Part 12
Notwithstanding a century of relative decline, in AUC 553 the Macedonian Empire was still the greatest military and economic power in the world, spanning three continents and a multitude of subject peoples. In that year the enlightened, but largely ineffectual, Alexander IV died and was succeeded by his son, Archelaos III. Although, like his father, a patron of the arts and sciences, the new Emperor was also an accomplished statesman and diplomat. During the first few years of his reign, Archelaos was preoccupied with quelling revolts, in particular in Anatolia and Parthia. The ever-restless eastern provinces were pacified, recalcitrant allies and client kings brought into line. In the far east, the Mauryan empire had passed its peak, relieving pressure on the frontier and enabling Macedonia to absorb parts of northern India.
Nevertheless, in the year 557 events in the west forced the Emperor to turn his attention there. In Hispania and Africa, Carthage had been gradually reclaiming her former domains, but the loss of Corsica to the Romans in 543 and the pressure of the Galles in Massilia put that revival in jeopardy - and kept the Poenic state firmly attached to the Macedonian alliance. Therefore, the most urgent need for attention was here. The Gallic peoples of the hinterland had prospered through trade with the Massiliotes but were becoming restless. As Carthaginians, Macedonians and Hellenes - and, on the fringes, the Romans - competed for dominance, the fiercely independent tribes inhabiting the Rhodanus valley felt increasingly threatened.
In response to the Gallic menace and the heavy-handed methods of Carthaginian diplomacy, the Massiliote cities had been entering into commercial treaties and non-aggression pacts with Rome. Macedonian policy did not discourage such contacts, if these were made individually and did not directly oppose the interests of the Empire. However, the Romans were growing bolder, and although their tactics were aimed at neutralizing the Carthaginians and suppressing the Galles, their strategic moves inevitably impinged upon Macedonian prerogatives.
This delicate balance of affairs was upset in 555. With the Macedonians distracted by their perennial campaigning against Parthians and Scythians in Asia, a coalition of Gallic Arverni and Allobroges swept down the valley of the Rhodanus, plundering the coastal settlements and besieging the city of Massalia. The Carthaginians offered little assistance, and the inadequate Macedonian garrison was reluctant to appeal to Rome. The Emperor sent the ageing general Xanthippus, accompanied by the 22 year-old crown prince, Alexander, to Siracusa to assess the situation and, if need be, to organize a military coalition. The Carthaginians at first resisted the Macedonians’ return to Sicilia, which they now regarded as their own sphere of influence, but relented under pressure.
The untried Prince Alexander had as yet given no hint of the military genius that, combined with his youth, would earn him a reputation almost equal to that of his ancestral namesake. By the time he reached Siracusa, Massalia had fallen; but the Romans had successfully held the line against the Galles on the Italian frontier, where the Consul P. Sulpicius Galba had won a hard fought victory (at an unknown location near the city of Nicaea) and taken Massalia.
In the spring of 556, Alexander and his forces landed near the mouth of the Rhodanus, to find only devastation, from which the coastal cities would take a generation to recover. The Gallic alliance had, by this time, inevitably succumbed to petty rivalries, and the Macedonians advanced as far as the Averni stronghold of Gergovia. Rather than sack the town, Alexander made a peace offering to the chastened tribes. He realized that the turbulent Gallic peoples did not pose a serious long term threat to the Macedonian imperium. That menace, he knew, resided elsewhere.
His first objective, however, was to bring the Carthaginians into line. The Poenic state was at best an unreliable ally, having contributed nothing to the pacification of the Galles but inclined to take advantage of their mischief. The Carthaginians were ordered to supply troops for a new campaign, to be commanded by Xanthippus. In return, Carthaginian sovereignty in Sardinia and the Balearic Islands was recognized, and a trade monopoly conceded over all Sicilia. The obstreperous Hanno wanted more, demanding imperial intervention for the restoration of Corsica.
Rome eyed these developments with suspicion and uncertainty. A new consular army commanded by L. Valerius Flaccus attacked the Allobroges east of the Rhodanus, but fell back to Massalia to protect its base in the event of Macedonian aggression.
Alexander announced that he was prepared to allow the Romans to retain the city of Massalia but to advance no farther westwards than the Rhodanus. In fact, he knew that Rome could not comply while any vestige of the Gallic threat remained. He was aware that the Carthaginians were no match for the Romans on land and that, without an enduring Macedonian presence, all of Massilia would become a Roman province. Taking the initiative, when a Senate deputation balked at his proposals, he issued a peremptory demand that the Romans withdraw from Massalia and evacuate Corsica, restoring the island to Carthage. This was a premeditated casus belli, a bold challenge to which the Romans would not yield without a fight. Indeed, the prince had been mustering his land and naval forces in preparation for war long before he delivered his ultimatum. To his surprise, however, the Senate indicated a willingness to evacuate Corsica, conditional upon a suitable arrangement over Massilia. The offer was attractive. The Romans had genuine security concerns in the land they called Gallia Maritima, and Alexander had no desire to promote the special interests of Carthage.
Intent on war, the prince was thus compelled to provoke the Romans by presenting further unreasonable terms. The Senate, desirous of a peaceful settlement, attempted to keep the dialogue alive; but the popular assembly, stirred up by ambitious politicians known to posterity as populares, demanded that Roman honour be defended. The Consuls elected for 557 were consequently members of the war party. This group is first referred to as the populares by later historians in relation to these events. They were not the "men of the people" - reformers claiming a popular mandate to remedy the corruption and incompetence of the senatorial elite - who were to bring down the Republic in the eighth century. They were mainly aristocrats, political conservatives advocating an expansionist foreign policy, in contrast to the Senate majority’s more cautious line. Their alliance with the equestrians, the emerging middle class, was a marriage of convenience. The latter won enormous profits from business opportunities arising from Roman expansion, whereas the landowning Senators saw the rise of a wealthy commercial class as a threat to their own interests.
Expecting an attack on Corsica, which they now resolved to defend, the Romans dispatched an army commanded by the proconsul L. Valerius Flaccus (appointed in the first prorogatio since the crisis of 531) to the island. Instead, in April of 557 Alexander landed in southern Italia, capturing the city of Rhegium without encountering serious resistance. He then moved north to occupy the west coast town of Terina, to use as a forward base of operations. Thurium was besieged and the Roman garrison was forced to surrender when the townspeople revolted. In Rome, the Senate and People responded with fury, condemning the garrison commander in absentia and accusing the citizens of Thurium of treachery. The war which Rome embarked upon with reluctance was now to be prosecuted with the utmost vigour.
A Roman army under T. Quinctius Flamininus, marching south from Heraclea, came very close to surprising Alexander, who was encamped near Thurium and had lost contact with the enemy. His left flank threatened, the prince retired south across the River Crathis, using the cavalry to screen his withdrawal. Finding the level, open ground on the east bank of the Crathis more to his liking, he deployed his phalanx facing northwards, the bulk of his cavalry placed on the more vulnerable left wing, with most of the light infantry, closest to the river. Here, near the town of Cosentia, the course of the stream curved away to the west, allowing the Macedonian horses plenty of room to manoeuvre and yet avoid the marshes, while making a Roman assault upon the Macedonian left a virtual impossibility. The placement of his elephants on the right, rather than in the customary centre, suggests that Alexander had no intention of taking the offensive. On the other hand, his was such an ideal defensive position that it can be assumed that he did not anticipate an immediate Roman attack. His aim was most likely to gain enough time to regroup and bring up reinforcements. Of course, at this time, lacking adequate reconnaissance, he remained unaware of the approach of a second and larger enemy corps.
However, the Romans were undone by the collegiate nature of their command system. Flamininus led a composite force of Romans and allies, thirty thousand men in all and facing twenty thousand Macedonian heavy infantry, ten thousand light infantry, four thousand cavalry and fifty elephants. Against superior numbers arrayed on a classic defensive front, Flamininus should have waited for his colleague, M. Claudius Marcellus (son of the Consul of 531) coming up slowly with an army of forty thousand. On the other hand, the two Consuls were ambitious politicians eager for glory, members of the faction who had pressed for this war. Flamininus feared that his rival might steal his triumph.
At age 33, Flamininus was technically too young for the consulship, but he had earned a solid reputation as a military tribune in Corsica, and he was one of the leading populares. To elect him, his supporters in the assembly had the lex Valeria annalis annulled, then re-enacted the following year, a cynical expedient though not without precedent. Flamininus felt it necessary to prove himself as a great commander and so an impatient general played into the hands of his cautious opponent.
Battle commenced on 17 Martiae, the festival day of the Liberalia. Flamininus adopted the traditional Roman formation, placing two of his three legions in the centre, flanked by the allies, most of the cavalry deployed on the right to face their Macedonian counterparts. The third legion, held in reserve, was positioned on the left, opposite the Macedonians’ weaker flank. Having thus committed himself to battle, the Roman commander had no option but to launch an attack before Alexander’s co-ordinated infantry and cavalry began their advance. Yet the phalanx, in spite of its inherent weaknesses, was in full array still an awe-inspiring sight. Outnumbered and intimidated, Flamininus hesitated; and at that moment he lost any chance of victory.
Perhaps at this point Alexander learned of the approach of Marcellus, or possibly he had sized up his opponent. Whatever his reasons, he took the initiative. Relying on the conventional tactics of cavalry hammer and infantry anvil, Alexander ordered his army forward, at a measured pace. As the opposing centres engaged, the Romans faltered. Against the bristling mass of pikes, the legionaries fell back, in good order, but inexorably. As the phalanx pushed ahead, however, the terrain became more uneven and the line lost its cohesion. Flamininus ordered in his reserves to bolster his collapsing centre. The Macedonian cavalry, on the left flank, encountered soggy ground and were unable to outflank the Romans; but the elephants, advancing on the far right of the line, routed the allies, most of whom had never encountered the behemoths.
Flamininus had prescribed countermeasures, but the troops lacked the training and discipline to carry them out. He detached part of his cavalry to retrieve the situation on the left, in doing so weakening his right wing - to no good effect, for the horses balked at the sight and smell of elephants. The terrorized allies abandoned the field, exposing the entire flank of the hard-pressed Romans.
As the Roman lines dissolved, Alexander pressed the assault, determined that none of the enemy should escape to join up with Marcellus, now just a few hours’ hard marching away. In the ensuing massacre the legionaries fought nobly to the end. Only a handful survived. The body of Flamininus was never recovered. So impressed was he with the fighting spirit of the Romans that the prince ordered all prisoners freed at the conclusion of the campaign (a magnanimous gesture for which he was harshly criticized by a flustered Xanthippus).
On the banks of the River Crathis, the future Emperor had won a tremendous victory; but his men were exhausted, two thousand had fallen, and another Roman army, forty thousand strong, was ready to take the field. Rome might yet win the day. The prince understood the merits of expedient retreat, and he pulled back to his base at Terina, on the west coast. He was content at this stage to cede the initiative to the enemy. Hard-won gains were relinquished without hesitation, including Thurium, where the Roman commander, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, exacted a savage vengeance for the city’s abject capitulation. Some two thousand of the leading citizens were executed and the rest of the population carried off and sold into slavery.
However, when news of the destruction of the army of Flamininus reached the capital, Marcellus was ordered to hold his ground and await reinforcement. It was a fateful misjudgement, due to a not unreasonable overestimation of Alexander’s strength. By the time the Roman army, by now sixty thousand in size, began moving south, the prince had received fresh troops, including several thousand cavalry, and forty more elephants.
The decisive battle was fought at Petelia, on the east coast north of Crotona. In spite of the larger numbers of troops involved on both sides, this engagement proved almost anticlimactic after the drama on the River Crathis. Maintaining a defensive posture in country unsuitable for offense, Alexander drew in the Roman legions onto the pikes of his phalanx, smashing the enemy’s wings with his cavalry and elephants and rolling up the Roman flanks. His victory was not as one-sided as that won on the Crathis, and the bulk of the Roman army escaped; but the Macedonians held the field and all of southern Italia. Marcellus and the remnants of his army fell back into Campania.
Roman power was now at its lowest ebb since the days of Philip III. The Senate recalled the army from Corsica, effectively ceding the island to Alexander, who fulfilled his promise to Carthage. In Rome, the populares had been discredited by their rush to war and the rash conduct of Flamininus. Still, the Senate conceded the depth of the crisis. An unprecedented sixteen legions were raised and the patrician Valerius Flaccus was elected to a second term. His appointment was a violation of the cursus honorum, yet this abrogation of the constitution, so soon after the Senators had decried the premature election of Flamininus, was warranted by the dire emergency. However, this precedent born of necessity would ultimately be used to subvert the Republic.
