Chapter 10
Introduction
The plains of Boeotia served in antiquity like a funnel for armies moving between broad Thessaly and the major centres of southern Greece. Not surprisingly, many battles were fought here over the centuries, heralding the rise and fall of great powers. On the very same patch of ground at the extreme western edge of Boeotia, approaching the foothills of Parnassus and below the small city of Chaeronea, two great clashes took place some two-and-a-half centuries apart. The first, in 338 BCE, saw the Macedonian strongman and military genius Philip II bring an end to the era of the independent Greek polis. Philip’s more famous son, Alexander the Great, parlayed his father’s victory over and forced unification of the Greeks into a crusade against the Persian Empire and ushered in the Hellenistic Era. In the second battle, in 86 BCE, Sulla, a precursor of Julius Caesar as a dictator of Rome, backed by a loyal and skilled army, cemented Roman control in Greece by defeating the forces of Mithradates, a king from Asia Minor who was a thorn in Rome’s side for decades. Today the battlefield still bears several evocative marks of its bloody past.
Directions to the Site
Modern Thiva (ancient Thebes) is the best base from which to visit the many important battle sites in Boeotia treated in this book (Chaeronea, Coronea, Delium, Leuctra and Plataea). Though not visited by very many tourists, Thiva is a site of major historical significance. Thebes was the mythological home of Oedipus and thus the setting of several of the most important Greek tragedies, and the modern town sits atop a major Bronze Age settlement and houses a newly opened archaeological museum that is one of Greece’s best. The centre of the town is actually quite charming, with a couple of decent and reasonably priced hotels, and a pedestrian area bordered by tavernas and cafes. Chaeronea is about a forty-five-minute drive from modern Thiva. The site of Coronea is about halfway between them, so it makes sense to consider both battles in a single day. From Thiva, head west on the main highway between Thiva and Livadia, following the signs for Livadia. After about 40km, where the road forks left towards Livadia and right towards Lamia, take the road for Lamia. After about 8km, you will arrive at the village of modern Cheronia. The famous Lion monument is visible to the left of the road just as you enter the village. The museum is behind the lion.
Historical Outline of the Battle – 338 BCE
In 359 BCE, a young man named Philip succeeded to the throne of Macedonia, a sprawling, fragmented backwater in what is today northern Greece. Known to history as Philip of Macedonia, he proved up to the task of uniting the Macedonians for the first time under a single ruler and behind a single purpose, forging perhaps the first national state in Europe. Though Philip and the Macedonians were disdained by the southern Greeks as semi-barbarians, Philip, over the course of two decades, methodically expanded his influence over all of northern Greece and Thrace, bringing many Greek city-states, or poleis (singular: polis), under his authority. He also became a key player in the various squabbles and conflicts among the Greeks of the central and southern mainland, especially a series of disagreements over the sacred site of Delphi called the ‘Sacred Wars’. Philip never missed an opportunity to expand his own sphere of influence by shrewd diplomacy, trickery, outright bribery and, if necessary, warfare.
Philip did not often need to fight, but when he did fight, he proved very good at it. And he made sure that he had the right tools for the job. The Macedonians did not live in poleis, and thus did not have a tradition of hoplite warfare, the famous mode of fighting of the Greek polis. Macedonian aristocrats rode to battle on their prized horses, but Macedonia had little in the way of a standing army or regular military organization of any kind. Ingenuity and a whole lot of money (the Macedonians came to control several lucrative mines) allowed Philip to build a peerless fighting force from the ground up. He regularized the Macedonian horsemen into a crack force of heavy cavalry, charging in the wedge formation utilized by the Thessalians and Thracians. He also gathered less wealthy Macedonians into a new kind of phalanx, one making use of long spears called sarissas, in some cases twice as long as a hoplite spear and wielded with two hands. This Macedonian phalanx was even more unwieldy than the hoplite phalanx, but it only had one job: to hold the enemy in place, just like an anvil, while the heavy cavalry delivered the primary offensive strike, like a hammer. Finally, he made full use of light-armed troops, both infantry skirmishers and light cavalry, to soften an enemy before the clash of armies, and to cover his flanks. Philip crafted the world’s first combined-arms force, and populated it with professional soldiers, kept in arms at all times and drilled relentlessly on the parade ground. Philip’s was a new type of warfare, one that would prove too much for even the best Greek citizen-soldiers. (For more on the Macedonian and Greek armies, see this book’s introduction.)
By the mid-fourth century BCE, the Greek poleis had been in a continuous state of war with each other for the better part of a century. Though at any given time one state might predominate, such as Sparta at the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 or Thebes in the 360s, no one state was able to unite the Greeks within a single Greek coalition or empire. Many thinkers, especially Isocrates of Athens, made the case that the Greeks should stop fighting each other and instead unite to combat foreign enemies, especially the hated Persian Empire. The Greek poleis, though, valued their independence too much and continuous conflict had settled in as the rule. It was only a matter of time before a strongman like Philip emerged to take advantage of the fractious Greeks.
Some saw it coming. Demosthenes, the greatest of Greek orators, urged the Athenians in many famous speeches over the course of several years to stand up to Philip and check his expansionist programme before it was too late. Some Athenians, such as Demosthenes’ arch rival Aeschines, actively supported Philip and attempted to forge an alliance with him. Others just ignored the Macedonian threat and went about their business. But in 338, when Philip, as part of his intervention in yet another ‘Sacred War’, suddenly showed up in central Greece and seized the city of Elateia, only a few days’ march from Athens, Demosthenes convinced his fellow citizens that drastic action was necessary. Demosthenes led an embassy to Thebes, at many points in Greek history a bitter enemy of Athens, to convince the Thebans to form a coalition with Athens to fight it out with Philip. The Thebans agreed, marshalling their famously tough hoplites, including the 300 members of the Sacred Band, an elite fighting force – allegedly comprised of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers – that trained continuously at state expense. The Athenians gathered their own hoplites, the amateur citizen-soldiers who formed the backbone of the military, and marched to join the Thebans in Boeotia. Some other Greek states provided soldiers too. It was one of the grandest coalitions since the Persian Wars. The Greek gauntlet was dropped, and Philip accepted the challenge, moving to meet the Greeks where they had taken up positions along the narrow plain in front of the polis of Chaeronea, the main corridor into Boeotia and southern Greece.
Diodorus tells us that Philip had 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, a slight advantage over the Greeks, who probably numbered around 30,000 (though other sources say the Greeks outnumbered Philip – ultimately it is impossible to assess exactly the relative strengths of the forces). Beyond numbers, the course of the battle itself must be reconstructed by scattered references here and there throughout the sources. No ancient author gives an account of the battle that is remotely satisfactory on its own. But by employing a little bit of detective work, scholars have developed a reasonable picture as to how the battle unfolded.
The Greek coalition was situated defensively on the southern side of the plain, guarding the Kerata Pass that afforded the quickest access to Lebadeia (modern Livadia). The Athenians held the left wing, towards the city of Chaeronea itself, and placed light troops on the hills to their flank. The Greek allies stood in the centre of the line, while the Thebans occupied the right, with the Sacred Band on the extreme right anchored on the marshy ground along the Kephissos River. The Greek line extended across the plain along a south-west-north-east direction. The Kerata Pass opened into the plain directly behind the Greek centre, so the Greeks were positioned in the most logical spot in case a retreat through the pass became necessary.
Chaeronea Map 1. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Philip led his Macedonians into the plain in a battle line that stretched roughly along a north-south axis, forming an acute angle with the Greeks, with the Macedonian right and the Athenians facing each other in the angle itself, while a larger gap extended between the Macedonian left and the Thebans on the Greek right. Diodorus tells us that Philip led one wing, and placed his 18-year-old son, Alexander, on the other, surrounded by Macedonia’s most seasoned generals. Since Plutarch tells us that Alexander fought the Sacred Band, the young prince must have been on the Macedonian left. And since we are told by Polyaenus that Philip led at the head of his infantry, Alexander likely led the Macedonian cavalry. Thus, the Macedonian line consisted of Philip and the 30,000 soldiers of the Macedonian phalanx on the right wing and in the centre, and Alexander and the 2,000-strong Macedonian cavalry on the left wing. The Greek and Macedoniaian battle lines each extended over a distance of nearly 3km.
It seems that a ruse induced the Athenians to advance against the hedge of spears presented by the Macedonian phalanx. The Athenian hoplites were certainly tough, but they were inexperienced, having spent most of their lives as farmers rather than soldiers. Philip, on the other hand, commanded a professional force that he drilled constantly. This gave the Macedonian king a singular advantage. Polyaenus, a later compiler of ingenious stratagems, tells us that at Chaeronea Philip ordered his phalanx to march backwards, feigning a retreat in the face of the Athenians. Many discount Polyaenus’ account, coming as it does centuries after the battle itself. But there is no reason to throw out such a vital piece of information, one of the few that come down to us. A feigned retreat was an extraordinarily complex manoeuvre to execute, one well out of reach of the Athenian amateurs on the plains of Boeotia that day. The Spartans had pulled off such feats in the past, but they were the exception rather than the rule among Greek hoplites. Seeing the Macedonians backing up before them, the Athenians were overjoyed and began to advance. In their excitement, the Athenians lost most of their cohesion, and, even more grievously, overextended the entire Greek line, causing a gap to form between the Thebans on the right and the allies in the centre. The Thebans were anchored against the Kephissos, and they could not afford to move left to keep up with the Athenians for fear that they would be outflanked by the Macedonian cavalry. It is tempting to imagine that the professional warriors in the Sacred Band recognized at once what was happening, but were powerless to stop it.
Chaeronea Map 2: Greek and Macedonian positions before the battle, 338 BCE. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Alexander struck first. Seeing the gap opening up in the Greek lines, he charged at the head of the Macedonian cavalry. Hoplites are only able to fight effectively in dense formation, presenting a solid wall of shields to the enemy. The gap in the line left a section of the Greeks vulnerable on their flanks, a weakness deftly exploited by the heavy-armed Macedonian horsemen. Unlike other ancient cavalry forces that relied on their speed and manoeuvrability to swarm opponents and strike with missile weapons like the arrow and javelin, the Macedonian cavalry were more akin to medieval lancers, equipped with a long thrusting spear and designed to ride the enemy down. They also typically rode in a wedge formation, with most of the horses following the lead horse into an ever-widening gap in the enemy lines as men fell and died by lance thrusts and under the hooves of horses. The shock of the cavalry’s collision against the Greek hoplites, after galloping for quite a distance across the plain, must have been devastating.
Several scholars have recently argued that Alexander led infantry in the battle, rather than cavalry. Apparently, horses will not charge into disciplined ranks of infantry, or so current majority opinion has it. It is therefore highly unlikely, these scholars contend, that the cavalry played a decisive role. This revisionist account of the battle suffers from two weaknesses. First of all, it leaves no room for the 2,000 horsemen that Diodorus tells us were present, one of the very few hard numbers we are given by the ancient sources. Second, there are many examples from antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern period of cavalry defeating well-disciplined infantry. Moreover, when considering the Theban phalanx, we should not have in mind medieval Swiss pikemen wielding massive two-handed weapons, which could be braced against the ground to skewer charging horses. The Swiss were certainly a formidable adversary for cavalry. The Thebans, by contrast, held heavy shields in their left hands and thus brandished their 2.5m-long spears overhand in only their right hands. Nowhere in the ancient sources do we hear of hoplites bracing their spears against the ground to receive a cavalry charge. Standard hoplite equipment and practice, while sometimes effective against light-armed horses typical of the Persians, were ill-suited to repelling the sheer weight of flesh and metal inherent in a charge of the Macedonian heavy horse. It is true that ancient horsemen were without stirrups, but skilled riders are trained to grip the horse with their thighs right before the moment of impact, allowing them to drive their lances home. Furthermore, recent anthropological work on the skeletons of the Sacred Band, found underneath the Lion monument, strongly indicates that many of the Thebans’ wounds were inflicted from above, that is, from horseback. In any case, Alexander probably exploited a gap in the Theban line, meaning that the horses could have charged into the unprotected sides of infantrymen struggling to maintain cohesion. There is little reason to discount the traditional reconstruction of the battle that includes an Alexander-led cavalry charge.
On the Macedonian right, Philip followed up his son’s charge by halting the retreat of his phalanx at a high point, perhaps the bank of a river that has since disappeared into the plain. He then advanced in perfect order against the bewildered Athenians. The sarissas of the Macedonian phalanx were much longer than the Greek hoplite spears. The first five rows of the Macedonian formation could extend their weapons beyond their own front row, confronting each Greek hoplite with five massive iron points. The discipline and skill of the Macedonian phalanx, coupled with its clear advantage in offensive equipment, can be seen in the casualty figures from the battle: more than 1,000 Athenians were killed, a stunningly large number. By retreating in an orderly fashion, Philip had lured the Athenian farmer-soldiers to their own slaughter. He also demonstrated once-and-for-all the superiority of the Macedonian phalanx over the traditional amateur hoplite phalanx of the Greek city-states.
Once Alexander’s charge broke into the Theban lines, and once Philip turned his phalanx against the disordered Athenians, the battle was effectively over. The Greek coalition, the most splendid of its kind since the Persian wars a centuryand-a-half earlier, had been defeated. But on the Macedonian left Alexander was not yet done with his work. The 300 members of the Sacred Band refused to yield. Conjuring up images of the Spartan 300 at Thermopylae, the 300 Thebans are said to have held fast and died to a man. Surrounded by horse-mounted warriors, the Thebans were methodically cut to pieces by swords and spears, to which the skeletal remains found beneath the Lion monument grimly attest. In addition to their 1,000 dead, the Athenians lost 2,000 men as prisoners, and the Thebans had many killed and captured too, though the sources don’t tell us how many. But by far the most famous casualty of the battle was the Greek polis itself. No longer would the Greeks have any meaningful independence. Philip was now their king, in deed if not in word. The sources disagree how Philip celebrated this accomplishment. Some say he danced over the corpses of the enemy in drunken revelry; others that he wept when he saw the bodies of the Sacred Band, all dead in the very spot they had been stationed, with all their wounds in the front, received while boldly facing a superior enemy.
Though Philip was assassinated just two years later, Alexander took over his father’s war-machine and, with a pacified Greece at his rear, he crossed into Asia. Within a few short years he had conquered the Persian Empire, leading Macedonian arms to Egypt, Iran, central Asia, Pakistan and parts of India. The world was forever changed, far beyond the traditional borders of Greece. Chaeronea was the herald of that change.
Chaeronea Map 3: The course of the battle, 338 BCE. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Historical Outline of the Battle – 86 BCE
Of all the foreign threats Rome faced during the period of the Late Republic, Mithradates VI of Pontus (whose name is often rendered in its Latin form, Mithridates) was the most persistent. King of the region of Turkey along the southern shore of the Black Sea, Mithradates claimed descent both from the sixth-century BCE Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great and from the Greeks. Despite the fact that Turkey, or Asia Minor, was firmly within the Roman sphere of influence in the early first century BCE, Mithradates set out to forge his own empire. As Plutarch says, Mithradates, ruling from the great city of Pergamum, distributed ‘wealth, provinces, and kingdoms to his friends’, acting like the mighty Persian kings of centuries past. As if wresting territorial control from Rome wasn’t enough of a provocation, in an episode known as ‘Asiatic Vespers’ in 88 BCE, Mithradates masterminded an unthinkable massacre. He urged the native inhabitants of cities throughout the region of Asia to rise up on the same night and murder any Romans they could come across, including men, women and children. Tens of thousands allegedly died in an orgy of terrible violence. Mithradates also had ambitions beyond Asia. He sent his talented general, Archelaus, to stir up rebellion in mainland Greece, officially the Roman provinces of Macedonia and Achaea. Rome had to respond, but in its response it unleashed a series of ambitious generals who came to threaten the very fabric of the Roman Republic for which they were fighting. The first of these generals was Sulla, who met Archelaus on the plain of Chaeronea in the spring of 86.
How Sulla came to lead the Roman army that fought Archelaus is one of the defining stories of the Late Republic. Sulla had been appointed by the Senate in 88 BCE to lead the expedition to the east, but the partisans of Marius, another great general who was an arch-rival of Sulla, managed to have Sulla’s command revoked and transferred to Marius. By now, because of nearly continuous campaigning under men like Marius and Sulla, Roman soldiers were more loyal to their particular commanders than to Rome itself. Their commanders, after all, were the ones who promised pay and tracts of land after the campaigns were over. Soldiers in the first century BCE were often poor and depended upon the army as the only possible source of revenue and livelihood, let alone the prospect of becoming landowners. Charismatic and resourceful generals, therefore, could command an army’s loyalty to such an extent that the army became a virtual private mercenary force. Upon hearing the news that Marius’ partisans had succeeded, Sulla hurried to join his army, called upon the loyalty of the soldiers and marched on Rome itself. Marius and his allies were forced to steal out of the city, and the Senate, under considerable duress, duly conferred the command against Mithradates back upon Sulla. Sulla had won, but he irreparably damaged the Republic in the process. Less than forty years later, another jilted general, Julius Caesar, followed Sulla’s example by marching his own army on Rome, sounding the Republic’s death knell and inaugurating two decades of ruinous civil war.
Mithradates’ general, Archelaus, had been successful in inciting the mainland Greeks to revolt from Rome. The Romans took particularly poorly the news that Athens – a great city in the imagination if no longer in actual fact – had joined Mithradates’ cause, and refused to budge even after the Romans had landed in its territory. Once in Greece, therefore, Sulla laid siege to the city of Pericles and Plato. When Sulla and his forces found a way into the city, he unleashed indiscriminate slaughter, causing the streets and the Agora, Athens’ famous marketplace, to run with rivers of blood, according to Plutarch. After taking the city, Sulla also sacked the port of the Piraeus, setting fire to nearly everything, including the Arsenal of Philo, an architectural marvel that had held equipment for Athens’ navy.
As symbolically important as Athens was, its territory was arid and produced too little fodder for Sulla’s army. He therefore moved into the broad plains of Boeotia, meeting up with a subordinate commander named Hortensius in the flat territory extending before Elateia, a strategically placed city lying along the main route between northern and southern Greece and whose occupation by Philip had terrified the Greeks 250 years earlier. Plutarch – our main source for the battle, who relied on the accounts of Sulla himself and was a native of Chaeronea to boot – tells us that the Roman force amounted to less than 15,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry. The forces of Mithradates, led by Archelaus, who had been joined by another general named Taxiles, numbered some 100,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry and ninety-four scythed chariots, a terrifying weapon with razor-sharp blades extending from the wheel-hubs. These numbers, indicating that Archelaus’ army outnumbered the Romans by an order of magnitude, are certainly exaggerated. Appian, our other main source, tells us that the Romans had a little less than a third of the numbers of the enemy, which seems more reasonable if still slightly exaggerated. In any case, the Romans were greatly outnumbered by an army consisting of a multilingual coalition from several nations within Mithradates’ growing empire. The Asians’ superiority in cavalry was especially troubling in the wide plain of Elateia. Fortunately for Sulla, a great number of the enemy fell to ravaging cities throughout the region instead of attacking the Roman army directly. Archelaus did, however, try to occupy the highpoint of the acropolis of Parapotamioi, which could have cut the Romans off from their supply lines. Sulla accordingly sent troops to this strongpoint on the double and managed to occupy it before Archelaus. Repulsed from his first objective, Archelaus turned towards Chaeronea, a point further to the south that also promised to hem in Sulla. It was in front of Chaeronea that the decisive clash took place.
Archelaus intended to take the city of Chaeronea itself, but a group of Chaeroneans in Sulla’s force begged the general to protect their city. Sulla duly dispatched the Chaeroneans along with an entire legion under the command of Gabinius. The Romans arrived before Archelaus and occupied the fortified city. Failing to achieve his initial objective, Archelaus camped in a well-protected place on the northern edge of the Plain of Chaeronea, between the slopes of Mt Hedylion and Mt Akontion to the north and east respectively, and the Kephissos River to the south and west. Plutarch says that his fortification works were impressive enough that the region was known as ‘Archelaus’ even in Plutarch’s day. Entering the plain himself, Sulla camped to the west of his enemy, on the opposite bank of the Kephissos. Since he had the advantage in numbers, Archelaus decided to divide his forces in order better to trap Sulla and cut off his lines of supply and communication. He sent a detachment from Pontus to occupy a hill called Thourion to the west of the city of Chaeronea, on the southern side of the plain. Though the ancient sources are very pro-Roman and give the impression that Sulla brilliantly orchestrated things exactly as he wished, the historian N.G.L. Hammond argues that Archelaus had really outmanoeuvred Sulla. Sulla had already been forced to divide his forces once in order to occupy Chaeronea, and was now presented with confronting a much larger army in the northern part of the plain, a vast open area amenable to cavalry and chariots, while a large detachment of enemy troops threatened from the southern edge of the plain too. There was a great chance that no matter what Sulla did, he would face a devastating attack in his flanks or rear.
Sulla decided to take advantage of Chaeronea’s strong position and reconnect with the legion under Gabinius. He took a gamble and crossed the plain. To protect himself, he stationed one legion and two cohorts, a total of around 5,000 men, under the officer Murena to serve as a rearguard against counter movements by Archelaus. As to whether Archelaus made a move at this point, which would have made sense given Sulla’s vulnerability as he crossed the plain, Plutarch is silent. Given that once Sulla reached Chaeronea he deployed his forces into line of battle, it is reasonable to assume that Archelaus had himself begun to marshal his forces as well. When Sulla arrived at Chaeronea, he turned his force into line of battle by wheeling east to take command of the right wing, while Murena, who had been at the rear of the column of march, now occupied the left wing of a battle line that stretched east-west. Sulla placed two other officers, Galba and Hortensius, with reserve cohorts in the rear, along the high ground.
Sulla was in a vulnerable position. He was about to fight a battle in a broad plain against a far larger enemy, and the Pontic detachment still occupied Thourion to the left of the Roman line and threatened a flank attack. Fortunately for Sulla, who did have the nickname ‘lucky’, two enterprising Chaeroneans informed him that they could cross a ridge extending from Chaeronea to Thourion and make a surprise attack against the Pontic contingent from the rear. These two Chaeroneans, named Homoloichos and Anaxidamos, with a group of soldiers traversed the ridge, which probably took around half an hour, and appeared suddenly on the high ground behind the Pontic detachment’s position, which was caught completely off guard. The Roman allies rushed down towards Thourion and began pelting the enemy troops with stones. For their part, the Pontic soldiers panicked and fell afoul of one another, even impaling themselves on their own spears. Plutarch says 3,000 of them perished. The survivors rushed headlong down the slopes of Thourion towards the relative safety of Archelaus’ battle line, which was by now deployed in the field, across from the Romans. Those of the Pontic contingent that managed to get past the troops of Murena on the Roman left, slammed into Archelaus’ right wing, creating havoc among the Asiatic troops. Sulla saw that this was as good a time to attack as any.
Chaeronea Map 4: Roman and Macedonian positions before the battle, 86 BCE. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
Sulla led his army across the plain quickly in order to come to grips with his opponents before the dreaded scythed-chariots could build up any momentum for a charge. Given the reduced space, the chariots reached the Roman lines at far less than full speed, and were easily handled by the amused Romans. In the long history of novelty weapons in the ancient world, disciplined armies more often than not rendered even the most fearsome charges of elephants, scythed-chariots and other terrors ineffective in actual combat. The value of such weapons, it would seem, was primarily psychological. Drawing close to the enemy, the front ranks of the Roman centre threw down their heavy javelins, the pila (singular: pilum), drew their short swords and came to grips with the long spears of Archelaus’ troops, who seem to have been equipped much as the Macedonian phalanx. This was no ordinary phalanx, however. Archelaus had freed thousands of slaves in Greece, doubtlessly eager to wound and kill their former masters, and equipped them as heavy infantry. Fifteen thousand of these freed slaves formed the front ranks of Archelaus’ centre against which the Roman swordsmen now fought. The slaves surprised the Romans by fighting with exceptional ferocity and bravery, and the Romans had a tough time of it. We gain a valuable glimpse of the tactics of the Roman legion in Plutarch’s description of this clash. The front-rank Roman swordsmen failed to crush the phalanx for quite some time. Only the fire-bolts and pila thrown by the rear ranks of Romans finally softened the phalanx enough to allow the Romans to break the formation. The scene must have been terrible: Roman soldiers armed with short swords hacked and slashed away in the midst of the enemy’s long pikes, while flaming missiles and heavy iron-tipped pila rained from above, killing and wounding the ex-slaves until they could no longer maintain cohesion.
At this point, Archelaus brought to bear his greater numbers by extending his right wing, where he was personally in command, in order to outflank the much smaller Roman line on its left, where Murena was in charge. Hortensius, with his reserve cohorts, sped behind the Roman line in order to reinforce Murena, but was repulsed by 2,000 of Archelaus’ cavalry and was forced against the high ground at the southern edge of the plain, close to Thourion. Sulla rushed from his right wing, which had not yet come into contact with the enemy, in order to aid Hortensius. Now the critical point of the battle arrived. Archelaus saw the massive cloud of dust sent into the air by the movement of Sulla and the troops with him, and guessed what had happened. He left Hortensius on the heights, and sped himself behind his own army in order to attack the Roman right, now weakened by the loss of Sulla’s contingent. For his part, Sulla perceived Archelaus’ action and the threat it posed to the Roman army, and decided to return to his right. He ordered Hortensius to stay on the left to aid Murena, who had now come under attack by the ‘Bronze Shields’, an elite unit under the command of Taxiles. With one of Hortensius’ cohorts with him, Sulla returned to his original place in the line.
The Roman right, seeing their charismatic commander returning with reinforcements, took heart and punched through the enemy line. The enemy fell apart, fleeing in disorder and panic north to the mountains that bordered the plain. Victory on his right assured, Sulla rushed back to help Murena, who had already achieved his own victory against the Bronze Shields and was turning the enemy to flight in that quarter as well. The rout became general, and Archelaus’ soldiers were cut down in horrendous numbers. Plutarch says that only 10,000 of the Asiatic soldiers survived, out of well over 100,000. Exaggeration aside, there was surely a great slaughter of Mithradates’ grand army assembled for the conquest of Greece. Sulla set up two trophies on the field of battle, one where he had first turned the enemy and another on Thourion where his Chaeronean allies had initiated the slaughter of the enemy by surprising and dislodging the Pontic detachment. The latter trophy has actually been found, with the names of Homoloichos and Anaxidamos still visible on it.
Sulla finished off the forces of Archelaus shortly afterwards at the nearby city of Orchomenos. Though his ambition to take mainland Greece was unfulfilled, Mithradates kept fighting the Romans and their generals for decades, only to be finally defeated by Pompey, the legendary rival of Julius Caesar. After he returned home with Greece behind him, smouldering but in Roman hands, Sulla made himself dictator and set about rearranging Rome’s constitution. In a surprising move, he voluntarily stepped down from power after only two years, but he had set a precedent – by marching on Rome and claiming absolute political authority through force of arms – that other ambitious generals all too happily followed in the coming decades.
Chaeronea Map 5: The course of the battle, 86 BCE. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
The Battle Site Today
The natural place to begin an exploration of the battlefield is at the Lion of Chaeronea (N38° 29.697"; E022° 50.898") and the adjacent museum.
The Lion itself has been dated stylistically to around the period of the battle of 338 BCE, and, following the testimony of Pausanias, has generally been associated with the mass grave of the Theban Sacred Band. Over a century ago, the enclosure atop which the Lion sits was excavated, revealing 254 skeletons stacked in seven rows, a number strikingly similar to the Sacred Band’s canonical membership of 300. Strigils – the tools used to scrape oil off the skin of athletes – and other accoutrements were found as well. The skeletal remains offer a chilling portrait of the battle in which the warriors of the Sacred Band were cut down to a man by Alexander’s cavalry. Many of the bones reveal wounds, including gruesome evidence of blows to the head from the butt-spikes of spears and massive sword cuts likely sustained by infantrymen fighting a higher, mounted enemy. Pausanias says that the image of the Lion was meant to convey the courage of the men buried under it, but it does not mark the spot where the Thebans were stationed during the battle, since they were on the Greek right at the other end of the plain. The Lion, though, does provide a useful marker for the battle, since the Greek left would have been just to the east of the monument. Philip’s false retreat was likely checked in the plain just to the north of the Lion, from which spot he commenced his charge against the disordered Athenians. The Lion therefore serves as a general marker for the Macedonian right and the Greek left. Polyaenus says that Philip reached a high point before he charged the Athenians, but no high point is now visible in this part of the plain. It is possible that in antiquity one of the several rivers flowing down into the plain, which now disappear into the broad agricultural land, had banks substantial enough to give Philip an advantage.
Fig. 10.1: The Lion of Chaeronea. Authors’ photo.
Just behind the Lion is the small museum of Chaeronea (€2 entrance fee at the time of our visit), which houses various finds from the area from all periods of antiquity, but in particular those from the two mass graves of the battle of 338. As you enter the museum, the left exhibit case in the atrium holds the Theban finds unearthed beneath the Lion, while that on the right holds finds from the Macedonian grave across the plain, including massive sarissa blades, swords, javelin points and other weapons. As of the time of writing, the skeletal remains of the Sacred Band were not visible to the public.
Continuing through the village from the Lion and museum, follow the signs for the ancient theatre leading to the left, to the hills at the south-western edge of the village. Several rows of stone seats from the ancient theatre are visible, as are the walls of the ancient acropolis, rising sharply behind the theatre. It is worth ascending to the high points of the theatre (N 38° 29.650"; E022° 50.502"), and even to the acropolis if you are up for a climb, since this high vantage point affords a good view of the entire plain and battlefield.
Looking almost due east across the plain, in the near distance you can make out the clump of trees surrounding the Lion and the museum, and far beyond that, in the centre of the plain close to the Kephissos River, there is another prominent clump of trees, which marks the spot of the Macedonian mass grave. The battle lines of 338 extended roughly from the Lion to the Macedonian grave, and a view from the theatre provides an excellent sense of the scale involved in two armies stretching nearly 3km. There are no good roads approaching the Macedonian grave, but the road extending to the north directly across from the Lion will take you across the plain to a bridge over the modern railway, where there is a better view of the grave. The monument can be approached on foot along the tracks, but do use caution. Just past the railway, the road also crosses the Kephissos, a river large enough still to hold considerable water in the height of summer.
Fig. 10.2: View of the battlefield of 338 BCE, looking northeast from the ancient theatre. Authors’ photo.
Looking north from the theatre, past the western slope of Mt Akontion, Mt Hedylion rises in the distance, some 3.5km away across the Kephissos, forming the extreme northern edge of the plain. The area between the slopes of Hedylion and Akontion contained the camp of Archelaus, Mithradates’ general in 86 BCE. Sulla’s camp was in the northern part of the plain, to the west of Archelaus and on the near bank of the Kephissos. The battle of 86 took place in the broad stretch of the plain between Archelaus’ camp and Chaeronea, with the armies arrayed roughly north-west to south-east. 1,500 metres to the west of the theatre, a ridge is visible extending into the plain. This is Thourion (N38° 29.906"; E022° 49.482"), mentioned by Plutarch as the place where the two Chaeronean allies of Sulla, Homoloichos and Anaxidamos, were able to ambush and slaughter a sizeable part of Archelaus’ army, bringing about the general clash of the two great forces. Plutarch, a native of Chaeronea, says that after the battle, Sulla set up one of his two victory trophies on Thourion, since this ambush was so important to his overall victory. The precise identification of this hill with Thourion was confirmed in 1990 when John Camp, the director of the Agora excavations in Athens, and several students of the American School of Classical Studies found the remains of Sulla’s victory trophy here, complete with an inscription of the names of the two Chaeroneans. They also found the rough fortification works hastily constructed by Archelaus’ men stationed on the hill. Thourion can be reached by heading west out of modern Cheronea on the main road to Lamia, and then turning south along the rough farm road at the base of the hill. The road extends to a small white church on a saddle to the east of the hill, from which the summit of Thourion can be ascended on foot. Sulla’s men reached Thourion by creeping along the ridge that extends behind the hill back to the acropolis of Chaeronea. The high ground extending between Chaeronea and Thourion is likely where the cohorts of Hortensius, one of Sulla’s commanders, were trapped by Archelaus’ cavalry, until Sulla came to the rescue.
Fig. 10.3: The Macedonian grave. Authors’ photo.
Fig. 10.4: View of the battlefield of 86 BCE, looking north from the Thourion hill. Authors’ photo.
Further Reading
Ancient Sources
–Demosthenes On The Crown 169-178
The greatest of all Attic orators, Demosthenes was a staunch opponent of Philip from early on, and masterminded the alliance between Athens and Thebes that made the stand at Chaeronea. This speech represents Demosthenes’ defence of his actions and policies surrounding Philip’s rise to power and the Battle of Chaeronea, and though it must be treated cautiously since it is hardly an unbiased source, the speech does represent an important contemporary perspective on the battle of 338.
–Diodorus of Sicily 16.84-87
Diodorus, writing in the first century BCE, used earlier sources that are now lost. His account of the battle of 338 and the events leading up to it are compressed and very vague, but he gives some valuable information, such as the fact that Philip led one wing of his army and placed Alexander in control of the other.
–Pausanias 9.40.10
Pausanias, writing a travel guide to Greece in the second century CE, provides a short description of Chaeronea, including a note about the Lion monument where the Theban Sacred Band was buried in 338.
–Plutarch Alexander 9.2
Writing in the first and second centuries CE, the biographer Plutarch, a native of Chaeronea and so well aware of the topography, tells us that in 338 Alexander was stationed near the Macedonian burial mound. He also says that Alexander ‘broke into’ the Theban Sacred Band, giving us an invaluable clue as to how the battle lines were drawn up.
–Polyaenus 4.2, 7
Writing in the second century CE, this compiler of ancient stratagems gives us several clues as to how the battle of 338 unfolded, including a description of Philip’s feigned retreat. Though sometimes inaccurate as a source, there is no reason to discard Polyaenus’ information pertaining to this battle.
–Plutarch Sulla 15-19
Plutarch provides the most detailed description of the battle of 86 and the associated topography. He seems to have based his account on Sulla’s own commentaries. The discovery of one of Sulla’s victory trophies has confirmed the accuracy of many of the details provided by Plutarch.
–Appian The Mithridatic Wars 41-45
Though often maligned by modern scholars, Appian, writing in the second century CE, is an important source for many periods, including the Mithradatic Wars, not covered by better-known authors. His treatment of the battle of 86 is fairly vivid, providing a complement to Plutarch.
Modern Sources
Books
–Hammond, N.G.L., Philip of Macedonia (Baltimore, 1994).
An accessible biography of the Macedonian king, written by one of the leading scholars of ancient Macedonia.
–Keaveney, A., Sulla: The Last Republican. Second Edition (London, 2005).
One of the only recent biographies of the controversial Roman leader, this book offers a general overview of Sulla, his politics and his military campaigns.
–Mayor, Adrienne, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy (Princeton, 2010).
A lively, popular account of Mithradates, with a very readable narrative of the battle of 86.
–Worthington, Ian, Philip II of Macedonia, (New Haven, 2008).
A recent and convincing treatment of Philip of Macedonia, emphasizing his importance for ancient history, particularly with respect to warfare.
Articles
–Camp, J., Ierardi, M., McInerney, J., Morgan, K., and Umholtz, G., ‘A Trophy from the Battle of Chaironeia of 86 BC’, American Journal of Archaeology 96 (1992), pp.443-55.
Details the discovery of one of Sulla’s victory trophies, confirming the topographical details given by Plutarch.
–Hammond, N.G.L., ‘The Two Battles of Chaeronea’, Klio 31 (1938), pp.187-218.
Though dated, still a thorough treatment of the topography of both battles, offering plausible reconstructions and maps.
–Liston, M., (forthcoming), chapter on bones in Brice volume.
A fascinating article examining the evidence of battle from skeletal remains, including those of the Sacred Band found beneath the Lion.
–Ma, J.T., ‘Chaironea 338: Topographies of Commemoration’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 128 (2008), pp.72-91.
A recent treatment of the battle of 338, offering a useful summary of earlier treatments, though disagreeing with the majority view as to how the battle should be reconstructed.
–Pritchett, W.K., ‘Observations on Chaironeia’, American Journal of Archaeology 62 (1958), pp.307-11.
Offers some important additions to Hammond’s treatment of the battles, based on first-hand examination of the terrain.
–Sears, M.A., and Willekes, C., ‘Alexander’s Cavalry Charge at Chaeronea, 338 BCE’, Journal of Military History 80 (2016), pp.1,017-35.
Addressing the arguments of those who suggest that Alexander led infantry instead of cavalry at the battle of 338, this article makes a case for the traditional interpretation of the battle, namely that Alexander did lead a successful cavalry charge against the Theban phalanx.