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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