Battles and Tactics

by Bob Bennett

  The heavy cavalry battle winners were the apple of the Successors’ eyes, just as they had been for Alexander. They personally led these troops, riding with their greatest subjects, councillors and friends, even when the main strength of their army might lie in their heavy infantry phalangites. This was the place of honour, traditionally on the right of the battle line and though the serried ranks of horsemen might be more exotic, drawn from a greater range of peoples, their role, like the Companions of Alexander, was that of Homeric heroes. It was a dangerous post; Leonnatus, Craterus, Neoptolemus and possibly Lysimachus perished leading these troops into battle, but it was at the heart of things. However, if from Cannae in 216 BC to Rocroi in 1643 AD, a successful attack by the cavalry wings to finish off an army (effectively occupied in front by the infantry) is a military truism, what the story of the Diadochi also illustrates is some of the more problematic qualities of these blue-blooded cavaliers. History equally has many examples, from Raphia in 217 BC to Naseby in 1645 AD, of such cavalry defeating the men in front of them and then heading off in pursuit, never to be seen again and leaving their comrades to suffer for it.

  If the heavy cavalry remained the queen of the battlefield, the usefulness of light horse was also well appreciated by Alexander’s Successors. It was fully understood by these commanders that these troops could hold an enemy in play at one part of the line while the killer blow was struck elsewhere. Eumenes and Antigonus both employed this tactic in their great battles, using many of the sorts of light cavalry that had been hoovered up along the way by Alexander’s army. Indeed, it is clear that in most combats for which we have information, one wing was intended to hold back and skirmish rather than get fully involved in deciding the battle, while the other wing was anticipated to win the day.

  Elephants were the big new thing in Hellenistic warfare, the one particular feature that would have stood out as different from a Greek battlefield thirty years before. They first seem to have been encountered at Gaugamela, when Darius fielded fifteen. These had no impact and the first time they were recruited was in India when a friendly prince gave Alexander some. These were not used by Alexander in battle and the first belligerent experience of these beasts for the Macedonians was at the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BC, when they found themselves very uncomfortably on the receiving end. In that encounter they caused numerous casualties and engendered great terror but the side they fought for still lost.

  It is often thought that Alexander, himself, did not seem to have a great deal of time for the beasts, thinking them very unreliable. Yet, he still kept several hundred in one part of the army or another in the last years of his life; perhaps it was a matter of prestige, the connection of elephants with royalty that mattered. They are depicted as an integral part of his army on one side of his death cart (the other three sides show cavalry, infantry and warships) and reluctance to put them in the front line certainly did not extend to his successors.22 What information we have suggests, whether it was Polyperchon, Cassander, Olympias, Eumenes, Antigonus or Demetrius, they were prepared to spend much to keep up their herds and, as often as not, used them as the spearhead in battle.

  How they were equipped and armed is made clear by Diodorus when he describes the death cart. ‘They carried Indian mahouts in front with Macedonians fully armed in their regular equipment behind them.’23 With an Indian driver sitting on its neck and fully armed phalangites sitting on its back, they towered above all the other warriors in any battle array. Even so, it is likely that the animals on occasions went into attack with just a driver, as fighting from the back of an elephant must have been very difficult for those unused to it. And anyway, the essence of the elephant as a weapon was the beast itself. It is also unclear whether elephants, at this period, carried missile troops. One occurrence suggests not, as before the Battle of Gabene, Eumenes’ elephants were ambushed by Antigonus and they could not reply to the missiles of the men who attacked them. Though, of course, it is always possible that, as they were unprepared for battle, they did not have their fighting crews on board. Certainly the Indians had mounted bowmen and javelineers on them and it is more than possible that their Macedonian pupils would have followed them in this too. Plutarch suggests elephant towers were used at Paraetacene ‘and on the backs of the elephants the towers and purple trappings were seen’, but the first hard evidence for their use is from Pyrrhus’ campaigns in Italy.24 They were certainly worn by the Seleucids’ animals in 273 BC when Antiochus I defeated the Gauls of Asia Minor in the ‘Elephant Victory’.

  Their tactical organization is described by Asclepiodotus as being like the phalanx, with a division of sixteen animals being called an elephantarchy. But some idealized arrangements see them acting in great squares of animals. However, in all the battle descriptions we have, they seem to have fought in a single rank. The whole corps was commanded by an elephantarch who, probably, was not just an ad hoc posting for a battle but was retained for a period. Certainly, Eudamus seemed to have had some such role under Eumenes, while Antiochus the Great seems to have had the same officer called Philip fulfilling the post both at Raphia in 217 BC and at Magnesia, twenty-seven years later. The creation of such a rank seems eminently sensible given that if any part of Hellenistic warfare was a real specialism it was the use of elephants. How actual command during the battle might have been arranged is another matter, as the beasts seem usually to have been strung out all along the battle front. The elephants were accompanied into battle by a light infantry guard of fifty men interspersed between each animal.

  Their usefulness in battle in the Diadochi era is somewhat inconclusive and only at Ipsus was their use decisive. But the elephants’ ability to frighten horses by their smell and noise made them particularly attractive as a weapon. That and their initial impact on troops who had never seen them before made them well worth having. No doubt, several of the Diadochi who became kings remembered the day Alexander’s army had refused to carry on in India and the straw that had broken the camel’s back for them was the thought of facing an army of 4,000 elephants. To own a weapon that had brought terror to the hearts of even Alexander’s conquering veterans must have appealed to the king’s old officers, whatever the risks and costs of pinning their fortunes to these behemoths.

  Some of these formidable beasts became famous and their names well known to the troops, in the same way huge cannons were given names like Big Bertha in a much later age. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, mentions one named Surus, possibly Hannibal’s own elephant, who had fought valiantly in the Punic War and had lost one of his tusks.25 Pliny also tells of two elephants in Antiochus’ army (which Antiochus is not specified) named Ajax and Patroclus after the Trojan War heroes. It was certainly understood they might vary in fighting quality as it is specified that when Eumenes deployed sixty beasts about his left wing at Gabene, these were the very pick of the bunch. Equally, being herd animals, the fate of their leader could be as important to the elephants as was the fate of a beloved general to soldiers. Eumenes was one who suffered from this in his last battle, when he was holding on against an enemy, who much outnumbered him, until his lead elephant was downed and his whole line fell apart.

  What is also very noticeable in our period is that elephants are mainly valued as a deterrent against enemy horsemen. These are the troops that they are seen as particularly useful against, most emphatically shown at Ipsus, when the failure of cavalry to go near a line of elephants decided the outcome of the battle. This is in marked contrast to subsequent periods when elephants were used. In the battles fought against Rome by Hellenistic armies or Carthaginians it is often the heavy infantry of the legions that the great animals are directed at and often with impressive effects. Perhaps the change of tactic can be explained by the fact that infantry of the Diadochi had become used to the animals over a period of years under Alexander so were never afraid of them in the way the Romans were when they first encountered them. However, the Romans eventually got used to handling them and, und
erstanding their characteristics, used tactics that nullified them. For example, at Zama in 202 BC, Scipio organized lanes so the beasts were harmlessly corralled down them.

  There is no question the army used and honed under Alexander and his Successors remained a military exemplar for generations and indeed millennia to come. Even Livy could not resist the lure of this force as the great acid test of quality for his ancestors from the beginning of the third century BC. The state and army that had come to dominate the central and south Italian peoples was still required in his imagination to be tested against the institutions, arms and personalities that had developed across the Adriatic and then conquered the whole world to the east.

  The issue Livy addressed in his History of Rome was: could those Romans who were contemporaries of Alexander and his Successors have faced their war machine with any chance of success? First, he concentrates on personality and claims a parity of skill between Alexander and many of the Roman military leaders of that era. Marcus Valerius Corvus and Titus Manlius Torquatus, both memorable duellists who later became generals, are portrayed as the equal of the Macedonian leader when it came to bravery and skill in battle. While this does not hold up when he matches them to Alexander himself, it might be nearer the mark with at least some of the Diadochi. Livy also makes the good point that as kings, both Alexander and his Successors had the advantage of providing unified command, but the great drawback was that if they were killed or debilitated everything fell down. Thus, if one of these kings had invaded Italy, to exterminate them would have been at the forefront of the thoughts and actions of all the brave young men of Rome. Pyrrhus encountered this phenomenon in his first encounter with the Roman army, when he had to change armour with a friend because of the vicious attacks on his person that the royal regalia attracted.

  This is interesting but does not really test Roman valour, talent, techniques and organization against a Macedonian model. Yet it would be possible, in a virtual way, to explore a situation where the conquering Macedonians turned from Babylon at the end of the 320s BC with plans to immediately invade the Italian peninsula. This was at a time when they still had available all the power of their original army, but were expanded and increased by the wealth and manpower of Asia. This is perhaps not a probable scenario, but nor should it be completely dismissed out of hand. After all Alexander of Epirus (Alexander the Great’s uncle) had not long since died fighting on campaign in Italy. Also, if this supposition is allowed much of interest is raised. If, almost 100 years later, Hannibal Barca could get most of Rome’s subject people to rebel, what greater success would these extraordinary Macedonian warlords have had if they had arrived in the plains of Apulia or the hills of Campania? Could Rome have triumphed when so many of the lands she had just conquered would have risen up to regain the freedoms so recently lost? Livy claims they could but it is very possible to argue the other case.

  Equally, what he says about the comparative military puissance of the two sets of armed forces is debatable. Livy claims a Roman population of 250,000 was capable of fielding armies of 50,000 just based on the city itself, never mind colonies and allies. Furthermore, that often four and five armies were kept ‘on active service in Etruria, Umbria (where the Gauls frequently joined their enemies) Samnium and Lucania.’26 In contrast to these mighty numbers he suggests that that the invaders would have been largely dependent on the Macedonian component of their army. Only that part would be formidable, that the levies of Asia would be of no moment and indeed even that the Macedonian core might have been badly debased. As Livy says, Alexander ‘would have been more like Darius…by the time he reached Italy, leading an army which had already forgotten its Macedonian origins and was adopting degenerate Persian habits.’27

  While this was not the whole truth, and indicates common prejudice against Asiatic soldiery, it is true that the main heavy infantry they could field would either be Macedonian or troops trained in a similar fashion. Against his Romans, Livy considered the Macedonians would only be able to field 30,000 heavy infantry and 4,000 cavalry, if the Thessalians were included. But the whole assumption that the Macedonian military machine could only dispose of 30,000 pikemen is debatable. Just twenty-two years after Alexander’s death, well over double that number of drilled and trained phalangites came together in combat at Ipsus. If these numbers had been united under Macedonian leadership, with skilled auxiliaries and a range of eager local allies who hated Rome, Livy may not have had such cause for confidence.

  As well as claiming a numerical advantage, Livy contends superiority in the value of fighting men; asserting an edge for the Roman soldier, with javelin and scutum against the round shield and pike of the Macedonian, because of their personal hardiness and the variety of weapon systems that allowed the legion a decisive flexibility. But he forgets the qualities that had seen Alexander’s troops overcome every type of people and terrain from the Danube to the Indus and also that any Macedonian force would have included an array of its own specialists: bowmen, slingers and numerous peltasts; a force of all the arms that would allow for a considerable amount of tactical agility.

  For Livy to have compared the GDP of these Roman and Macedonian virtual contenders would, of course, have been valuable, if not decisive, in understanding this potential conflict, but the financial and economic dimension are seldom dealt with in any period of ancient history. Most sources are pretty reticent about giving us a sniff of information on the matter of money. Only occasionally, when somebody heads for the hills with the loot, like Harpalus, do we get an inkling of how crucial filthy lucre could be. But his outcome showed that just plundering was dangerous and that it was necessary to have armed might to give the security to enjoy gains ill- or well-gotten. In the end, Harpalus’ bullion led to his death and ended up funding the Athenian contribution to the Lamian War. Still, always money was key but we are seldom given details of how it was garnered. Finance is rarely mentioned by Diodorus; one of the few times is when Antigonus takes centre stage. Having taken control of the 10,000 talents from the treasury at Cyinda, he is then reported as receiving 11,000 talents from the annual revenue. Philip II, in contrast, only got 1,000 talents from the gold mines that were such a major component of his revenue from Greater Macedonia. We also hear of the great windfall of 8,000 talents that Ptolemy got when he disposed of Cleomenes and how crucial this was in stitching together a military establishment in double-quick time that allowed him to see off the threat from Perdiccas. But, if little is known of the actual finances, what is clear is that the world divided by Alexander’s Successors was a rich one which allowed ambitious projects to be essayed that their forebears, a hundred years back, could not have dreamed of. Alexander himself crossed over the Hellespont with a war chest of only seventy talents. There is no polyphony of voices when it comes to describing Diadochi finances at this time, but the general picture is clear. These people had riches, released from Asian treasuries not known before; gold and silver ran through their fingers, luxuries filled their lives in a way just not known in the Classical period. Considerable inflation was probably one result and another was a world where conspicuous consumption became a curse and a worry that seems very modern.28

  All this is fascinating speculation that tells us something of what an early imperial Roman knew of the war machine deployed by Alexander and inherited by his Successors. But Livy, even if some of his assumptions can be queried, would always have had the last laugh, as indeed he himself points out in this discourse. That is that his people in the test of real history came out on top. Less than a generation later against Pyrrhus, a second cousin of Alexander the Great, who was blessed with many of his warrior qualities and much of his glamour, they survived. Then less than a century after that the Romans began the overthrow of the armies of Philip V of Macedonia, then Antiochus the Great of the Seleucid kingdom and then trounced King Perseus to such an extent at Pydna in 168 BC that the greater Macedonia created by Philip actually ceased to exist.

  All this unhistorica
l construction may have entertained the Roman historian but the reality was that it was a different foe who first challenged the armies of Macedonia immediately after Alexander’ breath had finally left his body. It was an old enemy from their own backyard who took up cudgels against them. And, despite the fact that most of what comes in the story of the Diadochi concerns officers who were hardly past their young manhood when the story kicked off at Babylon, the first chapter of this epic would not centre on these comparatively young Turks. Next to take the strain of maintaining Macedonian hegemony was an old man who could reasonably have felt that he had already done his fair share of national work in a very long life.

  Chapter Two

  The Lamian War