javelin V phalanx

[QwertyMIDX]

It's also worth noting that the 'battle' of Carrhae wasn't a pitched battle. It was more a march under fire and then a retreat under fire with the Parthian horse archers being resupplied with arrows regularly. It took quite awhile for the Parthians to whittle down the roman troops with missile fire and even then wounds seem to have been concentrated in the un- or under-protected extremities rather than killing wounds through armor. Since of the 20,000 or so roman troops killed at battle a large percentage seem to have been killed either during the retreat or as a fact of being cut off from the main army (this includes Publius' force, presumably 4-6,000 men, 4 cohorts cut off from the main army, 4,000 wounded who were killed rather than taken prisoner by the Parthians immediately following the battle proper, and thousands more killed during the retreat) it would seem that arrow fire during the battle proper killed at most a couple thousand roman soldiers. With about 9,000 archers presumably exhausting multiple quivers (hence the aforementioned camels) a ratio of 1 kill for 100 arrows seems a bit generous.