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The ancient world The Ancient World Bloodline

B-44 Odessa.

Of the Romans who survived the carnage, 10,000 managed to straggle back to Antioch. Another 10,000 fell to the Iranians as prisoners of war. Never before did Iran have to cope with such

an influx of prisoners. They could not be imprisoned anywhere in their Western borderlands,

within reach of any rescue attempt. There was also always the danger that so large a body of prisoners so close to Roman

territory might break free and fight their way back home. The lesson of

Xenophon's 10,000 under an earlier Persian Empire would not have been lost on their

successors.

But the earlier Persian Empire did supply precedence of what to do with prisoners from the troublesome west.

Deport them to the remote east.

Accordingly, the Roman 10,000 were taken to Margiana, on the northeastern fringes of the Parthian Empire.

This is how historian Warwick Ball describes the fate of Crass's legions after their bitter defeat at the Battle of Karai in 53 BC.

And just like Karai was only a stone's throw from the provincial capital of Odessa,

thoughts of Krasis must have been very close for Valerian.

If ever a spot could legitimately be considered enimical to the Roman cause, it was

the patch of land on to which he was leading his army. Closer than Kari, only 60 miles from Zugma, was the major city of Odessa. Like

Dura, it was a solucid foundation, built on a Macedonian military grid plan, but later with the

salucid decline, it had been dominated by Nabatean Arabs. An early ruler, Abgar the second, had either

helped the Parthians destroy Krasas' army or fought with Krasas against the Parthians. The sources disagree.

That ambiguity sets the tone for the next 300 years.

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