This Week in Ancient Warfare – Battle of Raphia, 22 June 217 BC

One of the largest battles of antiquity was fought a few miles south of Gaza on the Mediterranean coast. Credible sources give us around 150,000 combatants, which makes Raphia the biggest of the Hellenistic age. It pitted the young Antiochos III of Syria, later called Antiochos the Great, against the young Ptolemy IV of Egypt, called Philopater. Since I’m already actually past the week of Raphia, I’ll just play catch up a little bit by highlighting one aspect of the battle.

The two huge armies encamped within sight of each other for several days before fighting. During those several days, the soldiers from each army went out to skirmish with one another. Scholars have generally viewed this as a minor occurrence, something practiced by the skirmishers of the army involved, and not really worth comment. This is due to a tendency to imagine that in the Hellenistic period, characterized by powerful kingdoms, ever-developing bureaucracies, and a new cosmopolitan world, the Greeks would have been too practical to risk their best and brightest in pointless skirmishes. It sounds like the stuff of David and Goliath, not Ptolemy and Antiochos. We could actually identify several types of skirmish:

1) Between foraging parties (mentioned by Polybius at Raphia)

2) Between pickets and screens (mentioned in other situations, but not expressly mentioned at Raphia.

3) Between cavalry forces (mentioned by Polybius at Raphia). These are generally assumed to have been light cavalry, but well-born cavalrymen are probably at least as likely.

4) Between groups of infantry (mentioned by Polybius at Raphia as involving an exchange of missiles). This could be, in reality, very similar to foraging or picket skirmishes, the main differences being a) the greater organization or status of the soldiers, and b) the reason for skirmishing, in this last case being the skirmish itself, while in 1) and 2) the skirmish arises due to detachments attempting to execute particular duties.

But we have good reason to believe that the noblemen in the army actively participated in the skirmishes prior to battle. Polybius tells us that on one day, the skirmishing actually carried rather close to the Ptolemaic camp. Now, what should we imagine this skirmishing to be? From one perspective, it would involve hundreds, up to a few thousands, of light infantry—slingers, archers, and javelineers—scattered across the No Man’s Land, aiming their missiles occasionally at their enemy and yelling the best insults that could come to mind. But based on what follows in Polybius’ narrative, it might be preferable to imagine noblemen and a couple of attendants, sometimes on horseback, challenging their social equals to do battle, at least in some parts of the battlefield. Polybius expressly mentions the participation of the cavalry (5.80), and it is worth noting that neither army had very many specifically “light cavalry.”

It would seem that some of the leaders of the armies involved may have participated in these skirmishes or duels between social equals. Theodotos, an Aitolian officer who had deserted Ptolemy’s side to join Antiochos, had, according to Polybius, come close enough to the Ptolemaic lines during the skirmishes that he had actually seen Ptolemy’s royal tent and noted its position in the encampment. Rather than imagining that he managed this by slipping into a light soldier’s gear, it is preferable to consider that he, rather like a warrior of the heroic age, had ridden out on horseback to challenge an enemy rider, and there exchanged javelin fire aimed at demonstrating virtue, skill and courage, in emulation of the heroes of the Iliad.

By means of the skirmishers Theodotos located the king’s tent, and so one morning, probably a day or two before the battle was fought, Theodotos and two attendants slipped into the Ptolemaic camp. If groups of nobles were going out to the lines to protect foragers and seek out opportunities to challenge their enemies, it would not have been unusual for a few of them to head back to camp together, which means that Theodotos and his associates were able to enter the Ptolemaic lines unopposed. It is also possible that the pickets and lookouts were less than vigilant so soon after dawn. After entering the camp, they made their way to the king’s tent, where they slipped past the watching guards and entered the tent. There, they rushed around, but could not find the king, though they did apparently run into and kill or injure several of the men that they did find, including the king’s physician. The cries of one of these must have alerted the guards, for Theodotos escaped the camp only with some trouble, and we hear no further word of his two attendants. A few days later, Theodotos commanded part of the Seleukid phalanx in the battle, the ten thousand elite argyraspides, or “silver shields.” And to think that a man, who in battle commanded ten thousand pikemen, had only a day or two earlier snuck into the enemy’s camp and attempted to slay the enemy king by his own hand, and the day before had sought—in grand Homeric fashion—to demonstrate his personal virtue by challenging enemy horsemen to single combat.