Preface and Acknowledgements
This is a book designed for the traveller to Greece, whether the member of a tour group, the independent adventurer, or the curious scholar. We think that the material covered here is both interesting enough to appeal to the general reader, and detailed enough to be of use to more seasoned students of ancient history. Most importantly, we believe that the fullest appreciation of ancient history, especially as relates to battles and battlefields, is only gained by visiting the places themselves, by pondering the beautiful and haunting landscapes of Greece, and by imagining where great armies clashed so long ago. Our lives were certainly changed by our first visits to Greece, and they continue to be changed every time we go back.
This book is divided into chapters covering individual battlefields, each of which was the scene of one or more important clashes in antiquity. These sites are divided first by region, and then chronologically within each region. Each chapter begins with a brief note on the importance and interest of the battle covered, followed by a description of how the modern traveller can find the site. The largest part of each chapter consists of the historical overview of the battle, in which we provide a narrative account based on a critical study of the ancient literary, topographical, and archaeological sources, along with the most important work of modern scholars. There follows a description of the battle site as it is today, along with suggestions for how best to view and interpret different parts of the site and different phases of the battle. Major landmarks are given GPS coordinates to facilitate navigation. The end of each chapter consists of suggestions for further reading, including annotated lists of ancient sources as well as modern books and articles.
To get the most out of this book, we suggest that the traveller purchase a good roadmap of Greece (1:400,000 scale should be enough), available for purchase at many tourist shops but especially at the Athens International Airport and at various car-rental agencies. A dashboard GPS unit or, even better, a handheld device would be a great asset in the field, and there are many detailed GPS maps of Greece available as free downloads. Since many of the sites covered in this book are off the beaten path (the ancients didn’t always fight their battles within sight of major tourist attractions), we suggest readers take the plunge and rent a car to explore the country themselves and at their own pace. Though it might seem intimidating at first, driving in Greece need not be overly harrowing, especially outside of Athens. The most popular Greek destinations, from the Athenian Acropolis to the sanctuary of Delphi, are indeed spectacular. But the less-visited parts of Greece offer many benefits, including unbeatable seaside hotels and delicious (and cheap!) food and drink. Greece is a country that handsomely rewards exploration.
We owe a debt of gratitude to many friends, colleagues, and institutions for material and moral support in preparing this book. First and foremost, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, a top-rate scholarly institution and wonderful home in Greece, looms large over this project. The authors first met each other and discussed the possibility of this book while students at the school, and we thank especially John Oakley, Jack Davis, and Kirk Ormand for teaching us so much during our time as students. All continue to be supportive colleagues as we have transitioned into university faculty members ourselves. For his part, Kirk has accompanied us to more battlefields than anyone should rightly be expected to. The American School offered us financial support to live in Greece for extended periods, and always has a ready supply of eager students and faculty for us to share ideas with when we are in the country. The University of New Brunswick, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Brigham Young University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Harrison McCain Foundation have also provided invaluable financial assistance over the course of this project.
Jenny Denault, Matthew Sears’s wife and travelling companion, was with us at the American School, and has visited site after site with us since. Though we frequently tested her patience with our enthusiasm for dusty plains, she always kept us grounded and reminded us that beaches and seaside tavernas are a vital part of visiting Greece too. Many have commented on specific chapters or offered their valuable insights along the way. We would like to thank in particular Lee Brice, Glenn Bugh, Denver Graninger, John Hale, Peter Krentz, Maria Liston, James Murray, Keven Ouellet, Jacques Perreault, Emmanuel Stefanakis, Jake Stoddard, Barry Strauss, and Georgia Tsouvala. Without the support of Phil Sidnell, our editor at Pen & Sword, this book would not have happened. Last but not least, we would like to thank our students, whose keen interest in ancient history always keeps us honest and on our toes.
Introduction
This book covers nearly five centuries of ancient warfare in what is now modern Greece, from Marathon in 490 BCE to Actium in 31 BCE. Over this long period, Greece saw a wide range of battles on land and sea, including clashes of Greeks against Greeks, Greeks against Macedoniaians, Macedoniaians against Romans, and Romans against Romans. The whole gamut of ancient tactics and strategy is represented by these battles, from heavy-armed phalanxes to mobile cavalry and archers, and from armies struggling on broad plains to navies fighting in narrow straits. Ancient warfare is an immense topic of study, covering subjects including the role of warfare in ancient politics, society and culture; and the legacy of ancient warfare for the modern world. This introduction provides a brief overview of ancient battlefield tactics, primarily those that played a major role in the specific battles covered in the book. Some suggestions for further reading finish the chapter, for those wishing to delve more deeply into the broader phenomenon of warfare in the ancient world.
The Archaic and Classical Periods
The Archaic (c. 750-479 BCE) and Classical (c. 479-323 BCE) periods of Greek history saw two main types of conflict: Greeks fighting the Persians, and Greeks fighting other Greeks. On the Greek side of things, most of the battles were fought by militias comprised of free citizens, while the Persians used huge armies collected from the dozens of nations under Persian control. On land, the hoplite phalanx dominated, while the trireme ruled the waves. These were the wars of the polis, the city-state for which the Greeks are famous.
The Hoplite Phalanx
The Archaic and Classical world saw the rise and fall of the predominant military force in the Greek world: the hoplite phalanx. Traditionally thought to have been comprised of free and independent landowners, the phalanx seems to have had a key role to play in the formation of the polis and key Greek concepts such as egalitarianism and citizenship. For the purposes of this book, the most important feature of the phalanx is that it was a densely packed formation of heavy-armed infantrymen.
Despite its centrality to Greek history and military history more generally, the hoplite phalanx remains one of the most hotly contested topics among ancient historians and archaeologists. At issue are when hoplite warfare emerged in Greece, how the phalanx actually operated in battle and the phalanx’s role in the rise of the polis. There are a few things, however, we can say about the hoplite phalanx with relative certainty, thanks to a wide range of evidence from literary sources, material remains and vase painting. Furthermore, while the origins of the phalanx in the early Archaic period might be murky, by the time of the battles covered in this book (Marathon being the earliest, in 490 BCE), our evidence is much stronger.
A hoplite soldier almost always bore a certain bare minimum of equipment, including most crucially a large, round shield called the hoplon or aspis. This shield was typically made of wood, sometimes embellished with a bronze boss and rim, and less often with bronze decorations. Concave in shape, the shield had a double grip that included an arm loop in the centre of the shield and a hand grip on the rim, which allowed the hoplite to carry the heavy shield firmly with his left arm, covering his own left side, and the right side of the man stationed to his left in a dense formation. The other essential piece of equipment was a thrusting spear, around 2-3 metres in length, with an iron point and a bronze butt-spike as a counterweight and backup point. Nearly universally, this spear is depicted in art as being wielded overhand with the hoplite’s right arm. In case the spear failed, most hoplites had a short sword for cutting and thrusting.
Depending on the time period, and the hoplite’s personal resources, other items could be added to the standard equipment. Usually hoplites wore a bronze helmet, most famously of the iconic Corinthian type that covered the entire head and most of the face. Other helmets could be used too, including the less cumbersome pilos type that protected only the top of the head. Bronze breastplates were sometimes worn, but most soldiers could probably only afford lighter body armour, if any at all. The wealthy could furnish themselves with bronze greaves, or leg guards, and even arm guards, foot guards and other pieces of defensive armour. Of course, the more armour one bore, the less manoeuvrable he was. The hoplite phalanx, though, was not made for manoeuvrability.
Though some scholars think hoplites had reasonable freedom of movement and could engage in one-on-one combat, the standard picture of hoplite warfare is of dense formations and walls of shields and spears. A hoplite’s large shield was excellent for protection while soldiers were lined up side by side, but out in the open a hoplite would be vulnerable to attacks from light-armed enemies. Hoplites therefore were arranged in the phalanx, a dense formation that allowed for around a metre of space per man. Most phalanxes were arranged eight to twelve ranks deep, with only the first two or three ranks able to extend their spear points in front of the leading rank. The majority of hoplites, therefore, could do little but provide depth to their line, which was useful either as a quasi-reserve, in case men in the front ranks died and needed to be replaced; moral support and encouragement; preventing the front ranks from fleeing the battle; or even literally pushing into the men in front in order to break the opposing line. Ancient writers refer to the othismos, or mass shove, as a major element of phalanx battle, but scholars are divided concerning whether such a shoving match, akin to a rugby scrum or the clash of offensive and defensive lines in American football, was practically possible. We do know that in several battles, including Delium and Leuctra, extra ranks – even as many as fifty in the case of Leuctra – proved a decisive advantage, suggesting that the rear ranks were of vital importance. The number of ranks always had to be balanced with the width of the front, since the phalanx was vulnerable on the sides, especially the unshielded right side, and thus needed to avoid being outflanked.
Without the support of light-armed troops or cavalry, a phalanx was designed to fight against another phalanx, and this seems to be what happened more often than not in the Archaic period. The two armies would meet on an open and level plain, and simply push against each other, killing and being killed, until the ranks of one side buckled and broke. Once the phalanx formation collapsed, an army was done for, since a hoplite’s back and sides were virtually without protection. Greek armies tended not to pursue a defeated army too far, however. Instead, the winning side would set up a trophy, consisting of captured arms and armour from the enemy, at the spot where the tide of the battle turned, literally the tropē, or ‘turning point’, from which we get the word ‘trophy’. The losers would sue for peace and the right to collect their dead from the field.
Fig. i.1: Battle of the giants against the gods. The giants are equipped as Archaic Greek hoplites, with double-grip shields, Corinthian helmets, and thrusting spears. Relief from the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury, c. 525 CE. Archaeological Museum at Delphi. Photo courtesy of Erich Lessing / Art Resouce, NY.
In this book, Delium, Mantinea, Nemea, Coronea, and Leuctra represent battles of phalanx against phalanx, sometimes with a few twists. In addition to fighting other phalanxes, the Greek hoplite phalanx could be very effective against other types of armies too, given the right conditions. At Marathon, Thermopylae and Plataea, heavy-armed hoplites proved devastating to the more lightly armed and loosely packed Persians.
Cavalry and Light-Armed Infantry
Though the Greeks are most famous for the hoplite phalanx, there were other types of soldiers in Greek armies too, though our sources often neglected or looked down upon them given the hoplite’s cultural predominance. Cavalry and light-armed infantry could often be combined with the phalanx to great effect, and on occasion, these troop types could challenge and defeat the phalanx.
Mainland Greece is not an ideal place to raise horses. There are too many mountains and too few plains, making what horses there were in places such as Athens very expensive. Athens and other poleis did have horsemen, who were nearly always wealthy aristocrats, but they did not have many of them. A few places in Greece, especially Thessaly, had broader plains amenable to pasturing horses, and in these regions cavalry were much more prominent and numerous. The Persians had prized cavalry, well suited to the plains of the Persian Empire. Prior to the late fourth century BCE, ancient horsemen – both Greek and Persian – were lightly armed and equipped primarily with missile weapons such as arrows and javelins. The horse served as a fast and mobile missile platform, which could work wonders in open country. Cavalry formations would swarm in against an enemy, such as an encumbered formation of hoplites, loose a shower of weapons and then retreat at ease to re-form and attack once more. Cavalry were valued most of all for their speed, and were very useful for cutting down disorganized and fleeing soldiers.
The great innovation of Philip and Alexander the Great of Macedonia was to employ heavy cavalry, armed with a thrusting lance instead of ranged weapons, as a shock force to deliver the decisive blow in any given battle. Instead of relying on just speed and manoeuvrability, these horsemen could use the weight and shock of their charging mounts to deadly effect. Charging in a wedge-shaped formation, Macedonian cavalry could plunge into enemy lines, especially where gaps had formed, and ride down the opposing infantry. Greek and Persian light cavalry played important roles at Plataea and Delium, and Macedonian heavy cavalry was crucial at Chaeronea. Persian cavalry is conspicuously absent from the literary accounts of the Battle of Marathon, even though we are told that the Persians brought their horsemen to that plain.
Fig. i.2: Funerary monument for Dexileos, an Athenian cavalryman killed during the Corinthian War, 394 BCE. Permission courtesy of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens – Kerameikos Museum. © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports – Archaeological Receipts Fund (N. 3028/2002). Photo by M. A. Sears.
Greek citizens who could not afford hoplite equipment, along with foreign mercenaries and even slaves, played important parts in many battles, usually as light-armed troops. The hoplite phalanx could be supplemented by contingents of slingers and archers, as well as javelin-throwers. Thracian mercenaries, non-Greek peoples living in what is now northern Greece and Bulgaria, were sought as peltasts, light-armed troops armed with the javelin and a light wicker shield known as the peltē.
Throughout the Classical period, light-armed troops were incorporated more and more into Greek armies, and the Macedonians expertly combined these different types of soldiers with the phalanx and cavalry to form an unstoppable combined-arms force. Greek light-armed troops were especially important at Pylos and the Piraeus, where they were able to inflict heavy casualties on hoplites. The Persians tended to be more lightly armed than Greek hoplites, using wicker shields, short swords and arrows. On open ground, the Persian infantry could be quite formidable because of sheer numbers, but on more confined terrain, the Persians’ lack of heavy armour and weapons was a disadvantage against hoplites. Persian troops fell in great numbers against hoplites at Marathon, Thermopylae and Plataea.
Fig. i.3: A red-figure vase depicting Thracian peltasts. Drawing by Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter after an Attic kyathos by the Eretria Painter, Sozopol Archaeological Museum inv. 261.
Greek Naval Warfare
The Greeks and their enemies fought at sea primarily with two types of ship: the penteconter, a vessel rowed by fifty oarsmen; and the trireme, a much larger vessel rowed by around 170 oarsmen arranged in three horizontal ranks, which became the primary warship of the Classical Greek world. While sails existed, they were only used for travelling long distances, never in battle. The trireme’s full crew complement was around 200, including various crewmen in addition to rowers, such as marines, a helmsman and the trierarch, the person officially in command of the vessel. Both ships were long and narrow, penteconters measuring just under 30 metres in length, while triremes were just under 40 metres long. The primary offensive weapon was a bronze ram on the ship’s prow, just at the waterline.
Various naval tactics were possible, depending on the level of the crew’s training. In general, the goal was to ram the opponent’s ship with enough speed to rupture the enemy hull, but without too much speed so as to allow one’s own ship to be extracted after the impact. More advanced techniques included shearing off the opponent’s oars on one side of his ship, a very tricky manoeuvre since the attacking ship would need to retract all of its oars on one side just before impact. Sometimes ships fought what amounted to land battles at sea, coming alongside one another so marines, including hoplites and archers, could fight it out on deck, and other crew members could join the fray in an attempt to capture or disable the enemy vessel.
Fig i.4: The Lenormant Relief depicting a trireme and its rowers. Athens, Acropolis Musuem no. 1339. © Acropolis Museum. Photo by Socratis Mavrommatis.
Two of the Greek naval battles covered in this book, Artemisium and Salamis, involved hundreds of ships on each side, and therefore tens of thousands of men. Throughout antiquity, naval warfare tended to involve a very great share of the population and produce hideous levels of casualties. While Greek ships were crewed by free citizens, though of the poorer classes, the Persians, as a landlocked people, relied on their seafaring allies, especially the Phoenicians from the Levant, to provide most of the ships for the Persian navy. Despite the risks and costs of naval warfare, controlling the sea became a key strategic principle for the Greeks, especially the Athenians, which led to increasing levels of democracy as the lower classes of citizens who served as rowers demanded political power commensurate with their military importance. The Athenians demonstrated their naval supremacy over the other Greeks at the Battles of Naupactus, covered in this book.
The Hellenistic Period and the Roman Middle Republic
The Hellenistic period (c. 323-30 BCE) denotes the time between the death of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra, when Greco-Macedonian armies and generals ruled the eastern Mediterranean and extravagant military equipment and tactics, from impossibly long two-handed spears to war elephants, were seen on the battlefield. It is also the time when Greco-Macedonian armies faced – and were defeated by – the Roman legion, as by diplomacy and military conquest Rome expanded its influence throughout the entire Mediterranean world in the third and second centuries BCE.
The Macedonian Army
A basic building-block of Hellenistic armies was the infantry phalanx. Learning from the hoplites of Thebes, where he was a hostage as a teenager, Philip of Macedonia revolutionized the phalanx. Where the hoplite phalanx used large shields and one-handed spears, Philip adopted a much longer spear – at least twice as long as the 2-3 metre hoplite spear – called the sarissa, which was wielded with two hands, and made use of a smaller shield, the peltē, which was supported by a strap around the neck and shoulders to free up both hands for the spear. Up to five ranks of spear points could protrude in front of the leading rank, meaning that each soldier in the enemy army had to face five very long iron spear blades. The historian Polybius says that on open ground, nothing could withstand the charge of the Macedonian phalanx.
More lightly armed than their hoplite counterparts, soldiers in Philip’s phalanx were more closely packed and relied on the bristling hedge of their long spears to protect them from the missiles of the enemy. Because Philip and his successors used professional standing armies, instead of the citizen militias of the Greeks, the phalanx could be relentlessly drilled, meaning that the Macedonian phalanx was capable of better organization and more subtle manoeuvres than the typical hoplite army. Arranged at least sixteen ranks deep, the Macedonian phalanx was divided into units of around 256 men, each with its own officer, allowing for divisions to be shuffled around the battlefield with more flexibility than the hoplite phalanx, though not as much as the Roman legion. A special unit of elite infantry, called the hypaspists, anchored the phalanx on the right, covering the gap between the infantry and the main strike force of heavy cavalry.
In the hands of Philip and Alexander, the phalanx was never meant to deliver the decisive offensive blow. Rather, the phalanx was the ‘anvil’ used to hold the enemy lines in place, and force gaps in the enemy formation. The ‘hammer’ that delivered the brunt of the offensive attack was the Macedonian heavy cavalry, usually charging from the right wing, but charging from the left at Chaeronea. The core of the heavy cavalry was the king’s companions, based on the aristocratic horsemen who had traditionally accompanied and advised the king in Macedonian society. By charging in a wedge, the companion cavalry, usually with the king at the front, poured into the gaps created by the phalanx, plunging into the unprotected sides and back of the enemy.
The phalanx and heavy cavalry were supported by light cavalry and light-armed troops such as peltasts, archers and slingers, who, like the rest of the army, were professional soldiers expertly trained. After Alexander and his march all the way to India, increasingly baroque weapons could be added to the army, including elephants, but such units enjoyed only limited success. Philip and Alexander changed ancient warfare by deploying a combined arms force in which all of the parts – phalanx, cavalry, light-armed – played a role and exploited their own unique strengths. In the face of the Macedonian army, the Greek hoplite phalanx, even supported by limited cavalry and light-armed troops of its own, didn’t stand a chance, as the Athenians and Thebans at Chaeronea learned the hard way. After the death of Alexander, Hellenistic generals seemed to forget that the genius of the Macedonian way of war was combining many arms. Instead, against the Romans the Macedonians relied on the phalanx almost exclusively.
Fig. i.5: A Macedonian heavy cavalryman killing an opponent. After a drawing (Kinch 1920, pl. 3) of a now lost tomb-painting from the ‘Kinch Tomb’ at Lefkadia.
The Roman Manipular Legion
The storied Roman legion went through a few major changes throughout its history, but from the beginning it prized a new kind of weapon: the short sword, also called the gladius hispaniensis, or ‘Spanish sword’. With a steel blade of only 60cm, the Roman sword was ideal for hand-to-hand combat, allowing the legionary to get in very close to his enemy, who was himself typically encumbered by a much longer weapon. Trained to slash and thrust, the Romans inflicted hideous wounds on their foes. The historian Livy records the horror felt by the Macedonians when they first saw the damage the Roman sword could do. It would not be much of an overstatement to say that the Spanish sword won Rome an empire.
During the Early and Middle Republic, the legion was a militia comprised of Roman citizens and raised only for specific campaigns, before being disbanded to allow the soldiers to return to their normal lives of farming. Not until the first century BCE did the Roman legion become a professional force of full-time soldiers who served for decades. In the Middle Republic, at the time of the battles of Cynoscephalae (198 BCE) and Pydna (167 BCE), the legion was commanded by senatorial aristocrats who saw military service and military command as a stepping stone to a political career or the culmination of political success. A consular army – that is, a force under the power of a consul, one of Rome’s two senior magistrates – typically contained two legions, supported by non-Roman auxiliary troops.
The nominal strength of a legion was 4,200 soldiers. Before the end of the second century BCE, the legion was divided into three lines based on age. The soldiers in the first line, the youngest men in the army, were called the hastati, and were equipped with the sword; a heavy javelin called the pilum, which could inflict great damage at medium range and was designed to penetrate an enemy’s shield and so render it unusable; and a broad and typically rectangular shield of around 10kg called the scutum, which was reinforced with a metal boss in the centre that could make it an offensive weapon in its own right. The soldiers of the second line were called the principes, and were equipped like the hastati. Finally, the third line was manned by the oldest soldiers, called the triarii. The triarii represented the last line of defence, and instead of the short sword and javelin, they were armed with a long thrusting spear, similar to that of a hoplite. All of these soldiers had other items of defensive equipment too, including a helmet that left the eyes and ears open to hear commands and see the ever-important standards in the thick of battle; a cuirass, of mail if a soldier had enough money, of lesser materials if not; a belt to secure the cuirass and protect the groin; and greaves.
These three lines were divided into thirty ‘maniples’, with ten maniples in each line. Scholars thus call the legion of this period the ‘manipular’ legion. A maniple of the first two lines was comprised of two ‘centuries’ of sixty men, each under the command of a centurion. The ten maniples of triarii contained only one century each. The maniples therefore amounted to 3,000 men. The remainder of the legion was made up of 1,200 light-armed skirmishers called velites, who were drawn from the poorest Romans eligible for military service and were stationed in front of the maniples to harass the enemy before the armies clashed in earnest. Every legion also had 300 Roman cavalrymen to serve as support on the flanks and fill other roles suited to speed and mobility. Roman armies were usually supplemented by many units of allied auxiliaries too, sometimes representing as many troops as were in the legions themselves. Allies tended to be allowed to fight in accordance with their own unique equipment and tactics, as was the case with the Greek allies of the Romans during the wars with Macedonia.
Unlike the phalanx, which used a continuous line to present a wall of shields and spears, the maniples of the legion left large gaps between each other. These gaps were staggered between the three lines, meaning that behind every gap in the first line was a maniple of the second line, and so on. Perhaps these gaps were used to funnel enemy soldiers into a narrow space to make them easier targets, but this is unclear. The strange formation of the manipular legion made for another major difference between the legion and phalanx, namely that the Romans kept two-thirds of their army in reserve at any given time, whereas the phalanx system allowed for virtually no reserve. Despite knowing a great deal about the different units in the Roman army, thanks largely to the Greek historian Polybius, we are still in the dark about many of its tactical nuances. What is fairly clear, however, is that if the legion ever had to fall back and rely on the defensive spears of the triarii, things had gone badly.
Phalanx vs Legion
In two battles covered by this book, Cynoscephalae and Pydna, the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion – the armies of vastly different military systems – clashed, and in both cases the legion prevailed. It is hard to imagine any force in the world resisting the charge of tightly packed Macedoniaian spearmen, but the Romans had one key advantage over the Macedonians: flexibility.
Each legionary, equipped with a large shield and steel sword, could hold his own in a hand-to-hand fight. In fact, few armies of any period had such excellent one-on-one fighters and expert swordsmen as the Roman legion. While the legion was divided into units – centuries, maniples and so on – each soldier individually could inflict great damage on the foe with his deadly sword, while protecting himself from knee to shoulder with his large scutum shield. The phalanx, on the other hand, required strict cohesion and a dense formation. The sight of thousands of spears being driven onward in unison would have been terrifying, but in tight quarters and without the safety of a close formation, there was little a soldier in the phalanx could do with such a long spear. A Macedonian’s backup weapon, hardly more than a dagger, was little comfort when faced with a Roman sword. It was imperative, therefore, that the phalanx fight on favourable ground, that is, on broad and flat plains allowing for the line to remain intact.
At both Cynoscephalae and Pydna, the Romans found struggling against the phalanx to be a daunting task. The legionaries attempted various measures to overcome the hedge of spears, including breaking the spear points off by hand, and trying to push the spears aside to get up close with individual Macedonians. What turned the tide of each battle, though, was the phalanx being forced to fight on rough and broken ground, where gaps inevitably formed. Small groups of Roman soldiers charged into these gaps, slicing up the Macedonians by attacking their unprotected back and sides. Perhaps Philip or Alexander, by using cavalry and light troops to their full potential as a complement to the phalanx, could have halted the march of the legions across the eastern Mediterranean. But the Macedonian successor kings, relying too much on the phalanx, were unable to cope with the mobile legionaries.
The End of the Roman Republic
The Late Roman Republic (c. 133-27 BCE) was characterized by political strife and civil war at Rome. By the end of this tumultuous time, Rome had transformed from a narrowly representative republic dominated by the Senate into an empire under the sole-rule of Augustus, the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar. Though the Republic was brought down by infighting amongst Rome’s elite, many of the key battles were fought in what is now Greece, leaving Greece devastated and impoverished. On the plains of Thessaly and Macedonia, and in the waters of the Ionian Sea off Greece’s western coast, tens of thousands of Romans and their allies killed and were killed.
The Roman Army of the Late Republic
The great battles fought at the end of the Republic were primarily clashes of Roman legion against Roman legion, setting these battles apart from those fought during the earlier period of Rome’s conquests. The tactical considerations were accordingly different for this later era. The legion itself had also undergone several important changes from earlier times, primarily in becoming a professional force and, by shifting from maniples to cohorts, gaining even more flexibility and versatility on the battlefield.
Starting with the consul Marius at the end of the second century BCE, the Roman legion grew increasingly professional. Soldiers were no longer drawn from the landowning classes, but rather from the poorer segments of the population that had few other career options. These professional soldiers served for decades in the legion, and were kept constantly under arms and in peak fighting condition. Because of the lengthy campaigns they fought, and various promises of land-grants and other goodies upon retirement, the soldiers of the Late Republican legions grew more loyal to their commanders, such as Pompey and Julius Caesar, than they were to Rome itself. The change of the legion from a citizen militia to a professional force was a major reason behind the fall of the Republic.
In terms of equipment, aside from some relatively minor changes, Late Republican legionaries were armed similarly to their forebears, with the Spanish sword, pilum, scutum and the range of other defensive equipment. A major change was the elimination of the thrusting spear of the triarii and the disappearance of velites from among the legion proper. By the time of Pharsalus (48 BCE) and Philippi (42 BCE) and possibly Chaeronea (86 BCE), all soldiers of the legion were equipped uniformly. The battlefield formation of the legion changed a great deal too. The three lines of maniples, while effective against the Macedonians, were still wanting in terms of flexibility, especially as the Romans faced many new types of campaigning beyond pitched battles. The updated legion was organized into ten ‘cohorts’ of three maniples each, and the centuries were expanded to include eighty men. Each cohort, therefore, was an independent fighting unit of 480 uniformly equipped soldiers that could be detached from and combined with other cohorts as the situation demanded. The most famous arrangement of cohorts on the battlefield was the quincunx, or ‘chequerboard’ formation, consisting of three lines of staggered cohorts. The Roman armies engaged in the Civil War battles of Pharsalus and Philippi were huge, consisting in the case of Philippi of well over a dozen legions on each side, and a staggering number of allies. Hundreds of thousands of Romans and their allies fought each other on these fields, with horrifying consequences for the Republic and for Greece.
Roman Naval Warfare
Unlike the seafaring Greeks, the Romans were supposedly landlubbers. Despite their reputation, though, Rome did come to maintain several fleets in key ports throughout the Mediterranean, and ships were a critical part of many Roman campaigns. The Romans first developed a proper navy in the third century BCE, when they came into conflict with the Carthaginians, themselves a famous naval power of Phoenician stock. The Phoenicians had provided the majority of ships and sailors for Xerxes’ fleet in 480 BCE. To confront the Carthaginians, the Romans built a fleet from scratch, at almost miraculous speed. Sailors were found throughout the territories of Rome and its allies, and rowers were trained on land as the ships were being built. With their new fleet, the Romans bested the Carthaginians in several battles, upending the balance of power at sea. As the Republic continued to expand to encompass the Mediterranean, fleets became a mainstay of the Roman military system, manned principally by non-Roman auxiliaries, but usually commanded by Roman officers.
Fig. i.6: Roman legionary soldiers from Trajan’s Column in Rome, 113 CE. Photo courtesy of Roger B. Ulrich, curator of trajans-column.org.
The Romans’ ships and naval tactics were more or less the same as the Greeks’: long galleys powered by oars were manoeuvred to ram the enemy’s galleys. The Romans used triremes, just as the Greeks did, but experimented with several other classes of ship too, including four- and five-banked ships (quadriremes and quinquiremes), and even larger ships with seven or more banks of oars. These larger vessels, however, fell out of fashion towards the end of the Republic. At Actium in 31 BCE, the only Roman naval battle covered by this book, Octavian’s two-banked biremes, also called liburnians, were decisive because of their speed and manoeuvrability. Antony’s larger ships, cumbersome and under-manned, performed poorly.
Ever the engineers, the Romans brought some curious innovations to naval warfare to supplement the standard ram attack. Against the Carthaginians, the Romans used the corvus, or ‘crow’s beak’, which was a plank on a swivel and equipped with a spike, lowered to grip an enemy ship and serve as a gangway for marines. Creative as it was, the corvus fell out of use by the Late Republic. Agrippa, Octavian’s military genius, deployed a type of grappling hook that could ensnare an enemy ship, dragging it closer to the waiting arrows of marines. Towers were also often erected near a ship’s prow to serve as a missile platform for archers. The most obvious way, however, that the Romans differed from the Greeks and the Carthaginians was their preference to board enemy ships whenever possible, turning a naval battle into a land battle on deck, where the Roman marines could shine.
Further Reading
–Campbell, J.B., and Trittle, L.A. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World (Oxford, 2013).
An up-to-date and
accessible overview of ancient warfare, with contributions from leading scholars on a variety of topics.
–Erdkamp, P. (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Army (Malden, 2007).
A collection of relatively short and readable chapters on virtually every aspect of the Roman Army, from Rome’s beginnings to the Late Empire.
–Kagan, D., and Viggiano, G.F. (eds), Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 2013).
The best resource on the debate surrounding the nature of hoplite warfare, with contributions from the leading voices in the debate.
–Lendon, J.E., Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven, 2006).
Provides a succinct and readable history of developments in the art of warfare in the Greek and Roman world, focusing on the cultural factors underlying battlefield tactics.
–Pritchett, W.K., Studies in Ancient Greek Topography (7 vols) (Berkeley, 1965-1989).
Pritchett’s groundbreaking and exhaustive work on Greek topography, especially pertaining to warfare, provides the scholarly inspiration for this guidebook.
–Pritchett, W.K., The Greek State at War (5 vols) (Berkeley, 1971-1991).
These magisterial volumes, written by one of the greatest Greek military historians of the twentieth century, cover virtually every aspect of Greek warfare and provide exhaustive lists of primary sources.
–Sabin, P.A.G., van Wees, H, and Whitby, M. (eds), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (2 vols) (Cambridge, 2007).
An essential reference, in two volumes, of ancient warfare, with contributions from leading scholars on a variety of topics.
–Warry, J., Warfare in the Classical World (Norman, OK, 1995).
This book for general readers offers splendid drawings and reconstructions of many ancient Greek and Roman troop types, tactical formations and battles.