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Updated: May 21, 2025
Crassus haughtily replied, that he would give an answer in Seleukeia; on which Vagises, the oldest of the ambassadors, smiled, and, showing the palm of his hand, said, "From here, Crassus, hair will grow before you see Seleukeia." The ambassadors now returned to Hyrodes, to inform him that he must be ready for war.
This Seleukeia on the Tigris was built by Seleukus Nikator. It was about 300 stadia or 36 miles from Babylon, which declined after the foundation of Seleukeia. It was a Milesian colony. It was the birth-place of this Mithridates, surnamed Eupator, who made it his capital. There were harbours and stations for ships on each side of the isthmus.
This seemed to be the first blunder of Crassus, or at least, it was the greatest blunder that he committed next to the expedition itself; for he ought to have advanced and to have secured Babylon and Seleukeia, two cities which were always hostile to the Parthians; instead of which, he gave his enemies time to make preparation.
But Surena assembling the Senate of Seleukeia, laid before them certain licentious books of the Milesiaca of Aristeides, and, in this matter, at least, there was no invention on his part; for they were found among the baggage of Rustius, and they gave Surena the opportunity of greatly insulting and ridiculing the Romans, because they could not, even when going to war, abstain from such things and such books.
It is said that he fled to Seleukeia, on the Tigris, and that when the citizens there asked him to give lectures on his art, he treated them with contempt, saying, in an arrogant way, that a dish would not hold a dolphin.
It is said that twenty thousand perished in all, and ten thousand were taken alive. XXXII. Surena sent the head and hand of Crassus to Hyrodes in Armenia; and, causing a report to be carried by messengers to Seleukeia that he was bringing Crassus alive, he got ready a kind of ridiculous procession which, in mockery, he called a triumph.
Behind these followed courtesans of Seleukeia, singing girls, who chanted many obscene and ridiculous things about the effeminacy and cowardice of Crassus. All this was public.
He is classed as Arsakes XIV. Orodes I. of Parthia, by those who have attempted to form a regular series of the Parthian kings. Crassus replied that he would give his answer in Seleukeia, the large city on the Tigris, which was nearly pure Greek. The later Parthian capital was Ktesiphon, in the neighbourhood of Seleukeia, on the east bank of the Tigris and about twenty miles from Bagdad.
Removing himself from Seleukeia, he betook himself to Kleopatra, who was the daughter of Mithridates, and the wife of Tigranes; but he soon fell under suspicion, and, being excluded from all communion with the Greeks, he starved himself to death. Amphikrates also received an honourable interment from Kleopatra, and his body lies at Sapha, a place in those parts so called.
Now by hereditary right he had the privilege of first placing the diadem on the head of him who became king of the Parthians; and this very Hyrodes, who had been driven out, he restored to the Parthian empire, and took for him Seleukeia the Great, being the first to mount the wall and to put to flight with his own hand those who opposed him.
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