The Romans began their offensive. Aided by a small force from Philip V, Acilius Glabrio assumed command of the army previously deployed to Greece, which he then supplemented with his own reinforcements; Antiochus’ Anthamanian allies were quickly crushed.24 Philip of Megalopolis, the would-be king of Macedon, was captured and thrown into chains. Philip V taunted the pretender as he awaited transportation to Rome, calling him ‘brother’ and ordering Macedonian soldiers to salute him as ‘king’.25 After the campaign Athamania became Macedonian territory, Rome’s gift to Philip in gratitude for his cooperation.
The Romans proceeded to mop up meagrely defended garrisons in Thessaly, effectively undoing Antiochus’ previous lightning campaign. Antiochus lacked the troops to commit to a pitched battle in Thessaly. Badly outnumbered, he had only one hope of stalling the Roman onslaught into central Greece: to stop them at Thermopylae.
Thermopylae
The ‘Warm Gates’, named after local hot springs, had soaked up a great deal of human blood. On the road along the narrow coastal plain of eastern Greece, Thermopylae presented a natural ‘choke point’. The cliffs of Mt Callidromus rose rapidly from the coast, leaving only a few hundred metres of passable flat land. (Modern visitors will be disappointed, as over two thousand years of silt deposits have significantly extended the flatlands adjacent to the sea. A national highway runs along the coastal plain, a reminder of the area’s ancient importance as a trade route and military avenue.) Off the coast, turbulent seas hindered amphibious operations. At first glance, it was an ideal defensive position.
But Thermopylae had a fatal flaw for those who would defend it. While a small force could bottleneck a much larger army, shepherds’ paths through the mountain made it possible for flying columns to work their way behind established blocking positions.
The first recorded battle at Thermopylae took place between the Thessalians and Phocians around the year 500 BC, when the Phocians sought to stop an invasion from Thessaly. They were outflanked through the mountain paths and forced to retreat.26 The second and most famous battle of Thermopylae was that of King Leonidas and his ‘300’ Spartans against the invading army of Xerxes, in 480 BC. Leonidas commanded a combined Hellenic force of roughly 7000 troops and held the position against the Persian column assaulting from the north. The Spartans built a defensive wall on the plain, and detached a contingent of Phocians to guard the path. Yet once the Persians learned of the goat trails from a local collaborator, they were able to turn the paths with overwhelming force. Leonidas ordered the majority of his Greek forces to retreat before the trap was sprung, while he waited with his Spartans to die gloriously, if foolishly. Recorded by the historian Herodotus, the legend of Leonidas was well known to Antiochus and his contemporaries,27 and it was likely familiar to the Romans as well, particularly to Glabrio’s legate Marcus Porcius Cato, a leading orator who had studied Greek literature.28
Subsequent battles of Thermopylae gave potential defenders mixed hopes of holding the pass. In 352 BC, the Athenians successfully defended the pass against the advancing army of Alexander’s father Philip II.29 However, Philip II had just completed a very successful campaign and may have decided that forcing the pass was not worth the trouble. The Athenians briefly held a position at Thermopylae in 323 during the Lamian War, a revolt that broke out among the Greek city-states following Alexander’s death. This time, the Athenians successfully routed a Macedonian army near the pass, forcing it to retreat to the nearby Thessalian town of Lamia.30 In 279 BC, a pan-Hellenic force attempted to hold Thermopylae against the invading army of Gauls. In a replay of 480 BC, the small force assigned to hold the goat-paths was overwhelmed, but a daring naval extraction by the Athenian fleet prevented a massacre.31
The lessons of history were mixed; only two of the five previous attempts to defend the pass were successful. An attacker with sufficient local knowledge – or a native guide – could use the mountain trails to flank the position of the defender, and this fact was not lost upon the Romans.
Were these history lessons lost upon Antiochus? In some respects, he had little choice. Glabrio’s 22,000 man consular army outnumbered his 14,500 Seleucid-Aetolian force. He had only 500 cavalry, compared to the 2000 Roman and Italian horse, and could not afford to fight on open ground. The chokepoint at Thermopylae still offered the best chance to even the odds. For Antiochus III, the most important lesson was the critical importance of flank security, and to guard the critical mountain paths he detached his 4000 Aetolian allies. Armed with javelins and light shields, they were far more suited for mountain warfare than his heavy phalangites. He also elected not to defend the ‘west gate’, where Leonidas and the Spartans made their desperate stand, but rather the ‘east gate’, with the hope that the eastern pass, if wider, might prove more difficult for the enemy to envelop. The King positioned his phalanx at the gates and set light troops in the high ground to the front, perpendicular to the phalanx: forming an ‘L’. These would pepper the right flank of the advancing Romans with a crossfire of missiles. And like the Spartans before him, he constructed a wall for mounting catapults and ballistae: a rare example of the use of siege machines in a pitched battle.32 From the front, his defensive position was virtually impenetrable.
A flanking manoeuvre through the heights was the obvious Roman response. Acilius Glabrio assigned Marcus Cato and Valerius Flaccus 2000 men apiece, roughly half a legion. Each detachment was to attempt a different route through the twin peaks over the Warm Gates. They were to make a midnight march, scatter any guards positioned on the flanks, and crash into the King’s rear in the morning. Glabrio himself would lead the main body against the pass. If the plan worked, his main force would provide the anvil for the twin hammers of Cato and Flaccus to finish Antiochus’ force. But this plan was also inherently risky, as both detachments could become disoriented and isolated in the darkness
One of the many duties of the Roman commander was to ensure the cooperation of the gods. The traditional method was the votum, or vow, in which the Roman gods were offered a bargain. If (and only if), Glabrio and his legions triumphed over Antiochus, then Glabrio vowed the construction of a temple to Piety (pietas) in Rome.33
Valerius Flaccus and his detachment did lose the path in the darkness and never reached the fight. Marcus Cato found the shepherds’ tenuous tracks only with considerable difficulty; the prisoner of war employed as a guide became badly disoriented, and Cato broke away to locate the path, which he marked before returning to lead his troops. The path petered out again just before morning, but dawn brought the sounds of nearby Greek voices. Cato and his men were in the correct position, exactly in front of the Aetolian rearguard position. Cato unsheathed his sword, formed up his men, and attacked. Unsure of how many Romans were behind him, the panicked Aetolians fled.
Meanwhile, the consul Glabrio was failing in the attempt to force the pass. As required by the restricting terrain, his approach was in a narrow column. After an initial engagement with Antiochus’ light troops, his legionary infantry encountered Antiochus’ phalanx. With a flank on the mountains and a flank on the sea, the dense mass of pikes could not be budged along its narrow front, and the battle at the pass stood at a stalemate.
But Cato’s legionaries soon raced down from the mountains into Antiochus’ rear. The King knew that the trap had been sprung, despite his best precautions. He did not attempt to repeat the foolish gallantry of Leonidas but fled with the troops that could extract themselves. Plutarch claims that the King in retreat was hit in the face with a rock, causing the loss of even more teeth.34 (In all likelihood Plutarch is assigning the dental incident that took place at the River Arius in Bactria to the debacle at Thermopylae.) Most of the King’s 500 cavalry joined the mounted flight, galloping away before the jaws slammed shut. The survivors numbered in the hundreds: the phalanx, the flower of his expeditionary force, was surrounded, and 10,000 men were killed or captured. A mere 200 Romans and Italians fell fighting.35
Antiochus retreated to
Chalcis with only his tiny escort of cavalry. He met his fleet, collected his bride, and sailed for Ephesus. A major reason for the failure of Antiochus’ expedition in Greece lay in the fact that the Seleucids were unaccustomed to the significant logistical and infrastructure demands then required of major Mediterranean naval power. The Great King did not want for troops; his army at the time likely exceeded 100,000 men on active duty, but he was chronically short of transport for these troops. This logistical inability severely limited the numbers of his expeditionary force and gave him an unusual disadvantage in cavalry, given the space required to transport horses and their equipment.
By contrast, the Romans had over seventy-five years’ experience launching elaborate overseas campaigns, ever since their first actions against Carthaginian Sicily in the 260s BC. They were experts in assembling transports and supplying large armies overseas. When compared with the logistical difficulties Antiochus experienced crossing shorter distances with smaller forces, the Romans’ relative ease in moving 20,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry across the Adriatic is a testament to the rising importance of seaborne logistics.36
Yet Antiochus had also failed in his diplomatic efforts. His small expeditionary force might have succeeded had he been able to recruit an equal number of allied troops. For all their initial support, the Aetolians proved lukewarm allies and never mobilized their entire muster.37 The hope that Philip V might join the anti-Roman alliance was also quickly dashed, bungled in part by Antiochus’ own failed attempts at outreach to the Athamanians.
Invasion
The political unity of the Roman command team broke down after the victory at Thermopylae. Glabrio dispatched a messenger to deliver the official report of the battle. Cato, however, begged a furlough, which was granted, and he raced back to Italy to deliver a personal account of the battle before the official report arrived. In its place, Cato pronounced an entirely self-serving narrative, glorifying his own actions and sharply criticizing Glabrio’s command. With Antiochus expelled from Greece, the rancour and divisiveness of Roman politics had resumed.
The Romans continued their war effort against the recalcitrant Aetolians, and the senate extended Acilius Glabrio’s command to carry on the war in mainland Greece. Glabrio’s high-handed actions, which involved throwing an entire Aetolian peace delegation into chains, stymied peace talks and caused the Aetolian war to drag on until 189 BC.38
The elections of 191 proved another great victory for the Scipionic faction. Lucius Scipio, the elder brother of Scipio Africanus, was elected consul despite a failed attempt two years before. The plebian consul was Gaius Laelius, a long-time lieutenant of Africanus during the 2nd Punic War and later an important source for Polybius. Like Acilius Glabrio, Gaius Laelius was a talented ‘new man’ who rose to the consulship with Scipionic patronage. He had served as Africanus’ chief lieutenant in Spain and Africa from 209 to 201 BC, commanding the Roman and Italian cavalry at the Battle of Zama. Given his extensive military background, it seemed logical that Gaius Laelius be given the task of invading Asia Minor and bringing the war to an end, but Scipio Africanus interceded on behalf of his brother. He asked the senate to forego the traditional casting of lots to determine provincial responsibility, proclaiming his intention to join the conflict as a lieutenant if Lucius Scipio were given the command against Antiochus. Given the military pre-eminence of Scipio Africanus, his offer was gladly accepted, and Laelius, whose quiet competence had contributed to many of Africanus’ victories, was relegated to the province of Italy.39
The Scipio brothers crossed to Greece to assume command of Glabrio’s armies in theatre. They brought with them a supplementum (reinforcement) of 13,000 infantry and 500 cavalry, including 5000 clients (political dependents, often veterans) of Scipio Africans who volunteered to serve under him in the latest war. While the supplementum was in part designed to replace men who had been killed, injured, or taken sick, it would brought the total number of Roman troops in Illyria and Greece to well over 50,000. But most of these troops were needed to maintain the garrisons in Greece and Illyria, where the war with the Aetolians was in its final stages. The Romans continued to show a preference for modest field armies, which were easier to manage and supply. In all, the Scipios planned to take a modest expeditionary force of roughly 25,000 men as they marched toward Asia to bring the war to Seleucid territory.
First, however, the Romans confronted the problem of Antiochus’ blue water navy. The Great King had energetically built up a naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, and his fleet of over 150 warships presented an imposing force. In 191 BC, the Romans dispatched the praetor Gaius Livius Salinator to muster a fleet of over 100 warships (81 quinqueremes and 24 triremes). Many of these ships were left over from the 2nd Punic War and were hauled out of dry dock for the first time in a decade. But Salinator’s fleet was not large enough to take on Antiochus’ armada by itself, though Roman diplomatic efforts helped to fill the gap. After a series of consultations, King Eumenes II joined Salinator and returned to prepare the Pergamenese fleet.
The island of Rhodes also decided to enter the war. The Rhodians had been spooked by Antiochus’ naval operations off the coast of Southern Asia Minor in 197 BC, and they had previous ties to Rome as well, cooperating in the war effort against Philip V. While Rhodes was not traditionally hostile to the Seleucid Empire, the island nation questioned Antiochus’ emerging ambitions on the Aegean Sea. The defeat of Antiochus and the destruction of his newly built fleet would return the Aegean to its previous status as a Rhodian lake.40
The Battle of Cissus
The praetor Livius Salinator and King Eumenes united fleets and sailed toward the island of Samos to rendezvous with the Rhodians. The Seleucid commander was the admiral Polyxenidas, a Rhodian mercenary with a long history of Seleucid military service. He had previously commanded a unit of Cretan archers during the engagements in the Elburz mountains during Antiochus’ anabasis.41 The opposing fleets joined battle near the small coastal town of Cissus.
In the front of Salinator’s fleet were two allied Carthaginian ships. Three Seleucid warships quickly pounced on these, capturing one Carthaginian vessel and chasing the other off. Salinator, setting the tone for the entire sea-fight, quickly steered his flagship against these three ships. He caught two Seleucid ships at once with grappling hooks and swarmed them with his marines. This was the preferred manner of naval warfare for the Romans; rather than manoeuvring and ramming (standard tactics of the Eastern Mediterranean) they sought to close, grapple and board, turning a sea fight into a land battle. In the clash that followed, the Roman advantage in heavier quinqueremes proved decisive. Furthermore, Salinator deployed his line beyond the Seleucid right flank, and now his ships veered to the starboard and began to roll up the Seleucid line. The Romans destroyed ten Seleucid warships and captured thirteen more. Polyxenidas retreated with only forty-seven quinqueremes.42
Despite this defeat, Polyxenidas was not finished yet. He sent a series of letters to the commander of the Rhodian fleet, detailing his willingness to desert and betray the entire royal fleet. These letters were a cover to buy time to repair his fleet, drill his rowers, and recruit the aid of an archpirate named Nicander, who brought with him a small squadron of five ships. When these preparations were complete, Polyxenidas pounced on Samos, trapping the Rhodian fleet between his own ships and those of his pirate allies. Among the Rhodian victims was the admiral Pausistratus, a political enemy of Polyxenidas, a fact that made the victory doubly sweet.43
Yet the strategic effects of Polyxenidas’ victory off the coast of Samos were short-lived. The Roman and Attalid fleets quickly converged against Polyxenidas, linking up with the remainder of the Rhodian fleet and hemming Polyxenidas into his base of Ephesus. Salinator himself sailed to Ilium, where he sacrificed to Athena with great fanfare.44 This both mimicked and mocked Antiochus’ sacrifice two years before. As a Roman, the praetor could claim distant mythical descent from Trojans of Ilium, yet this sacrifice, like Alexander�
��s in 333 BC, marked an invasion that was moving in the ‘proper’ direction: from Greece to Asia.
While at Ephesus, Polyxenidas and his fleet succeeded in fixing Salinator’s blockading force and tying up Roman and allied naval resources. In 190, a new praetor named Lucius Aemilius Regillus arrived and assumed command of the combined fleet. Salinator, however, took two Roman ships and obtained a small fleet from Smyrna and Rhodes, in the hopes of ravaging the coast of Lycia in southern Asia Minor as a diversion. This small fleet quickly suffered heavy losses, and Salinator abandoned his mission and sailed back to Italy.45
Skirmishes in Asia Minor
Since Eumenes had chosen to aid the Roman fleet, Antiochus’ son and new crown prince Seleucus invaded the Attalid realm and attacked the city of Pergamon. Antiochus moved his army up from Sardis, sending additional forces to Seleucus and detaching 6000 soldiers to besiege Elea, the main port city of Pergamon. Eumenes was forced to rush troops to defend his capital, although he did not risk a full on battle, while the Roman fleet sailed to the defence of Elea.
As his troops raped and pillaged their way through the hinterlands of Pergamon, Antiochus had reason to be worried about the strength of the Roman fleet and the impending arrival of Scipio’s army from Europe. The King sent a herald to the praetor Aemilius with a peace proposal, a prospect seriously discussed by the Roman council. Yet Eumenes advocated for rejecting the peace, as it would leave him at the mercy of Antiochus. Aemilius himself lacked the authority to offer peace terms, and told the herald that peace talks would have to wait until the consul arrived in the theatre.46
The arrival of a battalion of 1000 infantry and 100 cavalry from Rome’s allies the Achaeans helped to turn the tide at Elea. Led by an aggressive commander named Diophanes, the Achaeans pitched into a brigade of 4000 Gallic mercenaries in a fierce skirmish and routed them completely, earning cheers from an audience of men and women watching from the walls of Pergamon.47 Seleucus withdrew to the coast to police communities that might defect to the Romans. The Roman fleet left Elea, and Antiochus himself overran a series of cities that had until now resisted Seleucid authority: Cotton, Corylenus, Aphrodisias and Prinne.48
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