Pydna
About
Consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus lured the Macedonian phalanx onto broken ground and picked it apart in gaps with sword-armed legionaries, killing an estimated 20,000 men in an afternoon. King Perseus fled and was later paraded in Paullus's triumph. The victory ended the four-century Antigonid dynasty and Macedon as an independent kingdom. Rome split the territory into four puppet republics rather than annex it outright.
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
- Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus 16–22
The phalanx advances, the Roman line gives, and gaps open in the pike wall as the ground breaks up — the fighting decided in under an hour.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →