Shameless self promotion or "men in skirts" XXXVI

Theme: Michael Park, 'The battle of Gaza, 312 BC - Doomed men of distinction'. Illustrated by Igor Dzis and José Antonio German.
Ancient Warfare, V.6, 2011

The horsemen reached Azotus (modern Ashdod, Israel) near midnight. Their horses, lathered in sweat in spite of the crisp December night, made directly for their stabling and water. Of the elite cavalrymen who had earlier left these winter quarters, few returned. The survivors, a defeated and desultory lot, made their way toward their general’s lodging. Here, in “council” (synhedrion) with what remained of his “Friends” (philoi), Demetrius canvassed his options. Many of the Friends, “the most distinguished of whom were Pithon [son of Agenor], who had shared the command on equal terms with himself, and Boeotus, who for a long time had lived with his father Antigonus and had shared in all his state secrets”, lay dead on the battlefield (Diodorus 19.85.2 – all references to this source and book unless noted). Still in his blood and grime covered armour and struggling to come to terms with events, Demetrius had an envoy sent to Ptolemy “about the burial of the dead since he was very anxious at any cost to honour those who had perished with the funeral that was their due” (85.1). More than a few of those who’d perished had sat in another council prior to the battle; a council of war.

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Battle of the Jiradi Pass

On the afternoon of June 22, 217 (all dates are BCE) Ptolemy IV “Philopater”, likely at the insistence of his generals and Sosibius in particular, had resolved to bring Antiochus III to battle. The two armies had been camped opposite each other for almost five days and the botched attempt on Ptolemy’s life by Theodotus, his erstwhile general of Coele Syria now in Seleucid service, was a product of this procrastination (Polybius, 5. 82.1; 81.1-6 – all references to this author unless otherwise stated). Two days previous Antiochus had closed down the distance between the two camps from 1.8 kilometres to a little less than one kilometre. As a result there “were frequent struggles at the watering-places” as well as “infantry and cavalry skirmishes in the space between the camps” (5.80.5-7).

Ptolemy, who had force marched his army “through the waterless region” from Pelusium to “the spot he was bound for” (5.80.2-3) some nine kilometres southwest of Raphia (near to modern Dikla) in five days – a distance of near 180 kilometres at 36 kilometres per day – had chosen his ground to a purpose. The Ptolemaic army, unlike the Seleucid, had not fought a major set-piece engagement in a generation with much of its work in the intervening years having been carried out by mercenaries. At the head of this largely untried conveyance Ptolemy’s general staff chose, as would other Egyptian generals 2,184 years later, to adopt a largely defensive strategy and block the Jiradi Pass...

Ancient Warfare IV.6

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Ancient Warfare Magazine

In any given army the number of men who are at ease with killing and capable of routinely carrying it out is small. The Antigonid phalangites were now locked in a death dance with just such men. Their memories of Paraetacene, where their phalanx had been summarily driven from the field with severe casualties, were alive now in front of them. Working sarisae into the spaces generated by the confusion, the Argyraspids pushed and thrust at the disordered phalanx opposite them and spaces became gaps. As front rank sarisae shattered the double edged sword (xiphos) of the Argyraspids began to find unprotected sides and groins. Gaps turned to breach as, wielding sarisae, butt spikes and swords and “not a man withstanding them”, the Antigonid phalanx was “cut to pieces at close quarters” (Plut. Eum. 16.4) by the Argyraspids. Dry salt dust turned bloody saline mud.

The breach, driven deep into the Antigonid phalanx, was quickly exploited by Eumenes’ native hypaspists and the other phalanx units as they drove in to the left and right, their rearward ranks butt-spiking those underfoot. The Antigonid phalanx, cohesion falling away, could not retreat as their rear ranks, the light infantry still loosing the odd missile from behind them, kept pushing forward. All now was butchery as Antigonid phalangites, desperate to escape, discarded weapons and attempted to flee the carnage. Bodies piled on bodies in the rout as those not spitted by sarisae were eviscerated and hacked apart by swords. As the panic spread rearward and along the line, the Antigonid phalanx was put to incontinent flight. The Argyraspids, regimented in their brutal savagery, pursued. Blood mixed freely with faeces and urine as the salt dust drank.

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A (hi)story...

Shameless self promotion... Anceint Warfare Magazine III-2


The dead lay everywhere; the ground onto which they had been driven was a charnel house littered with their corpses. Shattered sarisae, viscera and body parts shared the killing ground with the whole weapons and armour that had been abandoned in the final rout. The foetid odours of blood and bowel fouled the increasingly frigid air as the cries of the dying and the wounded faded with the Persian mid-winter sunset. Litter bearers carried the still living from the blood soaked dust into which they had fallen while carts, the produce of carnage piled high, plied their way to funerary fires as yet unlit. Morale in the camp matched the freezing night air as confusion, tinged with anger at the day's proceedings, spread with the smoke from the campfires. The military prospects were not propitious: the phalanx infantry and, more importantly, its Macedonians were shattered. Any resumption of hostilities on the morrow would prove difficult, if not impossible...

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Ancient Warfare, Vol III.

Artwork by Johnny Shumate

In the late summer of 318 BCE, in the sputtering embers of the first bloody war of the "Successors"(Diadochoi) of Alexander The Great, Eumenes of Cardia sheltered somewhere on the Anatolian plateau in the heart of Cappadocia with some 2,500 "friends" and allies. Eumenes had, within the last year, been defeated in the field by Antigonus Monaphthalmus, a former general and satrap of Alexander with the glint of empire in his one eye. Eumenes’ position, unprepossessing at best, was improved markedly by the arrival of a letter, from Polyperchon in Macedonia, the guardian of and regent for "the kings": Alexander IV (Alexander’s infant son) and the mentally deficient Philip III. Apart from appointing him "General of the Argead House" in Asia, the letter carried an authorisation for Eumenes to draw five hundred talents from the treasury in Cyinda, Cilicia, and "whatever additional money he requested for the raising of mercenaries" (Diod. 18.58.2-3).
Displaying great faith in his royal letter, Eumenes – "friends" in tow – forced marched to Cyinda. That faith was rewarded when he was joined by three thousand intimidating old sweats of the campaigns of Alexander and Philip. Having come "from a considerable distance in obedience to the letters of the kings" (Diod. 18. 59.1), the three thousand Macedonian Silver Shields (so named for the silver arms provided them by Alexander at the beginning of the Indian campaign), led by Antigenes and Teutamos, billeted themselves within the royal general’s camp. This was, as events would show, the signally important outcome of the letters to Eumenes. It was also a deadly double edged sword....


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