Phoebus wrote:To begin with, I don't really think it's fair to make the case of maniple vs. phalanx... Flamininus and Paullus alike fielded forces that were close to, if not greater than, 40,000 strong... yet neither marshalled more than two full legions. This means that, even including the Republican-era allied contigents (which numerically equalled actual Roman troops), only 50% of the actual force was (theoretically) in manipular formation.
Conversely, the performance of the phalanx itself is often not the reason for defeat.
Take Cynoscepahale for instance. The phalanx actually acquitted itself wonderfully against the Roman left wing. What actually decided the battle, though, was Phillip's decision to take to the field with only 50% of his phalanx and some accompanying elements. Polybius, who spends great energy in trying to convince us of the phalanx's inferiority (through a loaded comparison), nonetheless tells us that Flamininus was victorious on the right wing because Phillip's follow-on troops weren't even in battle formation, but in marching column. It was, he explains, the effect the charging elephants, along with the absence of officers and leadership at the head of the columns, that decided the battle.
A fascinating subject and one that has exercised itself on Pothos in several threads.
I’d tend to agree with the sentiments expressed particularly Polybius’ discourse on the - seemingly, in his view - severe limitations of the phalanx as a battle formation. Polybius spent a great deal of his writing life attempting to explain the total subsuming of Greece by a never overly interested but hugely successful Rome. It tasked him almost as much as his exculpation of his father’s (Lycortas) and – a fortiori – his as well as the Achaean League’s policies up to the decision forced at Pydna.
Part of this seems to be the inevitability of it all. Many things contributed to that inevitability and one was the total inflexibility and extremely limited nature of the phalanx. In Polybius’ time there is a reasonable amount of truth to this for – MM Markle aside, who then applies it to Alexander’s phalanx – this was not the phalanx of Philip II or Alexander III. There is evidence that the pike, like Pinocchio’s nose, had grown longer and rendered the phalanx that much more “rigid”. That, though, is not the most important aspect.
The Macedonian armies that took the field at Cynoscephalae and Pydna were not the “professional” levies of Philip II or Alexander III. Those armies, trained and under arms for more than a generation, were superbly drilled and units such as the hypaspists were long practised in the indelicate art of disembowelling and slaughter. In contrast, Livy (33.3) describes Philip V’s army at Cynoscephalae in the following terms:
Owing to the perpetual wars which had for so many generations drained the manhood of Macedonia there was a serious lack of men of military age, and under Philip's own rule vast numbers had perished in the naval battles against the Rhodians and Attalus and in the campaigns against the Romans. Under these circumstances he even enrolled youths of sixteen and recalled to the colours men who had served their time, provided they had any stamina left. After his army was brought up to its proper strength he concentrated the whole of his forces at Dium and formed a standing camp there in which he drilled and exercised his soldiers day by day whilst waiting for the enemy.
The drilling and constant training say much. As does the losses in the campaigns against the Romans. Livy attests to three battles in which the Macedonians were worsted. The arguments will be raised about the ground and flank attacks where protection was lost but, again, this simply demonstrates the vulnerability of the phalanxes of the second century.
Another illuminating excerpt from Livy’s description of the second Macedonian War (31.34) is worth the read:
Philip's men had been accustomed to fighting with Greeks and Illyrians and had only seen wounds inflicted by javelins and arrows and in rare instances by lances. But when they saw bodies dismembered with the Spanish sword, arms cut off from the shoulder, heads struck off from the trunk, bowels exposed and other horrible wounds, they recognised the style of weapon and the kind of man against whom they had to fight, and a shudder of horror ran through the ranks.
Indeed they had not ever seen the gladius in action. Over the ensuing campaign, and in the one that would follow against Perseus, many would not live to tell of the carnage it wrought amongst the phalanx. Philip, indeed, had to exhort his phalangites with excuses as to why the phalanx had been worsted prior to Cynoscephalae. Given the above description one doesn’t have to ask why. One of those engagements is also worth the read (31.35):
The Romans, whose main line was about half a mile distant, sent forward their velites and about two squadrons of cavalry, so that the number of their mounted and unmounted men was equal to that of the enemy. The king's troops expected the style of fighting to be that with which they were familiar; the cavalry would make alternate charges and retirements, at one moment using their missiles, then galloping to the rear; the swift-footed Illyrians would be employed in sudden onsets and rushes; the Cretans would discharge their arrows on the enemy as he dashed forward to attack. But this order of combat was completely upset by the method of the Roman attack, which was as sustained as it was fierce. They fought as steadily as though it had been a regular engagement; the velites after discharging their javelins came to close quarters with their swords; the cavalry, when once they had reached the enemy, halted their horses and fought, some on horseback whilst others dismounted and took their places amongst the infantry. Under these conditions Philip's cavalry, unaccustomed to a stationary combat, were no match for the Roman horse, and his infantry, trained to skirmish in loose order and unprotected by armour, were at the mercy of the velites who with their swords and shields were equally prepared for defence and attack. Incapable of sustaining the conflict and trusting solely to their mobility they fled hack to their camp.
Again, at Cynoscephalae, it might be debated just how and where the battle was won. It is completely true, as the sources agree, that the Macedonian king blundered awfully in not pulling back from the engagement. Committed, with only the right half of the phalanx and the caetrati in battle line, Philip elected to charge the Roman left. This met with initial success and, were his left to have engaged, he may well have carried the day. As it transpired Flamininus, who’d held his right aloof, committed both it and his elephants to the fray. At this stage Philip, who’d reached the top of the hill and caught sight of the action on his right, ordered a certain companion, one Nicanor, “to follow at once with the rest of his force”. Then this rather strange passage:
As soon as he reached the top of the hill and saw a few of the enemy's bodies and weapons lying about, he concluded that there had been a battle there and that the Romans had been repulsed, and when he further saw that fighting was going on near the enemy's camp he was in a state of great exultation. Soon, however, when his men came back in flight and it was his turn to be alarmed, he was for a few moments anxiously debating whether he ought not to recall his troops to camp. Then, as the enemy were approaching, and especially as his own men were being cut down as they fled and could not be saved unless they were defended by fresh troops, and also as retreat was no longer safe, he found himself compelled to take the supreme risk, though half his force had not yet come up. The cavalry and light infantry who had been in action he stationed on his right; the caetrati and the men of the phalanx were ordered to lay aside their spears, the length of which only embarrassed them, and make use of their swords. To prevent his line from being quickly broken he halved the front and gave twice the depth to the files, so that the depth might be greater than the width. He also ordered the ranks to close up so that man might be in touch with man and arms with arms.
Hmmm. Go figure as the Americans say. In any case the decisive action, it seems to me, was taken – on his own initiative – by a military tribune “who suddenly made up his mind what to do, and leaving that part of his line which was undoubtedly winning, wheeled round with twenty maniples and attacked the enemy's right from behind” (33.9). The near victorious Macedonian right, taken completely by surprise in their rear, raised sarisae vertically in abject surrender and were duly slaughtered by Roman troops who did not understand the action, apparently. That was the result of the superior tactical manoeuvrability of the Roman maniple and legion.
The point of all of this is that this phalanx was not that of the “glory age”. Neither was it was likely, aside from those old folk called back to the colours, that of Gonatas so singularly successful at Sellasia a generation earlier. Philip V who – by dint of his spree of rapine, plunder and slaughter – was near friendless at this battle was, aside from his shared appetite for dalliances with either sex, no Philip II either. Indeed his last ally, the Spartan tyrant Nabis, had deserted him. He’d taken the offer of Philip’s girls for his sons and the city of Argos, all of which he likely treated the same, and allied himself with the ever expedient Rome.
The Glory age phalanx had not ever had to come to grips with gladius armed Romans though.
