar might have done the same in the 40s BC, but he never got the opportunity: he was assassinated three days before he was to leave Rome for the Parthian campaign.

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.