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About Venditius,
"After the sudden Parthian invasion of Syria in 40 BC, Marc Antony sent him(Venditius) with several of Caesar's veteran legions to beat back the invaders. In three separate battles he drove the Parthian armies out of Roman territory and killed Parthia's top three military commanders. Antony later relieved him of command because he had actually done too well. Venditius went on to serve as consul of Rome, though citizens mockingly made the sounds of mules during his term."
"He was the only Roman general to be honored a triumph over the Parthians."
A great accomplishment!
All other Roman generals took a beating...
Johnny
Johnny Shumate
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I never knew about Venditius. I'm going to do some research about him now. Thanks for posting about him.
Michael Paglia
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Yes! Ventidius is frequently forgotten and seems to be completely ignored by those simpletons that go on and on and on about the Surena beating Crassus thereby proving the superiority of parthian cavarly over roman infantry. How boring, how wrong.
The Parthians after beating Crassus believed the Romans could easily be beat. But Ventidius understood what happen and tought them a very very good lesson. He chose the ground and used long range missiles (sling). Never again, after Ventidius, did the Parthians think they could beat a well balanced roman army in a set battle.
However the solutions of Ventidius were not a sure thing. In any case Antony just barely extricated himself from the mess he got himself into. But later roman well organized invasions of Parthia did make a balanced use of missiles (sling, archers) and light cavalry to neutralize the parthian mounted archers and the heavy cavalry. Parthian infantry was certainly not the problem. It basically sucked.
I've said this before. The Romans proved more flexible than the Parthians. The later always were incapable of fielding a good infantry and had always to hope the Romans overstretch themselves or make a series of mistakes. That the Romans did do this often does however show how many things could have gone wrong back then in that area, inspite of relatively good organization and logistics.
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
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The other issue is strategic. Ventidius is described here as winning three battles defending Syria from Parthian incursions. Several of the Roman debacles were while invading Parthian territory. The logistic issues are obviously reversed, and the terrain was not necessarily the same either (depending on exactly where in Syria Ventidius' victories were).
Felix Wang
