Faulty generalship had brought the Roman army into a position whence no courage could save it. In the second day’s battle a terrible defeat was sustained: no less than thirty thousand Romans perished in the disaster of Carrhae (53). Crassus himself was killed in a parley afterwards. It is said that a few days after the battle, before the news of it had reached him, the Parthian king was witnessing a performance of the Bacchae of Euripides in which there is a scene where one of the dancers comes in bearing a bleeding head. The actor who took this part carried the head of Crassus, which he cast, amid shouts of joy, at the king’s feet. Such was the tragic end of the millionaire Crassus. The news of his death and defeat came to Rome but caused no excitement there. The city was more interested in the street brawls of Clodius and Milo. The politicians were watching the growing conflict between Caesar and Pompeius. Crassus had dropped out of the Triumvirate. The stage was cleared for the great duel. XII Marcus Tullius Cicero Of none of the men of his own time do we know so much as of Marcus Tullius Cicero. His contemporaries we know from the accounts given and judgements passed by others: Cicero we know from his own. He was the first speaker of his age, and his speeches deal largely with the politics and people of his time, as he defended or attacked the men and their acts. Cicero was anything but impartial; yet it is from what he says that much of our picture of Caesar and Crassus, Pompeius, Antonius, Catiline, Clodius, Cato, Brutus and a host of others are drawn. In all the long gallery of portraits he has painted none is so sharp and vivid as his own. It comes to us not only through his speeches but through all his writings--and he wrote admirably on many philosophical and semi-philosophical subjects--and above all through his letters. These letters are addressed for the most part to his intimate friend the banker Pomponius Atticus, but also to others including most of the prominent men of his time, and to his daughter Tullia, to whom he was devotedly attached. They give a day-to-day picture of the life of Rome and also of the man who wrote them. Cicero was immersed, like most men of his time, in politics. He rose, to his own ineffable delight (a delight which he expresses again and again with childlike complacency), to be consul. But the explanation of a character that at times amused and at times exasperated his contemporaries, and has caused the same mixture of feelings to much later admirers, is that he was, in his essence, an artist. He wanted, as do many artists, to be and do other things. He was more vain of his dubious success in politics than of the splendour of his oratory or the beauty of his writing. In action he was timid, uncertain, and quite unable to cope with the great currents of his time, snobbish and constantly mistaken in his judgements of people, and alternately elated and despairing in his view of public events.