Marcus Licinius Crassus: The Rise & Fall of the Richest Man in Rome

They say that greed is the downfall of man. It certainly was the downfall of one particular man. Despite having all the power and all the money in the world, it was still not enough for Marcus Licinius Crassus. He could have spent the rest of his life as one of Rome's most influential citizens, getting rich and fat off the countless properties and businesses he owned. But instead, he marched to his doom out of greed and hubris, and caused not only his own demise, but embroiled Rome in a conflict that would last over 250 years. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born circa 115 BC into an old and respected Roman family named Licinia. He was the second of three sons of Publius Licinius Crassus and Venalea. His father was a very successful man. He served as a senator, then consul, then censor, then even had a Roman triumph at his honor, which was a public ceremony intended to celebrate a big military victory. Despite all of this, they lived modestly. Plutarch, who gives the most detailed account of Crassus' life in The Parallel Lives, said that the future general grew up in a small house, and that both his brothers got married while their parents were still alive, and they all lived under the same roof and ate at the same table. One of Crassus' brothers died in the early 80s BC, and left behind a childless widow named Tertulla. Although unusual for that time, Crassus decided to marry her, and they had two boys together, Marcus and Publius. His older brother also died a few years later, which meant that he received the full inheritance from his parents, which was substantial despite their meager living conditions. So just how substantial? Of course, it's hard to provide an accurate measurement of his wealth, but Plutarch said that when Crassus started out, he had around 300 talents. Which is great, but how much is a talent in today's money? That's actually surprisingly difficult to answer, since the value of the talent was tied to the value of silver, and has varied wildly over the course of the centuries that it was in use. Originally, the talent was simply a unit of weight, first introduced in ancient Mesopotamia and used by everyone. The Akkadians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Hebrews… The talent that Plutarch is referring to is the Attic, or Greek, talent. It was still a unit of weight, which measured around 26 kilograms, but it became far more commonly used as a unit of currency, which represented the weight of a talent in pure silver. So then, how much was an Attic talent worth? Fortunately, others have already made some calculations, so we don't have to. The English translation of Plutarch's book, dated to 1916, estimated that one talent was worth around $1,200, or around $29,000 in today's money. Another estimate was provided in 1885 by William Watson Goodwin, who taught Greek studies at Harvard, and he calculated that one talent was around $1,000, or $27,500 in modern currency, so both estimates were in the same ballpark. Going back to Plutarch, he said that Crassus started out with 300 talents, which would be around $8.6 million today, and by the time he left for the Parthian expedition, where he died, Crassus was worth around 7,100 talents, which would be over $200 million today. Of course, this is just a rough estimate, as some have placed his wealth in the billions, and whether or not he truly was the richest man in Rome is, again, something that is difficult for us to establish with any certainty. Crassus' rise through the ranks of Rome came during a time of turmoil for the Republic, one that perhaps foreshadowed its eventual collapse just a few decades later. The main cause for this turmoil was a rivalry between two men, Sulla and Gaius Marius, who were both highly decorated military commanders, but fierce opponents. In 88 BC, Sulla, who was a consul at the time, was getting ready to take his army and march in modern-day Turkey, led by King Mithridates VI. However, Gaius Marius also wanted that position, and he used his influence and intrigues to relieve Sulla of his duty. But he did not anticipate his opponent's next move. Instead of relinquishing command, Sulla took his troops and marched on Rome, the same as Julius Caesar would do 40 years later. This became known as Sulla's First Civil War, and the general garnered the distinction of being the first man to seize power of the Roman Republic through force. Gaius Marius and his cohorts, however, managed to flee the city and retreat to Africa, where they regrouped. Back in Rome, Sulla consolidated his power, enacted new policies, placed his supporters in high-ranking offices, then traveled to Pontus to fight the King Mithridates, as originally intended. This provided Gaius Marius with the time he needed to raise an army, so the following year he entered Rome and successfully ousted Sulla's supporters, erasing all the changes enacted by his enemy. The conquest was a lot bloodier, as it was followed by the Marian Purges, where Marius and his allies assassinated a lot of Sulla's supporters. This included Lucius Licinius Crassus, older brother of Marcus Crassus, and presumably also his father, who died around the same time, although we're unsure of the exact circumstances. It's possible that Publius Licinius Crassus committed suicide, knowing that a far worse fate was awaiting him. With the Senate at his mercy, Marius organized elections for consulships, but only two people were allowed to take part, himself and his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Unsurprisingly, they became the new consuls. Once he fulfilled all of his goals, Gaius Marius died just a few days later, and Cinna took over. Eager to avoid the same fate as his father and brother, Crassus fled Rome and traveled to Hispania to meet some of his father's friends. He spent the next few years there, living in a cave near the sea, making arrangements, building an army, knowing that another battle between the two sides was inevitable. However, Cinna would not take part. In 84 BC, he thought he would launch a surprise attack on his enemies by crossing the Adriatic Sea into Dalmatia. Although the circumstances are a bit murky, Cinna angered his own soldiers somehow, and he was killed in a mutiny. The leadership of his faction was passed on to others, such as Gaius Marius the Younger and a consul named Carbo. It was in 83 BC that Sulla launched his second offensive on Rome, predictably named Sulla's Second Civil War. He was joined by Crassus, but also by Pompey, who was an up-and-coming general at the time. The decisive moment in the war came at the Battle of Colline Gate in November of 82 BC, where Marcus Crassus played a pivotal role. He was in charge of the right wing, and while Sulla's troops were getting pushed back into the center, Crassus was victorious on his side and completely routed their enemies. Once Sulla was in charge of Rome again, he declared himself dictator and spent the next couple of years hunting down the remaining members of the Marian faction. At the same time, he was also very generous when it came to rewarding his supporters, and Marcus Crassus was at the top of the list. This was the beginning of Crassus' path to exorbitant wealth. He lost everything when he fled Rome, because his enemies enacted prescriptions and confiscated all of his family's property. But now the same thing was happening to the Marian supporters. Sulla took everything they owned, which was now being sold off for peanuts, and Crassus was the main buyer, letting his greed completely take over, or as Plutarch put it, the many virtues of Crassus were obscured by his sole vice of avarice, and it is likely that the one vice which became stronger than all the others in him weakened the rest. The historian makes mention of one case, in Brutium, where Crassus prescribed a wealthy man without Sulla's permission, just so that he could buy his estate at auction. Another, even more scandalous episode occurred when Crassus was accused of corrupting a Vestal Virgin named Licinia when, in fact, he kept visiting her because he wanted to buy her villa. But this was not enough for Crassus. Once there was no more confiscated property to purchase, he moved on to derelict and destroyed buildings that had been damaged after years of fighting. He also bought hundreds of slaves who were skilled laborers, particularly builders and architects. So he purchased ruined buildings for next to nothing, repaired or rebuilt them using slave labor, and then sold them off for a large profit. Next up, Crassus realized that many houses were damaged by fires in Rome almost every day, so he established his own private fire department. Of course, they did not perform this service out of the goodness of their hearts. No, if a person's house caught on fire, the brigade would rush over there, but then they would just sit back and relax, ready to watch the fire burn the whole thing down. That was when Crassus showed up, ready to make an offer to buy the property, while it still had some little value. If the person accepted, then the brigade put out the fire. If they didn't, then the house burned down to ashes, and Crassus made a new offer, this time much lower than the previous one. One way or another, he almost always came out on top. In addition to his ever-growing real estate empire, Crassus also derived his massive wealth from other sources, such as slaves, silver mines, and the land used for agriculture. Despite all his actions, Plutarch did not consider Crassus an unpleasant man. Quite the contrary, in fact. The historian said the wealthy Roman won everyone over with universal kindness, dignity of person, persuasiveness of speech, and winning grace of feature. Despite his obsession with making money, Crassus was never loath to spend it, and he was generous with strangers and kept his house open to all. He was an esteemed and careful man, and one who was ready with his help. He pleased people also by the kindly and unaffected manner with which he clasped their hands and dressed them. For he never met a Roman so obscure and so lowly that he did not return his greeting and call him by name. But wealth alone was not enough for a Roman of note. He also needed status and influence. So to gain these, Crassus had two choices, politics or the military. He chose the former because he was better suited for it, and it would have been undoubtedly aided by his wealth and lineage. Meanwhile, being a successful military commander would have meant being away from Rome for long periods of time, which would have adversely affected his businesses. Unsurprisingly, Crassus turned out to be an able politician and a skilled orator as he pursued the cursus honorum, aka the tradition of sequence of public officers held by senators as they steadily climbed the political ladder. He was described as making very many changes in his political views and was neither a steadfast friend nor an implacable enemy, but readily abandoned both his favors and his resentments at the dictates of his interests, so that frequently, within a short space of time, the same men and the same measures found in him both an advocate and an opponent. Throughout his life, it did seem to bother Crassus that he never achieved the same kind of military glory as some of his colleagues. He had a particular chip on his shoulder about Pompey, who went away to fight and amassed victories while Crassus was building his real estate empire. Despite his young age, he was already being called Pompey the Great, and Plutarch related one incident when somebody announced the arrival of Pompey the Great and Crassus fell to the floor laughing, asking, how great is he? But in 73 BC, Marcus Crassus was granted the opportunity to gain some prestige for himself as he was tasked with putting down a rebellion started by an escaped slave named Spartacus. And just before we continue with the rest of this video, let me give a quick word to today's fantastic sponsor, Squarespace. Now more than ever, people are getting creative with their time, reaching into their savings accounts to start a new business or a new website, maybe a blog of some kind. And with Squarespace, the world really is yours. It's the perfect tool to help you fashion a website into whatever you want it to be. If you're looking to get in and out quick without thinking too much about what your website should look like, well, bam, use one of Squarespace's beautiful templates and make a website that looks as if it was made just for you, but is actually just a beautiful template. 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Right now, you can go to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com forward slash biographics, and you'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain, and let's get back to the video. A lot of you are probably already familiar with Spartacus. If you're not, or if you simply want to learn about his rebellion in more detail, we actually already did a Biographics video all about Spartacus, which you should check out after you watch this video, if you haven't seen it already. Here is the CliffsNotes version, though. Spartacus and a bunch of other slaves escaped from a gladiator school in Capua in 73 BC and started raiding the Italian countryside. Such revolts were not unheard of. In fact, the War of Spartacus is also known as the Third Servile War, part of a series of conflicts caused by slave uprisings. That is why the Roman Senate did not really show much concern at first, only sending militia and local patrols after Spartacus and assuming that they would be enough to put down the rebellion. None of them could get the job done, however. They were defeated by the slaves, whose numbers kept growing as more and more people joined their cause. Eventually, even properly trained Roman legions, led by consuls, were bested by the rebels, and the Senate started to panic. That is when they gave the task of defeating Spartacus to Marcus Crassus, also making him a praetor and giving him command of eight legions. This was something that Crassus needed in order to advance his career, and to achieve it, he showed a degree of ruthlessness he never really displayed before. This was exemplified after an incident with his legate, Mummius, who was given command of two legions and told to follow Spartacus and his army without engaging them in combat. Mummius, however, thought he had the upper hand, so he attacked the rebels and lost. To punish him, Crassus revived the practice of decimation. He took the 500 soldiers who were the first to retreat, divided them into groups of ten, and made them draw lots, with one man being executed from each group. Despite the rocky start, Crassus soon had the advantage. He had trapped Spartacus and his army in Bratium, and had ditches and walls erected to prevent the enemy from running away. His plan was to wither his opponents down through attrition and leave them vulnerable for one final attack. However, he soon received terrible news. The Senate was sending him reinforcements. This might sound like good news, but it wasn't, because Pompey was the one leading those reinforcements. Crassus knew that the only reason they chose him in the first place was because Pompey was busy putting down a revolt in Hispania. But he had been successful, and now he was heading this way, and Crassus realized that if the Gladiator Rebellion ended when Pompey arrived, he would be the one receiving all the glory. Unfortunately for Crassus, that is exactly what happened. He met Spartacus in one decisive action, known as the Battle of Solaris River. Despite sustaining significant losses, the Roman was triumphant. Spartacus was killed in the battle, as were tens of thousands of his soldiers. Thousands more were taken prisoner and later crucified along the Appian Way, on Crassus' orders, but around 5,000 or so still managed to flee the battle. They ran into Pompey's army and were cut down without hesitation, but this allowed Pompey to write to the Senate, saying that Crassus had conquered the slaves, but that he himself had extirpated the war. For his efforts, not just against Spartacus, but also in Hispania, Pompey was awarded a major triumph upon his return to Rome. Crassus, meanwhile, did not object, as he knew it would make him seem petty and ignoble. Instead, what he did was ask Pompey for help. Despite his young age and inexperience when it came to public office, Pompey had been asked to stand for consulship, which was the highest position of the cursus honorum. Typically, two consuls were elected to serve a one-year term, so Crassus asked Pompey to endorse him as the other candidate, which Pompey did because he thought it would be useful to have Crassus owe him a favor. So the two became consuls together in 70 BC, although Plutarch specified that their terms ended without anything of significance happening because each one tried to undo the measures of the other. Although the relationship between Crassus and Pompey was never openly hostile, it was contentious since the two of them usually had the same ambitions. But a third element was introduced into the equation which changed the dynamic, and that element was Julius Caesar. Caesar was another prominent citizen of Rome who was climbing the ranks and saw the potential for a powerful alliance if Crassus and Pompey were able to put aside their differences. At first, Caesar was actually the junior in the partnership. Pompey was Rome's most celebrated military commander, while Crassus was the city's most influential landowner, and both were more powerful than him. Caesar did not want to risk making an enemy out of one of them by fully supporting the other, so instead he persuaded them that it would be in all their best interests if they worked together against other prominent statesmen, such as Carto and Cicero, who opposed them all. That is how the First Triumvirate was born around 60 BC. In the words of Livy, it was a conspiracy against the state by its three leading citizens. They did not share an agenda, but they sought to help each other out so that they could bypass the Senate in order to accomplish their goals. Plutarch said that Rome was divided into three powerful parties, that of Pompey, that of Caesar, and that of Crassus. It was the thoughtful and conservative part of the city which attached itself to Pompey, the violent and volatile part which supported the hopes of Caesar, while Crassus took a middle ground and drew from both. Caesar was the one who most benefited from this triumvirate. With the support of his allies, he was elected consul and was granted an army and then went off to fight the Gauls. After a few years, his military success made Caesar very popular and influential, and his two co-conspirators started feeling like they were getting the short end of the stick. Although they faced heavy resistance from their enemies in the Senate, in 56 BC Pompey and Marcus Crassus secured another consulship for themselves and, afterwards, were assigned governorships of Roman provinces. Pompey received two provinces in Hispania, while Crassus received Syria. The exact circumstances behind this political move are uncertain. Some historians claimed that Caesar helped them become consuls again in an attempt to preserve their waning alliance, while others said that Crassus and Pompey did this without Caesar's approval, specifically to counter his growing influence. Back then, being made governor of a province meant that you had carte blanche to do whatever you wanted. More or less, that was to receive bribes, take loans, start new businesses, etc. It was usually regarded as a reward from the Senate to make yourself as rich as possible while you served as governor. This should have been an ideal position for Crassus, but he wanted more. Not satisfied with the riches found in Syria, he thought about expanding to the East, into the Parthian Empire. The two nations had a complicated and violent relationship for most of the 500-year existence of the Parthian Empire. Founded in the mid-3rd century BC, Parthia was an Iranian civilization that became a powerhouse in the Middle East when it defeated the Seleucid Empire. It took over all of their territory and just kept expanding. The problem with expansion is that, eventually, you run into other people who would prefer to stop your expansion. That's what happened to Parthia. It expanded westward until it reached Roman territory. Even so, for about 200 years, the two sides coexisted, using the Kingdom of Armenia as a useful buffer between their lands. This changed in 54 BC, however, when the first of a series of conflicts known as the Roman-Parthian Wars began, after Crassus decided to rekindle his military career. Nobody knows what brought this on. Crassus was over 60 years old, and he had not taken part in a military campaign for almost 20 years since he fought Spartacus. Was it merely his greed that spurred him on, or was it also his desire not to be outshined by Pompey and Caesar? According to Plutarch, in private, Crassus made youthful boasts which ill become his years, saying that he will go beyond Parthia, into India and Bactria, and make Pompey's campaigns against Mithridates look like child's play. So it definitely seemed like he was motivated by more than just money. As a governor, Crassus had the power to levy an army. So in 53 BC, even without Senate approval, he invaded Mesopotamia. At first, things went quite well for the Roman commander. Most cities offered tribute and allied themselves with the Romans willingly, particularly the Greek cities that had been founded by the Macedonians during the time of Alexander. One exception was a city called Xenodotion, which arrested and killed some of Crassus' soldiers. So in return, Crassus plundered it and enslaved all of its citizens. The Roman general made his first mistake when winter came. Because instead of pressing the attack, he retreated to Syria until spring, waiting for his son Publius to arrive with reinforcements. By this point, of course, the Parthians received word of his incursions, and this gave them time to prepare. They even sent an envoy to Crassus from King Orodes II of Parthia, giving him one last chance to stop his invasion. Boastfully, Crassus replied that he would give the king his response in Seleucia, meaning that he planned to take the Parthian capital. To this, the envoy burst out in laughter and, pointing at his palm, said, O Crassus, hair will grow there before thou shalt see Seleucia. His second mistake came when he refused the aid of King Atavastes II of Armenia, who offered Crassus safe passage and reinforcements if he invaded Parthia through his land. Instead, Crassus accepted the help of Ariamnes, leader of the Kingdom of Osrone, and crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. Ariamnes had served Pompey in the past and proved himself a friend of Rome, but on this occasion, he was working with the Parthians and led Crassus and his troops into the open desert. Completely weakened, tired, and demoralized, the Roman troops fought the Parthians at the Battle of Karhai in 53 BC, located in modern-day Horan, Turkey. The Parthians, led by a general named Serena, slaughtered the Romans, even though they were severely outnumbered. Crassus had clearly lost the battle. His son Publius had been killed, and most of his remaining men were getting ready to mutiny. He tried making a truce, but this was a trap, and Marcus Crassus and his entire retinue were killed when they met the Parthians. According to Plutarch, Crassus' killer was a man named Pomax III, who then cut off his head and one hand and sent them to the Parthian king. A much more notorious death was told by Cassius Dio, who said that Crassus had molten gold pulled down his throat to punish him for his unending greed, although he didn't specify if the Roman general was alive or dead when this happened. Back home, his death had important consequences. For starters, it was a humiliating defeat for Rome, one that had to be answered for, so Parthia became one of its fiercest enemies for the next 250 years. But Crassus' demise also meant the end of the First Triumvirate. Pompey and Caesar were already on hostile terms by this point, and with Crassus gone, the two of them were firmly placed on a collision course which prompted the fall of the Republic and gave rise to the Roman Empire.