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Cynoscephalae
About
Roman legions under Titus Quinctius Flamininus caught Philip V of Macedon's phalanx on broken hilly ground where it could not hold formation, and flanked it with a detached maniple for a decisive win. Macedonian losses ran to roughly 8,000 dead against a few hundred Romans. The battle proved the flexible legion could beat the rigid Macedonian phalanx on uneven terrain. Flamininus later declared the Greek cities free at the Isthmian Games to wide applause.
What happened here
A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.
In ancient writing
- Polybius, Histories 18.20–27
Two armies collide in fog on the ridge; Polybius uses the day to argue why a phalanx cannot hold formation on broken ground.
Sources
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