Battles and Tactics

by Bob Bennett

  According to Diodorus, Nicanor also joined in with what was left of his fleet and he eliminated all of Cleitus’ ships that had managed to get under way, except for the one boat that Cleitus, himself, was on.9 His fleet destroyed and fearful of capture if he tried to flee by sea, Cleitus got back to shore on the Thracian side, no doubt hoping to make his way overland back to Macedonia. But his luck was out and he was captured by soldiers of Lysimachus and promptly murdered.

  The other choke point was that area where the second Greek squadron had waited in the Lamian War. This was Artemisium and the squadron placed there controlled the channel between the long island of Euboea and the mainland. The men posted there would have been well aware of the other fleet made up mostly of Athenian ships that had waited in trepidation for the overwhelming Persian enemy in 480 BC. But, this time, the outcome was to be very different. Unlike their forebears at that other Battle of Artemisium, who showed well against overwhelming odds, this time the Athenians and their allies fled after a short struggle, intending to try and recoup their strength far to the south.

  In 313 BC the straits between the mainlands of Euboea again became a cockpit of considerable naval altercation. The Antigonids were clearly intent on testing Cassandrine power in the Balkans and he had to prepare very seriously against this threat. Cassander’s position in Attica and the south was fairly securely held but his eastern flank had holes in it. The island of Euboea, which was likely to be the target of an Antigonid offensive, was largely in Cassander’s pocket but the city of Oreus on the north coast was not towing the line. Cassander intended to secure it before it could become a breach which his enemy could penetrate. He mobilized what ships he could, thirty in all, and sailed south, passing close to the Thessalian coast where he descended on the northern coast of Euboea. Cassander was in no position for a patient policy and he was energetically preparing for an escalade when what Cassander must have feared transpired, an Antigonid fleet hove into sight. What he did not know was that this was not just one fleet but two. Telesphorus, Antigonus’ nephew, on hearing of the activities in Euboea, had set sail from the Peloponnese with twenty ships. On his way he rendezvoused with a fleet of 100 vessels sent from the eastern Aegean, led by Alexander’s old admiral Medius. Cassander was outnumbered many-fold and events were to show the enemy were equipped with the latest weapons of naval warfare. Early in the resulting engagement, fire pots were dropped or catapulted into Cassander’s ships, four were burned out and the rest were in very great danger of catching fire too, an awful prospect for the wooden, highly-flammable craft of the period. Cassander had no option; when he saw the results of this uneven conflict, he pulled out his ships as best he could, packed up his army, raised the siege and ended the blockade. The attempt on Oreus was shelved and Medius was able to reinforce and supply the brave defenders.

  But the course of maritime combat in this age was an unpredictable matter. Often, after a victory, the winners were lax in their precautions, overconfidence leaving them vulnerable. The Antigonids, on this occasion, relaxed their guard in the knowledge of their superior numbers and beached their warships with little thought for defence. Cassander, showing great resilience, called up reinforcements from Athens under the admiral, Thymochares, and counterattacked. The surprised enemy sailors rushed to defend their boats but not before Cassander’s captains had sunk one and towed off three others as prizes, thus neatly compensating for his own losses in the earlier battle.

  What is inescapable in these accounts is that the one crucial fact about ancient navies was how vulnerable they were when the boats were beached. Twice in this short period, good beginnings crumble into disaster, or at least defeat, when a fleet was caught high and dry on the beach. Cleitus and Medius had both won victories and each considered their opponent to be a busted flush. They did not take the kind of precautions they surely would have if they had known that an active enemy was at hand. On both occasions, these experienced and usually-competent admirals beached their ships and failed to put up proper defences to protect them. In the case of Cassander’s attack we are not told that Medius’ fleet was beached but merely that they ‘were off their guard’ but this is most likely to mean when they were beached, as ancient fleets did not stay under way unless preparing for battle or going somewhere.10 Neither of these were the case here, but then again it does say three were seized with their crews whom, it could be argued, would unlikely to have been on board if the vessels were beached. The reference, however, is so brief that speculation, though inevitable, has little to work on. It is possible the crews had got on board to try and get out to sea so they could manoeuvre but were still caught by the attackers. Equally, it could be argued that as one ship was sunk they probably were at sea. But this is not decisive as we certainly hear on other occasions of ships being pulled off the beach to be sunk. And it just seems improbable that a squadron at sea with its crew on board and ready to react could be so surprised, particularly when the fleet that suffered defeat was still much larger than the force that attacked it.

  But with Cleitus there is no question; both Polynaeus and Diodorus make it clear the attack took place on the unprepared, disembarked (and some probably sleeping) crews. Looking to baggage and prisoners taken in the previous encounter made getting Cleitus’ ships underway even more difficult and we hear nothing of guard posts that should have been needed to be overcome during the land assault that was carried out by what seem to have been mainly Antigonid missile men. The attack from the sea was delivered by ships carrying ‘many of his bravest infantry’, presumably heavy infantry.11 It seems Cleitus put up no palisade or ditch to protect his beached fleet though this was certainly a normal precaution when a fleet intended to stay put for any length of time.

  Not that these two were the first to succumb in this way. On a more momentous occasion, almost a century before, much the same thing had occurred. The final efforts of a war-traumatized Athenian community had raised a fleet to face the Spartan, Lysander, and his Persian-funded navy. They did well until, at Aegospotami in 404 BC, opposite Lampsacus on the eastern side of the Hellespont, they let themselves be lulled into a false sense of security by Lysander’s behaviour. He, by repeatedly offering battle then returning to harbour when it was refused, ensured that the Athenians would begin to assume that this would always happen. After this pantomime had been played out one more time, the Athenian leaders sent their men off to forage and Lysander attacked and caught them beached and completely off guard, destroying the last fleet Athens could muster in the Peloponnesian War.

  Apart from the two choke points already explored, another region was crucial for any power wanting to dominate the east Mediterranean sea lanes. These were the islands of the southern Aegean. It is no surprise that when Antigonus began his ship building programme in 315 BC, as he besieged Tyre, his eyes were drawn there. When the Phoenician, Cilician, Hellespontine and Rhodian bottoms, that were the core of his navy, evolved into a potent fighting force he directed them west.

  It was not, however, all plain sailing for his infant marine. One of his squadrons was picked off by the power most disturbed by his growing naval puissance. Polycleitus, Ptolemy’s admiral, had been sent from Cyprus by Seleucus to help the cause in Greece but on finding Alexander, Polyperchon’s son, had gone over to Cassander he had no real enemy to fight. At a loose end, he cruised the Anatolian coast from Pamphylia to Cilicia. Whilst there he heard Theodotus was taking some Rhodian built boats with Carian crews to join the main Antigonid navy. The new fleet was being escorted by an army under Perilaus who was marching along the coast, keeping up with the fleet. Polycleitus disembarked a considerable army and ambushed Perilaus. The army and its leader were captured and when the Rhodian ships went to try and help he led out his fleet from round a promontory where they had been hiding and captured the whole squadron which was caught unprepared and not drawn up for battle at all. With these spoils of war, Polycleitus returned first to Cyprus and afterwards home to the main base, at Pelusium, in Egypt.


  Yet, despite this setback, Antigonus was still able to assemble a fleet of 240 ships, fully manned, whilst yet more were still under construction. He launched ten dekares (‘tens’), three nines, ten fives and ninety quadriremes, the balance being made up of triremes and thirty smaller un-decked vessels; a force that had much more than an even chance of wresting control of the seas from Ptolemy’s men. Antigonus sent fifty ships to the Peloponnese and put his nephew, Dioscurides, in charge of the remainder, who was sent west, both to support his allies and agents in the attempt to secure the Aegean islands that were such crucial bases for the enemy’s war fleets in the region.

  By 314 BC, Dioscurides was flying the flag of his uncle to considerable effect in the Aegean. Large numbers of the island cities either came over to him or were captured by his marines. If he could establish the family in the Cyclades many benefits would accrue. Here, fleets based in the south Aegean could ensure safe passage between Asia and Greece. Armies could be shipped to the Peloponnese, Attica, Euboea or even Boeotia with ease to ensure opponents in Greece could never feel safe from Antigonid interference. Antigonid control of the southern islands also denied easy communications between dynasts in Europe and Africa who might want to gang up against them.

  If the key points at the European crossing, Artemisia and control of the Cyclades, were crucial in controlling the western seas, further east another place was central to maritime hegemony. This was Cyprus and here took place the greatest sea battle of the whole era and fortunately one we have considerable evidence for. Ptolemy had struggled for years to impose his control on the island and Antigonus was no stranger to the place. He had campaigned there in the first civil war when it was controlled by Perdiccans, in one of the many fronts opened against that dynast. As Antigonus had for many years controlled Syria and Cilicia, the main coastlines near the island, he could always use influence, money and threats to undermine whatever his Lagid enemy achieved there. But when he had achieved at least parity with Ptolemy at sea, his ambitions became more all consuming. He had thought for years of invading the island but wars with powerful enemy coalitions and the eastern campaigns against Seleucus had kept him involved elsewhere.

  But in 307 BC all things looked possible. Ptolemy had recently sailed all over the Aegean, even establishing a foothold at Corinth and Sicyon and showing that, whatever Antigonus had achieved, his rival still was in the game. To finally dispose of him Antigonus needed Demetrius’ fleet and army. The old man ordered that his son should secure what he held in Greece and set sail to the island. Demetrius arrived in northern Cyprus with a force of 110 triremes and what Diodorus describes as ‘fifty-three heavier transports and freighters of every kind sufficient for the strength of his cavalry and infantry’, as well as 15,000 foot and 400 horse.12 After securing a centre of operations around the captured towns of Urania and Carpasia, the invaders marched straight to attack Salamis, where Ptolemy’s brother, Menelaus, had his headquarters. He fought a battle outside the walls but was defeated and soon Demetrius had his enemy bottled up behind the city defences and settled down to besiege the place.

  Siege engines were constructed on the spot, either from local timber and iron or out of sections of dismantled machines used before in Greece, and shipped over for this new enterprise. Particularly noted outside the walls of Salamis was a helepolis, or city-taker, nine storeys high. This machine, with accompanying battering rams, wreaked havoc, clearing the walls of defenders and causing great cracks in the fabric of the defences. Menelaus’ men managed to set most of these constructions alight with fire arrows during the course of one night but even this success could not hide the fact that time was running out for the garrison. The defenders had fought with skill and determination but without relief there could be only one final outcome, a complete eviction from Cyprus for the Ptolemaic party.

  Word was sent to Ptolemy warning of the imminent loss of the island he had been working to dominate for years. He had poured in money, sent his best officers to subjugate the place and was perfectly prepared to brutalize the families of the petty local dynasties. All this in an effort to retain a territory that would be central to the ambitions of his house, right down to its extinction almost 300 years later. The wound that the Antigonids clearly wanted to inflict could not be contemplated; it would ring a death knell to any ambitions Ptolemy had to retain his influence in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. More than this, the island was the last dependable source of timber left to the Lagids (a crucial resource without which no navy could be created or sustained), especially as the only other reliable stock was in the Levant which Antigonus, of course, already controlled.

  Ptolemy realized he was not facing a peripheral threat, this was a vital contest and he decided he would have to deal with it himself. Every arsenal and port was scoured to mobilize a navy and army that might take on Demetrius to resurrect his fading dreams of thalassocracy. By the time he had called in all his reserves and recruited from allied cities on Cyprus, Ptolemy had a fleet that totalled 140 ships, the largest he had so far ever mobilized. Skirting the southern shore of the island, the great armada pushed on to the rescue of the garrison of Salamis. Slipping a messenger through the siege lines to Menelaus, Ptolemy relayed to his brother that an attack was to be mounted by the Egyptian fleet the next day and that Menelaus was ordered to support the offensive by leading his own sixty ships out from Salamis harbour to join him. Demetrius, far from blind to this threat, assigned ten quinqueremes to blockade the narrow exit from the port to the sea, a precaution of crucial importance in the day ahead. He also took advantage of his control of the countryside to deploy cavalry to patrol along the coast, so they could aid his mariners as much as possible in the coming encounter.

  Though one tradition suggests Ptolemy had sailed at the dead of night and hoped to enter Salamis without a fight, there is no doubt he expected and prepared for a full-scale sea battle.13 Masts and sails were stowed away soon after the fleet left Citium. Dawn broke early on this summer morning and it would soon have become oppressively hot for the sailors and marines whose journey was greatly increased by the need to round the promontory of Pedalium before the fleet turned north to approach Salamis. Somewhere along the coast south of the besieged city, possibly near Leucolla, they found the Antigonid fleet drawn up in battle order and eager for the fight.

  There is considerable dispute about the size of Demetrius’ fleet. Plutarch mentions 180 warships, Polynaeus has 170 whilst Diodorus reports him with 108 vessels. Clearly the similarity of the numbers involved with Plutarch and Diodorus suggests a commonality of source with one or the other misreading the original figure. It is likely on this occasion that Plutarch is correct, as earlier in the year, at Athens, Demetrius commanded a fleet of 250 and we hear of no disaster or act of policy that would have so far eroded his former strength.14

  It was a huge war fleet that confronted Ptolemy and dotted along the arch of the Antigonid line were those broad high-sided sevens that were some of the largest warships yet seen in the eastern seas. At about 0.5 miles distance from each other, the two fleets paused to sacrifice to the gods and make the final arrangements for the proper alignment of their battle lines. The 140 warships of Ptolemy’s fleet 15 were either quinqueremes or quadriremes and they spread out in line abreast with the supply ships (carrying the troops that could not be accommodated on the warships)16 well to the rear. Their commander led the left-wing squadron where the largest craft were marshalled and where an even greater concentration of numbers may have been achieved by deploying a second line of warships in support.

  Demetrius’ forces were considerably more mixed in type and usefulness than his opponents. At least 110 of his warships were light triremes, while he also fielded sevens and sixes that carried more artillery and soldiers than anything Ptolemy had. The balance was made up of quadriremes and quinqueremes. Antigonus’ son had much to fight for; this was his first opportunity for revenge against the man who had humbled him six years before at Gaza. No longer
a young untried commander, but a general at the height of his power and reputation, and as the day would show, as an admiral he had considerably more initiative than his opponent. On the left of the Antigonid battle line he personally commanded the most powerful squadron. Here, there were seven sevens from the ports of Phoenicia and thirty Athenian quadriremes under the experienced Antigonid admiral, Medius. And, behind this front line were deployed in support ten sixes and ten fives. Together these fifty-seven warships comprised the biggest and best of the fleet crammed with ballistae and seasoned troops on the reinforced decks above the oarsmen. It was with them that he intended to decide the encounter. The centre and right-hand squadrons were made up largely of triremes that, though maneuverable, would be at a disadvantage in the melee when the two fleets collided.

  Ptolemy gave the order to attack all along his formation by trumpet blasts and flashing shields. His own flagship led the way at the head of a squadron of fives on the left of his line. The Antigonid vessels, opposed to him, were commanded by Hegesippus of Halicarnassus, and it is probable many of the seamen of Demetrius’ fleet came from the same region as this admiral. The rugged coast of Caria and Lycia and the islands of the southwest of Asia Minor had for generations nurtured brave and skilful mariners; the chief pilot of the fleet came from Cos while one of the admirals in the centre of the line was a native of Samos. The lighter triremes that experienced the brunt of Ptolemy’s assault were at a disadvantage as their sea-room was constricted between the shoreline to their right and the central squadron on their left, they simply did not have the room to manouevre that might have allowed them to cope with the larger and better-protected enemy vessels. The outcome in this part of the battle was not long in doubt, some of Hegesippus’ ships could not take the shock of contact and sunk while Ptolemy’s marines boarded and made prizes of many more. The details of the battle are not described but the logic of events indicates that, at the point of his greatest success, Ptolemy lost control of the direction of the battle. His captains may have got carried away by their victory and pursued the fleeing enemy too far or perhaps became involved in securing individual prizes. Whatever the reason, by the time Ptolemy had reorganized his squadron in preparation to build on his local advantage he found it was already too late.