Greek and Macedonian Land Battles of the 4th Century BC

by Fred Eugene Ray Jr

  Calpe Harbor I, II, and III (400 B.C.)

  The Arcadian/Achaean division landed in darkness at Calpe Harbor, a sharp promontory about midway along the Thracian coast in Bithynian territory. Fixing a hill inland as a rallying point the next morning, the mercenaries divided into their 400-man companies to spread out and raid the countryside (most of the units set out alone, but there were a couple of doublecompany teams). The Thracians were able to gather for a counterstrike and caught two of the single-company raiding parties as they were withdrawing for the day with their booty. First hit was a team of Arcadians under Smicres. With Bithynian peltasts swarming all about, these hoplites tried to keep a tight formation and make a fighting withdrawal; however, their harried retreat met with disaster when trying to cross a ravine. The enemy pounced on the heavy spearmen as their formation fell apart, forcing them to fight as individuals. The much more agile javelineers then wiped out Smicres and his hoplites to the last man. The Bithynians shortly thereafter caught a second company on the move. This group of Greeks fared little better than the first, its commander managing to escape alive with only seven of his men. The other eight companies made it back intact to set up a perimeter on the appointed hill, where a siege began the next day as the Thracians circled with a growing mass of horsemen and peltasts. The spearmen had no light infantry or cavalry of their own and were helpless to strike back as the enraged tribesmen launched one assault after another, throwing their missiles from a safe distance and then retiring without fear of pursuit. The barbarians soon cut off the water supply, which gave the Greeks no choice other than to seek a truce; and when negotiations hit a snag, things were beginning to look desperate. Just then, help arrived.

  Xenophon and his men had landed on the eastern border of Bithynia and set out from there on foot. They were just now approaching, and the sudden appearance of this new Greek fighting force in the area took the besiegers by surprise. Dispersing during the night, the tribesmen allowed the trapped hoplites to escape to Calpe Harbor where they joined Cheirisophus and his men, who had just arrived. Xenophon's column reached the harbor shortly thereafter; however, any hope of reconstituting the army's old organization came to a quick end when Cheirisophus died after taking some medicine for a fever. This left Neon in command of the southern Peloponnesian division and he wasn't on good terms with Xenophon.

  The Greeks sat down to await arrival of Cleander, the Spartan harnmost (governor) of Byzantium, to discuss terms of employment. In the meantime, rations were running low, so Neon took it upon himself to secure supplies and went out to forage with his division of 2,100 men. This went terribly wrong when he was attacked by horsemen (perhaps a regiment of 600800 javelin-armed riders). These troopers had been sent by Pharnabazus, the Persian in charge of Phyrgia in Asia Minor, who had come to the aid of the Bithynians in hope of preempting a Grecian invasion of his own land. Joined quickly by Thracian cavalry and peltasts, the Persians killed at least 500 of Neon's men without the need for a set battle, since the victims had been widely scattered in the process of scavenging. The remaining Greeks dug in on high ground until Xenophon came to rescue them with a mixed command composed of all the younger, speedier soldiers from Calpe. Falling back to the harbor camp, the mercenaries suffered attacks on their outposts throughout the night before relocating the next day to a better site, which they then fortified.

  Pharnabazus' infantry, possibly a 6,000-man division of mixed arms (some with shield and spear and others with bows) thereafter joined his horsemen and their Bithynian allies to threaten the Greeks. Xenophon sortied to meet this challenge, leading out all of the mercenaries under the age of 45 and leaving the rest behind to guard the new camp. He had perhaps 4,500 spearmen (if the younger men were some 75 percent of the remaining 5,900-5,950 hoplites) and maybe 600 foot skirmishers plus 30 horsemen (again at 75 percent of those surviving). Finding the enemy holding fast on high ground, Xenophon set up his phalanx (likely eight shields deep over a front of better than 550m) with his light-armed troops off the flanks and the few horsemen on hand sitting far right. The Greeks advanced to the attack, but their peltasts charged without orders and were routed by the opposing cavalry and Bithynian javelinmen. Despite this setback, the hoplites continued to sing their paean and close, easily shedding aside a shower of missiles with shield and armor. And when they got near and lowered their spears along the front with a shout, their foes lost heart and ran away. Xenophon's cavalry chased the enemy left wingers and slew a large number. Less rapidly pursued, those on the opposition right managed to reach a hill and take a defensive stance; however, when the phalanx moved against this position in turn, the barbarians again fled.

  Having regrouped, it was the Greek peltasts who now gave chase, though they didn't kill many due to cover from the Persian cavalrymen, these having kept well-ordered despite all hell breaking loose around them. The Persians were soon joined by Bithynian riders and took post on a rise to menace the phalanx, which had at last become somewhat disordered in pursuit. But rapidly redressing ranks, the mercenary spearmen resumed their advance and for the third time that day saw opponents refuse to stand and fight. The enemy horsemen fled down the back slope in haste, leaving Xenophon and his men to set up a trophy and return to camp. After this humiliating beating, the Thracians and their friends prudently avoided further combat.

  Cleander arrived at last and proved a haughty bully; still, the mercenaries eventually agreed to relocate to the Asian side of the Bosporus opposite the Spartan base at Byzantium. At this point, greed intervened. Sparta's admiral in the region, Anaxibius, took a bribe from Pharnabazus to get the hireling army away from the Persian's satrapy by offering a job in Europe. Anaxibius reneged on this deal once he'd gotten the mercenaries to move back across the Bosporus; however, they wound up finding employment all the same, joining Seuthes, warlord of Odrysian Thrace. They would work toward winning Seuthes a kingship before finally accepting transfer into Spartan service in 399 to again deploy against Persia.

  Sparta's War on Persia

  The attempt by Cyrus on the Persian throne that had ended with his death at Cunaxa originated out of the district on the western edge of the Persian Empire where the young man had been governor (satrap, his province being a Persian political unit called a satrapy). The coastal portion of this area was composed of a number of Greek colonies that dated back in some cases to before 1,000 B.c. These had in recent times fallen to the Lydians immediately to their northeast and then to Persia upon its conquest of Lydia. The Greeks here, known collectively as "Ionians" for the predominance of the Ionian dialect of Greek among them (their region hence being commonly called "Ionia"), had risen up against Persia in 499 only to be defeated. And while Greek successes following the failed Persian invasion of Europe in 480-479 had let them break free for a time, the Great King had once again taken over in the course of helping Sparta win the Peloponnesian War.

  So things sat at the beginning of the 4th century. That's when the Spartans, full of hubris after their triumph over Athens and successful consolidation of power on the Greek mainland, began to reconsider their relationship with Persia. There was, after all, a good deal of profit to be had from claiming Ionia and plundering the wealth of its Persian masters. Their first step had been to support the coup of Cyrus. When this went badly, the dead prince's replacement as satrap, Tissaphernes, arrived in Ionia to demand submission from its Greek poleis. These had been well disposed toward Cyrus and were of no mind to have a less acceptable fellow running their affairs. Their solution was to seek aid from Sparta that they might again tear away from Persia. The Spartans took advantage of this to send out their own man Thibron as Ionian governor, providing him with 1,000 freed helots armed as hoplites along with 4,000 other spearmen drawn from their Peloponnesian allies and 300 horsemen provided upon request from Athens. Gathering more troops from the Ionians, Thibron prepared to contest the Great King's forces for control of Asia Minor.

  Bithynia (399/98 B.c.) and Cyllene (398 B.c.)

  Thibr
on opened his campaign against the Persians with caution. Wary of their cavalry, he refused to lead his army out onto the plains where the superiority of his phalanx in close-in (shock) fighting along the front would be offset by its lack of speed and vulnerability at sides and rear to encircling horsemen and light infantry. The Spartan thus kept to the defensive at first; however, after the arrival of Xenophon and the mercenaries that had served with Cyrus (the "Cyreans" as they came to be known) he grew bolder, benefiting from their past experience against mounted foes. He was thereafter able to capture a number of cities by surrender or storm before taking station at the major Grecian port of Ephesos along the central Ionian coast. There, he was readying an invasion of Caria, the mixed barbarian-Greek province to the south, when Dercyllidas arrived as his replacement.

  Dercyllidas took stock of the situation and saw that the two Persian satraps he faced weren't on friendly terms with each other. He therefore arranged a ceasefire with Tissaphernes, whose satrapy covered all of the former Lydian territories including Ionia. This let him concentrate against Pharnabazus, whose province of Phrygia lay to the north and east. Moving up the coast, Dercyllidas seized the cities there and then headed inland to gain surrenders from all the other towns in Aeolia, which sat just west of Pharnabazus' realm. The Spartan went on to capture more sites and add their mercenary defenders to his own army until he had some 8,000 hired men under arms (Xenophon Hellenica 3.1.28). Dercyllidas now had a strong base for moving against Pharnabazus and the satrap chose wisely to come to terms for the winter. Dercyllidas therefore withdrew to take up quarters in Bithynian Thrace.

  When the Greeks arrived in Bithynia, they began raiding for supplies. To help in this, Xenophon's old employer Seuthes sent a contingent of his Odrysians numbering 200 horsemen and 300 peltasts. Dercyllidas gave these allies 200 hoplites to provide a heavy guard for their camp and they headed out to gather more spoils. However, with the light-armed men out on the hunt, the hoplites suffered a dawn attack from local Thracian riders and javelinmen. The Greek spearmen took a number of casualties from missiles before charging from their palisade in formation. This proved a futile effort, since the much fleeter tribesmen were easily able to escape slow-moving hoplites, who were not only burdened with armor but also had to stay in close order. The Thracians showered their foes with javelins from one side and then the other as they skipped back from every rush the spearmen tried to make. In the end, "the Greeks were shot down like cattle shut up in a pen" (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.4), with just 15 escaping slaughter by slipping off amid the chaotic fight. By the time that Dercyllidas was able to send help, his relief force found only the bodies of the dead stripped bare where they had fallen. More alert from then on, the Greeks and their tribal allies were able to avoid repeating this debacle and got through the rest of the winter without further loss.

  Dercyllidas returned to Asia in the spring, marching to Lampsacus at the lower entrance to the Hellespont. But there was to be no action on Persian soil this season, as Pharnabazus signed onto yet another temporary ceasefire. The Spartan commander was thus free to attend to matters elsewhere and elected to turn westward for a while that he might aid fellow Greeks complaining about Thracian attacks in the Chersonese (the long, narrow peninsula forming the European side of the Hellespont). Returning from this brief diversion, he spent the rest of the year consolidating his gains.

  Dercyllidas received orders for 397 from the Spartan leadership that he was to end his truce with Tissaphernes and move to take Caria. Meanwhile, Pharnabazus had reconciled with his fellow satrap and they now joined to march against the Spartans, planning to cross the Meander River northward into Ionia. Dercyllidas led his army down into Ionia and met the Persian forces aligned in battle formation across the road somewhere on the plain above the Meander. The satraps had a combat array that included maybe 4,000 Greek spearmen on the left wing. (These included 1,000-man mercenary bodyguards for the satraps and 2,000 or so militiamen from the Aegean coast of Caria, the latter providing around 25 percent of the full national levy [Ray 2009, 41].) There were barbarian Carians on the right wing (hoplites with white, leather-covered shields), possibly 6,000 strong per the remaining 75 percent of Carian manpower. Persian infantry held the center. Each satrap probably had a garrison division (baivarabam) of imperial footmen at a nominal strength of 10,000 men, thus Diodorus' claim of a 20,000-man total (14.39.5). However, only 30-60 percent parade strength was common for such standing units (Sekunda and Chew, 1992, 5-6); therefore, there were likely only 6,000-12,000 Persian foot soldiers actually present.

  Pharnabazus rode with maybe half the cavalry on the left. He might have had as few as 750 or as many as 3,000 riders, depending on whether the total mounted force was five 1,000man companies (hazaraba at 30-60 percent nominal manpower per a common ratio of one rider per four line infantrymen) or ten such companies as suggested by Diodorus in citing 10,000 riders. Tissaphernes led his own horsemen at the same strength on the right. Both mounted bodies no doubt had supporting light footmen that might have matched the cavalry in number. These would have been Phrygian peltasts for Pharnabazus and most likely similarly armed Carians for Tissaphernes. Deployed at eight shields deep for the Greeks and a depth of ten men for the Persians (using their smallest organizational unit, the ten-man dathabam, for each file) as well as the Carians, the heavy, shield-bearing troops would have spanned a 2,000m front.

  Dercyllidas ordered his men to array in phalanx eight shields deep (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.16), splitting the light footmen off each flank along with what few horsemen were available. There could have been 14,000 hoplites at most. This honors a heavy corps that would have included the 5,000 spearmen brought from Europe, 7,000 mercenaries (Cyreans and recent additions less about 1,000 to account for both garrisons left behind and casualties in Bithynia) and perhaps 2,000 from Ionia (Cartledge 1987, 210). (Note that Diodorus put the Greeks at no more than 7,000 men, an underestimate that would seem most likely to have taken into account only the non-mercenary hoplites.) This would have let him set up his phalanx across a 1,750m span - short, but at least approaching the opposition's breadth of array. However, the local amateurs (probably in the formation center where Greek generals usually stuck those considered least reliable lest they endanger their more vulnerable flanks) lacked the stomach for a fight, some deserting and the rest openly showing signs of fear.

  As it turned out, a key figure on the other side had no greater desire to tangle; for though Pharnabazus was keen for action, Tissaphernes was not. That general had led the Persian left when it faced hoplites at Cunaxa, including the Cyreans now standing resolutely on the other side of the field. He'd watched his Asian infantry there simply melt away before a Greek charge and was now of no mood to hazard another round with odds anything near to even. As for Dercyllidas, he seems to have had his own reservations. Famed for painstaking preparation and having been surprised by the enemy blocking his march, his resulting hasty deployment must have been disconcerting. Moreover, he was sitting on an open plain with a much inferior mounted arm. Ultimately, such mutual discomfort led to a peace agreement being negotiated on the spot that avoided battle by declaring Ionia free from both Persian and Spartan rule.

  While Dercyllidas was prosecuting the campaign against Persia, his fellow Spartans were engaged in a conflict of their own against Ells. That polls on the northwestern coast of the Peloponnese controlled Olympia and had barred Sparta from the Pan-Hellenic games held regularly at the sacred site. The Eleans had also made alliances of which the Spartans did not approve. Sparta retaliated in 399 by demanding that Elis relinquish some of its outlying territories and, when this was refused, declared war. Agis, one of the Spartan kings, led out the national host, but turned back after an earthquake. However, another force set out for Elis under Agis later in the year, this one including some allied troops from the Peloponnese and Athens.

  Agis ravaged the countryside, but chose to spare the un-walled capital city of Elis, moving instead toward Cyllene on the north
west Elean coast. A civil war now broke out there between members of the wealthy, oligarchic party, who wished to yield to the approaching Spartans, and those in the popular faction opposed to this. The result was a pitched battle that perhaps involved 500-1,000 spearmen with appropriate light support. The popular group probably held a small edge in hoplites and a larger one in light footmen, while its more aristocratic opponents would have had most of the horsemen present. We've no detailed account of the action, yet know the oligarchs took a beating that most likely reflected the manpower differences in what must have been an infantry-dominated scrap. The winners then set out to defend the city walls as the losers escaped to Agis. Not interested in being tied down with a siege, the Spartan king marched home to disband his army, leaving a garrison behind in Elean territory that included those fled from Cyllene. This outpost force proceeded to spoil Elis throughout the rest of the year and into the next, causing the Eleans to finally capitulate and sign a peace with Sparta on the latter's terms.