by
Damien F. Mackey
I’m Marcus
Licinius Crassus,
No rich man could ever surpass us.
Wanted people to say I was brave,
But I lost my first fight and hid in a cave.
Living there could be a pauper’s nightmare,
But if you’re rich like me then you don’t care.
I called my slave to the cave to ask it,
To cook a feast and lower in a basket.
No rich man could ever surpass us.
Wanted people to say I was brave,
But I lost my first fight and hid in a cave.
Living there could be a pauper’s nightmare,
But if you’re rich like me then you don’t care.
I called my slave to the cave to ask it,
To cook a feast and lower in a basket.
Horrible Histories
Confusing Croesus with Crassus
Mrs. M. Lanch wrote this to the Independent, “Letter: As rich as Crassus”
“Sir: The study of
classics may be in decline, but it would be encouraging if journalists got
their classical references right. Anne McElvoy ("Never underestimate a
rich man's anger when forced to resign", 9 August) confuses Croesus (king
of Lydia in the mid-sixth century BC) with Crassus, a Roman millionaire of the
first century. And the eastern empire against which he campaigned was the
Parthian one, not the Persian”.
She
was referring to this written statement by Anne McElvoy
“….
Centuries of burnt fingers have not helped politicians learn the high price of
other people's money. Ever since Croesus demanded the leadership of Caesar's
army in the east in return for bankrolling the Roman Empire's military machine
- only to lead it to defeat and get himself killed by the Persians in the
process - bankrollers have striven for office as a quid pro quo for supplying
cash to fund the ambitions of leaders. …”.
Not
a hard thing to do, though, to confuse the similarly-named Croesus and Crassus.
The
two names are mentioned together by Branco Milanovic in his article, “Who Was the
Richest Person Ever?”: https://www.theglobalist.com/who-was-the-richest-person-ever/
“The fabulously rich triumvir Marcus Crassus’s
fortune was estimated around the year 50 BCE at some 200 million sesterces
(HS). The emperor Octavian Augustus’s imperial household fortune was estimated
at 250 million HS around the year 14 CE. Finally, the enormously rich freedman
Marcus Antonius Pallas (under Nero) is thought to have been worth 300 million
HS in the year 52.
Take Crassus, who has remained associated with
extravagant affluence (not to be confused, though, with the Greek king Croesus,
whose name has become eponymous with wealth). With 200 million sesterces and an
average annual interest rate of 6% (which was considered a “normal” interest
rate in the Roman “golden age” — that is, before the inflation of the third
century), Crassus’s annual income could be estimated at 12 million HS.
The mean income of Roman citizens around the time
of Octavian’s death (14 CE) is thought to have been about 380 sesterces per
annum, and we can assume that it was about the same 60 years earlier, when
Crassus lived. Thus expressed, Crassus’s income was equal to the annual incomes
of about 32,000 people, a crowd that would fill about half of the Colosseum”.
In
common Croesus and Crassus: Disgustingly
rich; powerful; fought against the east, Persians, Parthians; captured; killed.
It
can either be said today, “as rich as Croesus”, or, “as rich as Crassus”.
2 1 The Romans, it is true, say that
the many virtues of Crassus were obscured by his sole vice of avarice ….
“… Croesus’s
leading feature was avarice” (The
Gentleman's and London Magazine: Or Monthly Chronologer, 1741-1794).
The
fact is, as noted in my article:
Croesus and Montezuma
“We
know little enough about Croesus”.
As
for Crassus, he even seems to be, in some instances, channelling Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
For example, Nadav
Sharon writes (Judea under Roman Domination: The First
Generation of Statelessness …, pp. 241-242):
“More reminiscent of that
persecutor [Antiochus] were the events involving
Crassus in 53. Crassus not only entered
the temple, as Pompey had, but he also robbed it as Antiochus had. In addition, Plutarch (Crass.
17. 5-6) describes
the plundering of a temple at Hierapolis in Syria
by Crassus, the same
I shall clarify this point: in asserting similarities between the actions of Pompey and Crassus
with Antiochus Epiphanes, I neither maintain an identity of the causes and the motivations of the revolts of the
first century BCE against the Romans with those of the
Maccabean revolt against Antiochus, as argues by William
Farmer and by Martin Hengel … nor do I agree with them that those motivations
were primarily religious”.
Perhaps Farmer and Hengel deserve further study on the matter.
I’m Marcus
Licinius Crassus,
No rich man could ever surpass us.
Wanted people to say I was brave,
But I lost my first fight and hid in a cave.
Living there could be a pauper’s nightmare,
But if you’re rich like me then you don’t care.
I called my slave to the cave to ask it,
To cook a feast and lower in a basket.
No rich man could ever surpass us.
Wanted people to say I was brave,
But I lost my first fight and hid in a cave.
Living there could be a pauper’s nightmare,
But if you’re rich like me then you don’t care.
I called my slave to the cave to ask it,
To cook a feast and lower in a basket.
Horrible Histories
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