It really is uncanny, even down to the love of gold. Likely also true about US support for Israel which has completely collapsed in the under 50s.
Crassus was destroyed by Hubris. So many good comparisons of both leaders:
"Trump and Crassus: The Eternal Folly of Invading Persia
History has a habit of whispering warnings to those who care to listen.
Unfortunately, power has an equally persistent habit of ignoring them.
If the United States under Donald Trump chooses to march into conflict with Iran, the shadow that stretches across the centuries is unmistakable: the disastrous campaign of Marcus Licinius Crassus, whose invasion of Persia ended in catastrophe at the Battle of Carrhae.
The parallels are not perfect — history rarely repeats so neatly — but they are instructive enough to give any statesman pause.
The Original Western Invasion of Persia
In 53 BC, Crassus, the richest man in Rome and one of the three rulers of the Roman Republic, sought military glory to rival that of Julius Caesar and Pompey.
He marched east with approximately seven legions — roughly 40,000 men — intending to conquer the Parthian Empire and seize its wealth.
He ignored the warnings of allies, rejected safer routes, and advanced deep into hostile territory.
The Parthians responded with a style of warfare Rome scarcely understood.
At Carrhae, a small Parthian force commanded by Surena used mobile cavalry and horse archers to surround the Roman legions in the desert. Roman heavy infantry — formidable in European battlefields — proved helpless against a fast-moving enemy that could strike
•10,000 captured
•Crassus himself dead
•Roman prestige shattered across the East.
The Euphrates became the effective boundary between Rome and Persia for generations.
Rome had learned a painful lesson: Persia is not easily conquered.
Persia: The Graveyard of Western Ambition
From Crassus onward, the story repeats.
Roman emperors invaded Persia again and again — with mixed success, but rarely decisive victory. Later empires would learn the same lesson:
•Alexander succeeded briefly but his empire collapsed after his death.
•Rome and Persia fought for centuries without decisive conquest.
•The British Empire failed to dominate the wider region.
•The Soviet Union failed in nearby Afghanistan.
•The United States struggled for two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The geography itself fights the invader: vast distances, mountains, deserts, and a
civilisation accustomed to resisting foreign domination.
Iran is not merely a state.
It is a civilisation over 2,500 years old.
And civilisations fight differently than regimes.
The Psychology of Great Power Overreach
Crassus did not invade Persia because he had to.
He invaded because he wanted glory.
His colleagues Caesar and Pompey had conquered Gaul and the East. He needed a
triumph of his own. Ambition, prestige, domestic politics — these are ancient forces in statecraft.
Modern superpowers are not immune to them.
Military planners can calculate missiles and logistics. But the deeper calculation is
psychological:
pride, perception, and the intoxicating belief that power guarantees victory.
Crassus possessed the finest army of his age.
It did not save him.
The Lesson Carrhae Still Teaches
The true tragedy of Carrhae was not simply military defeat.
It was strategic blindness. Rome assumed that because it dominated the Mediterranean world it could dominate
Persia as well.
That assumption proved fatal.
Every empire eventually confronts this moment — the moment when power mistakes itself for inevitability.
Persia has historically been the place where that illusion dissolves.
If Washington today contemplates war with Iran, the desert plains near Carrhae still whisper their warning across two millennia:
Great empires are not destroyed by weak enemies.
They are destroyed by overconfidence.
And somewhere in the sands of Mesopotamia lies the skull of Crassus — a relic of the last man who believed Persia would be easy."