Excellent illustration of a duel between Seleucid (R) and Ptolemaic (L) elephants. Note the two-man crew of the Ptolemaic elephant, as opposed to the three-man crew of the larger Seleucid Indian elephant. (This illustration seems to depict the Ptolemaic elephant as one of the larger African Bush Elephants instead of the small, now extinct North African Forrest Elephant; used by Ptolemaic and Carthaginian armies.
Another “specialty” troop type was the scythe chariot corps. How many such chariots were maintained is unknown; but they were a small force and of questionable value. Their use at Magnesia was disastrous, and contributed to the Seleucid defeat in that battle.
The fundamental weakness of the empire forged by Alexander the Great was its lack of an institutional base that could manage the transition of power after Alexander’s death. The empire was at its end what it was at the beginning: the product of one man’s dream. While there is little doubt that Alexander planned to create formal governmental institutions that would manage the empire after his death, his demise occurred before any of these plans could be put into effect. When Alexander died, his empire died with him, and the future of the realm was settled in traditional Greek fashion: by a series of wars among would-be successors for control of the spoils.
The Wars of Alexander’s Successors
The result was the Wars of the Successors from 323 to 280 b. c. e., where Alexander’s generals and their heirs fought one another to carve out spheres of influence within which to establish their own dynasties. The political entities that finally emerged were mostly defined by the territories occupied by the various contending armies at the end of the wars. When it was over, three major imperial realms came into existence. The Antigonids ruled mainland Greece and Macedonia, the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, and the Seleucids controlled most of southwest Asia, an empire that ran from the Aegean to the Hindu Kush. The Successor empires represented the imposition of Greek military oligarchies on various conglomerations of native populations conditioned to docility by centuries of foreign occupation by one power or another. Greek rule was perpetuated by establishing military garrisons at key points throughout the respective realms and by settling these garrisons with Greeks, sometimes by forcible resettlement. The three empires continually viewed one another with suspicion and often fought over one issue or another.
The period from 280 to 197 b. c. e. was a transitional period in the political and military history of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. When it began, Alexander’s Successors (the Diadochi) held the entire area in a firm military and political grip. Greek values remained the dominant cultural form of the area, and Greek arms dominated the practice of military science. When this period ended, however, the three Successor empires were in ruins, Greek culture was held prisoner to Roman gravitas, and Greek influence on military history was swept from the historical scene, never to emerge as a major force again. Simultaneously, the Macedonian military system, which had remained unchallenged for more than a century and a half, also met its death at the hands of a new military system: the legions of Rome. It is difficult to find any other period in ancient history that was more momentous for the development of warfare in the West.
Macedonian Armies
The general structure of the Macedonian armies under the Antigonids during the period of the Successors remained essentially as it had been during the Alexandrian period, a force comprising the central phalanx organized into taxeis of infantry coupled with ile, or “squadrons,” of cavalry. While the general structure of the army remained, the manner in which the Macedonians tactically employed their armies was significantly different from the manner in which Alexander had used them. The major difference between the Macedonian model and the armies of Alexander was that the role of infantry in tactical application changed substantially. Alexander used the infantry phalanx as a platform of maneuver to pin the enemy in place until he exploited the development of the battle with his cavalry. The Alexandrian cavalry was typically the arm of decision. Under the Macedonians, the roles were reversed, with infantry used as the primary striking and killing force, while the cavalry was relegated to a secondary role. It is difficult to find a battle of the later Successor period where cavalry played a decisive role.
A number of factors contributed to this reversal of tactical roles. First, unlike the Seleucid Empire, the Macedonians quickly lost interest in affairs in Asia, where the enemy armies consisted mainly of cavalry. The Macedonians fought mostly against the former city-states of Greece that had relinquished the old hoplite phalanx and adopted the weapons (sarissa) and formations of the Macedonian phalanx. Great improvements in siegecraft made the city-state more vulnerable than ever before, and the social system that supported the old hoplite system collapsed. More and more, the armies of the smaller city-states comprised mercenaries and professionals who adopted the phalanx as the more effective form of ground warfare. As a consequence, Macedonian armies fought mostly infantry battles against fellow Greeks armed with similar weapons and arrayed in similar battle formations. The result was a renewed emphasis on infantry as the primary arm of decision. A second reason for the reemphasis on infantry lay in the fact that the Macedonians generally perceived these conflicts more as police actions than as genuine wars. A similar development occurred in the other Successor empires. The role of the imperial armies was more domestic suppression than combat against foreign enemies. Under these conditions, trained infantry were considerably cheaper and more effective than expensive cavalry.
The Macedonian emphasis on infantry had changed the combat power of the phalanx. It became a cumbersome thing that had lost almost all the flexibility it once possessed under Alexander. Under the Antigonids, the phalanx grew considerably heavier, and it is likely that the syntagma, a unit of about 1,800 men, replaced the taxeis as the basic component of the phalanx. Smaller organizational units would have made the phalanx somewhat more manageable. Alexander deployed his phalanx in various depths, depending on the demands of the tactical situation. At its heaviest the Alexandrian phalanx was sixteen men deep. The Macedonian phalanx ranged in depth from sixteen to thirty-two men and, in some instances, even denser than that. This increase in depth adequately demonstrates the change in tactical concept for the use of infantry. When used as a platform of maneuver, it was the stability and training of the phalanx that was most important. But when used as a decisive arm, the bulk and momentum of the phalanx became most important. The increased density of the phalanx reflected its changing combat role under the Macedonians.
The weaponry of the Macedonian phalanx also changed. Alexander’s infantry carried the sarissa, and while there is some debate as to its length, it is generally held that the Alexandrian spear was no longer than twelve to fourteen feet. It was sufficiently light to be wielded at the balance with one hand. The length and weight of the Alexandrian sarissa made it possible for the phalanx to shift formations to meet an attack from any direction. The Macedonian sarissa had grown in length and required two hands and considerable strength just to hold it out straight. The length of the infantry spear when coupled with the denser phalanx deprived the phalanx of any tactical flexibility. It could move in only a single direction, forward, and the propensity of the longer spears to tangle when moved about made it next to impossible for the phalanx to shift its formation to meet an attack from the flank or rear.
Only the first five rows of the phalanx could actually engage the enemy, and it is possible that the two front rows carried shorter spears. The rest of the ranks in the phalanx held their spears upward at a forward angle to provide some protection against arrow and missile fire. No matter how many ranks were arrayed in depth, all but the first five remained essentially reserves. To increase the bulk of the phalanx even further, the Macedonians reduced the gap between individual soldiers to only one and one-half feet. To protect the soldiers within the phalanx, the technique of “locking shields”-used by Alexander at the Hydaspes-became a standard maneuver. With both hands holding the spear and with the shield held by a shoulder strap, the men of the phalanx pressed against the men to their right in an effort to permit their neighbors’ shields to overlap their right sides. In this formation it was impossible for the phalanx to maneuver in any direction except straight ahead. The press of the mass of humanity within the phalanx decreased the speed of movement to a crawl.
This cumbersome body of men could hold its ground and slowly advance forward only as long as the ground was level. Even the slightest unevenness in terrain tended to throw the ranks of the phalanx out of alignment. There was an additional tendency for the wings of the phalanx to move outward from the center as it moved and to create gaps between the individual syntagmae within it. This was a dangerous condition. A first-rate commander could easily use his cavalry to exploit these gaps, as Alexander had at Issus and Gaugamela. As the Romans demonstrated at Pydna, it was also possible to insert an infantry maniple into the gaps and to hack at the phalanx from within. But the experience of the Macedonians was largely against armies that used phalanxes and had equally poor cavalry, and while the risk of creating gaps was recognized, few of the opposing forces in the Macedonian military experience were capable of exploiting this vulnerability.
The inability of the phalanx to maneuver made it extremely vulnerable to flank or rear attack. The Macedonian phalanx fought four major battles against the Romans- Cynoscephalae, Pydna, Magnesia, and Corinth-and in every instance the phalanx crumbled to flank or rear attack. The paradox of the Macedonian phalanx during the time of the Successors was that the decline in cavalry resulted in the rise of an infantry formation that was even more in need of flank protection at precisely the time when the new cavalry doctrines could not provide this vital combat function.
