by Bob Bennett
The Wars of
Alexander’s
Successors
323–281 BC
The Wars of
Alexander’s
Successors
323–281 BC
VOLUME 2: Armies, Tactics and Battles
Bob Bennett & Mike Roberts
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright © R. Bennett and M. Roberts 2009
ISBN 978-1-84415-924-6
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Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Plates
List of Maps
Introduction
1.Soldiers and Armies
2.The Lamian War
3.Eumenes’ War
4.Gabene and Paraetacene
5.Battle of Gaza
6.Battle of Ipsus
7.Siege Warfare
8.Naval Warfare
9.Border Wars
10.Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
As with our first volume, our thanks go out to the late Mr Polack (Bob’s old teacher) for his translation of Polynaeus and to Jeff Champion without whom we would not have appeared in print. More specifically for this volume, we would like to thank again Phil Sidnell, our editor, who has been an invaluable source of help and guidance in both the planning and gestation of this book.
Since the publication of Volume 1 we have been touched and gratified by the support of our friends and work colleagues who have not only bought the book but appear to have actually read it and said many complimentary things as well. Finally our thanks go again to our wives Janet and Sue and children Katie, Joe, Philip and Stephen. After publication of Volume 1 they have been at last forced to take us seriously and their interest has concomitantly increased from the intermittent to the almost frequent.
List of Plates
Artist’s impression of a Macedonian heavy cavalryman (copyright J Yosri)
Artist’s impression of a typical phalangite (copyright J Yosri
Bust of a Macedonian soldier of the late fourth century BC, Naples Archaeological Museum (author’s photograph)
Artist’s impression of a light infantryman or peltast (copyright J Yosri)
Artist’s impression of a war elephant (copyright J Yosri)
Artist’s impression of an Iranian light cavalryman (copyright J Yosri)
Details from ‘Issus Mosaic’, Naples Archaeological Museum (author’s photograph)
Artist’s impression of a Hellenistic lithobolos (stone thrower), after Jeff Burn (copyright J Yosri)
Hellenistic walls (author’s photograph)
Salamis port (author’s photograph)
The reconstructed Greek trireme Olympias (courtesy of www.hellenicnavy.gr)
List of Maps
The World of the Successors
Leonnatus’ Battle, 322 BC
Battle of Crannon, 322 BC
Battle of the Hellespont, 321 BC
Battle of Paraetacene, 317 BC, initial deployments
Battle of Paraetacene, 317 BC, phase 1
Battle of Paraetacene, 317 BC, phase 2
Battle of Paraetacene, 317 BC, phase 3
Battle of Gabene, 316 BC, initial deployments
Battle of Gabene, 316 BC, phase 1
Battle of Gabene, 316 BC, phase 2
Battle of Gaza, 312 BC
Battle of Salamis, 306 BC
The World of the Successors.
Introduction
Military equipment and organization did not hurry to change in the pre-modern world; in fact, lack of change may be amongst the very definitions of the difference between then and the modern era. But, this did not mean that the people of the time did not think deeply about and modify the military institutions they had grown up with. The cerebral inclination and technological sophistication of the ancient Greeks remains one of the constant surprises of scholarship. The group of generals, rulers and kings who are studied in the following pages were very much amongst those who thought and adapted. Anti-elephant traps, great siege machines, and fire pots for attacking enemy warships just begin to show off their capacity to move and develop with the new. In the first volume of The Wars of Alexander’s Successors we have suggested that in political motivation, policy and vision the Diadochi were understandable to a twenty-first century mind in a way that Alexander himself was not and, in the same way, how they functioned in their martial careers shows they were familiar with what we consider modern principles of war and their tactical and strategic decision making is not at all outlandish to us.
Despite the generally slow pace of change in the ancient era, in some ways the fourth century BC could be claimed as a period of real martial development when compared to the several centuries before it. Battles in the Greek world went from just a hoplite scrum to something very different indeed, with many more sorts of warriors deployed to many different kinds of tactical and strategic blueprints. The scale of warfare, too, expanded in this period, the size of armies increased markedly as did the extent of the territory over which campaigns were fought. And the Diadochi, heirs of Alexander, being men born in that century, were children of change, yet still a change that was really an adjustment not a revolution, taking place within a limited range. So, these heroes of our story are still actors working within centuries of distilled military tradition.
The story of ancient warfare is a generally pretty well-ploughed acre and has been for a long time, whether it is coffee table volumes with sumptuous colour illustrations, well-drafted maps and photographs of relevant terrain or more obviously-intellectual efforts that eschew visual extravagance, but make more of an effort to place military matters deep within the culture in which it grew and that reflected the warrior zeitgeist of the time. But, in all these works, many of which are exceptionally worthwhile, the martial world of Alexander’s Successors gets fairly short shrift. A thin chapter, at best, is all that’s vouchsafed to the reader who is more likely to find a few paragraphs attached to the chapter devoted to Alexander, or a section referencing the epoch only as a sort of introduction to the rise of Rome.
This is perhaps not a surprise if, as is often suggested, even by the Emperor Hadrian’s time the ancient world already had its greatest ‘historical hits’.1 That most literate people in the Graeco-Roman world in the second century AD already saw Herodotus’ Persian Wars, Periclea
n Athens, the periods of Alexander’s conquests and Ciceronian Rome as the times when civilizations had peaked and when the talents and qualities of the Greeks or their Roman heirs had hit the high notes. Suggesting that it was not just that these were the periods from which the sources survived but perhaps that these were where the sources reflected the periods of high culture and civilization and because of this very fact they were the ones that survived.
In any event, what is certain is that the forty years after Alexander’s death never has been seen as, and still is not seen as, a period to compare with these other ‘epochs’. Though, as with most good and interesting analysis, it is always possible to point to something that does not fit the pattern. So, here it should be noted that Cicero showed great interest in Demetrius of Phalerum, the ruler of Athens under Cassander’s sponsorship, and later the polymath at the Ptolemaic court, who is mentioned on numerous occasions in the great man’s writings.
If the military world of the Hellenistic states is dealt with at all, it is usually the later period when the collision with the nascent might of Rome was in the wind. This, again, is no surprise as the well-respected Polybius gives credible evidence to tell this part of the story, while the chroniclers who describe the life and times of the Diadochi are frequently second division in both literary quality and factual dependability. Indeed, the main one could be dismissed as simply a plagiarist ripping off earlier chroniclers and offering little from his own thought process. But, if much is stylistically dubious, fragmentary and, in the case of Plutarch, disinterested in military matters the epoch is not as badly attested as some; at least until 301 BC, when the main continuous source peters out leaving us very little military meat on the bone for the second half of most of the Successors’ careers. Yet, before the century turns we have good material with few major gaps and details of terrific colour for the great campaigns and even for more peripheral events like the Cyrenean wars of Ptolemy or the Nabataean campaign of Antigonus and Demetrius.
Diodorus, who is our main guide, takes much from Hieronymus, who was there as a captain under Eumenes, possibly his kinsman and certainly a Cardian compatriot, and then for the Antigonids, father, son and grandson. And, in a long life, he stood always near the centres of power and thus the sources of information. The kind of numbers that Diodorus gives are always credible and, particularly in battles like Paraetacene and Gabene, the details of troop types and deployment suggest a source that had not just seen the battle arrays in situ but, in the first case in particular, had access to the battle plans drawn up in the command tent. More than this, Hieronymus seems to have stayed clear of the kind of fanciful and rhetorical embellishment that mars many of our other sources for these years. Seldom do we hear of ‘myriads of men’ that reflect a desire to boost the home side’s achievements rather than the facts. From the pages of Diodorus army size and details of military types and casualties are almost always convincing. Even when huge armies are described in the field the wealth and power of their sponsors makes this credible. Particularly as armed forces of this kind of magnitude are well and convincingly attested under Alexander (the invasion of India was an affair of over 100,000 men) once he had gained the resources of Darius’ Empire in order to mobilize them.
Yet, though the sources exist, few modern writers seem inclined to look in detail at the period. All that is often allowed for the era is a kind of ‘freak show’ element; an inclination to gigantism, shown in the use of elephants, in the building of monster siege engines and battleships with huge numbers of oarsmen and dimensions, that put them a world away from the triremes and quadriremes that were the typical warship of the line even in Alexander’s day. This bloated condition is declared as decadence much like the art forms of the period, that are frequently taken to be a decline from the Classical heights of the fifth century. Like all such generalizations this does not tell us everything, but still there is something in it. Demetrius, Antigonus’ son, clearly revelled in his reputation as a great besieger of cities and in each of his sieges he seemed to compete with himself to build bigger and bigger engines of war, with no apparent concurrent increase in performance. Yet, to accept wholesale this picture is certainly unfair to many of the leaders who came to the fore in the wake of Alexander’s demise.
The story of the Successor wars is also a tale of subtlety and subterfuge as well as raw might. Intelligence is much prized in commanders and often is shown to win the day; Damis with his elephant traps at Megalopolis is an early example. But if Odysseus was much admired, still Achilles appealed not just to Alexander but to many who came after him and nor were the two exemplars at all contradictory. Eumenes was probably regarded as the most cunning of all, yet he also famously fought and slew his deep and poisonous enemy, Neoptolemus, in a duel in the middle of a great battle at the very beginning of the Macedonian world wars. Pyrrhus, too, was admired for a reflective approach to military matters. He is claimed to be the first to institutionalize the use of the defended marching camp while on campaign, but, just as much, he was lauded for his duel with Demetrius Poliorcetes’ bravest captain, Pantauchus, during a battle in Aetolia in 289 BC. Plutarch informs us that ‘Pantauchus was by general consent the best fighting man of Demetrius’ generals’ but the young Epirote bested him in truly Homeric fashion, first throwing a spear then with close quarter swordplay.2
We have already dealt with the chronological narrative of the Successors in our first volume. It is now our intention to deal with military strategy and tactics in a more detailed and thematic fashion. However, historical context must still be given particularly in view of the fact that their military development was rooted in the reforms of Alexander and his father Philip.
Alexander, in thirteen years as king of Macedonia (from the death of his father, Philip, to his own at Babylon in 323 BC) first re-imposed the hegemony his forebear had battened on the north Balkans and Greece. He then battled in Illyria, met Celts by the Danube, razed the ancient city of Thebes to the ground before starting on the great project of his life. Then, a few years saw him crush the vast but fragile Persian Empire where the army created by Philip, and still mostly commanded by his old officers, showed itself in battle to be able to take on any odds that could be thrown at it. The army and its leader faced all kinds of military challenges, from satrapal forces of Greek mercenaries and Iranian and Anatolian cavalry to huge armies of all arms led by Darius, the Great King himself, to the kind of mobile force of nomad horse archers that would puzzle almost any conventional army, however well-equipped and intelligently led, until the advent of effective firearms. Then they faced down monsters in India as Porus fielded hundreds of elephants against Alexander, which terrified his men in a way nothing had before. He won at Hydaspes but at a terrible price, even if his foot guards eventually hamstrung enough of the huge beasts or drove them from the field by hacking off their trunks. The rest of the army the Indian ruler fielded was not so formidable but the pachyderms had done their worst. Not long after the battle, Alexander’s Macedonians finally refused to follow him any further. Weeks of rotting clothes and snake bites in the monsoon had been important but it was the talk of the kingdom on the Ganges River possessing 4,000 war elephants that finally turned the table. A shrine was left by the waters of the Beas to show how far they had come but, even so, it was far less than the great conqueror would have liked.
Eventually, the extraordinary adventure finally ended on the banks of the Euphrates in 323 BC when Alexander’s officers were left with the conundrum of what to do in a situation of contested succession that Alexander had made little attempt to clarify. Great officers argued at Babylon and some would become considerable players in history. Ptolemy would take over the legacy of the Pharaohs; Seleucus would create the nearest thing to a new Persian Empire. Antigonus’ progeny would hold greater Macedonia. Others like Lysimachus and Cassander, after playing a game hand, would leave nothing with their name on it to posterity. Perdiccas, Craterus, Leonnatus, Eumenes, Pithon, Asander, Cleitus and Peucestas wo
uld, from fine starts, fall all too quickly, leaving in the long haul hardly a trace, but still each would be a major player in the military story that occupied the years after Alexander’s death.
At the start, this pool of men was of mixed background and generation. Some were Greeks from cities as far apart as the Thracian Chersonese or the Peloponnese, others were from other Balkan kingdoms like Epirus. Some were of advancing years like Polyperchon or Antigonus, while Antipater, at least, was very ancient indeed. But most of them were Macedonians and most of roughly the same generation of Alexander himself. Others were a bit older, Craterus and Eumenes and perhaps Perdiccas (we can assume from service under Philip) were probably in early middle age but full of vigour and health. A core had even been playmates and school comrades of Alexander, so we know they too were 30 years old or so when Alexander died. Most had left Europe when young and their experiences of young manhood had been all to do with marching, fighting and ruling, with a fair leavening of intriguing as well. Aristotle had sent his nephew to keep his old pupils company, but to what extent Callisthenes sustained a philosophical dimension in the conquering cavalcade is arguable. The men who began to shape the world they found in their control in 323 BC, whether they were stationed in Macedonia, Phrygia, the Punjab or Babylon at the time of the epochal event, were soldiers.
The first chapter of this volume will describe the arms and armies of the main contestants and the military culture in the years after Alexander’s death. A culture that they had developed from Macedonian tactical arrangements that were, themselves to a large degree, a synthesis of Greek and Persian ways of making war. A mixing of strong infantry and heavy horse to force victory at the point had been what Philip II had devised and Alexander perfected. And this admixture the Diadochi themselves might be seen to personify. They, too, grew to manhood in the Greek world, all be it on the margins, but then spent their often-long adult lives in an extra-European world where perspectives, influences, interests and opportunities could be very different.