Glory and Gold

Emperors of Rome

La Trobe University

Roman Emire, Rhiannon Evans, Biography, Emperor, La Trobe University, Roman History, Julius Caesar, Rome, Caesar, Ancient History, History, Caillan Davenport, Roman Emperors

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Crassus had power, he had money, but he still felt something was missing. With an army and a province in the east, he sets off to win the glory he had always been denied Perhaps it lay in Parthia.

Episode CCXLII (242)

Part IV of Crassus

Guest:
Assoc. Professor Rhiannon Evans (Classic and Ancient History, La Trobe University)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my name's Ali, and I'm seven years old, and you're listening to the Emperors of Rome podcast.
0:14.5	Are they? And welcome to Emperors of Rome, a Roman history podcast from La Trobe University.
0:23.1	I'm your host, Matt Smith, and with me today is Rianna Evans, a Roman history podcast from La Trobe University. I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Rianne Evans, Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at La Trobe University. This is
0:30.0	episode CCXLII, Glory and Gold. Krasis had power, he had money, but he still felt something was missing.
0:39.3	With an army and a province in the east, he set off to win the glory he had always been denied.
0:45.3	Perhaps it lay in Parthia. Here's Riannon Evans.
0:49.3	In 55 BC, Krasus was consul for the second time. And after this, of course, after every consulship,
0:58.6	you get the chance to be a governor and he gets the pro-consulship of Syria. And with this comes a big army,
1:06.5	the chance for glory that he's always been waiting for. He must have been really excited about this.
1:12.1	He's really overjoyed.
1:13.6	It does seem like it's from this point that Plutarch, as we'll see, he'll start to
1:18.3	concentrate on Crassus being overly ambitious, overly sure of himself rather than just greedy.
1:25.5	So we're kind of moving up in terms of his bad characteristics.
1:30.4	So to quote Plutarch, he showed his joy that he regarded no peace of good fortune in his
1:36.4	whole life as more radiant than the one which had now come to him.
1:41.1	Among strangers and in public, he could scarcely hold his peace, while to his friends
1:45.8	he made many empty and youthful boasts. Youthful, youthful will be a strange thing to say there
1:53.5	because we're about to have it stressed just how old Kressis is at this point. And Plutarch
1:58.3	indeed says that this is very much out of character with his earlier
2:01.9	demeanour. So this makes a big change in him. And it's almost like, in this account, at least,
2:07.8	what would you call it in a movie, the inciting incident, the thing that makes Krasas
2:12.0	different and leads to his doom, of course. Yeah, this is just before the third act, really. That's
	...

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