His contemporaries, Gnaeus Pompey (the Great) and Julius Caesar are more famous the the shadowy figure behind them, Marcus Licinius Crassus. Yet Crassus was the richest man of the ancient world. Crassus was the man who quelled the slave revolt of Spartacus, and crucified nearly two thousand of the defeated army all along the Via Appia. And Crassus was the general with seven Roman legions who suffered perhaps history's greatest defeat at Carrhae, in Parthia. Legends have grown around, not his life, but his death. Peter Stothard brings Crassus to life two thousand years later.