Crassus
Crassus names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Crassus MARCUS LICINIUS, a Roman consul and triumvir
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
MARCUS LICINIUS, a Roman consul and triumvir; immensely rich and passionately fond of money; took part with Sulla in the civil war. As prætor, in 74 B. C., he was sent against the insurgent gladiators under Spartacus, and totally defeated them near Rhegium. The next year he was consul with Pompey. Pompey and Crassus were, however, personal enemies, and it needed the powerful influence of Cæsar to effect a formal reconciliation between them, which took place in 60 B. c., the first rate being then formed. Consul again triumvifive years later, Crassus had Syria for his province, and made war on the Parthians. He was defeated by them with immense slaughter, and was put to death, 53 b. c. It is said that Orodes, King of Parthia, had melted gold poured into the dead mouth, with the taunt, "Sate thyself now with that metal, of which in life thou wert so greedy." CRATÆGUS, a genus of trees, order Pomaceæ. Calyx segments short and acute, petals large and roundish, styles 1 to 5, fruit oval or round, concealing the upper end of the cells, which are long. It differs from the genus Pyrus in containing a variable number of stones, and from the medlar by having the fruit closed. The genus contains about 80 well marked species and varieties, occurring in the temperate parts of both hemispheres. C. oxyacantha is the hawthorn, Oriental species have heavy leaves, large, fragrant flowers, and large, succulent, somewhat angular fruit; those of America are often very spinous. Finally, some species of the genus-viz., C. mexicana and C. pyracantha-are evergreens.
Crassus LUCIUS LICINIUS, a Roman orator
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LUCIUS LICINIUS, a Roman orator, 140 B. C., who is introduced by Cicero, in the treatise "De Oratore," as the representative of that writer's own opinions on the subject of oratory. He was unfortunate as a legislator, inasmuch as the law proposed by him, to compel all who were not citizens to depart from Rome, was a main cause of the Social War. He was distinguished for his love of the arts; and his mansion upon the Palatine is cited as having been one of the most noteworthy in ancient Rome. He died 91 b. C.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The bare framework Collier's set out in 1921 still stands: Crassus crushed Spartacus, shared the consulship with Pompey, joined Caesar and Pompey in the alliance of 60 B.C., and died in the Parthian disaster of 53 B.C. Two details have been tightened since. Rhegium was where Crassus penned Spartacus in behind a fortified line across the toe of Italy; the final battle in 71 B.C. is placed further north in Lucania, near the river Silarus, and the fatal campaign itself is now known by the name of the battlefield, Carrhae, near modern Harran in southeastern Turkey, where Crassus was killed at a parley after the defeat rather than on the field. Historians also treat the molten-gold-in-the-mouth taunt as a later moralising embellishment rather than reported fact, and they read the "first triumvirate" as a private and quite informal bargain, not a constitutional arrangement; the caricature of Crassus as merely greedy has given way to a picture of a formidable financier and patron whose money underwrote much of late-republican politics.
Written for this edition, 2026.