SHREDS & Leftovers (english)

The Chinese and the Barbarians (Background)

Crassus refused to listen to his veterans who were in favour of marching on the coast and avoid the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the arab Arimanes and his six thousand horsemen, who had secretly sided with the Parthians and abandoned the Romans few minutes before the battle. 

Crassus, facing the enemy, ordered his soldiers to form a square, packed like sardines, instead of scattering them so that they ended up being slaughtered by enemy arrows before they could even attempt a response. 

At nightfall, Crassus accepted to negotiate with the enemy but was caught instead in a trap and his head was also cut off. 20,000 Romans died that day, 10,000 were taken prisoner, and the remainder managed to escape and return to Italy.

This setback was partially redressed by Marcus Antonius few years later and a diplomatic solution with the Parthians was reached under Augustus in 20 BC when a peace treaty was stipulated and the lost insignia were retrieved. 

The Parthians agreed on the return of the eagles and the banners of the seven Roman legions, but when Augustus sought the return of the prisoners abandoned in 53 BC they maintained that there were no prisoners to repatriate. The Roman historian Plinius also upholds this theory in explaining the disappearance of so many men.

The Parthian practice had always been to shift prisoners caught in the west to Turkmenistan in the east. By so doing they would secure their loyalty against their worst enemies - the Huns - and this is probably what happened to the unfortunate Romans whom the Parthians had caught. 

The Roman historian Plinius also upholds this theory in explaining the disappearance of so many men.

What happened then to those 10,000 legionaries? 

No plausible answer could be found for two thousand years until an American sinologist, Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, announced a possible answer during a conference in London in 1955 called, 

"A Roman City in Ancient China".