Battles and Tactics

by Bob Bennett

  What had occurred on the other cavalry wing, where the Greeks had their non-Thessalian horse including the Athenians knights, we do not know, but the fighting altogether had gone sufficiently well for the Greeks to claim a great victory. The reality was less decisive; the army that Leonnatus had brought with him had not been hugely depleted. The core of the infantry was still intact, even if most of the cavalry had been destroyed or dispersed. Antipater arrived the following day, too late to help Leonnatus, but in time to take command of the leaderless warriors he found encamped amongst the hills north of Melitia. He could not stay there in the face of a rampant coalition army and instead followed the open road north, keeping up on the hills where Menon and his Thessalians could not get a good run at them.

  Good news at sea, with the triumph of Cleitus over the Athenian fleet, gave some succour to Antipater and his men as they leapfrogged north and even more heartening was the realization that further help from his erstwhile colleagues in Asia was likely to be forthcoming.9 Craterus and his veterans had left Cilicia and were on the road to Europe. Around 6,000 of Alexander’s old veteran Macedonians, 4,000 more who we are told were recruited on the march, 1,000 Persian bowmen and slingers and, crucially, 1,500 front-line cavalry were on the way. He travelled up over the Taurus across the Anatolian plateau into regions he not seen for over ten years. This was a homecoming the troops had waited a long time for, even if it involved seeing off some Greeks to enjoy it. They had even mutinied against their beloved king Alexander to get their discharge and now these world conquerors intended to settle down and enjoy their portion of the loot of the Persian Empire, that would make them very rich Macedonian farmers indeed. Thrace was traversed, and presumably Pella was visited, on the way to Thessaly but now Craterus was not dawdling as he aimed to join up with Antipater. With his arrival, the old man found himself in command of the agglomeration of three forces, a truly formidable army. Antipater had the phalangites he had originally brought south from Macedonia, a long year ago, and with whom he had seen the siege of Lamia through. Added to these were the very substantial rump of the army Leonnatus had led to defeat and now the impressive array brought by Craterus. With this superfluity, he could contemplate taking the initiative with considerable confidence.

  Mainland Greece, south of Thermopylae, had so far been defended from the hitherto-invincible armies of Alexander; driving them back deep into Thessaly, the Greek army had looked set to bundle the enemy unceremoniously over the border into Macedonia itself. ‘Antiphilus, the Greek commander, having defeated the Macedonians in a glorious battle, played a waiting game, remaining in Thessaly and watching for the enemy to move, reports Diodorus’.10 If this indicates that the Greeks had no intention of actually invading Macedonia, the difficulty of establishing an attainable strategic aim may have doomed the rebellion from the start. It is almost inconceivable to imagine any Greek coalition army having the determination or resources to completely crush the might of the Greater Macedonia that Philip had built, and yet failure to do so would mean it would only be matter of time before the northern imperialists returned in new puissance. None the less, Antiphilus and his officers were still borne on the crest of a wave of optimism as they led their men north towards the Peneius River, where they encamped close by the position occupied by Antipater and Craterus. When the coalition leaders realised the full strength of the force opposed to them is not clear. But it must have come as a considerable shock to them when they discovered the true numbers of the opposing army, as surely they would not have encamped so close if they had known the odds they faced. Antipater had concentrated 40,000 heavy infantry as well as 3,000 light infantry and 5,000 cavalry. The number of cavalry now present indicates that the combined presence of the old regent and Alexander’s greatest general had possibly enabled some recruitment, even amongst the local Thessalian squirearchy, to supplement the Macedonian horse.11

  The Greeks realized that, against these odds, they were in no condition to challenge the enemy to battle and withdrew their army to a defended position. Antipater, at last, had control of events which, after long months on the defensive, he had no intention of losing. Deploying his forces in the plain below the coalition army’s position, he offered battle, intending to bring on the decisive encounter before the enemy could be reinforced by any returning allies. This challenge was repeated on several days running, while the Macedonian cavalry denied them supplies. Antiphilus was still hoping more troops would be coming into his army from those that had gone back to their homes ‘to look after their private affairs’.12 But fighting or starving soon became the only options that faced the coalition forces and Antiphilus decided to accept battle while at least his men’s morale was high and before his own horses were debilitated from lack of forage. To have delayed further would have undermined his army’s strength, whilst in battle tactical brilliance and bravery might yet compensate for numerical inferiority. The Greeks could only field 25,000 foot and 3,500 horse, but they still had great faith in the quality of their cavalry which had brought them two famous victories already. The climactic fight took place not far from Crannon in early August 322 BC. This town was once as important as Larissa (the richest, largest and most powerful city in Thessaly) but had been in decline since the middle of the fourth century.

  Some manoeuvring had gone on before the two sides met in combat; Crannon is half a day’s march south of the Peneius River where Diodorus’ account firmly placed the two sides at the outset. No doubt the coalition army had been attempting to work their way back south, so they could have an unimpeded line of retreat if things went against them. When battle was joined, Antiphilus deployed his horsemen in front of his infantry phalanx rather than on the wing, hoping by this unorthodox formation to decide the battle before his weaker infantry became too involved. This is the only occasion this unusual deployment is mentioned in the Successor wars; in every other affray the horse were always positioned on the wings. Interestingly, however, at the Battle of Leuctra fifty years before, Epaminondas of Thebes set up his cavalry in the same manner. But, on that occasion, it seems he was using his horse to screen his weak allies on the right of his phalanx while he won the battle with his own Thebans on the left. Eumenes would later try a similar ploy to ensure that the battle was largely a cavalry affair, but he still kept his wings separate. Nothing is reported but probably Antipater lined his forces up in the traditional fashion with the foot in the centre and the cavalry divided on either flank. His strength lay in the Macedonian phalangites and he had no interest in keeping them out of the front line of battle. When he saw the enemy troopers coming in a mass along their whole front he ordered his cavalry out to confront the menace. What would have happened had he not is difficult to say as even Thessalian horse would surely not have flung themselves forward onto the sarissae of an unbroken phalanx. In the event, a huge melee developed with almost 9,000 men and their animals involved whilst the infantry on both sides stood and watched. Late summer is incredibly hot and dry in Thessaly and the dust raised by these myriad swirling hooves must have made it impossible to make out the progress of the fight for those watching, whether they were the rank and file or commanding generals.

  Antiphilus’ confidence in his cavalry was not misplaced. The Macedonians were driven back by the fury of the Greek attack and swiftly put to flight. But this reverse only served to clear the battlefield and allowed Antipater to push his phalanx forward against Antiphilus’ infantry. In action at last, they closed in on the Greek hoplites who, outnumbered almost two to one, had no answer to the long sarissae of their opponents. The coalition phalanx was forced to fall back, but they were first-class troops, and keeping discipline they withdrew, in order, to the rougher terrain behind the plain where the battle had been fought. ‘Thus they occupied the higher ground and easily repulsed the Macedonians thanks to their possession of the superior position.’13 The many mercenaries in the ranks hated and feared their Macedonian foes who they had fought at Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. They could no
t forget how their comrades were mercilessly massacred after defeat in the first of those fights, and they might well have anticipated such treatment for themselves.

  There are a number of outcrops near Crannon and it was to these that the Greek army retreated, where the terrain allowed them to hold their own against the Macedonians’ continued assaults.14 The coalition cavalry, seeing the defeat of their infantry, curtailed their pursuit of their fleeing enemies; these were impressively disciplined warriors who could be so kept in hand, and returned to support their comrades in the hills which effectively brought the encounter to an end. If the sources are to be believed, the casualties of the battle were minimal, with only 130 Macedonians slain and 500 from the Greek army. The very modesty of these figures argues for their plausibility, when so often the dead from ancient warfare are counted unbelievably high. Whatever the truth, this had been no crushing defeat for the coalition. The Macedonians held the field at the end of the day but apparently little more. Antiphilus’ army was still in being and had fought splendidly against the odds. Antipater and Craterus had much to occupy their thoughts as the victory trophy was set up and the dead and wounded dealt with. Three battles had been fought, two had been lost and one won only on points, but none of this had finally brought a conclusion to the conflict.

  Actually, this casualty-light skirmish would turn out to be epochal. From the year 322 BC nothing would be the same in Greece. Never again would any Greek people or even a Greek coalition of cities, unaided, be able to take on the power at Pella. Crannon had finally buried any chance of revival by any of the mighty independent states of the Classical era. Chaeronea in 338 had really written this death sentence but Crannon put the full stop in place. Muscle flexing in the future by Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, or Aetolian or Achaean leagues would need to be sponsored and seconded by a great power from outside for the combatants to stand any chance in a stand-up fight. But this would not have been clear to the combatants as the sun rose on the day after the combat. Antipater certainly had put the stop to a losing streak, but almost the whole of Greece still stood against him, with no friends raising their head above the parapet south of the Peneius River. The coalition army was still very much intact, and the Thessalian horse had shown again that head-to-head in the crucial cavalry melee they would still come out on top. But this picture was deceptive. In fact, all had changed. The corporate commitment of the Greek communities to the ruin of Macedon had been undermined by the failure of some of the detachments to return to Thessaly after the winter demobilization of 323/322 BC. The encounter at Crannon may have been little more than a skirmish but its effect on the will to fight both in the army and the cities was considerable. To blame this disintegration of morale on the comparatively-young generals in charge, as Plutarch does, is understandable but hardly fair. Both Antiphilus and Menon had shown real mettle against enemies who had just conquered most of the known world. It was not the failings of military leadership that had turned the war in Antipater’s favour but the political failure of the Greek communities to maintain the enthusiasm and energy that had buoyed up Leosthenes’ original success.15 And, merely by surviving, Antipater had conquered; once the resources of the Macedonian Empire slowly began to seep back along the road Alexander trod over a decade before, it was only a matter of time before the Greeks would be overwhelmed.

  Chapter Three

  Eumenes’ War

  Perdiccas had won out at the army assembly at Babylon, ending as regent and guardian of Alexander’s heir, and now it would be him and his erstwhile comrades who would come to blows. For, though now apparently confidently seated at the centre of the Macedonian Empire, cracks were showing elsewhere. As a companion bookend in the east to the Greek rebellion in the Balkans, the mercenary garrisons in Bactria and Sogdia had decided they had had enough of being ordered around by men from Macedonia. Pithon, the new satrap of Media, who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Perdiccas at Babylon, sorted this problem out. But this was only the first of many troubles that built up in the new regent’s ‘in tray’. Anatolia proved a can of worms which even his extraordinary lieutenant Eumenes could not handle alone. The regent came himself but, by drawing closer to the other power brokers in Europe, his actions only increased the temperature between men who had not long since been comrades under Alexander. Perdiccas campaigned against the king of Cappadocia and cities in Isauria but success in those places soon became marginal as he realized he would have to go to war with the other great Macedonian powers. It was the bodysnatching of Alexander’s remains by the ruler from Alexandria, Ptolemy, that provided the final straw, but events anyway had been driving relentlessly towards the First Macedonian Civil War.

  The exact sites of the battles of the western campaign of the first Macedonian Civil War are somewhat in dispute. Much suggests they took place near the Hellespont. Logic would urge that Eumenes, commanded to defend in the west, would deploy himself there; this crossing was a choke point, where an invading army might be held up or even destroyed. Diodorus specifically states Eumenes was sent by Perdiccas to defend the Hellespont, and that he had to send to some distance to his own satrapy of Cappadocia for horsemen, as the army the regent left him was deficient in that arm, which suggests he was near the Hellespont.1 Plutarch, however, places a different emphasis. He describes Craterus and Antipater as planning an invasion of Cappadocia and Eumenes is specifically detailed as the commander with plenary powers over the armies in Armenia and Cappadocia. Perdiccas, in this analysis, seems to have expected Eumenes to defend deep, the regent sending letters to Neoptolemus and to Alcetas, off in Pisidia, to support the Cardian.

  This position is given some credence when, at the battle with Craterus’ army, it is mentioned that Eumenes persuaded his own men that they were facing just Neoptolemus and some Paphlagonian and Cappadocian horse.2 This makes more sense if they were in that locality; if not it is difficult to see how it would be believable to Eumenes’ followers that Neoptolemus, who had recently ran off with just a few supporters after defeat in battle, could recruit cavalry from so far away. But that he might have enlisted them locally would be eminently plausible. Plutarch also states that there were ten days between the two battles but this does not help at all, as how much distance was covered in this time period we have no way of knowing. A modern commentator certainly holds to the battle on the border of Cappadocia, and nothing intrinsic in the evidence bars the events occurring in either locality.3 Cornelius Nepos offers no help as he merely says Eumenes was left to defend territory from the Taurus to the Hellespont.4 But it is necessary to jump one way or the other, as to try and describe events hedging one’s bets on the locality would be clumsy in the extreme. We have taken the view that the action unrolled near the waters of the Propontis where, so often over the centuries, the incumbent in Asia has stood fast to defy invaders from the west.

  The manoeuvring that led to the two battles we are now describing certainly began where Europe met Asia at the Hellespont, a place that would figure much in the Diadochi story as both barrier and highway. The rest of this particular conflict played out in Egypt but on that front no major battles were fought and it was intrigue and treachery that decided the day, not military confrontation. Eumenes was left by Perdiccas as supreme commander in Anatolia on the western front of the coming world war. His responsibilities were huge, to counter what was bound to be the most potent thrust of the enemy coalition and guard a region that was far from easily defensible, but was rich and advanced, a part of the heartland of the Perdiccan realm whose loss could not be contemplated.

  It is difficult to emphasise too much what major figures the people who Eumenes had to contend with were. Certainly he had, himself, been a senior bureaucrat who went back to Philip’s reign but these, his two adversaries, were by far the greatest figures in the post-Alexandrine world. Compared with them even Perdiccas was almost a second division figure. Unlike what was to happen with the regent in the heart of Egypt, it is difficult to imagine either Craterus or Antipa
ter struck down by a cabal of ambitious officers so early in the Diadochi epoch; their standing and repute would have made it unthinkable. Certainly Perdiccas would not be the only one to suffer, Seleucus would fall under the knife of a murderous follower at the height of his success, but that was after forty years of chaos, bloodshed and fracture that changed the balance of men’s loyalty in a world far gone in disintegration.

  Antipater had grown old in service to Macedonia under Philip, even before the previous fourteen years when, with an absentee monarch, he had governed all of Macedonian Europe. He had taken on all-comers during that time, from Alexander’s mother to the king of Sparta, and overcome them all. Despite this, and the fact that he had just gained a hard-fought victory in the Lamian War, it would be true to say that he was more of a politician than a military man, but this could not be said of his co-commander. Craterus was without doubt the greatest soldier of his day and had held that place after Alexander from halfway through that king’s reign. After Parmenion was rubbed out in Ecbatana, there was no question that Craterus had expanded to fill his place. The extent of his services to his king were legend, whether from leading the main army forward at the Persian Gates as Alexander turned the enemy flank or holding the crossing at the Hydaspes River while Alexander took his strike force down river to cross and bring on battle with Porus. And since Alexander’s death it had been his contribution that had decided against the Greeks in the Lamian War. And, at the time he was dragged away to this first Macedonian civil war, he looked on the brink of decisively dealing with the Aetolians (an achievement no one else came near in these years) despite their unorthodox strategy of defence, where they declined to fight in the open but took to the hills and fought a guerrilla campaign.