Plutarch's life of Marcus Licinius Crassus traces the richest man in Rome from a fortune built on fire, slaves, and Sulla's proscriptions to a catastrophic death at Carrhae, chasing the military glory that money alone could not buy.
Plutarch opens with Crassus's disciplined, thrifty upbringing in a crowded household and then pivots immediately to the theme that will govern the whole Life: love of money. He catalogues how Crassus turned Rome's disasters into private profit, buying up condemned men's estates during Sulla's proscriptions and, most notoriously, purchasing burning buildings and their endangered neighbors at panic prices using a private brigade of five hundred slave architects and builders, until 'the greater part of Rome came into his possession.' Plutarch balances this with Crassus's genuine virtues: his open house, his interest-free loans to friends (though ruthlessly called in), his self-taught oratory that let him step in for Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero alike, and his famous habit of greeting every citizen, however humble, by name. Political rivalry with the younger, more naturally gifted Pompey shapes Crassus's career, driving him toward the courts and the crowd rather than the battlefield, and his one real military triumph, crushing the slave revolt of Spartacus, is undercut when Pompey claims the war's final credit.
The narrative then follows Crassus into the First Triumvirate, where Caesar reconciles him and Pompey into 'an irresistible strength' that dissolves the Senate's authority, and traces his second consulship, the violent electoral maneuvering that secures him and Pompey their provincial commands, and his elation at drawing Syria in the lottery, the one province that puts him within reach of a Parthian war. Plutarch treats what follows as a long unraveling: omens ignored, a tribune's terrifying ritual curse at the city gate, a winter spent counting temple treasure instead of training troops, and a fatal decision to trust the treacherous Arab guide Ariamnes, who leads the legions off the safe riverside route into open desert built for Parthian cavalry and archery. The set-piece battle near Carrhae, the death of Crassus's son Publius with his head paraded on a spear, and Crassus's own murder during a false truce are rendered in the vivid, almost tragic detail for which this Life is famous, ending with the surreally macabre scene of his severed head used as a stage prop in a performance of Euripides's Bacchae at the Parthian court.
Historically, the Life is a primary source for the Third Servile War, the mechanics of the First Triumvirate, and the disastrous Battle of Carrhae (53 BC), one of Rome's worst military defeats and a rare instance of Parthia decisively humbling Roman arms. Plutarch's moralizing frame, avarice as the flaw that finally destroys an otherwise able man, also makes this Life a case study in how he structures character and consequence, and its parallel partner (Nicias) invites a direct comparison of two men undone by ambition mismatched to their gifts.
“The Romans, then, say that though Crassus had many virtues, a single vice overshadowed them all — his love of money”
— Crassus
“he bought up slaves who were architects and builders, and once he had more than five hundred of these, he made a practice of buying up the buildings that were on fire and those neighboring the ones on fire, which their owners let go for a small price out of fear and uncertainty, so that in time the greater part of Rome came into his possession”
— Crassus
“Hair will grow here, Crassus, before you see Seleucia”
— Crassus
“Romans, this sorrow belongs to me alone; the vast good fortune and the renown of Rome remain whole and unvanquished in you, who yet live”
— Crassus
“Tell all the rest, if you survive, that Crassus perished deceived by the enemy, not betrayed by his countrymen”
— Crassus
Plutarch says he began with about three hundred talents and built it into eleven thousand mainly through Sulla's proscription sales and a scheme of buying burning or endangered buildings cheaply using his own five-hundred-strong crew of slave architects, so that in time much of Rome itself belonged to him.
As the Senate's appointed general, Crassus reorganized a demoralized army (including reviving the punishment of decimation), walled off the Rhegium peninsula with a ditch and wall stretching sea to sea, and finally destroyed Spartacus's forces in a decisive battle, though Pompey publicly claimed credit for 'tearing out the root of the war' after mopping up fleeing survivors.
Plutarch attributes it to jealousy of Caesar's and Pompey's military triumphs; having outdone both men in wealth and political maneuvering but never in generalship, Crassus set his sights on a war against Parthia, imagining conquests as far as the Bactrians and Indians, even though no law authorized such a campaign.
Lured off the safe river route by the treacherous guide Ariamnes into open desert, Crassus's legions were surrounded by Parthian horse-archers and cataphracts under the general Surenas; his son Publius's detachment was wiped out and paraded on a spear-point, and the main force was eventually destroyed or captured after a failed retreat to Carrhae.
Pressured by his own soldiers into a parley he distrusted, Crassus went down to meet Surenas under a supposed truce; a scuffle broke out over a horse provided to him, and he was killed, by a Parthian named Pomaxathres according to Plutarch, though he notes other accounts differ on who struck the fatal blow.
Plutarch describes Crassus's head being thrown into a Parthian banquet where a tragic actor named Jason was performing the role of Agave from Euripides's Bacchae; Jason seized the head as a prop and sang the lines about a 'fresh-cut tendril' brought from the mountain, turning Crassus's death into a grotesque theatrical finale.
He portrays a triangular rivalry in which Crassus, envious of the honors given to both men, worked the courts, the crowd, and loans of money to build comparable influence at home, and was ultimately brought into an uneasy political partnership with them by Caesar at Luca, forming what became the First Triumvirate.
Yes; Plutarch records unfavorable sacrifices, a tribune's ritual curse at the city gate, thunderstorms and a broken bridge, standards that would not budge, and a slip of the tongue about the army never returning, all of which Crassus dismissed or failed to address, alongside Cassius's repeated tactical objections that he overruled.
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