This is the first part of the third part of our four(ish) part (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb, IIIa) look at the triumph of the Roman legions in the third and second century over the Hellenistic armies of the heirs of Alexander. Last time, we looked at some of the operational and strategic advantages that the Roman legions possessed. Now we turn from theory to the actual combat record of these armies. We’ll begin not with the failure of Hellenistic armies, but with some of their notable third century successes, looking especially at situations where these armies succeeded at the things they are, in theory, supposed to be bad at.
The reader may be pardoned for assuming, at the end of the previous part, that we would pick up with Roman legions screaming towards a Hellenistic sarisa-phalanx,1 but before we get to those victories in the second century BC, I think it is worth pausing for a moment to look at the performance of the Macedonian phalanx in the third century. In particular, because I think it is possible to come away from a lot of discussion of Hellenistic armies with the somewhat simplistic assumption that these armies were such fragile, exquisite creatures that they could only fight on perfectly flat, featureless plains against entirely cooperating enemies.
And as we’ll see, that simply isn’t the case. Hellenistic armies can, and do, win battles on rough terrain. They can, and do, compel reluctant enemies into pitched battles on favorable terms. They can, and do, defeat tactically challenging adversaries like horse archers and withstand the crushing rush of Gallic warriors. In short, before we can see how Roman armies defeat this military system, it is worth noting that it worked and indeed, worked quite well.
So we are going to look at, in as much as the sources permit, some of the successes of Hellenistic armies in the third century. In particular, I want to cover the notion that Hellenistic armies could be easily foiled by even modestly rough terrain with the Cleomenean War (228-222), that they were easily beaten by horse archers, focusing on Antiochus III’s invasion of Parthia (210-208), before looking at the combination of tactical innovation and strategic weakness that defined Pyrrhus of Epirus’ campaign in Italy against the Romans (280-275). In order to keep that scope manageable (as much for my writing time as anything else) we’re going to split this into two sub-parts, dealing with hills and horse archers this week, and Pyrrhus of Epirus next week.
Now I should say at the outset that our sources for this period are quite bad. We often have very incomplete descriptions of these battles or conflicting accounts (often in much later sources). So our ability to reconstruct details may vary here, though we can be quite confident about outcomes. In particular, I want to note that my reading of the always confusing and often confused sources for Pyrrhus’ three major battles follows P.A. Kent, A History of the Pyrrhic War (2020) which is also absolutely the thing you should read if you want to understand the course of Rome’s famous war with Pyrrhus of Epirus. I’ve also leaned here in N.L. Overtoon’s Reign of Arrows (2020) and M.J. Taylor, Antiochus the Great (2013), the former with rather more reservations (some of which will come up) than the latter.
I want to note at the outset that while this seems like a tremendous amount to cover, in a lot of cases what we can say is sharply limited with how few sources we have. Often all we know about these battles is that the Hellenistic armies won them, or we have conflicting and confusing accounts from ancient sources. In many cases, the battle itself is beyond confident reconstruction. Nevertheless, Hellenistic armies are able to win in a wide variety of difficult circumstances and that is the core point here: this military system worked, generally speaking.
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The Hills of Sellasia
One of the common things said about the Macedonian phalanx and the Hellenistic armies it depended on is that it simply isn’t functional in rough terrain. And there’s not nothing to this. The claim is based on Polybius (18.31.5-12) who says as much, that ditches, ridges, trees and water will all disrupt the phalanx and that it is hard to find a battlefield without such features. That passage of Polybius, in turn, seemingly gets endlessly exaggerated and essentialized in the pipeline from specialist literature to textbook to introductory course to history teacher to high school course, leading to a popular perception that these formations just stop working on any terrain more broken up than a football pitch.
But this is a case where we ought to be fairly cautious of Polybius’ simplification here. Hellenistic armies (and their Macedonian phalanxes) do operate in rough terrain, sometimes using it to their advantage, sometimes being disadvantaged by it. Now, we ought not swing too hard the other way: the Roman legions do, as we’ll see, seem to be less hindered by broken ground. But this is a fighting system developed in ancient Macedonia and Greece (the former famously forested and both broken up by numerous streams, mountains and hills) rather than the vast open Eurasian Steppe. Dealing with rough terrain some of the time was always part of the bargain.
Terrain disruption and roughness seems to have been a factor in both Pyrrhus’ two victories (Heraclea in 280 and Asculum in 279). At Heraclea, Pyrrhus seems to have used the river Siris to his advantage, forcing the Romans to ford it to attack him (Plut. Pyrrh. 16.6; Zon. 8.3).2 At Asculum, the rough terrain prevents Pyrrhus’ elephants and cavalry from operating, but his infantry functioned just fine, leading to a bloody but inconclusive first engagement (Plut. Pyrrh. 21.5),3 whereas on the following day, Pyrrhus seizes the heights before the engagement to force the battle into more open space where his elephants could be decisive.
Perhaps an even more dramatic demonstration of the ability of large Hellenistic armies to manage difficult terrain when well-generaled is Antiochus III’s expedition against Arsaces II (210-208). Antiochus first surprises Arsaces by marching through the northern Iranian deserts (Polyb. 10.28), causing the later to retreat into Hyrcania, which required Antiochus to cross the difficult and defended mountain passes through the Alborz mountains. This is truly rough country, as Polybius notes (Polyb. 10.29.2-3), not just rolling hills but mountains with narrow passes. And here the composite nature of the Hellenistic army comes into play, because Antiochus is clearly well-furnished with light and medium troops to screen his advance. Arscaes’ forces blocked the main pass with wooden barricades, but Antiochus’ picked detachments ascended the heights around the pass to clear those defenses by flanking them, clearing the way for the main body (Polyb. 10.30) which remained strong enough to prevent the Parthians from resorting to a pitched battle to disperse the screening forces (as we’ll see in a moment).
But perhaps the most direct example of a Hellenistic army performing effectively on rough ground is the Battle of Sellasia, the final and decisive battle of the Cleomenean War (228-222), which I am of course also excited to talk about because it is one of the most thorough and complete drubbings the Spartans ever take.
The brief background is this: Cleomenes III (r. 235-222), one of the hereditary kings of Sparta, seems to have realized – as Agis IV (r. 245-241) had before him – that the Spartan system was in dire need of reform. At the same time, the Achaean League (a federal league of Greek states, a common sort of thing in this period), led by Aratus of Sicyon, was aggressively pushing to consolidate the Peloponnese. Cleomenes thus embarks both on a set of military campaigns against Aratus and the Achaeans as well as sidelining the ephors to institute an ambitious set of reforms, raising the number of Spartiates – which had been just a few hundred – to 4,000; these he armed in the Macedonian manner, at least according to Plutarch, with the sarisa (Plut. Cleom. 11.2), presumably rather than the lighter thureophoroi troops common in many poleis.4 He also seems to have been bankrolled by the Ptolemies (looking to stir up trouble for their Antigonid rivals, perhaps) and so was able to supplement his army with mercenaries.
Once Cleomenes starts winning, however, the potential of having one state – Sparta – consolidate the Peloponnese and possibly reach beyond was an unacceptable security threat for the Antigonus III Doson, who rules Macedon (as part of the Antigonid dynasty, the smallest and weakest of the ‘big three’ Hellenistic states), leading to Macedonian intervention in the war to try to bail out the Achaeans and contain Cleomenes III. Cleomenes tries to block Antigonus at the base of the Isthmus of Corinth, but this fails when Antigonus is able to sail some troops around that land-based blocking force and support a revolt in Argos, behind the lines. A series of raids and smaller sieges follows which effectively confine Cleomenes III to Laconia, leading to the final, decisive engagement at Sellasia in Laconia (that is, Sparta’s home territory on the road to Sparta itself) itself in 222.
We have the battle described by Plutarch twice (Cleom. 28 and Philop. 6) and even more usefully in detail by Polybius (2.65-70); of these, Polybius is generally to be preferred, writing about 50 years after the battle (and about 250 before Plutarch) and being quite a bit more familiar with military affairs as well. Cleomenes, as the defender, chose the ground and chose it well: the battlefield consisted of two hills, bifurcated by a river (the Oenous) which he then fortified with field-works. Antigonus initially avoids attacking directly, instead trying to maneuver Cleomenes out or bait him into a foolish attack, but logistics will have been decisive in the event. Cleomenes, on his home territory with Sparta behind him, could stay on his hills forever, but Antigonus could not remain camped in hostile territory for very long, so he opts to force the issue by storming Cleomenes’ fortified hilltop position.
Cleomenes occupies the right-hand-side hill, named Olympus (not to be confused with Mt. Olympus) with his Spartans and mercenary troops, while on the other hill, Euas, he has the Perioikoi and Greek allied troops under the command of Eucleidas. Finally, stretched over the riverbanks in the center he deploys cavalry and some of his remaining (probably lighter) mercenary troops. The battlefield here is thus nothing but broken up ground: hills and riverbanks. Antigonus responds by forming two main striking forces: on his right (against Euas) the chalkaspides (the more senior part of the phalanx) supported by Illyrian troops (medium infantry) in ‘alternating lines’ – suggestive of an articulated phalanx, supported in turn by Arcarnaeans, Cretans and the Achaeans. Opposite Olympus, he deployed the rest of his phalanx (probably the less senior leukaspides) along with his mercenary troops, presumably including his 1,000 Galatians; this is clearly the ‘junior’ wing (on the left-hand side, as one would expect) but Antigonus opts to lead it himself, seemingly because he was gunning for Cleomenes in particular (Polyb. 2.66.8). In the middle he strings his cavalry, supported by more allied troops.
The result was a battle effectively in three ‘lanes’ which interact with each other. On Euas, the Illyrians and Achaeans open the attack by pushing up the hill, but the Achaeans get into immediate trouble as Cleomenes’ mercenary troops in the center turn their flank; Philopoemon, a young man and junior officer rescues the issue by driving forward with a portion of the cavalry (for which Philopoemon is commended by Antigonus after the battle, while he criticizes his own cavalry commander for failing to do so). That danger averted, the chalkaspides then push up the hill and quite roughly shove Cleomenes’ forces off of the hill, inflicting heavy losses. The fighting in the center is heavy, but indecisive, while on Olympus, a see-saw fight between the Spartans and Antigonus’ leukaspides develops. According to Polybius, the terrain was more confined and so the Macedonian formation here was more compact, with no intervals (2.66.9), perhaps preventing the creation of a similar articulated phalanx as on the other hill. The two lines meet, Cleomenes initially is able to make ground and push forward, but then Antigonus doubles up his phalanx and decisively crushes Cleomenes’ line. The result is a crushing victory in which the Antigonids won on both hills separately. In both cases the Antigonid phalanxes were able to advance effectively over rough, hilly terrain to force a successful engagement with enemy infantry in prepared positions on high ground.
To sum up then, it is certainly the case that, as Polybius notes, the Macedonian phalanx could be disadvantaged by rough ground, but it does not follow that this was a formation that become utterly useless in hilly terrain. On the one hand, the Hellenistic army contained all sorts of other kinds of troops which could better handle extremely rough terrain like mountains (where, I will note, Roman legions would also struggle to operate), and on the other hand for modestly difficult terrain, the phalanx could still perform when well-handled. It was not enough merely to fight a battle near a hill or a river to gain an advantage against the phalanx, as Pyrrhus’ victories demonstrate.
The Archers of Parthia
Well, if the confines of mountains won’t fatally cripple the phalanx, what about archers – or better yet horse archers – and wide open spaces? Here the assumption is generally that the Parthian military system, in particular, represented a fatal weakness to the Hellenistic military system. And at 20,000 feet, you can see the case: the Parthia ends up breaking away from the Seleucid Empire and then absorbing most of its eastern provinces, so clearly they could win against Seleucid armies. And, of course, in Total War games, horse archers are ‘hard counters’ for the slow-moving sarisa-phalanx units.
As always, history is more complicated.
Alexander’s campaigns, for one, had brought him to the very edge of the Central Steppe (a part of the broader Eurasian Steppe) in Bactria and Sogdiana and he fought both armies of Scythian steppe nomads and armies with Scythian auxiliaries in them successfully, albeit with substantial difficulty (Arr. Anab. 4.4-4.22). The largest engagement was a battle on what Arrian refers to as the River Tanais (Arr. Anab. 4.3.6-4.5.1) against a force of Scythians. In the battle that results, we can see Alexander leaning quite heavily on the supporting arms of his army: he clears the riverbank to make a crossing safe using his siege artillery (read: torsion catapults) and while his phalanx does cross the river, effectively all of the fighting is done by his light infantry and his cavalry. A useful reminder of why those later Hellenistic armies (especially the Seleucid ones) have all of those supporting arms.
The Seleucid record against the Parthians is more mixed, but ‘mixed’ doesn’t mean ‘nothing but defeat.’ Instead, the pattern we see – admittedly with a very limited sample set – is that when the Seleucid Empire is united and able to focus East, the Parthians aren’t generally able to resist Seleucid power but that – primarily because of events happening in the West of the Seleucid kingdom, the Seleucids are, after c. 250, rarely so united and able to focus. Now that is a real weakness of the Seleucid system – it is a problem with Hellenistic monarchy that it is so easy to destabilize it – but that is not the same as Hellenistic armies being categorically incapable of coping with horse archers.
Parthia forms out of such a moment of division: the Seleucid satrap Andragoras rebels in 245 in the context of a larger civil war involving Antiochus Heirax (running from 246 to 236) creates the opportunity for the nomadic Parni to push into the satrapy of Parthia and ‘set up shop.’ This is the context first for Arsaces I’s unsuccessful effort first to set up shop in the satrapy (read: province) of Margiana) in 245 (being repelled by Diodotus I, satrap and soon to be king of Bactria, with a Hellenistic army), before successfully ‘picking off’ Andragoras in Parthia in 239 while the main Seleucid army was distracted, off dealing with (or more correctly, failing to deal with) a civil threat from Antiochus Heirax in Anatolia.5 Seleucus II (r. 246-225) is only going to be able to get around to trying to do anything about the Parthians in 235.
Seleucus II’s effort to subdue Parthia, when it comes in 235, is clearly a failure. Evidently there was a battle, but our sources for it are almost non-existent. Quite clearly the Parthians – potentially aligned with Diodotus I’s Bactrians – won, and the Seleucid effort to reassert power initially fails. Seleucus’ Antiochus Heirax problems weren’t over either, which may have divided or weakened the Seleucid effort. It is frustrating we don’t have better details about the failure of this effort to get a sense of how it differed from Antiochus III’s much more successful campaign.
The next effort will come with Antiochus III (r. 223-187), who though he comes to power in 223, waits until 210 to deal with the Parthians, being occupied in the intermediate space by a host of other problems, including losing the Battle of Raphia in 217. That said, by 210, Antiochus has managed to more-or-less stabilize his kingdom and consolidate power and so now the Parthians, under Arsaces II (r. 217-191), face effectively the full power of the Seleucid war machine.6 If simply having horse archers was enough to solve that problem, Arsaces II should have been alright, because the Parthians were excellence horse archers, the Parni themselves having come from the Steppe. But it is not enough and Arsaces II gets, quite frankly, utterly wrecked.
Our sources for this are not great (mostly Polybius 10.27-31), but we through him we can chart the basic campaign. Antiochus surprises Arsaces by making an operational desert crossing, getting his army into the core of Parthian territory intact. Arsaces could at that point, have offered battle in the relatively open ground. That he doesn’t suggests that the Seleucid field army – clearly quite large, even if we don’t trust Justin’s numbers – was sufficiently strong that Arsaces didn’t think he could win even on his home territory. Instead, he withdraws into the mountains, hoping – it seems – as much to exhaust Antiochus’ supplies (and perhaps money, as he has to be paying all of these soldiers and has been looting temples to do it) as to use the rough ground to his advantage. As we noted above, Antiochus’ light infantry components were perfectly capable of forcing the relevant passes over the Alborz mountains into Hyrcania, allowing Antiochus III to pursue Arsaces II successfully.
At this point, the Parthians try a pitched battle (Polyb. 10.31.1-6) at the foot of Mount Labus, evidently a strong defensive position. The description of the battle is minimal, but apparently the Parthians tried to force the phalanx (Polyb 10.31.3), failed to succeed at that and were then flanked and routed by Antiochus’ lighter troops who occupied the heights around the battlefield. Overtoom (op. cit., 115) tries to read this as an episode of feigned flight – that the Parthians skirmished with the phalanx and then withdrew – but this reading does not hold. For one, we have just the one source on this battle and Polybius says πτοηθέντες ὥρμησαν πρὸς φυγή, “terrified, they made to flee” (Polyb 10.31.3) which is just very clear. One can argue that perhaps Polybius has misunderstood, but Arsaces’ army does flee and much of his army (but not, perhaps, Arsaces?) ends up holed up in Sirynx, a fortified town close by, and neither Arsaces nor his army risks a pitched battle. That is not a thing you do if your harassment tactics are working, but it is a thing you do if you just got badly mauled in a pitched battle.
In any case, having now pinned Arsaces’ army down, Antiochus sets down to besiege Sirynx. The Parthians evidently attempt to flee encirclement but fail to break out when it is clear Antiochus will breach the town (Polyb. 10.31.11), their breakout fails and then Antiochus takes the town. The fighting was fierce but while Overtoom (op. cit., 127-8) insists the siege must have been long, Polybius explicitly notes it wasn’t – the moats which protected the town were filled ταχέως (‘swiftly’) and then the wall was undermined and breached. Polybius then cuts off, frustratingly but from Justin we know the outcome of the campaign, which is that Arsaces was forced into vassalage under Antiochus (who would then go on to also subordinate Bactria in the same way by 206). It seems fairly likely that, after a lost pitched battle and a lost contested siege, Arsaces was effectively out of army and thus forced to negotiate from a position of relative weakness. Vassalizing, rather than destroying, the rulers of his wayward provinces seems to have been Antiochus III’s default policy, so I’m not sure we can even assume that Arsaces had a particularly strong bargaining position after the fall of Sirynx, but he may have.
Subsequent affairs were typified more by Seleucid weakness as a result of internal weakness or external western threats than Parthian strength. Antiochus III gets into a disastrous war with Rome (192-188) with crushing results in both lost soldiers and a heavy financial indemnity. Antiochus III then dies in 187 and the internal collapse of Seleucid power begins. Antiochus III’s son, Seleucus IV is assassinated in 175 and Antiochus IV, a usurper, seizes the throne. Antiochus IV’s efforts to expand into Egypt meet with initial success, but are checked by Rome, which threatens to join the war if Antiochus IV continues, so he retreats; his death of natural causes in 164 kicks off a series of Seleucid dynastic struggles from that point until the disestablishment of what was left of the kingdom by the Romans in 63. In the chaos, the Parthians were well-positioned to gobble up whatever Seleucid vassals or satraps were nearby and did so, with relatively little direct Seleucid intervention.
Demetrius II (r. 145-138, 129-126) makes an effort in 139 to bring the Parthians to heel, but does so in the context of an on-going civil war with Diodotus Tryphon. Demetrius seems to have won several initial engagements (so says Justin (36.1.4)) but then fumbles the campaign and is captured – a good example of that weakness we’ve noted where Hellenistic armies often have to have the king himself present. Antiochus VII Sidetes (r. 138-129) then tries himself 130. He reoccupies Mesopotamia, defeats several Parthian armies (once again, from Justin, 38.10.5-6) and pinned the Parthians back to their core territory in Parthia, but then like Demetrius, it seems, overextended, gets cut off by a revolt of the Mesopotamians and is defeated and killed in 129. The Seleucids fall back into civil war, their last real effort to bring Parthia to heel having failed.
There are a few things to note here. First, Seleucid armies can beat Parthian armies and do so, repeatedly. Antiochus III’s campaign demonstrates that well-commanded and backed by the united might of the Seleucid Empire, a Seleucid army could defeat Parthian armies, force its way into Parthia proper and compel a favorable peace. If we believe our sources – and I think we should – evidently Demetrius II and Antiochus VII were also able to win victories in pitched battles against Parthian forces, albeit not decisive ones.
On the other hand, Parthian armies can clearly beat Seleucid armies too. I often find myself reacting against the assumption of Parthian super-armies based on a handful of their most notable victories – the Parthians, more often than not, lose to Roman armies (the Romans sack Ctesiphon three times: 116, 164, 197) – but we shouldn’t go overboard in the other direction either. Parthian armies were properly dangerous on their home territory and could and did destroy poorly commanded armies which were unprepared. It is unfortunate but perhaps to be expected that the surprising Parthian victories are the ones that get described in detail in our sources, so we have a good sense of what a Parthian army winning looks like, but not a good sense of what a Parthian army losing does, despite the latter happening about as much as the former.
As for the Seleucids, it seems to me that the Parthians alone were not enough to cause the collapse of Seleucid rule and that the spark which lights the fuse of Seleucid self-destruction is not the arrival of the Parthians in 245, but rather the arrival of the Romans in 192, as the Romans will continually meddle in Seleucid politics, blocking expansion, supporting Seleucid rivals and generally making a mess of their succession disputes. Of course the Romans might have found this more difficult had the Parthians not been causing their own problems, but it seems worth noting that while the Romans proved capable of defeating a maximum-strength-deployment Seleucid army (under Antiochus III at Magnesia, no less) the Parthians mostly thrive picking off weak Seleucid leaders bedeviled by civil wars and disunion.
Can the Parthians beat a Seleucid phalanx? Yes. Do they always do so, in the manner of a Total War ‘hard counter?’ No. Of course, the same might well be said of Parthian performance against Roman legions as well: they can beat them, but most certainly do not always do so. And speaking of Roman legions: next week we will, at long last, turn to Italy and take a closer look at why Pyrrhus of Epirus’ effort to face Rome both met with initial success and ultimately failed.
- I will never stop stealing this joke from Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword.
- Kent, op. cit., rejects, correctly in my view, efforts by later scholars, notably Delbrück to claim that Pyrrhus didn’t use the Siris defensively here.
- Note that we have a quite different version of this battle from Dio and Zonaras, which I think Kent is correct to regard as a patriotically embroidered pro-Roman fiction covering what Plutarch correctly represents as a quite stinging defeat.
- Cleomenes is hardly the only Greek leader to recognize the weakness of thureophoroi and to try to shift to heavier troop-types in this period; Philopoemon does it too, Plut. Philop. 9.1-2. That both of these anecdotes are in Plutarch has led to some questioning of if this is something of a trope and it may be, but it’s also a very plausible military reform to make.
- I should note that this reconstruction of the early days of the Parthian state follows Overtoom, op. cit.
- Justin 41.5.7 claims the army is 120,000 strong, a statement upon which no faith may be reposed: it is both unlikely (it would be by far the largest Seleucid army ever assembled) and Justin is not a terribly reliable source for this sort of thing, writing as he is in the second century AD.
I really need to get around to reading Polybius one of these days. Do you have a translation you’d recommend? My Greek is nonexistent, and at least according to an old college friend, Polybius’s Greek is so boring that any translation improves on the original. (Not sure how true that is, sorry David)
The Paton translation, which is available in its entirety on Lacus Curtius (https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/home.html) is the one most often used and is quite good.
Thank you for the recommendation.
“How striking and grand is the spectacle presented by the period with which I PURPOSE to deal”-2 1
From your link. Should that not be propose? Or is it just a very weird result of literal translation?
3 1 “The date from which I propose”
This is from the very next section, which I hadn’t read initially, wish I could edit my above comment instead. So I guess it *was* a typo in 2 1.
I don’t think it’s a typo: “purpose” a is a verb, although an uncommon one (I suppose because it’s so close to “propose”)
Purpose(verb) is a synonym to propose or intend, but it seems like a weird choice here when there are so many more common verbs that have the same purpose(noun).
Interesting. I wonder what the differences in connotation there are (if any). It’s usually the case that synonyms mean very similar but not quite exactly the same thing.
I wonder, if you ‘purpose’ something do you ‘propose it, but with more of a clear determined drive to achieve a particular goal’.
‘Purpose’ in this context is perfectly grammatical, just a bit archaic. Consider that this translation is about a century old.
Yes, it’s an archaism. Here is an example of the usage from the King James Bible: “And, behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spake unto David my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto my name.” (1 Kings 5:5)
“assuming there is still a Twitter by the time this post goes live.”
This gets funnier every week.
An appendix on Parthian vs phalanx and legions would no go amiss. Even if our sources on Parthian defeats are poor, I think a good look at their victories might tell us something about their failures. As in, if X is a common cause of victory, would not-X match what we know about their defeats?
Typo: “Mesopamia”
Fixed
Is is “Overtoon” like in ‘cartoon’ or “Overtoom” like in ‘mushroom’?
In history-themed video games, spear-wielding units often get a bonus when in rough country. For example, in “Crusader Kings III”, pikemen and landsknechten have mountains as favourable terrain. In popular history, rugged spearmen in rugged places are presented as being effective against formidable opponents (think the Greek hoplites at Thermopylae, the Italians supporting Matilde di Canossa against Heinrich IV, or the Swiss versus anyone foolish enough to invade their homeland). Might the Macedonian phalanx have actually been more effective in rough terrain, perhaps after adjusting their tactics to take advantage of it?
I think it depends massively on the kind of roughness.
Mountain passes arguably are advantageous to the phalanx, because enemy cavalry can’t maneuver freely and armies are particularly firmly channelized down a few specific paths where a nearly unbreakable heavy infantry shield wall can prove decisive.
But something like a forest is very bad for the phalanx, to the extent that it’d be folly to enter one.
Things like broken boulder fields strewn with random rocks, or a swamp, or any number of other kinds of “rough terrain” might all have very different effects on a phalanx.
A belated thank you for your excellent reply. A forest would probably be bad for any formation-based army, advantaging soldiers that fight in an irregular manner (I’m thinking of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest).
There’s a definite pattern yeah — the heaviest shock infantry of a given period has a notable tendency to develop or come to fame in the roughest terrain available. The obvious explanation would be that humans are fairly all-terrain, but horses less so, and cavalry is thus exponentially more effected by rough terrain than infantry, occasioning a tendency toward infantry-centric warfare in rough regions and spiking the severity of that tendency when it comes about.
There are certainly some quibbles to address with such a theory, but I think it’s nevertheless the best general hypothesis available, and many quibbles come undone with a lenient interpretation — the importance of cavalry in any given area fluctuates over history in accordance with a great many factors (not least among them random chance) and adding another factor in the form of rough terrain is by no means guaranteed to always, or even often, decisively penetrate the white noise.
That still leaves the question of thrusting-spear-wielding infantry as opposed to sword-and-javelin infantry in the La Tène style, and while there’s no cut and dry answer there my theory would be that the latter system of combat is simply a larger intuitive leap, and a less likely developmental progression from the decentralized combat systems that heavy infantry generally evolves from. There’s Rome, and I’m pretty sure I remember reading descriptions of soldiers that sounded suspiciously similar somewhere in ancient China, but overall the shock-javelin line seems to simply be a less common mode of heavy infantry than the thrusting-spear block or the shield-and-archer wall, both substantially common all throughout history in centralized military contexts.
I’ll go ahead and ask this again since we’re so early in the thread today 🙂
Dr. D, have you had a chance to play either of the Field of Glory II games (ancient or medieval)? I’d love to hear your thoughts about whether it provides a reasonable representation of tactical battles, or if it’s more TW-like gaminess.
(also just to add – I saw somewhere you were talking about covering Imperator Rome, just wanted to add my vote for sooner rather than later :))
It’s more reasonable than TW, that’s for sure. I’d say “acceptable”, all in all.
A little bit of Field of Glory, as well as a bit more of Pike and Shot, which I think is the same developer.
The limitation of Field Of Glory 2 is of course that it is turn based, so it *feels* less real than Total War, or at least the older less arcadey style Total War combat system. But otherwise I personally think it is much more accurate to the *feel* of a battle. Units are locked into the melee at the battle line, flanking is much more powerful and also I think the UX of the flanking is better. The limitations of movement are portrayed in a more realistic way. Ranged combat is more realistic because you can’t just fire into the battle line and moreover you can’t simply fire over your own troops with no issue, you’d need a height difference to get LOS.
The system for armor, experience, troop type and so on are better and the morale system is better.
Of course this is a case of being a 7/10 representation whereas Total War is a 5 or 6 out of 10. There aren’t any war games I’m aware of that are amazing simulations. Fog of war is basically non-existent in all these games. Your control your armies in both like a hivemind which follows your commands precisely.
Pike and Shot (I haven’t played FOG) has a few stuff that kinda makes sense but is unintuitive: Infantry can in most cases just straight up not engage cavalry in melee, for instance. And there’s some funky stuff with zones of control that often feels weird.
Reading Bret’s stuff kinda ruined Field of Glory II for me because it got me thinking about how the roman formations dont translate to their grid.
The maniples should be 60 meters wide with gaps of 10-20 meters between them. So putting them directly next to each other is a closer approximation then putting a one square gap between. And the depth of all three ranks is about the same as the width of one maniple so really it doesn’t make sense to have more then one rank of depth. This means the least inaccurate way to emulate the triple acies would just be a single uninterrupted line of “hastati/principes” units. Which is pretty boring and disappointing.
Then there is the difficulty of getting the velites to actually do their job. Having your velites sit directly in front of the heavy infantry doesn’t work. Yes they can withdraw from charges (some of the time) but they wont actually throw javalins before withdrawing or exchange fire with enemy skirmishers who get close. Trying to use skirmishers as a defensive screen is actually just making them meet shields. You are really better off putting the velites farther ahead, using your ability to magically transmit orders to advanced units.
And there’s the issue with strategic reserves. If you hold some of your heavy infantry back from the line you are sacrificing frontage for little advantage. Troops that aren’t engaged will be no faster at redeploying then troops that were committed and are now fighting; there is no friction for the units that just fought and might have dead centurions/musicians/standard bearers. So the entire motivation for strategic depth isn’t there. What’s worse, troops behind can trap the troops in front and worsen your loses or keep the enemy from pushing forward into a disadvantageous position.
It really makes me wonder how much sense the game mechanics actually make. They seem to make sense when viewed from orbit but when viewed up close they encourage very ahistorical behaviors in this case. I imagine that other nations have similar ahistorical incentives that would become apparent if I learned more about them too.
One thing to wonder about Field Of Glory 2, or other TBT games, is what unit of time the turns actually represent.
Unrelatedly, it is certainly the case that the AI uses reserves and they even work sometimes. When you break through the front line you are often prevented from flanking and thus rolling up the whole enemy line by their second line.
I do think it would be more interesting and maybe historical to have battle plans, Dominion 3/4/5/6 style, that your units follow, especially for skirmishers, rather than giving direct orders.
I think the famous problem is always that people will blame the AI for mistakes if you take direct control from the player. And since the “AI” is actually half script and half RNG generator they are gonna be making tons of dumb plays that will make players mad.
I think the famous problem is always that people will blame the AI for mistakes if you take direct control from the player. And since the “AI” is actually half script and half RNG generator they are gonna be making tons of dumb plays that will make players mad.
To be fair, I’ve always found the AI in Pike and Shot and Sengoku Jidai (haven’t played Field of Glory) to be quite good, probably because the computer doesn’t have as much to keep track of as it does in Total War or similar games.
I do think it would be interesting to have a game that tries to simulate some limitations of generalship, e.g.:
– Your army is grouped into a number of divisions, and before battle you can give each divisional commander a broad set of instructions (“Stay on the defensive”, “Advance and pin your opposite numbers”, “Outflank the enemy”, etc.), which they’ll then implement to the best of their ability.
– You can only issue orders directly to units within a certain radius of your general; all others follow the instructions you’ve given them beforehand.
– If you want to change plans during battle, you have to either send a messenger to the relevant divisional commander (which may take several turns to reach him, depending on the distance) to give them new orders, or go there yourself to take command.
Depending on how much detail you want, you could even try adding personality traits to your subcommanders, so that, for example, a commander with the “Impetuous” trait might try attacking even if you’ve ordered him to stay on the defensive, or a “Timid” commander might hang back even if you’ve told him to attack.
This comes close to a description of the old RTS, Kohan. (Bonus serendipity for today, because it has a Persian flavor.)
While there were individual units, all control was done at a “company” level (unclear what it represents, but “divisions” seem about right, since they can involve combined arms). Before battle starts, there’s room for cleverness when it comes to maneuver and facing and readiness, but once they engage, your only options are “retreat” and “rout”. And if the company commander unit dies, all you get is “rout”.
It’s possible to pull off some Hannibal/Mongol-style tricks, having weaker companies intentionally engage and then retreat to lure the enemy out of position and into a prepared meat-grinder of companies that you’ve fortified and have a terrain advantage. It’s especially great if you have cavalry reserves that can swing in behind and take out the enemy support and command units.
I wish RTS games had gone more down this path, rather than emphasizing intense micro. I’d love to see something like this at a large scale.
That reminds me, I should play that again…
“I think the famous problem is always that people will blame the AI for mistakes if you take direct control from the player”
A multiplayer game could potentially offer a way. There are games that go 40 vs 40 or bigger which would be enough to allow for some proper fog of war if the players were officers instead of general troops and a morale system were in place.
I feel like the best way to simulate a triplex acies would be to give the relevant units the ability to swap position or advance/withdraw through each other without losing cohesion. Also to have a “fatigue” mechanic, so that units which have been in combat a few turns start to lose effectiveness, and then regain effectiveness again when they’re out of combat for a bit. Add these together, and a Roman army could keep cycling troops in and out of battle, keeping its front line manned by fresh units whilst the enemy infantry steadily gets more and more fatigued and worn down.
The cohesion mechanic *could* do that if not for the fact that it’s impossible for the front maniples to actually withdraw.
Yeah, you’d have to have a “disengage” option available. Or make units automatically break off combat when they both get too tired.
Huh. Actually, my experience in Total War is that the horse archers run out of arrows before inflicting meaningful damage on the phalanx. And anyway, as at the River Tanais, you have your siege artillery, and missile troops native and mercenary as well.
Agreed, I’ve found the “persistence hunter” technique reasonably effective if you have the patience for it. Just absorb their arrows until they run out and then slowly walk at them until they’re unable or unwilling to keep running.
Of course if you have artillery or archers that’s a much less tedious way of doing it.
I look forward to reading the sixth post in the increasingly inaccurately named Phalanx’s Twilight tetralogy.
I will never stop stealing this joke from Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless.
Though since it’s from the book jacket, I don’t know whether Adams actually wrote the line.
He did. Ford Prefect takes pride in persuading the Hitch-Hikers Guide entry on Earth from ‘harmless’ to ‘mostly harmless’.
I think the question is if Douglas Adams wrote the phrase “The increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Guide Trilogy”. I suspect he did, but Ford Prefect’s actions don’t help us.
This is a nice corrective to the weary old “Hellenistic phalanxes can’t fight on rough ground” nonsense, an idea that really needs to be taken out and shot (despite Polybius’ apparent, if partial, backing).
But as you say, a phalanx army needed supporting arms – a Hellenistic army might be only one third phalanx, while a Roman army could be almost entirely legion (and allies), because the phalanx and its supporting arms were specialist forces while legions were generalists (which is Polybius’ point).
The presumed deleterious effect of hills is always a bit puzzling to me, as if sloping ground is somehow inherently difficult to move or fight over (in formation). More important than either gradient or relief is surely the nature of the ground and in particular, ground cover – vegetation. The assumed battlefield of Sellasia today is covered in extremely thick, virtually impenetrable maquis; how it might have looked in the 3rd C BC we can only guess (probably it was more agricultural, or pastoral) but I would defy any army to move over the ground as it now is.
> But as you say, a phalanx army needed supporting arms – a Hellenistic army might be only one third phalanx, while a Roman army could be almost entirely legion (and allies), because the phalanx and its supporting arms were specialist forces while legions were generalists (which is Polybius’ point).
I wonder if the comparison is entirely fair. Yes a phalanx is a specialist needing other elements to form a generalist army. But similarly the hastati were a specialist component needing other elements to form a generalist legion. And sure, the hastati line is probably less “specialist” on its own that the phalanx is on its own, but the point is that both armies are made up of different elements designed to work together to form a complete fighting group.
Both armies combined elements of different types meant to support one another and which would be much less effective on their own or with only other elements of the same type. The difference here besides the basic nature of these elements is how they integrated them. The Hellenistic armies seem to have relatively coarse-grained integration with big uniform blocks next to one another. While the romans had a more fine-grained integration with elements working more closely together. In general anyway; that probably doesn’t hold up when you add in roman cavalry.
I would go further and remark that apparently the Romans administratively integrated elements even more closely than it would make sense tactically. To wit, the ten-men contubernia consisted of six heavy infantrymen, two light infantrymen (velites) and two non-combatants (calones). Clearly this wasn’t intended as an operationally (or even tactically) independent combined-arms maneuver unit, and it created the slight but entirely unnecessary inconvenience of task-organizing the components every time they transitioned from camping to doing anything else (whether marching or forming for battle). Unfortunately I don’t know the reason they did it for.
Seems kinda obvious. The velites are junior soldiers and many would be going on to serve as hastati in a year or two. They’re mostly from the same families that the hastati and principes are coming from. So of course dad or older brother is going to want to watch out for junior, teach him the soldiering life and maybe start training him in hastati combat during their off time. And if dad or older brother can’t be there to do it, they’re going to want their neighbor to do it. It seems like something you wouldn’t even need a formal system to implement and later writers could just describe as a formal system even if it wasn’t.
Worth remembering that this sort of integration is common in many other situations as well. The “lance”, the lowest level organisational unit of many high/late Medieval European armies, is a knight plus various supporting/lighter troops. Minimally you might get knight + squire + page; maximally you can see up to 10+ armed fighters (say knight, squire, 2 mounted crossbowmen, 3 foot archers, 4 infantry) and corresponding non-combatants.
One interesting effect of this is that if you split up units, you get the integrated elements you might want. Say you’re garrisoning your legion across a city to keep order – you might want to have smaller contingents spread out, each of which should have some lighter troops and some heavier ones. With the integrated contubernia, you can do this just by sending centuries out to different areas.
I shall gather Parthian horse archers for the commanded execution.
…
Zounds! Thou will not believe what happened!
My understanding is that sloped ground is usually sloping in multiple directions. Most mountains aren’t clean ramps; they usually have lots of bits that are jutting up or plunging down on a human scale. They’re not marching along an inclined plane, they’re marching around boulders and ridges and stuff.
“The reader may be pardoned for assuming, at the end of the previous part, that we would pick up with Roman legions screaming towards a Hellenistic sarisa-phalanx but before we get to those victories in the second century BC, I think it is worth pausing for a moment to look at the performance of the Macedonian phalanx in the third century.”
— Bret Devereaux
“We pardon our readers for having turned the previous page with the understandable expectation of finding Dauntlesses hurtling downward from the heavens, only to discover that a brief but necessary piece of business remains before we get to the ‘exciting part’.”
— Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully
I hit this comment and has a sudden panic attack that perhaps I had forgotten to include the note citing the original joke.
Oh, sorry about that. I just laughed out loud at both the original and your parallel, and figured it’s worth sharing.
> Instead, he withdraws into the mountains, hoping – it seems – as much to exhaust Antiochus’ supplies (and perhaps money, as he has to be paying all of these soldiers and has been looting temples to do it) as to use the rough ground to his advantage
I can’t remember where, but I’ve read about cases where an army expecting a siege will harvest what they can from the nearby countryside and then destroy the rest as a way to deny the besieging army resupply. Are there many cases of an army in the field and not anticipating a siege pillaging their own territory to deny resources to the enemy? I seem to recall reading something about the Chinese doing that during the earlier parts of the second world war.
Before the advent of Industrial Age military logistics, the lines between “an army in its own territory requisitioning supplies,” “an army in its own territory plundering on general principles” and “an army on its own territory plundering to deny resources to the enemy” might be a bit blurry.
It was not just blurry. In 1654, the Swedish royal coucil recognised officially that waging a defensive war inside your own borders was essentially the same as waging war against yourself, so the only reasonable thing to do was to wage offensive war if you assumed that there was a war coming.
On a completely unrelated note to this comment, something like 12 million people would die in the lands on the opposite side of the Baltic over the 1630-1721 period….
But not in Sweden. Which was rather the point.
Listen, it’s not a _nice_ way to wage war, but war is rarely about “who is nicest.”
I’m pretty sure the Russians did something similar against Napoleon.
I remember reading (or maybe it was a podcast) that Parthian armies were typically majority light to medium infantry. The army at Carrhae which seemed to only consist of horse archers, cataphracts, and wagons carrying arrows for the horse archers, was nothing like the ‘normal’ Parthian army.
Tabletop ancient wargame rules and wargamers mostly try to be historically accurate. From the 1980 publications through to a 2021 French (translated to English) set, Parthian armies are described as some cataphracts and a lot of horse archers, plus optionally a few not very good infantry. Like any other society there is change over time, but not much.
These aren’t academic publications, and majority opinion can be wrong, but I think there’s a solid consensus about Parthians being mostly horse archers that would require exceptional evidence to overturn.
But how far is that based on a broad assessment of the evidence, and how far is it just an extrapolation from Carrhae?
They (eventually, but this fully applied by the time of Carrhae) ruled generally speaking the same area as the Achaemenids and the Seleucids. Since in reality — unlike in war/strategy games (up to 4Xs like Civilization) — the ruler can’t just select for a region to produce a different type of unit than it is accustomed to, they would have had a total mobilizable manpower pool not too different from the previous empires. However, if they were otherwise stable and at peace at the time, a commander might have had unusual latitude to pick and choose from the “army list”.
The Parthian core was further east than the Achaemenid, and recent archaeology supports the idea that there were more peasant farmers in Achaemenid times. So more infantry available. Bactria and Media were sources for heavy cavalry, Parthia and the south-east (Carmania, Ariana) for horse-archers.
I’ve read lots of disputing claims about the Parthians. For instance one claim said that the Parthians fielded cavalry in a 1:5 ration with infantry. Whereas Romans might field 1:10 or even 1:15. Carrhae was indeed a special case. However Parthian infantry would be mostly feudal style levy infantry and not very well equipped or trained. and I guess some number of mercenaries.
Of course the internet is also flooded with many claims that the Parthians were more of a 5:1 cavalry army. I imagine accurate information with citations is mostly locked behind the wall of academia.
“I imagine accurate information with citations is mostly locked behind the wall of academia.”
The real reason we need better funding for the humanities is so that all the juicy stuff can get moved outside of the paywalls.
A cynic might suspect that better funding could build higher paywalls.
Going by what we know of a Mid-Republican Legion, the organisation should give a ratio of 7:1 Infantry to cavalry. A standard Consular army of two legions having 8400 Citizen Infantry, 8400 Socii Infantry, 600 Citizen Cavalry and 1800 Socii Cavalry.
Só in this article, not only do we learn that Bret is recruiting 20,000 phalangites, but we also find out that we *can’t nullify this with horse archers* (at least, not categorically)?! Bret’s army will be unstoppable; he knows too much military history!
I am a bit puzzled at the insistence that horse archers “hard counter” pike phalanxes in Total War games. Generally the interaction is that the two can’t really touch each other: the phalanx can’t possibly catch the horse archers (or foot archers, for that matter), but the horse archers can’t do that much damage to the phalanx. Eventually the archers run out of arrows and have to either charge in and die or cede the field (that is, of course, if they can’t outflank the phalanx, which helps with both the deadliness of arrows and makes a charge a potential threat if the horse archers are also decent melee combatants, but this is not guaranteed, and it’s easy to infer that in historical context this would be much harder). Realistically, the horse archers will probably avoid the phalanx and try to engage other troops, while the phalanx will likewise probably try to engage enemy infantry rather than try to chase down horse archers.
I think it comes out more in matched play, where battles looks very, very strange compared to more casual TW (and even further from historic battles in many ways). The trick horse archer armies use there is to attempt to fragment the enemy army and encircle portions of it, generally holding fire unless they can land a volley at close range to the rear or unshielded flank. If it’s going the horse archers’ way, you’ll end up with a load of isolated units being threatened from multiple angles so that no matter what way they turn they’re exposing a weaker side to the enemy.
In some ways it’s more historically accurate (horse archers weren’t really taking potshots from max range), but in many others it looks very, very strange. Check out some youtube videos of some RTW2 battles. You’ll get the idea.
Even if terrain may prevent a particular formation, it seems to me that in most terrain an umpteen foot long spear is an umpteen foot long spear, which means (regardless of terrain) – except maybe in corner cases with a lot of vegetation to get in the way – an umpteen foot spear owner can fatally poke someone incoming with a shorter reach weapon some distance before being in any danger of being poked back themself.
The versus horse-archers with arrows things seems weird to me though. Has anyone tried any reconstructions to try to figure out how a phalanx could survive that? Some kind of ‘hollow square’ formation with archers of their own inside, maybe? Can an archer standing in place on foot shoot with greater range and/or accuracy than an archer moving on horseback? I suspect this may have been covered in the ‘How the Mongols conquered all of the planet that they came in range of and wanted’ series of articles, but those were posted some time ago, and my memory is not so good these days.
Link
Above weas written about this subject, there are probably others scattered around the blog within other posts.
Thank you. From the following section in that essay, I’m getting the impression that at least Mongol horse-archers would have cut a phalanx to pieces: ‘…For our discussion, what is really crucial here is how this tactic interacts with range and penetration. With steppe composite bows rivaling the power of a longbow, at the apex of his approach, the Steppe warrior is going to be hitting his shots with all of the power of a point-blank longbow shot, defeating mail and even potentially modest plate defenses (Lamellar armor was quite common in China, for instance – a high power close range hit might rupture the connections between plates, e.g. here).
Those shots at the apex are also going to be very accurate. Steppe warriors trained in archery in part by hunting even small game on the Steppe – and an archer who can hit a running rabbit on open ground reliably can also drop his arrow into the unprotected face or neck of a lightly armored infantryman with some frequency. The lethality of this sort of archery would be much higher than the ‘sit and plink’ style of Total War tactics…’
But note that horse archers at the apex of that caracole are really vulnerable to being counter-charged by heavy cavalry – of the sort Hellenistic armies often have quite a lot of.
Mongol armies were defeated by Chinese troops with crossbows and spears, supported by cavalry. And by heavier Mameluke cavalry supported by light cavalry. And by Hungarian and Polish troops with crossbows, supported by cavalry. Horse archers hate having their mounts shot
Horse archers vs a phalanx might be very bad for any phalanx unsupported by archers of its own, that is to say. I think others responding to my initial post have mentioned it might indeed be possible to include archers in a phalanx formation.
This whole series of posts has put heavy emphasis on the fact that phalanxes never operated alone, and were rather anchors for obscene amounts of skirmishers and heavy cavalry which were entirely organic to a Hellenistic army. It seems pretty obvious that Hellenistic victories against Parthians and the like consisted rather more of the latter two elements going through the adversary like a food processor, not the shock infantry itself.
In the absence of good sources (other than Alexander’s one battle) for phalanx vs Scythians or Parthians, my guess is that the phalanx is the immovable object and the other Hellenistic troops fight around it.
The pike phalanx may not be as well armoured as Romans, but they’ve got helmets and body armour that will stop arrows. The horse archers certainly aren’t going to charge frontally, and won’t be able to rapidly cause lots of casualties with archery.
Seleucid elephants stopped Macedonian cavalry from flanking a phalanx at Ipsus, and I can’t see Parthian horses being any more enthusiastic about going near the things. Without elephants, the screening infantry probably stay much closer to the phalanx for safety.
The big change I would expect is in cavalry tactics. The European crusader shock cavalry who fought horse archers had to learn, often the hard way, not to just charge at the first opportunity. I imagine that Hellenistic cavalry would likewise have to learn to stay closer to the phalanx and be patient, waiting until they could cut off and destroy small detachments of horse archers rather than going for the big hammer blow that defeats the enemy.
The later Seleucids seems have to deployed horse archers themselves (147 B.C). The heavy cavalry with their less nimble horses and all their armour have trouble to catch them (and probably are occupited to stay the Parthian heavy cavalry in check) and the light cavarly don’t have the range advantage of horse archers.
The versus horse-archers with arrows things seems weird to me though. Has anyone tried any reconstructions to try to figure out how a phalanx could survive that? Some kind of ‘hollow square’ formation with archers of their own inside, maybe?
I’m not sure if this is what the Hellenistic armies did (indeed, based on the OP, it doesn’t seem that enough evidence exists to reconstruct the phalanx vs. horse archer battles), but infantry forces who had to fight horse-archer-based armies seem to have generally converged on mixed spearman-and-archer formations. The archers would shoot down the enemy horse archers, whilst the spearmen would protect them from cavalry charges.
Can an archer standing in place on foot shoot with greater range and/or accuracy than an archer moving on horseback?
Generally, yes — infantry bows can be bigger, meaning they can fire an arrow with more oomph, and standing on the ground provides a more stable firing platform than riding around on a horse. Plus infantry can stand closer together, meaning they can give out a greater density of fire.
On the bows poundage front, once you get into laminated recurve bows (which I expect any steppe warrior worth his salt would have), size doesn’t tend to prove the limiting factor on range.
Stable firing platform would be a thing, though again I’ve seen some impressive displays of folks standing dead still atop a horse while firing arrows.
It’s also worth considering that if a horse is travelling at speed then that gets imparted into the arrow as well. It’s not much in the field of arrow velocities, but it’s something.
Steppe bows are optimised for range (heavy draw, light arrow). Presumably because armour was rare and the aim was to disorder enemy formations enough to allow a charge. Longbows and crossbows go for penetration (heavy draw, heavy missile). Armoured troops can keep steppe archers off – the armour keeps the arrows out at range and, if they close, the crossbows kill. As at Arsuf, where one Arab chronicler noted Frankish infantry trudging along with arrows hanging off their mail, and shooting the horses of any warriors who came close.
I do note that a basic idea of “Some kind of long pokey thing supported by missile infantry” seems to do quite well against horse archers: Chinese armies often use polearm-crossbow combinations high effectiveness. The problem tended to be more strategic (IE: Operating in the steppes without a steppe-type army is a nightmare)
The much later Byzantine armies employed extremely complex square formations against Arab cavalry, although these were a bit more concerned with charges but they did still have to deal with horse archers as well. They also would use those squares as a base for the maneuver of their own cavalry in battle.
Not only does the sarissa phalanx have body armor and shields, but the think forest of upright spears of the back ranks provides decent cover against indirect archer fire trying to get over the shields. In general, it seems that the Horse Archer vs Heavy Infantry match-up (assuming no disruption by other forces) remains rather constant throughout history: If the Heavy Infantry breaks formation and tries to give chase, if it doesn’t, the battle stalls (because neither side can effectively damage the other) and turns into attrition.
As for the “a long spear is a long spear” thing, you’re not wrong, but the problem is that if you’ve got ten buddies also trying to use their very long spears right next to you and you’re not properly coordinated, you’ll get in each other’s way. That’s what Polybius sort of gets at: If the sarissa phalanx gets out of formation, its effectiveness goes down a lot more sharply than for other kinds of heavy infantry. A ditch that you need to cross can do that, but honestly, if you as a commander draft a battle plan that requires your sarissa phalanx to cross a ditch deep enough to cause formation troubles, you’ve done something wrong: You should have the phalanx lined up behind the ditch defensively, and use your other, lighter units, to secure victory.
And something that I feel should also be noted for the sarissa-phalanx vs. horse archers matchup is that while a phalanx might have trouble with keeping formation on rough terrain, you know who has trouble even getting into, or in fact maneuvering in any effective way on rough terrain? Horses. The mountains around the Iranian plateau can be a infantry’s best friend. By placing the heavy infantry and own cavalry on the flat parts of the terrain, and the lighter infantry in the inclined and broken parts of the terrain, you can give the horse archers a really bad time, because they can’t assault anything effectively.
In general, the whole question of “who wins the battle/war” then sort of comes back to generalship, whether the commander deploys and uses the troops they have effectively – especially the sarissa phalanx, given it can go from “easy fodder” to “unassailable fortress” easily. The track record against the Parthians bears this out.
When ACOUP writes about the Spartans, one needs read between the lines and check the background material to see what was left on the cutting room floor
To wit, one could easily write this as background material:
‘With few forces initially, Cleomenes swept through the Achaean League, seizing city after city. Routing three Achaean armies and scaring off another who had FOUR TO ONE ODDS* over the Spartans at Pallantium, Cleomenes swept the board, excelled at diplomacy, military reform, and social reform.
Cleomenes was so successful that he scared Ptolemy into withdrawing military funding. Even so, for a time, the Achaean League still preferred the Spartans to their former blood enemies the Macedonians.
It was this loss of military funding that a Macedonian army was which exceeded his own by 50% was able to defeat Cleomenes’ mostly green troops in Sallasia by a lucky calvary charge which folded their line and killed a general. Almost every single Spartan fought to the last man.’
Everything written above is ALSO true but like myself and the Jets, ACOUP’s favorite team is anyone who defeats the Spartans so some nuance and context like ‘army sizes’ gets cut. Odd that.
*I don’t recall even once in his Phillipics against the Spartans that ACOUP mentioned how invincible the Greeks who actually fought the Spartans thought about them. That it is documented that 4 to 1 odds was considered too bad odds is informative to the reader but does not, however, further his Anti Spartan Narrative.
You’re right, Cleomenes excelled so much diplomatically that his most important international partnership…wait, what happened with Ptolemy again?
Ah it was a good thing I didn’t finish either Sparta series or Fremen Mirage then. Or that reducing-goodwill article about diversity in Rome.
The Sparta series is not the best IMO, but you’re going totally off the deep end in somehow reviling the Fremen Mirage series (and whatever Roman shit you’re confusingly referencing) by nebulous association. The two are completely separate. And neither are some sort of body-puppetting cognitohazard, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t read them unless you are somehow wholly incapable of exercising independent critical thought in the process.
I believe you’ll find the references to Greek perspectives on the military prowess of Spartans in the entry about the military record of Spartans. Specifically the account of Spartans buying into their own narrative while facing an army that assumed them to be from another polis which, undeterred by the reputation, proceeded to demolish them.
If you’re referring to the anecdote from Xenophon’s Hellenica, he attributes the Spartan defeat to being severely outnumbered and explicitly states that they fought valiantly until they were all killed.
It’ll be interesting when we get to the stuff about how Romans fought Pyrrhus and the details of how “dying heroically” is a far inferior way to conduct war than “having a decent tactical doctrine for actually withdrawing your losing army in order to have the troops to try and win later”.
The essays included an exhaustive list of victories for and against Sparta. Sparta came out not as egregiously bad, but absolutely less effective at war than they are typically portrayed as being. They had something like a 45% win ratio, mostly against smaller cities; when they went toe-to-toe against peers, they tended to either be defeated (exceptions exit and were discussed) or bought foreign aid.
As for what the other Greeks thought of them, that was part of a running theme through the entire series: Sparta was MUCH better at propaganda than they were at war. Most of the “Spartans as supermen” stuff was and continues to be pure fantasy. The author here even goes so far as to probe the origins of this fantasy, and explore how it echoes through time (not once but numerous times). He literally starts the series this way, in laying the groundwork for both why this question is worth exploring (“how it echoes through time”) and establishing what information we have about Sparta (“to probe the origins of this”).
To accuse the author of leaving this information on the cutting room floor is simply unreasonable.
That “exhaustive list of victories” flattens out hundreds of years of history in a way that obscures what was really going on. If you take a more fine-grained look, it’s apparent that the Spartans had a very good win ratio in the early period before dropping off into egregiously bad territory during the fourth century. Sparta’s reputation wasn’t fantasy or propaganda, but simply the result of their being very good at fighting battles for most of the fifth and sixth centuries.
“If you take a more fine-grained look, it’s apparent that the Spartans had a very good win ratio in the early period before dropping off into egregiously bad territory during the fourth century.”
Which was discussed–the early victories were against smaller polis as they consolidated power in their peninsula, and the drop-off corresponds to them dealing with polis that are more on par with Sparta in terms of resources and capacity, or when Sparta had to travel further (and thus ran into problems that other polis didn’t seem to suffer from nearly as much). There are exceptions of course (this is history; exceptions are the only constants), but that was the general trend the author drew from the data. This was a not-insignificant part of his argument that the reputation was unwarranted.
“Sparta’s reputation wasn’t fantasy or propaganda, but simply the result of their being very good at fighting battles for most of the fifth and sixth centuries.”
But Sparta’s reputation isn’t “They were good against specific types of enemies but were of limited effectiveness otherwise.” Sparta’s reputation is as super-soldiers and the manliest manly-men who ever maned–and notably has been since Sparta and Athens were vying for dominance, as attested to by Athenians in at least one case. These are two very different things. And sure, I’ll grant it had some basis. Good propagandists don’t invent victories or enemies, they use facts creatively. But that doesn’t make the reputation any less fanciful. When your period of dominance is limited in geographic scope and was several generations ago, it no loner has any bearing on your military capacity in larger theaters and the present day.
The author literally lays out this reputation in the first few paragraphs of the series of essays. If you want to argue that Sparta has a different reputation that’s fine, it’s possibly a conversation worth having–but it’s a very different conversation from “Did Sparta deserve the reputation they’re given in the media, exemplified by the movie “300” (but also shown in dozens of other sources)?” As long as we’re discussing the reputation the author presented, Sparta being good against smaller cities with smaller armies simply isn’t sufficient to justify the reputation they have.
(To be clear, I don’t think the author is perfect. For one thing, the movie “300” is not presented as a factual presentation of Spartan society, but is on its own terms an example of Spartan propaganda–it’s a story being told by a Spartiat for the purpose of rallying other cities to the cause. And that impacts his assessment of the movie in significant ways. My objection is that you’re making factual errors, saying that things weren’t said when they very much were.)
Which was discussed
Where? I’ve just gone over the “Spartan Batting Average” section, and I can’t see any discussion of trends over time. Instead, he just lumps the “victories”, “defeats”, and “draws” together.
the early victories were against smaller polis as they consolidated power in their peninsula, and the drop-off corresponds to them dealing with polis that are more on par with Sparta in terms of resources and capacity, or when Sparta had to travel further (and thus ran into problems that other polis didn’t seem to suffer from nearly as much).
Taking “early” to mean “before the Peloponnesian War”, the list starts off with a battle against Argos, then some against Persia, one against the Tegeans and Argives (Brett just says Tegea, but the Argives are mentioned in the Herodotus passage he cites), one against “all the Arcadians except the Mantineans” (per Herodotus; Brett’s list says “Tegea and Arcadia”), and one against an alliance of Argos and Athens.
Of these nine battles, then, the only one that could reasonably be described as “against smaller poleis” is the Battle of Dipaea against the Arcadians, though since we have no details of the battle other than that the Spartans won we don’t know which side had the numerical advantage. For the rest, we have one battle against one of the leading Greek city-states (Argos), one against an alliance of a leading state (Argos) with a minor state (Tegea), one against an alliance of two leading states (Argos and Athens), and five against the most powerful empire in the world at that time (Achaemenid Persia). This really doesn’t support the idea that Sparta was only effective against minor city-states in the Peloponnese. And given that, of the nine battles listed, the only unambiguous defeat (at Thermopylae) also happened to culminate in a heroic last stand in which the Spartans and their king died facing overwhelming odds, I think we can safely say that the Spartans would have enjoyed a high reputation among the Greeks even if Herodotus had never propagandised on their behalf (which he didn’t actually do anyway, but that’s a discussion for another time).
“Where?”
This suggests to me that you are not arguing in good faith.
This suggests to me that you are not arguing in good faith.
Why?
“Where?”
This suggests to me that you are not arguing in good faith.
“Mayday, mayday, we’ve run out of sound arguments! Activating low-effort ad hominem accusations!”
Looks fun, let me give it a try
“faith”
This suggests that you are an avid worshipper of Baal Hammon, and thereby reject pro-Spartan arguments because such revisionist accounts of Greek history often reject exaggeration of Spartan child-sacrificial practices, with which you as a 2nd century Carthaginian find kinship.
It doesn’t look like archers or dedicated missile troops in general play a significant role in this style of battle, but I believe you’ve mentioned that Romans made use of good foreign archers when they could. What kind of role would they have had, and how would that have affected their tactics?
They’d probably be good at attrition of supporting light infantry.
What style of battle? They are intrinsic to the Hellenistic one. As for Roman battles, you could argue that they made use of a decent number of dedicated javelineers not really intended for much close combat; archers, when used in quantity, might have fulfilled similar roles, supplementing the Roman front-line javelin skirmishers.
All of his victories are from BEFORE his reforms, when he was fighting not with the resources of Sparta but with mercenaries hired with Egyptian money. Once the Egyptian money was gone and he could only hire what Sparta could levy or the hire, he loses decisively. If anything that makes it even worse for Sparta, a general who could be successful with non Spartan troops couldn’t make a Spartan army successful.
And he scared off an army 4 times larger because Plutarch said so. That is to say because a non military man writing three centuries later who is prone to giving wildly impossible numbers in other campaigns says he scared off an army 4 times later. And this is before the reforms so Sparta only has a few hundred “Spartans” so it’s incongruous that Achaea is afraid of 5000 Spartans.
After one of his victories the other side is the one capturing territory. It’s not quite a contradiction but it’s hard to square with the claim that the vast majority of the Achaen army was lost, who was doing the capturing then? The Macedonian victory on the other hand leads to the result you would expect from an overwhelming victory, they march their army into the enemy capital.
Whoops, I meant to reply to this: https://acoup.blog/2024/03/01/collections-phalanxs-twilight-legions-triumph-part-iiia-peak-pike-phalanx/#comment-63550
But I seem to have not hit the reply button.
Programming question: I presume your thoughts on Dune Part 2 will come in the next Fireside?
I find it funny talking about horse archer vs sarissa, in context of Iranian terrain. Isn’t horse archer gets even more disadvantaged in mountainous terrain than any infantry?
Iran has mountains but so do, for example, France or the United States. The Iranian mountain ranges are the edges of a big plateau with lots of good grassland and farmland, and more such on the other side of the mountain ranges (eg what is today Azerbaijan ).
So yeah the horse archers are terrible for fighting in the mountains themselves, but that’s not where most people want to live.
“‘Legion: Life in the Roman Army’ Review: Service Through a Soldier’s Eyes at the British Museum” by Dominic Green
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/legion-life-in-the-roman-army-review-service-through-a-soldiers-eyes-british-museum-65d84c9a
… “Legion,” now at the British Museum, is a superb exploration of the men, women, children and slaves who were part of Rome’s military machine. Curated by the British Museum’s Richard Abdy, “Legion” traces the life of sword and sandal through more than 200 objects across 10 spaces, with loans from 28 lenders. … “Legion” personalizes our understanding with wall texts and object labels bearing excerpts from the letters of Claudius Terentianus, a citizen who volunteered in A.D. 111. …
In “Ranks and Roles,” Terentianus joins the marines at Alexandria, the Egyptian port of origin for the grain that made Rome’s daily bread. …
Terentianus transferred to a legion and shipped out for Syria, asking his father to send a sword, two spears, a beaver-skin cloak, and his trousers. Amid helmets, swords, scabbards, armor and leather tunics, the highlight of “Dressing for Battle” is the world’s only intact scutum (shield). Found at Dura-Europos, Syria, and lent by the Yale University Art Gallery, it is uncannily vivid. Red-painted leather customized with the yellow, green and black highlights of the unit is stretched over a wooden frame, now curled with age. The handle behind the bronze boss resembles that of an old-fashioned suitcase. …
In “Battle,” we see a replica portable catapult and a cataphract (horse armor) set: a blanket of iron scales, a leather face armor, sieve-like eye guards, and a talisman of Minerva for the horse’s forehead. “Aftermath” describes the massacres and enslavement that followed a Roman victory. The papyrus sales receipt for Abbas, a 7-year-old Mesopotamian boy sold by one marine to another in A.D. 166, is more powerful than the stylized marble statue of a furious barbarian prisoner. …
Terentius, after campaigning in Syria and repressing a “Jewish tumult” at Alexandria, retired in A.D. 137 as a “man of means” with 10 years’ bonus pay. Half of his comrades did not survive.
On a minor “Horse archers vs Phalanx” note, Tacitus mentions Scythian Horse Archers acting as a police force in Athens, IIRC?
So mercs were available, but no one thought they were a huge hard counter that could be used against a far less sophisticated Phalanx army.
Thucydides, obviously. Brain fart.
The interesting thing I don’t see mentioned is that long spears seem to go with hilly country. We’ve got the Greeks, the Macedonians, and the Swiss, but we’ve also got the Hawaiians independently inventing small formation pike tactics.
Since I grew up in steep, slidey hill country, this makes sense. We routinely used long walking sticks to get around, something we figured out rather than copying. I’ve subsequently found that everyone from the Canary Islanders (Google salto del pastor) to the Swiss (check out the old alpenstocks) using long sticks to get around, and often those sticks have points on them.
So I’d suggest that, perhaps, pikes and pike formations were a way mountaineers figured out how to fight effectively, then they got adopted by flatlanders as part of a combined force. This is center to the implicit idea that pikes only work on level ground, which I’m not sure I see much evidence for.
That’s a very interesting argument; it makes me think of how Archaic Greek elites sometimes carried spears with them in a “civilian” / peacetime capacity in the same sort of role that most cultures generally restricted to the more portable sword.
There’re also some possible mentions to longspears/pikes in one Germanic context, IIRC at the time of the later Roman Empire; if there was rough terrain there too that could be an interesting addition to the body of evidence.
Doesn’t seem like the Parthians were that dangerous if they could only beat incompetent generals or kingdoms wracked be internal conflict. Did the analysis here go too far in the opposite direction? Because it made them look like chumps.
That’s a very striking header image, but I have to say I think it was a missed opportunity that you didn’t use a photo of Pike’s Peak.