Supply in Hellenistic armies

The main question I've been asked pertaining to this blog concerns the logistical problems underlying the numbers of troops at battles like Raphia. Regardless of source credibility or textual criticism, the sheer numbers involved in major battles beg questions concerning supply. This problem will come up again in my TWAW entry this week, which will concern the Battle of Cannae.

There are several logistical sorts of questions we can ask about ancient armies. I'll answer each of these in relation to the Raphia campaign.

1) Population - could the states involved have actually committed the numbers of soldiers described in the account?

Both the Ptolemaic and Seleukid armies were stretched to raise their forces for Raphia, but the numbers were not beyond the ability of what were, at that point in time, the largest states west of India. Population estimates put the population of Ptolemaic Egypt at between 5 and 7 million at this time, which means that we might expect a military-eligible population in the range of 1 to 2 million. But this number is actually more complicated. The vast majority of those men would have been Egyptians, of whom the machimoi (warrior class) only numbered several hundred thousand. So only a small number of the machimoi class were mobilized for the Raphia campaign, roughly 1 in 20. The mobilization would have heavily stressed the non-Egyptian population of Egypt. For example, P.Count establishes that the number of cavalrymen settled in the Fayum, one of the most important sites of military settlement, was in the neighborhood of 3,500 during the latter 3rd century. These settlers would have provided many of the non-mercenary cavalry raised for Raphia, and if the P.Count and Polybian numbers are both right, most of them served at Raphia. The other settlers, accounting for just over 30,000 soldiers, would have similarly stressed the Ptolemaic Hellenistic or Hellenizing population. It over-extended the military settler system, forcing the Ptolemies to recruit from their non-military population (the "epigonoi," or descendants) in order to reach their full complement. It is possible that there were as few as 100,000 military age, able-bodied men in the non-Egyptian population. If that is the case, as many as 1 in 3 went to Raphia, which would put a considerable stress on the expedition. For this and other reasons each side sought out the decisive battle, and even the victorious Ptolemies did not seek to carry their advantage very far after the battle.

2) Food Quantity - how much food would each soldier, horse, attendant, and elephant eat?

While a modern American soldier might consume 3,000 or more calories in a day, the ancient soldier likely ate considerably less, and attrition was much higher (estimated to be as high as 15% in Roman Republican armies over the course of a major overseas campaign). Engel's study of Macedonian logistics concluded that a well-supplied army would provide 1.5 pounds of bread for every soldier every day. With 70,000 soldiers, we're dealing with 105,000 lbs. of bread per day, or 52.5 tons. That's 367.5 tons per week. Only a powerful economy could sustain that sort of supply for more than a few days. And Egypt was indeed the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, producing tens of thousands of tons of grain every year.

3) Food Transport - how did the armies get the required foodstuffs to their destination, and how did they continually resupply these troops?

Individual soldiers, and occasional attendants, could carry some of their food themselves. But within a few days the army would be dependent on supply trains. For the Ptolemies, even this was not a major problem. They left their military camp at Pelusion, with its large store-houses, which had been in existence since Pharoanic times, to head east. They traveled about 115 miles before coming into contact with the Seleukid army. For most of that trip, which may have been made in a week, the Ptolemaic army would have been in direct contact with naval resupply ships. The Ptolemaic navy controlled the sea, especially that close to Egypt, and could protect large supply ships bringing additional grain, if such a need arose.

The Seleukid army faced greater problems. They too used the coastal roads in that campaign, and could be resupplied by ship or supply train. But their supply situation was not simple. They encamped first at Gaza, where Nabataian Arab trade routes terminated, and where they therefore could have gotten access to needed foodstuffs. But this source of supply would not have been as reliable as a royal resupply via ship or land. Ship resupply would have been difficult once the armies drew up near one another, since the Ptolemaic navy could threaten the Seleukid ships. And large supply convoys would have faced a harrowing journey through the coastland of Palestine. For that reason, we can look at one aspect of the battle and revise the traditional narrative.

Revising the Initiation of Battle

The Seleukids pushed for the start of battle. They moved their camp forward from Gaza to Raphia, bringing the two camps within sight of one another. They drew out their army first to being the attack. And when the two armies were drawn out, the Seleukids started the battle. Polybius' narrative, and the narrative that has traditionally been most popular, is that Antiochos III desired to start the battle because he was a good general, a zealous warrior, and questioned the quality of the Ptolemaic army. But what we see from looking at logistical concerns is that the Ptolemaic army could have maintained a standoff considerably longer than the Seleukids could. If the Seleukids were to seek decision to the war over Syria, they needed to seek out battle before their supplies ran low. This logistics-driven narrative is an attractive alternative to the personality-driven narrative which has generally held greatest sway.

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.

The Battle of Pelusion, 170 BC

Also referred to on occasion as the Battle of Mount Casios, this battle pitted the army of Ptolemaic Egypt against the army of Seleukid Syria. According to Polybius (27.19), Antiochos IV Epiphanes, having only become king a few years previously, grew concerned that the Egyptians would soon attempt to retake Koile Syria. The Ptolemies had lost control of Phoenicia and Palestine, which together constituted much of the larger region called Koile Syria, in about 200 BC. In that year Antiochos the Great had utterly defeated a Ptolemaic army at Panion in Koile Syria, and the Seleukids had controlled the region ever since.

Phoenicia and Palestine, which by 170 had been controlled by the Seleucids for 30 years, had been Ptolemaic possessions for the entire third century. From about 175 some of the First Friends and others in the court elite of the Ptolemaic kingdom had begun planning to retake Koile Syria. The leaders in Alexandreia at this time were not the young Ptolemy VI Philometer, but his tutors Eulaios and Lenaios. They were Syrians by descent, and were not normal members of the Alexandreian court aristocracy. They had most likely come to Egypt with Ptolemy VI's mother, Kleopatra, the daughter of the former Seleukid king and the sister of Antiochos IV. They had cared for the young Ptolemy when was a child, and became his regents after his mother died.

Eulaios and Lenaios have long been blamed for instigating the war against the Seleukids. The tradition dates back at least as far as Polybius. While it is true that they commanded the army at the battle of Pelusion, scholars have too quickly vilified them as "easterners” driving a wedge between the fading remnants of Hellenic political-military power. In fact, court intrigue and the Alexandrian mob likely drove their planning, and if they had not begun preparing to lead the army to war, surely one of the many Ptolemaic generals and aristocrats that flooded into Alexandria in 175/4 would have been more than willing.

The Ptolemaic army marshaled at Pelusion, off the eastern edge of the Delta, on the main highway to Syria. Pelusion was and would remain the primary fortification on the eastern boundary of Egypt, and was one of the largest garrison sites in the entire Ptolemaic empire. Historians of the early twentieth century enjoyed styling the forthcoming battle as one between the Seleukid Greeks and the Ptolemaic Egyptians, drawing the ethnicity of the armies from the Hellenizing character of Antiochus implied by ancient sources and by the “eastern” descent of the Ptolemaic tutors-turned-generals. This simply would not have been the case.

The Ptolemaic army preparing to invade Koile Syria would have had a good bit in common with the army that fought at Raphia in 217, and even more with the army that fought at Panion in 200/199. In addition to imported mercenaries, elite units from Alexandreia, and the standing army garrison at Pelusion, the Egyptian commanders would likely have drawn from their forces in the upper Delta region (around Memphis) and from the Fayum and its vicinity. From these areas they could have recruited several thousand Hellenic cavalrymen of varying qualities and several thousands of Hellenes and Egyptians for their respective phalanxes. Additionally, after the end of the major Egyptian rebellion in 186, as many as eight thousand new soldiers had been given medium-infantry land allotments in the Arsinoite and Herakleopolite nomes. These soldiers, who likely fought as thureophoroi or thorakitai, likely faced their first major test against Hellenistic forces in the battle at Pelusion. Altogether, the Ptolemaic army, raised to defeat the Seleukids and recover all or most of Koile Syria, could have reasonably numbered three thousand or more cavalry, as many as forty thousand locally-recruited line infantry, and—counting the mercenaries garrisoned at Pelusion and those who would have accompanied the army to garrison captured strongpoints—ten to twenty thousand mercenaries and newly-recruited local light infantry.

The most significant element in the Ptolemaic army at Pelusion would likely have been the nearly eight thousand soldiers settled after the campaigns in Upper Egypt in the 180’s BC. Given that their land allotments were half the size of those given to phalangites, their armament could not have been particularly heavy, and it is most likely that they fought as thureophoroi of some sort. Now, the Ptolemaic army has been assumed to have developed thureophoroi-type soldiers in the 160’s BC as a reform of Philometer, but the Ptolemies began equipping soldiers in this style, in mimicry of their capable Galatian troops, in the aftermath of the battle of Panion, if not earlier. They were only organized in the Roman manner in the 160’s BC, but their equipment would have looked rather Roman to a modern time-traveler.

We know very little about the battle. Based on papyri, it has been dated to November 170 BC. This is an odd date, because most campaigns started in the spring, not in winter. It indicates that the Egyptians had planned to attack early in the spring of 169, so Antiochos forced the issue by attacking the Egyptians at Pelusion at the onset of the Middle Eastern winter, which aside from cultural norms would likely have been a better campaigning season anyway. The Seleukid forces likely camped on Mount Kasios, several kilometers east of Pelusion, and the two sides likely joined battle in the plain between Pelusion and the mountain, since later writers could reference the battle as that of Mount Kasios or that of Pelusion.

The limited description of the battle implies that the Seleukids achieved a double envelopment of the Ptolemaic army. This is impressive since, if the Seleukid army was roughly the size of that at the Daphne parade, it would not have outnumbered the Ptolemaic army by a very significant margin, if at all. However, it almost certainly had a decisive advantage in cavalry, which could easily have outnumbered the Ptolemaic cavalry by 3:1. While phalanxes and elephants may have slowly opened an engagement in the center, the textual evidence implies that Seleukid cavalry were successful on both wings, putting their opposition to flight and threatening to cut off the entire Ptolemaic force. Diodorus says (26.77) that at that point Antiochos rode around to his army, telling them to capture prisoners rather than slaughtering the Ptolemaic army. If such orders had only been given to his own wing it would not have been an aspect of the battle worthy of recount in Diodorus’ scanty note. And if the wings had not succeeded in some form of envelopment, riding around to other parts of his army to deliver his order for mercy would have been impossible. So what is most likely is that his cavalry wing achieved a major success, as did the cavalry complement on the other wing. Fearing that his successful forces on the wings might fall on the flanks and rear of the phalanx and kill thousands of Ptolemaic Makedonian soldiers, as apparently happened at Panion, he gave orders to his own wing to show mercy, and, riding across the rear of the out-flanked Ptolemaic phalanx, gave similar orders to cavalry on the opposite flank. The actual success Antiochus had in stopping a massacre is unclear, though the narrative in Daniel (11.26) implies that either the entire Egyptian army, or the royal contingent near the king, suffered heavy casualties.

This order was fed by Antiochos’ desires to gain some form of hegemony over all Egypt. After the decisive battle, he sought to show kindness to the Ptolemaic prince, lavished gifts on the Hellenic citizens of Naukratis, and, judging from a small fragmentary papyrus, gave similar gifts to the klerouchs, or settled reserve soldiers, of the Arsinoite nome in the Fayum. By sparing many soldiers in their defeat, and by showing them greater favors in the following months, he hoped to secure their support for his growing power in Egypt. His plan does not seem to have been spectacularly successful, for his occupation was short-lived and ended in coordinated resistance by considerable elements of the Ptolemaic military, even if there is clear papyrological evidence that some soldiers had joined his side.