The King Laughed at 15,000 Romans. Then Lost 100,000 Men in One Afternoon.

imagine this. a king looks from the top of his golden walls. below him the greatest army asia has ever seen, three hundred thousand warriors, armored knights that make the earth tremble, horse archers that obscure the sun with their arrows, and then in the distance a spot, fifteen thousand roman men. the king laughs, not a nervous laugh, a real deep laugh of someone who has already won. too many to be an embassy, he says to his generals, too few to be an army. that laugh will echo for eternity, because at the end of that day one hundred thousand of his men will lie dead in the dust, and the romans five, five dead romans, not five thousand, not five hundred, five. this is not a battle, this is a miracle written in blood, or perhaps the greatest humiliation in the history of humanity. welcome to tigranocerta, the sixth of october,