Lorica Hamata being pierced by arrows

[Alanus]

An arrow in the foot will incapacitate a soldier just as surely as an arrow through the heart.

Agreed. Carrhae was an arrow in the foot... and elsewhere. It was a disaster before it even began, Crassus being overconfident and undermanned. I don't want to get off-topic, but the Parthian cataphracts were impaling the infantry two at a time. Within the first ten minutes, the Romans were shaken to the core... and it went downhill from there. I'm not saying hamata didn't do its job. I'm just quoting Abraham Lincoln-- "You can stop some of the arrows some of the time, but you can't stop all of the arrows all of the time."