Battle of Pydna
Perseus surrenders to Paullus
| date | 168 BC Chr. |
|---|---|
| place | Near Pydna |
| output | roman victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| approx. 38,000 | approx. 44,000 |
| losses | |
|
approx. 200 |
approx. 25,000 |
The Battle of Pydna on June 22nd in 168 BC. Between the Romans and the Macedonians under King Perseus brought about the end of the Macedonian dynasty of the Antigonids . It was also an important step in the expansion of Roman rule to the eastern Mediterranean and is considered a classic example of the juxtaposition of a Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legions , which showed weak points in the phalanx. The battle of Pydna probably took place between Louloudies and ancient Pydna in the hilly terrain to the west.
prehistory
The Third Macedonian War began in 172 BC. The Romans feared that Macedonia, which had regained strength under Perseus , might challenge them for political control over Greece , and so, spurred on by Greek allies such as the Attalid kingdom of Pergamon , decided to destroy the Antigonid monarchy. The Roman troops initially won a number of minor victories as Perseus refrained from joining forces. Towards the end of 169 BC The tide had apparently turned; Perseus had made up most of the casualties, achieved some success, and regained the important religious center of Dion . In doing so, he had taken advantage of the incompetence of several Roman commanders. Perseus finally entrenched himself in an almost impregnable position above the Elpeus River in northeastern Greece and awaited the Roman attack.
Lucius Aemilius Paullus
The following year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus was sent to Greece. Paullus had become consul for the second time that year , which was still quite unusual at the time. Theodor Mommsen describes him as follows: “An excellent general from the old school, strict against himself and his people and despite his sixty years still fresh and strong, an incorruptible official”. Other historians judge Paullus, who was unpopular with many senators, far less favorably, but his talent as a general was undisputed.
After his arrival in the Roman camp at the foot of Mount Olympus , Paullus Publius sent Cornelius Scipio Nasica with a small army (8,200 foot soldiers and 120 horsemen) to the coast of Herakleion . To prevent defectors from betraying his plan and to confuse Perseus, Paullus and Nasica claimed they were going to attack Perseus at the Elpeus River . Nasica, on the other hand, marched with his troops to the Pythion Pass that night to stab Perseus in the back. Despite the precautionary measures, however, a Roman deserter managed to communicate the plan to King Perseus. He then sent General Milon with 12,000 soldiers to close the pass road. According to Polybius , when Nasica reached them, Milon's men were asleep and were barely able to escape. Nasica himself, however, claims that there was a sharp battle in which he personally killed an enemy and that Milon eventually fled.
This achieved what Paullus had planned: Perseus, who feared being encircled, left his entrenchment on the Elpeus and moved his army north, to a position near Katerini , a village south of Pydna , a wide plain that was used for his operations Phalanx seemed appropriate. Paullus called Scipio's soldiers back to the main army and marched with his troops along the coast to the vicinity of Katerini, where Perseus was preparing his army. Instead of starting the battle with the troops tired from the march, the Romans set up camp west of the foothills of Olocrus .
When the Roman soldiers lay down to rest, the full moon suddenly turned gray and pale and finally disappeared entirely. According to Plutarch, the Romans tried to call back the light with torches and burning branches. In the Macedonian camp, on the other hand, it was said that a lunar eclipse heralded the fall of a king. Paullus and his officers knew the phenomenon, but were considerate of the fear of their husbands and therefore immediately sacrificed eleven mares for the gods. At daybreak, Paullus also sacrificed 20 cattle to Hercules , but it is said that the innards did not show good omens. It was not until the 21st, as Plutarch says, that Paullus would win if he fought defensively. To what extent this account is a later invention (Plutarch wrote about 250 years after the battle) is difficult to say.
Battle formation
The next day, June 22nd, 168 BC. BC, the armies waited until the afternoon to attack. The exact reason for the beginning of the battle is unclear and is said to have arisen by chance without the formation of a systematic, orderly battle formation. One version says that Paullus waited until the sun no longer blinded his soldiers and then sent an unbridled horse to signal the attack. It is more likely, however, that some Roman forage troops got too close to the Macedonians and were attacked by some Thracians in Perseus' army.
Both armies were roughly equally strong. The Romans had 38,000 men, including 33,400 infantry , including two legions. The Macedonians and their allies had about 43,000 soldiers, including 25,000 phalangites . About 4,000 men on each side were cavalry . The two armies were each set up in the usual way: the Romans had put the two legions in the center, the allied Latin , Italian and allied Greek infantry at their side. The cavalry stood on its wings, the Roman right flank was reinforced by 22 African elephants . The phalanx formed the Macedonian center, with the 3,000-man elite guard, who fought with gold-plated weapons and dressed in red, formed the left. Lighter troops, Greek mercenaries, and Thracian infantry clad in black and armed with heavy battle axes stood on the flanks of the phalanx, while the Macedonian cavalry was rather unevenly distributed between the two wings. The stronger contingent was on the Macedonian right, where Perseus personally commanded the heavy cavalry, including his holy band.
Course of the battle
The two centers attacked around 3 p.m. with the Macedonians advancing on the Romans near the Roman camp. Paullus later stated that the sight of the phalanx filled him with fear and terror. The Romans tried, without much success, to push down the long opposing lances, which prevented them from reaching the phalanx with the sword, or to cut off the tips. The Romans were pushed back and some of their Greek allies were already leaving the battlefield.
But as the Macedonian phalanx advanced rapidly, it found itself in the foothills of the hills. There the ground became uneven, the lines of the phalanx were too long and lost their cohesion. This created a number of crevices and gaps in the ranks of the Macedonians. With that the battle was decided, because Paullus divided up his cohorts, ordered them to run into the gaps between the Macedonians, and thus let the phalangites attack from their unprotected sides.
The rigid Macedonian formation could not respond. In hand-to-hand combat, the somewhat longer Roman swords ( gladii ) and heavier shields quickly made a predominance of the Macedonians armed with short swords (rather daggers). Soon the legions were also supported by the Roman cavalry on the right flank, who had succeeded in riding down the weaker Macedonian left. An orderly resistance by the royal soldiers was now out of the question, as they were largely defenseless and massacred by the thousands.
When Perseus saw the battle unfold, he and the cavalry fled the Macedonian right flank. After Polybius he withdrew to the city with the horsemen under the pretext of sacrificing to Heracles. Both the king and the cavalry were later accused of cowardice by the infantry survivors. In his defense, however, Poseidonios writes that Perseus had already gone into battle injured because a horse had kicked his leg the day before, and that he only fled after a spear had brushed him. Moreover, Perseus had quite rightly recognized that the battle was already lost.
The slaughter lasted little more than an hour, but after the 3,000-strong Royal Guard had also been crushed, the Macedonians had lost a total of over 25,000 of their 40,000 soldiers: According to Plutarch, the next day the water of the river was red with blood. Both he and Livy emphasize that the Romans did not give pardons during the battle, but also cut down the wounded and those who surrendered. It was only after the end of the battle that around 11,000 Macedonians were captured and enslaved.
Political Consequences
After the battle three quarters of the Macedonian army were dead or captured. Perseus initially escaped with a few companions and 6000 talents of gold. But after he murdered one of these, he had to give himself up to Paullus and was carried along in a triumphal procession in Rome in 167 and then imprisoned. A few years later he died as a prisoner of state in Alba on Lake Fucin . The Macedonian kingdom was dissolved by the Romans and replaced by a koinon made up of four republics , which, however , were converted into a Roman province after a while .
analysis
Although this battle repeatedly revealed the fundamental unsuitability of the rigid, Macedonian type of warfare compared to a flexible, Roman way of fighting, the defeat is also due to errors in the immobile command structure of the king. The penetration of individual maniples under the leadership of tactically independent centurions into the gaps next to the phalanx should not have happened, especially since the Macedonian version of the phalanx raised light troops against precisely this problem and Perseus had them in his ranks at the beginning of the battle. The Macedonians had actually been familiar with Roman combat tactics for decades. The phalanx at Pydna was much too fast and advanced too far, so that the connection to the flanking troops was broken and the side cover was lost.
The battle (as well as the battle of Magnesia in particular ) nevertheless shows that the defeats against the Romans can be traced back to the inability of individual Macedonian generals as well as to their outdated way of waging war.
Date of the battle
There is an isolated assumption that the battle did not take place on June 22, 168 BC. BC, but on September 2, 172 BC. Occurred: On the one hand, the lunar eclipse began on June 22nd at 7:20 pm local time. At that time, however, the sun was just setting and it is unlikely that the Romans slept this early. In addition, Plutarch writes that the battle took place in the time of "θορους γἦρ ἦν ὥρα φθίνοντος", at the end of summer, which it is difficult to call June. There is also another point that speaks for September 2nd: Plutarch writes: “It was the fourth day after the victory over Perseus, and in Rome a lot of people saw horse races”. This would have been September 7th and to get a lot of people into the stadium it would have to have been bigger games. At this time the big games took place every year ( Ludi Romani ), while there were no festivals around June 26th.
Against this hypothesis, however, speaks among other things, the report of the contemporary Polybius , who expressly states that the Battle of Pydna took place immediately before the day of Eleusis (beginning of July 168 BC).
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Mommsen, Roman History, III, chap. 10.
- ↑ In a lost fragment of his book 29, see Plutarch 16: 3.
- ↑ Plutarch: Aemilius Paulus, 16.3.
- ↑ Plut. 17.7.
- ↑ Hans Delbrück : History of the art of war. Part 1. Antiquity: From the Persian Wars to Caesar . Reprint of the new edition: de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, Nikol, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-937872-41-4 , Römer und Macedonier, Pydna , p. 474.
- ^ Adrian Goldsworthy : The Wars of the Romans . Original title: Roman warfare , Brandenburgisches Verl.-Haus, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89488-136-4 , The wars against Carthage and the Hellenistic kingdoms, land war against Carthage and the Hellenistic world , p. 72.
- ↑ Plut. 18.7.
- ↑ Philip de Souza: The wars of antiquity: From Egypt to the Inca Empire , original title: The ancient world at war . Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-7338-0362-9 , Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Wars, Stagnation, pp. 133-137.
- ^ Adrian Goldsworthy : The Wars of the Romans . Original title: Roman warfare , Brandenburgisches Verl.-Haus, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89488-136-4 , The wars against Carthage and the Hellenistic kingdoms, The army in battle, p. 55, Land war against Carthage and the Hellenistic world , P. 72.
- ↑ See also [1] .
- ↑ Polybios 29:27.
Coordinates: 40 ° 15 ′ 41.2 ″ N , 22 ° 23 ′ 51.7 ″ E