Battles and Tactics

by Bob Bennett

  Lysimachus had hoped for much greater reinforcements than the few that survived the crossing and the story they told showed that he could now expect no more help from Cassander. Morale in the coalition camp was not helped by these events and it perhaps explains the desertion of some hundreds of Lycians and Pamphylians to the Antigonids. More significant was a group of 2,000 ‘barbarian’ auxiliaries who were originally from far off Illyria and had been planted on the borders of Macedonia and Thrace for almost a decade. These were the Autariatae, who had lost their baggage to Demetrius on the Hellespont. Clearly the prospect of regaining it by joining what looked like the winning side was stronger than any sense of loyalty to Cassander who had found them a new home.4

  Lysimachus, Seleucus and, presumably, a recuperating Pleistarchus prepared and planned for the coming campaigning season (Prepelaus also must have been involved but he is never again mentioned in the sources). They were all veterans and were familiar with their enemy from many years of rivalry. Their experiences over the last years had been very different and they had made their names in separate corners of the Macedonian world, but just their survival indicates most of them had qualities of determination and sufficient talent in command that ensured they would be formidable opponents for anybody. That they had now combined meant they were, at last, in a position to face Antigonus on virtually-equal terms even if there would be no more reinforcements coming. If they were going to act decisively then now was the time (what they hoped Ptolemy might do we don’t know but there is no reason to think they expected him to arrive on the battlefield). It was as ethnically diverse an army as any Macedonian had ever commanded that packed up their bivouacs and marched out in the spring of 301 BC. Horses were sleek and well-fed and the men well-equipped and rested as they began on the road that would lead first to Dorylaeum, where 1,500 years later the first Crusaders would win through in their initial battle with the Turks. The coalition commanders were determined to bring on a fight as soon as possible, time was not on their side. Both Lysimachus and Seleucus could not have helped but be worried what was happening back home when they were hundreds of miles away from Thrace and Babylonia.

  For Antigonus, the enemies who had eluded him in the previous year may have been reinforced but so, too, had he. Demetrius was with him and many thousands of his troops. When the two Antigonid monarchs paraded their army, it was almost as large as the force they had led against Egypt and most were seasoned veterans. Macedonian phalangites and the best mercenaries money could hire were at its heart. They also had excellent light infantry from Anatolia and unit after unit of aristocratic horsemen drawn from half the Hellenistic world. So they waited with confidence as spies, travellers and merchants were pumped to get word of where the enemy was and what they were planning. The Antigonids seemed to have been marching north when it became clear that the invaders were not far off and the combatants’ paths eventually crossed 50-odd miles northeast of Synnada. It is possible that Lysimachus was aiming to cut Antigonus’ communication to the east in a campaign of manoeuvre or in a ploy to ensure the old man would come out and fight. A threat to his communications with the Levant was bound to make the Antigonids react, especially as they would by now have known of Ptolemy’s abortive invasion of Coele-Syria in the previous year. A return by the Egyptian satrap and threat to Antigonia must have seemed extremely probable.

  Plutarch tells us a couple of tales which seem to imply a change in Antigonus’ demeanour. Perhaps he had a premonition before the battle that made him more thoughtful than his normal bumptious self. Showing less than his usual contempt for the approaching enemy, he presented Demetrius to the army as his heir, a not unreasonable precaution for an 80-year-old on the eve of battle. Furthermore, he also apparently consulted his son before deciding on his battle plans and Plutarch contends that this was very much against character for a man who usually took no one into his confidence. Plutarch also repeats an old saw that on a previous occasion Demetrius had asked his father when they were striking camp and the old man allegedly replied: ‘Why, are you afraid that you will be the only man who does not hear the trumpet?’5 Plutarch also describes a dream Demetrius had before the battle. The dream, which inevitably featured Alexander, had the king ask Demetrius for the battle watchword.

  Demetrius said it was ‘Zeus and victory’, whereupon Alexander replied ‘in that case I shall go and join your adversaries they will certainly receive me’ for he was offended to find that Antigonus had not chosen ‘Alexander and victory’ for his watchword.6

  These are stock fables reminiscent, for example, of a similar dream Eumenes is supposed to have had before his battle with Craterus. But perhaps it indicates a lack of confidence in the Antigonid camp before the battle, though we have no supporting evidence for this conjecture. In fact, Plutarch is, unfortunately, our only surviving coherent account for Ipsus and is mainly concerned with the part played by his ‘hero’, Demetrius. Diodorus remains in only the smallest of fragments for the battle; a great loss as the whole account, based on Hieronymus, would have undoubtedly answered many questions that now can only be guessed at.

  Antigonus needed an open site where his cavalry could be brought into play and, in turn, the allied kings could only effectively utilize their elephants on level ground, so it is no surprise the encounter took place on a vast open plain. The exact spot has never been established but it would be wonderful to think that some day a metal detector enthusiast will crack this puzzle (as has happened quite recently with the site of the Battle of the Teutoburgerwald) and will be able to claim with a fair degree of certainty an epicentre for this Battle of the Four Kings.7

  Something is known of the general disposition of the armies, particularly on the Antigonid side, but the details are far from clear. Of the 70,000 infantry they fielded, probably over 40,000 were armoured phalangites. Pikemen conventionally deployed sixteen deep. In the centre of the battle line they were solid and almost impossible to face down, but unwieldy and vulnerable on their flank and rear. The rest were peltasts or light infantry, bowmen or slingers generally not intended for hand-to-hand combat; they were still crucial in both acting as a protective screen for the elephants and shielding the vulnerable flanks of the phalanx, filling the gap between the heart of the battle line and the cavalry on the wings. Here in the middle of the battle line, protected by his bodyguard, Antigonus the One-eyed stationed himself, the greatest warrior of the age, whose life stretched back to a past that was almost legend to the young men in his army. The horse at the Antigonids’ disposal amounted to 10,000. Some were deployed holding the left wing but the more numerous and the best quality were positioned on the right wing under the young king Demetrius himself. These were the king’s friends (hetairoi), aristocrats in gilded armour and lavish finery, all eager to impress under the gaze of their glamorous monarch who represented the prospect of future advancement in a way his 80-year-old father could not. In front of this massive array of horse and foot were seventy-five elephants which, each with its fifty light infantry guard, would be expected to begin the fight. The two Antigonid kings hoped they would not find it impossible to compete against the much greater number of animals that they knew the enemy could deploy.

  The tactical plan of the Antigonid kings was not innovative. The decisive blow was to be struck by the right wing just as Alexander, who had led them to glory years before, had done in his great battles against the Persians. Here, it was anticipated the high morale and superior training of Demetrius’ cavaliers would make short work of the largely-Iranian horse facing them. These Antigonids were the traditional, and in some cases literal, descendants of Alexander’s Companion cavalry, who had always bowled over such opposition at the charge. The weaker left wing was only intended to hold its ground while the centre pushed inexorably forward until Demetrius and his victorious horse returned to take the enemy phalanx in the rear and complete the triumph. As a plan, it was not over-elaborate and Antigonus had good reason to expect it to work. Intricate tactical schemes an
d deceptive ruses were the necessary armoury of a general commanding an intrinsically weaker force but Antigonus was not in that position. His was an army that had, for the most part, been together for years, not a disparate alliance of strangers who had joined each other only a few months before.

  How the other side were drawn up is even less well attested. The coalition fielded 64,000 infantry, of which 20,000 must have been light infantry. Seleucus had brought that many over the mountains from the east and it is unlikely that more than a few of his men were phalangites. In addition, some of his allies’ infantry were also likely to be light troops. Thus, even if they deployed the remainder (between 30,000 and 40,000) in the central phalanx, the allied kings were at a serious numerical disadvantage in heavy infantry.

  As to cavalry they, in fact, outnumbered the Antigonids, as altogether they fielded 15,000, of which 12,000 were Seleucus’ Iranian cavaliers. They were probably divided evenly on either flank of the phalanx. For the actual commands of the allied army we have only one meagre detail. Antiochus, the young untried son and heir of Seleucus, was in charge of the left wing. His presence is noted because he happened to be directly opposed to Demetrius. That none of the senior commanders led on the left suggests this was, as was traditional, the weaker wing, with the coalition right being where the best cavalry and the commanding generals were positioned. Here would have been the Companion cavalry recruited in Macedon itself, and the heavily-armoured Thracian aristocrats, who Lysimachus had recruited to his own bodyguard. There is no actual record of where Seleucus, Lysimachus, Prepelaus and Pleistarchus were deployed and what is an even greater mystery than the stations of the allied commanders is the positioning of over 400 elephants and over 100 scythed chariots that had accompanied Seleucus in his epic march from the upper satrapies. The chariots are not mentioned at all in the battle but the elephants were to have a decisive influence on the outcome. A proportion of these were placed along the front of the battle line to face the seventy-five Antigonid beasts, but whether all were thus used or hundreds kept in reserve is in many ways the key to understanding the outcome of the whole battle.

  Few of those present can have ever seen so many human beings gathered in one place, as the two armies dressed their ranks and moved slowly towards each other. There was the equivalent of the citizen populations of forty fair-sized towns gathered together on this dusty plain in Anatolia, almost 200,000 men. By the time Demetrius gave the order for his horsemen to advance, the dust kicked up by the myriad of animals’ hooves and human feet must have made visibility all but impossible. In this murk, Antigonus’ son had marked out where the elephants opposite him were placed and he carefully manoeuvred his units around them before leading a charge directly at the enemy horse under Antiochus.

  The matter of the elephant/horse relationship can be confusing in these Successor battles. Clearly the big beasts were much prized for their ability to negate the effect of enemy cavalry, as horses were usually terrified by the sight, noise and smell of elephants. But it is clear that on this occasion some cavalry units manoeuvred nearby and through lines of their own elephants. Though not recorded anywhere it must be the case that some horses were trained to cope with being near elephants or otherwise such manoeuvres would have been virtually impossible. Whether any horses could become totally immune to the noisy, smelly beasts is not known. However, we do have at least one good example of the two species working together in some sort of tandem. When Antigonus attacked Eumenes’ elephants before the Battle of Gabene we are informed by Diodorus that they formed a square with 200 horse as the rear side of the formation. This shows that they could be conditioned to work together to some extent.

  In any case, squadron after squadron of Demetrius’ cavalry charged into the fight, eager to bring to bear their numbers and superior quality. They rode in the wedge formation that had been so effective for the cavalry of Alexander when they shattered the battle front of Darius’ Persian armies. Each unit had its commander leading at the point, able to manoeuvre easily on their officer’s lead and effective as a spear in cutting into the formations in front of them. The assault was pressed with such elan that Antiochus’ men began to lose cohesion and think only of their own survival. Soon they were in flight, carrying the son of Seleucus along as he vainly tried to rally the routed formations. However, Demetrius failed to keep his troopers in hand as they swept away in pursuit, an occurrence that was far from unusual in cavalry actions from ancient through to modern times.8

  In the crucial clash of the phalanxes in the centre, the contest had begun with duels between the elephants. The great beasts fought tusk to tusk, with their riders lunging at each other with pikes and their light infantry escorts attempting to hamstring the enemy animals while protecting their own charges. ‘In the battle’, says Diodorus, ‘the elephants of Antigonus and Lysimachus fought as if nature had matched them equally in courage and strength’.9 All merely a preliminary to the main clash of the two great lines of phalangites. The push of pike began and both sides held firm, despite the carnage wreaked amongst the front ranks on both sides. Veterans now settled down to the process of jabbing and shoving by which they hoped to break up the opposition’s formations.

  We are told nothing of what had occurred on Antigonus’ weaker left wing but it seemed that the outnumbered cavalry and elephants there were holding on as planned. Now was the moment for Demetrius’ victorious troopers to return and charge the vulnerable flank and rear of the allied phalanx. Though they had gone further in pursuit than intended, the young king had eventually managed to regain control of his men who were then far in the rear of the allied army. He realigned his squadrons and turned them about to return to the main battle, but very soon found that his way was blocked. The enemy had drawn up 300 elephants in a great line across his path and his horsemen could not get through this cordon of beasts. The soldiers’ mounts would not approach the elephants, such was their fear of the smell and noise and an increasingly-anxious Demetrius could not find a way round this living barrier.

  The whole episode of the elephant manoeuvre at Ipsus has been the cause of much discussion and explanation, none of which is entirely satisfactory. The first question is where this number of beasts came from; it is unlikely they could been drawn from those already involved in the battle. To move elephants on this scale was difficult in any event and virtually impossible if they had to be withdrawn from the battle line before the manoeuvre began. The only other alternative is that they were kept in reserve behind the main formations but this is a tactic never heard of before in Hellenistic warfare, though a little later Pyrrhus kept elephants in reserve at Asculum in 279 BC and at Magnesia, in 190 BC, Antiochus the Great kept some of his beasts back in reserve. But if 300 animals had been held back, only 100 or so would have been available to clash with Antigonus’ 75, thus giving up for the coalition army an opportunity to far outnumber their opponents at this key point.

  However, the assumption that this number of elephants were kept back would support the proposition put forward by Tarn that the whole business on the allied left was a deliberate ploy in which Antiochus feigned retreat to ensure Demetrius was drawn away and his return blocked by elephants, kept in hand for that very purpose.10 Attractive though this theory is, it is hard to believe that the allied kings would have countenanced such a gamble. A withdrawal of Antiochus’ wing would have risked demoralizing the whole army, particularly with the polyglot nature of the allied forces. Lysimachus’ men and the Macedonians in the phalanx would have certainly suspected treachery and the morale of the whole army crippled when the footmen saw Persian and Median cavaliers, so recently hereditary enemies, running from the field, having barely contested the fight on their wing.

  If it was not a premeditated strategy then this manoeuvre with the elephants was a piece of inspired improvisation that turned the battle. It bore the hallmark of a leader very familiar with the use of massed elephants and Seleucus is the only senior commander who fits the case. He had seen, at first
hand, their use in large numbers in India and may have fought a major battle with Chandragupta Maurya who would have fielded many hundreds, if not thousands, of these beasts. Perhaps Seleucus’ role was to remain in charge of his elephants which were kept in hand until developments allowed their decisive use. But, even allowing for all this, there is still the further question of why the mobile horsemen of Demetrius’ squadrons could not avoid the cumbersome beasts which confronted them and find a way round their line. One suggestion has been that behind the allied army was a wide valley out of which they had originally debouched to face their enemy in the plain.11 Demetrius would then have pursued Antiochus up the valley and on his return found this wide passage completely blocked by the elephants. They were spread thickly enough to prevent infiltration over sufficient distance to completely close the mouth of the valley and the sides were too steep for Demetrius’ horsemen to ride up and over.

  But, perhaps this detail of terrain is not even required. If each elephant was accompanied by its guard of fifty light infantry, or even if not, each individual beast would have had a frontage of at least tens of yards and probably much more. No sophisticated arithmetic is called for to see that 300 such pachyderms would create a huge barrier of several miles, especially for horses who might be distressed at the sound and smell of these beasts even from a good way off. A number of explanations are possible, if improbable, but what does not ring true is the chess-like precision of the movements of men and animals that is so untypical of warfare at any time and especially in the ancient world. The most tenable solution is that the meagre sources have rationalized a much more confused conflict between the young Antigonid’s cavalrymen and the allied forces including large numbers of Seleucus’ elephants that by chance or adept manoeuvring managed to keep Demetrius from the battle between the phalanxes until it was too late.