Excellent documentary on Parthia

[Mulceber]

I've only had a chance to watch the first segment of the Parthian one, but it doesn't really strike me as excellent. I noticed one inaccuracy in the first couple minutes - it shows a map of Parthian lands in the 1st century BCE and it lists central turkey and Antioch as being held by the Parthians and afaik, that's not correct - the Parthians had mesopotamia and what was left of the Seleucid Empire held Syria. Then, when Pompey came through Asia, he essentially subsumed Syria into Roman hands. So I'm pretty sure the map that documentary showed is inaccurate.

Secondly I take issue with that remark "chasing down fleeing enemies is something the Romans knew all about." - that seems like it's trying to imply that the Romans only were good at fighting when their enemy was retreating, but the simple fact of the matter is, EVERYONE did that in the Mediterranean. The Romans did it. The Greeks did it. The Hellenistic Successor States did it. The Carthaginians did it. I'm no expert on Celtic culture, but I imagine they did it as well. That's how you turned military victories into massive military victories.

I also thought that it did a massively inadequate job of explaining Crassus' motives for invading Parthia. I realize that it's a documentary of Parthia, not Rome, and thus they should focus on Parthians. But how long does it take to say "Crassus, envious of the massive plunder being brought back by Caesar from Gaul, felt a need for some conquests of his own, and decided to invade Parthia, against the advice of many of his contemporaries."?

Also, they really truncated the Battle of Carrhae down. I'm not saying that they made Crassus look more foolish than he was - just that they didn't give the full details of what happened.

Lastly, I thought it funny that Jones was showing us the statue of that "Parthian Warrior" and failed to mention that it's believed to be a statue of Surena himself - the very man he was talking about less than a minute before. I'm not sure how they messed that up.

I think NikosMaximilian said it best: "If I've learned something new from that documentary is that Terry Jones posts in this forum and is a member of the Romaioktonoi group." And not a very well-informed one either. -M