The Ancients - Greeks vs Romans: Empires at War

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Greece and Rome, they are the heavyweights of ancient history. But what happened when they came face to face with one another? Tristan is once again joined by Simon Elliott to talk about some of the great clashes that occurred between the Greeks and the Romans. From Cynoscephalae, to Magnesia, to Pydna - how did the forces match up and how did they evolve in armour, weapons and strategy to better compete against each other.For more from Simon, you can find his book here.For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, we've got an ancients veteran returning to the show. It's Dr. Simon Elliott.

Simon, he's been on the podcast a few times in the past, more than a few. He's talked about topics that vary from the Ninth Legion to Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain to Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar, our special New Year episode. And I'm delighted to say that Simon is back. He's a lovely chap. And today we're talking all things Roman military in the context of the Greeks when the Romans met the Greeks on the battlefield. We're going to be talking about military reforms during the Roman Republican period and of course we're going to be focusing in on some of these great clashes that occurred between the Greeks

and the Romans at places such as Sinus Cephali, Magnesia, Pydna and so on. This was a really fun conversation between Simon and I. We chatted for a long, long time when we got together to record this episode and I do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, to talk all about ancient Greeks at war, Rome versus Greece, here's Simon. Simon, it's great to have you back on the podcast today. It's always amazing to come back on the podcast with you guys at Ancient History Hit and History Hit with you, Tristan, because we always go into such great depth about amazing subjects

and it's real, proper history. It is real, proper history. It's real, proper ancient history. And with yourself, we're talking about ancient Romeome but we're also talking about ancient greeks at war because the romans and the greeks there's this time period isn't there where there's this series of wars this extraordinary period where there's conflict between these two titans of the ancient mediterranean you can almost i mean the easiest way to approach is to divide the mediter Mediterranean into two halves and you have the western Mediterranean and you have the eastern Mediterranean and broadly for much of the history of the Romans and much of the history of the Greeks

one dominates the western Mediterranean and one dominates the eastern Mediterranean and then later the Romans beat the Greeks and they dominate the eastern Mediterranean as well creating the Roman Empire. What many people don't realize, though, is that these two overt cultures did not exist in isolation. They existed side by side, interacted for much of their histories. And one of the exercises I like doing when I'm doing my own research on the Greek or the Roman world is to think about, if I'm looking at something in, say, the Greek world at a certain point point in time what was happening in the Roman world and so on because it was all

interactive so if you look at the the beginning of the classical Greek period about 500 BC when you're talking about the Greco-Persian wars so we're going into the period where you get the first and second Persian invasions of Greece you get these titanic battles which still reverberate through history like Marathon, like Thermopylae, like Salamis and like Plataea. These are big tent pegs in the narrative of the classical world and ancient world history and military history.

But similar things were happening in the Roman world as well. You're only jumping across from the Balkans, one peninsula, to the Italian peninsula. So what was happening around the same time in Rome? Well, you have the beginning of the Roman Republic, which eventually came to annihilate, dominate, completely decimate

the whole Greek and Hellenistic world and then absorbed it. But the beginning of the Roman Republic was happening at the same time as these amazing events were happening in the Greek world. We can jump forward 100 years so you look at um the end of the peloponnesian wars and so we go to the beginning of the fourth century bc this is the century when alexander the great dies in 323 bc as an example let's go to the beginning of the century though you have the end of the peloponnesian wars the this huge decline in the power of athens and then the ascendancy of Sparta but then it begins to get

challenged by the rise of Thebes which then has its own narrative of course towards the rise of Macedon later but let's stay on the rise of Thebes around the time that Thebes is becoming a major power in the Balkans what's happening on the Italian peninsula well here you actually get one of the low points in the entirety of Roman history you get the battle of Alia and then the sack of Rome where the Romans are absolutely annihilated and embarrassed and defeated, humiliated by the Gauls from the north of Italy. And that's a seminal moment actually in the whole narrative of Roman military development because that's when you have the separation taking place between on the one hand in the Roman world the moving away from facing the Greeks, having first class warriors who are

basically Greek hoplites moving towards what we now call Roman legionaries through the reforms of Camillus. That's happening on the Italian peninsula while you have a similar revolution happening on the Balkans peninsula as well because here with the rise of Thebes you then get the evolution of a classic hoplite phalanx into this deeper formation, which the Thebans then used to great effect to defeat the Spartans at battles like Leuctra. And then later the evolution of the hoplite itself through the reforms of Iphicrates, where you start getting hoplites using smaller shields, a pelter rather than the aspis, and a longer, possibly two-handed spear. And there

you see the evolution towards the Macedonian phalangite, which of course all of those are encapsulated in the Balkan spinning shield by the experiences while in Thebes of Philip II, who then revolutionises the Argaid Macedonian military system and creates this military machine which his son inherits to conquer he's a whole known world the key thing to take out of all of that narrative is things were happening on the Italian peninsula in the western Mediterranean and in the Balkans peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean that weren't in isolation I think it's so interesting that evolution that you see at the same time what you mentioned

there Simon and and for you you've got your dog in the room Hector good old Hector so he might be going to sleep but we will let that slide it will just make more fun for the podcast itself. The archaeological dog. The Hector the archaeological dog indeed the dog who's found Roman villas if I'm not mistaken. This this very morning we were walking across the site of a Roman villa. There we go. That's why it's got very muddy paws. Well, first of all, just from what you were saying there, something which was really interesting

was that how, let's say you go back to the Battle of Alia and the early 4th century BC. Is this a time, therefore, when the Romans are fighting almost as Greeks? If you look at the very beginning of the Roman Republic, they've just gone through a period of reform where they effectively had been governed by etrusco roman kings and etrusco romans means

dominated by the etruscans the etruscans use a military system which is based on the greek military system so the main warrior is the hoplite so the the first roman legionaries as it were they weren't called legionaries but the first roman main line of battle soldier was actually a hoplite and that dominates the entirety of the 5th century bc so you have this amazing situation where on the italian peninsula the main warrior whether it's in magna gracia to the south of italy whether it's in latium in central italy whether it's in etruria further north all the way up to the po valley and the separation with cisalpine gaul the military systems are all dominated by greeks using hoplites and clearly on the balkans peninsula in the same period through the greco-persian wars the peloponnesian

wars the military systems are all dominated by the hoplite so while we look at the military history of both peninsulas, both spheres of influence as being completely separate, clearly they weren't because the cultural exchanges taking place meant that the Italians, whoever they were, were osmosing the best technology and tactics they could of the day to defeat their opponents who probably used the same systems and therefore they had to go down the hoplite route. And what should we envisage when you say the word hoplite, when we're talking about this time period, let's say the 5th and 4th centuries BC? So the term hoplite is used to describe a soldier equipped with a certain panoply who fights in a phalanx.

So the term phalanx is first actually used by Homer to describe a deep body of spearmen. Now that could be a deep body of any spearman. I, in my books, call Sumerians, 3000 BC, fighting the phalanx, their spearmen, because they fight in the deep formation of spearmen, the phalanx. However, the term phalanx in the popular imagination today is most closely associated with two different manifestations that are linked one is the hoplite phalanx and one is the later macedonian pike phalanx we'll start with the hoplite phalanx we call it the hoplite phalanx because the main troops fighting in this formation are hoplites with this panoply based on greek designs so the

key aspect is actually the shield the aspis some call it the hoplon shield actually but i call it the aspis so you get the aspis which is this huge round bronze face body shield and then the warrior standing behind holding the shield in his left arm is equipped with body armor of some kind by this time of 5th and 4th century bc probably a corset of sheets of linen glued together to form a very stiff shirt, which is actually better protection than it sounds it's going to be. Is this the linothorax? Is this the famous linothorax? Exactly right, exactly right.

And it is actually more flexible than metal armour and provides a degree of protection similar to the metal armour, even though it's possibly not quite as good, but it gives you flexibility when you're fighting as a warrior so you've got uh hobork the thorax and then you've got a helmet of various designs of the bronze helmets all have very iconic names whether they're corinthian whether they're pylos whether thracian designs chalcodician designs etc there are a variety of different designs of helmets all basically making the head very well protected for the hoplite bronze helmet linen armor aspish shield bronze

leg greaves so it's a fully armored warrior and then the the warrior's principal weapon is the doru which is the long thrusting spear think of a spear about two meters in length so basically you've got this armored warrior with this huge shield in front of him with this long thrusting spear two meters in length he's got a sword as well but his principal weapon is a spear and then think of these warriors in this deep spearman formation eight men deep 10 men deep 12 men deep in files and the men at the front who are facing the enemy with this fierce and fearsome visage all have the shields overlapping so it's almost to an opponent who doesn't have the same level of technology an impenetrable wall of death very nice indeed and they said that that phalanx i'm guessing it

it must be so interesting we won't go into too much details we've got to go on to the rome versus greece and going pyrrhus and hellenistic period and all of that but i'm guessing with the hot plights i mean especially when you get to a period like let's say the aftermath of alexander the great steph the lamian war athens and its allies against the macedonians in that out the at that time in let's say the late fourth century bc the greek hoplite by that time let's say it looks very different the arms were particularly the armor that they have compared to let's say a greek hoplite just before the battle of the marathon like a couple of hundred years earlier well actually the first thing to point out here is actually the nature of the greek warrior in this hoplite panoply the greek hoplite is a citizen soldier as was

the roman legionary by the way until the later principate so the greek hoplite is a citizen soldier so he's not fighting all the year he's either a townsman or he works in the agrarian economy and he has enough personal wealth to be able to afford the spinapli and he's encouraged to actually buy this equipment as well by the society in which he lives to show that he's a man of substance and if you have the money but chose not to you'll be looked down upon so if you could afford the arms and armor then you would naturally buy the arms and armor and then take your place in the battle line of your city state your polis when you're fighting their opponents because that's your duties what you would do now at the time of the greco-persian wars you would probably find that there's a large percentage of the warriors equipped as hoplites in probably metal armor going through the Peloponnesian war more of them will start

wearing the linen cuirasses etc the ones I've described by the time you get to the post Alexandrian period many of them would have been unarmored in actual fact so they're purely relying on their shields and their helmets if they've got a helmet and their greaves if they've got greaves for protection so basically for many of them you're down to your shield which is a big shield but it's only a shield and your spear juxtapose that with what's happened in the macedonian world so again we see an evolution of military technology on the italian peninsula through the defeats the romans had against the gauls at the beginning of the fourth century bc and this sees the emergence of what we can now call legionaries. Similarly, you see the military superpowers of the Balkans,

so Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Masson, etc., all looking at each other's military prowess and in various ways developing their own expertise. Athens always goes down a naval route as an example. However Thebes doesn't. Thebes knows that at the beginning of the 4th century BC to take on the Spartans it's got to defeat the Spartans on land and they have a series of very very innovative military leaders who go through various stages of taking the hoplite military system and adding and increasing and making it better so epaminondas is a classic example of a military leader and a diplomat and a civil leader in actual

fact who almost reinvents the way that the hoplites are fighting and it's under his watch probably that you see the development of these very deep formations of hoplites so the battle of lutra we know that the thebans deployed one of their wings that are 50 ranks deep allegedly and you can imagine a 50 ranks deep wing of hoplites smacking into another body of hoplites who are only 8 or 12 ranks deep and you can imagine what's going to happen so this revolutionizes hoplite warfare suddenly things are being done in a different way in the same way that things have been done in a different way the italian peninsula on the balkans peninsula things are being done in a different way in the same way that things have been done in a different way the italian peninsula on the balkans peninsula things are being done in a different way one of the observers of what was happening in thebes was a very young philip ii

and macedon who was there as a hostage and he observed this military revolution taking place in thebes and then took his memories and ideas back with him to Macedon. And once he became the king in Macedon, he was the Argaid king, he proved to be one of the greatest military leaders, actually, in the ancient world. I think he's one of the great and heralded military, and indeed leaders overall, actually, in history. Completely revolutionising the nature of Macedonian society, certainly the Macedonian military.

And there you see the emergence of two things in fact three things you see the emergence of the Macedonian pike phalanx so now he evolves the hoplite phalanx concept through to something which is very different 10 and then 16 ranks deep where his pikemen not hoplites of the spear but pikemen with a two-handed pike are deployed with spear but pikemen with a two-handed pike are deployed with a smaller spear but with a two-handed pike which could be very long indeed you're talking of something which could be eight nine ten meters in length so this suddenly presents an impenetrable hedge a really impenetrable hedge to any opponent including a classical hoplite phalanx and also the pikes are so long that you can actually get the first five ranks of pikes pointing forward so of the 10 or 16 deep phalanx formations which she uses

the first five ranks are engaged in the fighting and the people at the back are adding weight to the formation and then can't remember placing casualties so you have this very very powerful battle line but separately he then increases the number of the one key thing the Macedonians have got, which make them better in this regard than any of their opponents. And that's their shock cavalry. Most Greek cavalry at this time weren't shock cavalry. They would fight if they had to, but they were preferred to skirmish. Macedonian cavalry were all gayed.

They liked fighting. They liked cavaliers. They charged into battle with their long Zistan lancers, which again were many meters in length uh smashing into enemy formations so you suddenly have this amazing combination that you have this anvil if you like which is the macedonian pike phalanx and then the hammer which are wedges of macedonian companion shot cavalry armed with the zistan lancers and here the system evolves into one where under Philip II the enemy battle line is pinned by the pike phalanx and then the companion wedges smash into one of the weak points in the enemy battle line and roll up the enemy battle line as happened at

the battle of Carinhea where Philip II and Alexander defeated the combined powers of the Greeks under the Athenians and Thebans and gave them domination of the Balkans Peninsula. The third thing that Philip introduced, though, I would argue, was probably even more important, and that was that he revolutionised the siege train of the Macedonians, which enabled them, for the first time, to, at their will, whenever they wanted wanted to besiege and defeat and capture any city they chose and it's interesting that Philip here with the siege train shows you his state of mind when he's approaching these problems he hires the greatest military engineers of the day to completely revolutionize the siege train and suddenly

no one's safe so on land he and alexander have defeated athens and thebes across the whole of thrace towards the dardanelles looking towards asia they can capture cities whenever they want to provide and they've got the time to besiege them so suddenly this revolution takes place in macedonia and it's interesting isn't it that you have a revolution taking place in the Italian Peninsula with the arrival of the legionary. Yes, three different kinds. That started the Principia and the Triarii, but nevertheless, they are called legionaries. So at the same time, you have the appearance of the legionary on the Italian Peninsula, a revolution. And on the Balkans Peninsula, you have the appearance of the hellenistic pike phalanx

the hellenistic siege train and the really really focused use of shock cavalry together another revolution all at the same time and it's quite interesting simon as that revolution in the roman army at that time he said the triarii the hastati the principes that soon proves its effectiveness against its closest neighbors in italy over the following decades it's quite similar how if you went across the ionian sea to central greece with the macedonian phalanx when you do get those first clashes between the macedonian phalanx and the hoplite phalanx whether it's philip ii at chiron air which you've mentioned or a or Alexander the Great against the mercenaries at the Battle of the River Granicus,

or even Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy Antipater, fighting against the Athenians and their allies at the Battle of Cranon, just after Alexander the Great's death, that in all of those cases, like with the new Roman system further west, this new system of the Macedonian phalanx, it always seems to overcome,

to defeat the older, more traditional hoplite phalanx of its neighbours. Fascinating. It's really fascinating, isn't it? There's a narrative here. It begs the question, by the way, why didn't people just follow what the Macedonians were doing themselves? Which they all eventually did anyway. Why did they wait 50 or 100 years to do it? So let's answer that first. Maybe it's money, isn't it? Because effectively, Philip II's army is a professional army although there were citizen soldiers there was enough wealth in Macedon to actually keep them in uniform as long as necessary including carrying out sieges and military operations through the winter which even the Romans at the time wouldn't do

so you have this professional military operation happening in the north of Greece and then dominating the rest of Greece. By the same token, the Greek polis, whether they're the polis in Attica, Peloponnese, in Ionia, they're still citizen hoplites. They still have to pay for their own kit and they still got to go and farm their own fields or run their merchant shops or whatever as well at the same time so there's a disparity here which is huge not just in military capability but in the way that their respective societies were able to wield it the Greeks could never ever match the Macedonians but let's then jump that forward to the Macedonians and the Hellenistic kingdoms fighting the Romans by the time that took place it was the Romans who had jumped ahead in terms of this capability over the Hellenistic kingdoms and there's a really good question to ask there why? What happened in the Roman world which allowed them to jump ahead of the Hellenistic

kingdoms and their military systems in the same way that Philip and Alexander had been able to jump ahead of the Greek military systems. And I think there, Tristan, what we have to do is move away from the military per se and actually look at the respective societies. So you can't argue that an Argaic king was not militaristic. Clearly he was. If you're a Macedonian king, you basically had to fight from the front of your battle formation. You couldn't stand at the back and have an intellectual sort of battle plan and then dictate it from the rear. You had to basically tell people what to do and then show them how to do it. You've got no choice. Well, the Romans were different in that respect, which reflects a different nature of Roman society. Roman society was probably,

which reflects a different nature of Roman society. Roman society was probably, broader society was probably, I would argue, even more militaristic than Macedonian society. Absolutely, certainly the Greek society, but even more so than our gay Macedonian society. And it had two key traits, which I always associate with the Romans. One is grit, this ability to always come back from adversity and never accept defeat and only accept victory on your own terms. And that probably reflects the nature of Roman politics, which

was viscerally competitive. There were no kings. You had your twin consuls every year and you had the cursus honorum, the career path, the senatorial class along which they progressed throughout their lives. It was intensely competitive. And if you tripped at once you were gone you know if you're a roman senator young roman senator you were trained to do two things you're trained to fight and you're trained to practice law because you knew that in your life you'd have to fight for your life at some stage in battle and also that you're spending your entire life being sued by somebody for something because that's the nature of competitive Roman society. So for a consul leading a consular army on campaign against the Macedonians, going back to Rome saying I've lost wasn't an option because you were finished.

You had to win at all costs. So failure wasn't an option for the Romans. Winning on your own terms, that's the only outcome of any engagement. The other thing the Romans were brilliant at was actually nicking other people's ideas if you look at the panoply which the Roman legionaries of this time were using fourth third second century BC you're looking at the scutum shield which is nicked from the Samnites you're looking at the pill and way to throwing javelins which is almost certainly a truscan you're looking at later the gladius hispanensis which is the name gives it away it's Spanish you're looking at the helmets which are often nicked from gallic designs you're looking at the chain mail that many

of them wore which was actually based on gallic designs so all the ideas were nicked the romans had no problems whatsoever nicking other people's ideas and military technology because they knew help them when it was fine and you can probably tell actually in the hellenistic world around the same period that level of technological evolution hadn't taken place. It was almost atrophying, wasn't it? And so therefore, although you have this sort of elite Roman legions with the three warrior classes fighting the phalangites, you'll probably find that the Romans have gone through two or three levels of evolution

in military technology ahead of what the Macedonians were doing. I'm a huge lover of Hellenism and I'm a huge lover of Hellenistic warfare. One of my favourite figures in history is Alexander the Great. My son's called Alexander. Every time I read about the great battles in the Macedonian wars and the Roman Seleucid war, I always want the Greeks to win. I always go into reading about the Battle of Kynosophlae and go, please can the Pike phalanx win now? Please can it win now? And it was losers. History tells us that in 1455, the royal houses of Lancaster and York went to war, beginning a 30-year dynastic struggle for the throne that would change the course of English history

forever. It became known as the course of English history forever. It became known as the Wars of the Roses. At this time the Wars of the Roses are well underway, there's so much uncertainty throughout the country and who's going to come through all of this. This month we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out all the answers to your burning questions. People have just ashamed that both words were bad. But when was this scribbled in? It's effectively an act of graffiti on a parliamentary roll. Who were the key players?

What were the critical battles and switches of allegiance? Was it ever really a case of good and bad? Join me, Matt Lewis, on the Gone Medieval podcast from History Hit every Saturday for brand new episodes. The one thing which is really interesting, you know, this period that you talked about, you know, between, well, let's say between 350 and 281 BC with the outbreak of the Pyrrhic War, as you say, you have this development, this improvement of the whole roman system it's interesting you say when you look at the hellenistic kingdoms at the same time after alexander the great's death the chaotic wars of the successors you do see evolution in the pipe phalanx i think in the amount of armor that they wear isn't they get heavier and heavier and

heavier but what is quite interesting which always strikes me which which is like compared to when we're talking about evolution of armies is when we look at siege machinery when we look at siege weapons in the East during that period and especially like for instance the size of the huge ships which they build these Titans of the sea before they come into conflict with Rome and you think they create these incredible siege engines unlike anything the world had seen before, and some incredible ships. And yet they're unable to bring those to bear almost when it comes to fighting the Romans, which I find quite astonishing. It's probably because actually the speed with which the Romans engaged them as well. For the Hellenistic kingdoms, it was very, very difficult to predict how the

Romans would react to any situation. Because when it's one king versus one king, you basically know how he's going to react, unless he's psychoticotic there may be examples of that in the hellenistic world or unless he's enfeebled and there are certain examples of that in the hellenistic world usually you know how a king fellow king is going to behave because he has the same responsibilities that you do but that's not the case with the romans because they have this very complicated political system with twin consuls and with a senate where at any one time any faction could be dominant and one faction may just choose to be anti-greek at a given time when a delegation arrives simply because it helps them politically in rome so nothing to do with

foreign policy helps them politically in rome so if you're one of the great kings of the hellenistic world of philip v of macedon or antiochus the or IV of the Seleucid Empire or any one of the Ptolemies. You send a delegation to Rome to try and get the Romans on your side in a particular conflict or disagreement and you don't know what's going to come back. You don't know if one of your opponents has got their delegation there first, for example. So it's totally and utterly unpredictable. And also you pick a very interesting period as well about what's happening in the Roman world between sort of the mid-fourth and early third centuries when suddenly the Roman world starts encroaching on the Hellenistic world being drawn into which they didn't want I don't think initially

by the way to get drawn into matters between the Greek policy in particular you're probably finding you've got the mid-republican Roman legions at their height and there's something else there's an elephant in the room it's a very good analogy which I didn't know you didn't actually mean to make there by the way it's completely by accident but there is an elephant in the room in this period we've not mentioned yet and this is of course the Carthaginians because the Romans are honing their fighting skills of these embryonic legions against their greatest opponent to date and that's saying something by the way you know the romans only just won many times against the samnites for example it took them many years to do so when

when they're fighting the carthaginians the first two punic wars these are brutal sanguineous conflicts certainly of a scale which the romans have never engaged in before and also again here you see this roman skill about appropriating the ideas and technology of their opponents because the Romans for example enter the first Punic war with no maritime capability and they end the first Punic war having defeated the Carthaginians at a strategic level at sea and then they are the dominant naval power in the second Punic war so again another example of the Romans nicking other people's ideas and technology. But crucially for us, these mid-Republican legions,

through fighting the Punic Wars, become the elite military formations of their day in the same way that Philip II's Macedonian army in his day was the elite military formation then. And that's when you see the beginning of the Romans having this sense of self-belief that they could take on anything that's when you see the beginning of the romans having this sense of self-belief that they could take on anything that's thrown at them okay i get it yeah because i was going to talk about pyrrhus but pyrrhus is of course before the punic war so this is actually before that kind of that conflict with the carthaginian this is like pyrrhus the arrival

of this you know hellenistic dashing general to southern italy with his hellenistic army of phalangites, elephants, cavalry and Tarentine allies and that stuff. That's in a period, isn't it, between when the Romans have just defeated the Samnites, their great enemies there, but before they've reached attacking the Carthaginians. So is, let's say, the army that Pyrrhus faces, his Hellenistic army, and the army, the Roman army he faces, is it a bit different to the army, let's say, that fights the Macedonians following the Punic Wars, you know, half a century later? Chronologically, think of the early Roman legions. So after the Cumulon reforms, after

the defeats by the Gauls at the beginning of the fourth century BC. Think of these embryonic legions. So they have the Hastart, the Principia and the Triarii later they have the Velite Light Infantry but these are fairly sort of like new formations and they are very successful fighting their neighbours but the formations fighting there the soldiers fighting there the way they fought was probably in order of effectiveness far less capable than the ones which the Hellenistic kingdoms ended up fighting and losing to much later. The question to ask there then is why? What happened in between to allow the Romans to evolve their legionary-based system to something which the Hellenistic kingdoms later couldn't stand up against?

And there are two phases of this evolution. So firstly, let's go through to the beginning of the 3rd century BC, into the 280s. And you have one of these, one of the great things when you're talking about this whole period of history, there are so many great figures. It's more Game of Thrones than Game of Thrones and more Tolkien than Tolkien. One of these figures,

which could have glamorized any episode of Game of Thrones is Pyrrhus of Iperus. One of the great Hellenistic Kings, possibly one of the classical world's great chancers, who almost had it all and eventually didn't, but he almost had it all. And one of his biggest gambles was to try and take on the sort of embryonic legions of Rome. So he's drawn from Iperus, which is effectively modern Albania, which was then a Hellenistic kingdom. Bear in mind at one stage he was the king of Macedonia, for example, so he wasn't a bit pot player at all and his military was full fat hellenistic full fat alexander so we're talking

in a period that's only 40 odd years after the death of alexander classic macedonian pike phalanx 16 deep meters long held in two hands pikes um zist on arm shot cavalry uh siege train and in his case one of the innovations which came through the Alexandrian engagement with the East, he's now got war elephants as well. So he arrives on the Italian peninsula in the 280s, drawn in by some of the Magna Graecia and Greek states in the south who are now worried about this dominant power of Rome in Latium, sort of in the middle of Italy. And he arrives and fights an almost very successful

campaign against the Romans for example the first two battles that he fights he wins only very narrowly loses the third battle however in fighting the Romans he learned something which maybe the Hellenistic kingdoms didn't learn that the Romans would always come back so in the first two battles which we get the phrase Pyrrhic victory because he won but he lost so many troops they call it a Pyrrhic victory the Romans still kept going and kept going and kept going in the Hellenistic world he would have reasonably been able to think that having won two victories his opponent would fold while the Romans didn't and eventually he wasn't able to continue the conflict and later fought in Sicily and went back to mainland Greece now what did this do to the Romans well it made the Romans slightly more battle-hardened so they'd learn new things

they'd fought the Pike Phalanx for the first time they'd had to innovate they'd fought shock Ziston arm Lance arm cavalry for the first time they had to innovate they fought war elephants for the first time and this really did help them actually because then we go through the really big crucible which turned these embryonic Roman legions into something the Hellenistic kingdoms could not stand up against at all

and these were the Punic Wars certainly the first and second Punic Wars when the Romans beginning to rise to dominance in the Italian peninsula then began to rise to dominance across the western peninsula, then began to rise to dominance across the Western Mediterranean. So they started clashing with the Carthaginians, who were the great colonial power of the Western Mediterranean, in North Africa, Carthage, in eastern Spain,

in southern Gaul on the Mediterranean coast, and in Sicily. And the Romans, again, are fighting different opponents here. And they're fighting an opponent here that's almost as tenacious as they are, but not quite. But they fight, again, a series of incredible, sanguineous conflicts. And again, they're learning. So they start the First Punic War without any maritime capability. They end the First Punic War, being the dominant maritime power in the western Mediterranean,

eclipsing the Carthaginians, whose ideas they nicked. Classic Roman. They nicked their ideas. They bring grit to the party, they don't give in, and they nick people's ideas until they win. They keep going and going and going until they win, and they do not give in. They do not give in. The Carthaginians learn the hard way, Hannibal learns the hard way,

eventually losing in 202 BC at the Battle of Zama. That's a crucible for the Roman legions, because they've gone through this embryonic stage they've gone through an early period of hardening through fighting perisiviparous and so they suddenly emerge absolutely rock hard battle hardened military establishment just at exactly the wrong time for the hellenistic kingdoms because you have this beautiful little quirk of history it's one of the things I love about history where you an event happens a person happens an event happens and here an event happens where you get the slightly chippy

slightly too big for his boots Macedonian King Philip V thinking at the time when Hannibal's got the upper hands in the Second Punic War after the Battle of Cana on the Italian peninsula, you know what, I might as well back this guy because actually if the Romans are going to go down, I want to share the winnings. So this is what we're told by the classical historians. He sends a diplomatic delegation by sea from the Balkans peninsula, one sphere, to the Italian Peninsula, another sphere. What happens? It gets captured by the Romans. So the Romans capture his diplomatic notes for Hannibal.

And they know what's going on. So that, I think, for the first time, properly draws the Romans towards the Hellenistic kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean for the first time. It's clearly on the Roman radar because of the Wars of Pyrrhus, because of the engagement over the last 200 or 300 years of Magna Graecia and the Greeks. But this is when suddenly the Romans start looking, hello, what's going on here? Well, we've won in the Western Mediterranean. All these senators want to make a bit of money.

Might be a bit of money to make in the Western Mediterranean. Gold mines in Spain. The wealth from maritime trade in North Africarica that's interesting isn't it because if we read our classical history what we'll know in the last couple of hundred years is that the greeks have engaged with and then conquered the ackerman persian empire which goes all the way through to the punjab and central asia they won the entire wealth of the ancient world. And I think from that point, that begins to bend the way they view their engagement with the Hellenistic East. Because they suddenly realise there's a lot of loot to be had, basically. They've got this battle-hardened, hard-as-nails military establishment fresh out of the Punic Wars. And Philip V has given them the opportunity to engage there.

But with Philip V, at that time, Simon, what military resources does he have available on the Greek mainland? I mean, he's not going to be an easy nut to crack, is he? At this time, even before these Macedonian wars erupt proper, he's still the dominant force in the central Mediterranean, east of the Ionian Sea. So let's look at what's happening across the geography of the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean. You've still got the various Greek polis in Attica and the Peloponnese and Boeotia. You've got the Kingdom of Macedon, which includes the Macedonian Royal Army,

which in the eastern Mediterranean is probably the finest military force you've got across the Hellenistic world. Arguable, but probably. Through most of Anatolia and then through Syria into modern Iraq and probably at this stage still into modern Iran, you've got the Seleucid Empire. So you have the great late Seleucid king Antiochus III, for example. And then to the south across Egypt, we've got Ptolemaic Egypt if you're looking towards the Punjab and looking towards modern Afghanistan Bactria Central Asia you've got the Bactrian Greek kingdom or kingdoms and the Indo-Greek kingdom or kingdoms so when we talk about the Hellenistic eastern Mediterranean we're actually talking

about most of their known world in actual fact that's a very big nut for the Romans to crack to be to be fair far more difficult than conquering coastal eastern Spain and in terms of military capability they've gone through a period of evolution of the Macedonian or Hellenistic military system where basically you have an arms race taking place where basically they double down on their core troop types so you get better phalangites with probably better armor and longer pikes one of the things that people don't realize until they really dig down though is actually there's a fundamental flaw beneath all of these military systems in the Hellenistic kingdoms and that is everything spread very thin because I've described the vast geography of the Hellenistic kingdoms following Alexander's conquests well in each of those places at the time as Alexander

conquered the places he had to leave colonists to basically hold the regions down and he had to maintain the borders with more colonists so he's watering down continually this core Macedonian army and bear in mind that say it's the Macedonian army it's been sourced from the same effective population it's not getting a bigger population and even though he's creating more and then later Hellenistic kings create more shot cavalry by turning them into military colonists certainly in the case of the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic kings or pharaohs the whole thing's still being watered down if you look at the classic sort of clash between the Seleucid empire and the mid-republican romans at the battle of magnesia which is a really titanic sort of ancient world clash

where you have this Seleucid Hellenistic menagerie fighting against a classic Republican Roman army. I mean, that's an absolute rout on the part of the Romans against one of the finest Hellenistic armies of the day. It included elephants, side chariots, cataphracts, which are fully armed, cavalry, man and horse with a long lance, pike phalanxers, Galatian cavalry, Thracian peltasts, Cretan archers, all the best warriors and fighting forces of the Hellenistic world of their day matched together. You probably find in

actual fact that three-fifths if not four-fifths of the army that Antiochus III used at Magnesia was nothing like that at all. It's actually probably levies of local satrapal troops as the persians would have called them from across anatolia simply because his main military arm was spread too thin so not only was the roman military system when it began to engage after the punic wars the hellenistic kingdoms battle hardened to a degree which the hellenistic kingdoms should have been terrified of but also in actual fact the crust of the Hellenistic military system was probably by that time very thin and also once the fighting took place I actually think that you can draw an analogy with the Hellenistic kingdoms with the condottiers of Renaissance Italy where you have these professional warriors and soldiers and mercenaries and generals and kings who are fighting conflicts and wars and at the point when they think they're

going to lose they just put their hands up and say sorry we'll make friends well I'll pay you off to my earlier point the Romans didn't do that at all actually they carried on killing and also they carried on killing very tellingly so for example in these huge battles with the Romans and the Hellenistic armies look at the Cano Sofila and Pidna in the Second and Third Macedonian Wars. The Roman legionary's principal sidearm by that time was increasingly the Gladius Hispaniensis, which is a brutal stabbing weapon. It doesn't have any blood runnels. So when it goes in, there's no runnel to allow the blood to come out and the air to go in.

So you can't withdraw the sword quickly. So therefore, to withdraw the sword, you have to give it a massive twist and it creates a gaping terrifying wound it's actually a psychological weapon and plebius another classical historians of the time actually reflect on the fact that the hellenistic warriors who are holding their pikes up to surrender to the romans but are being butchered in this most brutalistic manner are shocked to the core about what they're facing they've got no idea what's going on. And so, Simon, during this later period, we've talked about how at the start, how Romans fought as Greeks, as hoplites in the early Republican period.

Now, at this time, when Rome is dominant, are there attempts by the Hellenistic kingdoms for their soldiers to fight like Romans, like legionaries? Well, firstly, the answer is yes but it's a waste of time because the military systems of the Hellenistic world have been eviscerated at every major opportunity fighting these battle-hardened post-second Punic war legions of Rome. However the Hellenistic kings who survived long enough all try far far too late to turn their military systems over to something which at least partially is akin to the Roman system. Why would they do that? Well,

belatedly, far, far too late, they've realised that the way they fight wars is actually outdated in exactly the same way that the Achaemenid Persian way of fighting war was outdated fighting Philip and Alexander. As a great example, let's look at the Seleucid Empire. So we'll start by going back to the Battle of Magnesia, the shattering defeat of the Seleucid army of Antiochus III, the great, quote-unquote, by Lucius Scipio. That was as big a victory as the Romans were ever going to get. One of the things the Romans stipulated in their peace agreement

was that Antiochus should hamstring all of his elephants and the Seleucid army had no choice but to actually follow that order. Now imagine you're the new king of the Seleucid empire Antiochus IV. Everything you do is going to be in the shadow of the defeat of Antiochus III by the Romans and in actual fact in the shadow of the Romans full stop. There is no better example than an engagement he has with Ptolemaic Egypt, when he's seen conflict with Ptolemaic Egypt over the succession of the Ptolemaic throne. And he marches an army towards Alexandria, which is the Ptolemaic capital of Egypt. And as he approaches with his army, which is as good as he's going to get, a delegation arrives from the Romans and a meeting takes place on the beach.

And the Roman delegation is a consular delegation led by a very elderly senator called Papilius Leonis who by the way Antiochus IV knew because he'd spent time himself Antiochus IV in Rome so he knew this elderly Roman senator and they're on very friendly terms but not today so when the Roman senator arrives to talk to Antiochus iv on this given day it's to deliver a message from the consuls and the senate in rome and the message is pack it in and go home because the romans don't want any more aggravation in the eastern mediterranean and they don't want what's by now quite an important supply of grain to rome from egypt and from north africa being disrupted by the intervention of the

Saluted Army. And the way this message is given by Laianus is very blunt and very Roman and it gets you a long way to understanding the psyche of the Romans because Laianus actually delivers the message and then he draws a circle in the sand around the king Antiochus IV who's an inheritor of the most significant part of the empire of Alexander the Great he draws a circle in the sand around him he says wait wait wait I want you to tell me before you step out that circle whether you agree to what we're saying you have to do or whether you're going to disagree with us in which case I will go back to the senate in Rome and we'll probably go to war with you so before you step out the circle you've got to give me your answer now firstly this is a king being told by a Roman civil leader effectively but a Hellenistic king being told what to do but he doesn't. That's all you need to know about the way the world is now.

He doesn't argue. He actually says, okay, we'll go home. And that's it. Now, it's very interesting going back to your original question, what happens next? Because what can Antiochus do to show his own people and army that he's not an idiot and that he's not frightened by the power of Rome, which he clearly is he decides to have a parade and this parade actually is described in great detail by classical historians and in it you get this brilliant snapshot of this very very very late Hellenistic army you're not that far away from you know the time of Julius Caesar now and in this snapshot of this very late Hellenistic army we have a description of the guard troops

called the Argyraspedes, the silver shields in the Seleucid army, who were all pike-armed before, but now in this new, better, very late Hellenistic army, look like Roman legionaries. So far too late in the day, the Hellenistic rulers have begun to arm their elite troops in the manner of the Romans. But it's way too late. The reason it's way too late is because the political and military leaders back in Rome now have the scent of loot. And they know there's money to be made. And no matter what the Hellenistic kings do from this point, they're doomed.

Too late. Innovating too late. It's a classic tale with the Hellenistic kings, isn't it? It's a sad, it breaks my heart to hear all that, Simon. Breaks my heart as well. I want the Macedonians to win all the time. I always want the Pike phalanx to win. Well, I mean, I know, me too, all the time.

And that's why the Wars of the Successors is great, because it's just Pike phalanx versus Pike phalanx to win. Well I mean I know me too all the time and that's why the Wars of the Successors is great because it's just Pike Phalanx versus Pike Phalanx. Speaking of which I'm sorry that we didn't get to talk about the Battle of Raffia today. It has to be another time that Titanic clash from the biggest Phalanx versus Phalanx battles of ancient history. In actual fact there are three. You want to do three in a row. We want to do Gaza and then Raffia and then Panion. I think the most important one there actually the Battle of Panion because the more you look at the primary sources there it looks as though that broke the Ptolemaic phalanx so Ptolemaic land power from that point actually from that defeat by the Seleucids probably their ability to wage symmetrical conflict against the Seleucid kingdoms the kingdom of Antiochus III and Antiochus IV, finished at the Battle of Panion.

The interesting thing is there, then, does that mean they need to start leading more and more on the Romans to give them some kind of symmetrical power, regional power? And is that another draw for the Romans into the region? How interesting that all of those three titanic fighting battles, they all occur in that same area between Egypt and Syria, isn't it? And even more interesting, we started our conversation today, Tristan, talking about the fact that there's interlinking taking place all the way through this period, from the 6th century through to the end of the 2nd century BC, between these two zones, the Western and Mediterranean, and eastern mediterranean and you can see right at the very end that written large here with the egyptians probably one of the new draws to bring

rome even further and further and further into the hellenistic world i mean actually there's one other name actually let's just bring his attention to right at the end if you haven't really focused on that i guess we've got to talk about it with ancient greeks versus the romans which is of course the famous city-state of sparta sparta now sparta with the romans and like post alexander the great post megalopolis you know down to the emergence of the romans i mean what happens sparta seems to just fade from the scene it's worth remembering where sparta is geographically because it's in the peloponnese clearly so it's at the foot of greece but it's also sort of fairly interior as well you know

and a lot of the activities and actions we've spoken about today are either maritime or dependent on maritime engagement or dependent on maritime access which Sparta did have by the way they get me wrong but being coastal or being close to being coastal I think as the Mediterranean world expanded and more interaction took place between the East and West, I think actually that was a distinct disadvantage for the Spartans. They become more and more and more and more insular, and the behaviour becomes more and more and more difficult to predict, and to us bizarre in actual fact.

You get this series of kings who emerge that almost turn it into sort of a communist state at one stage and clearly they're resting on laurels from two or three hundred years ago and they can never never come to grips with the fact that they're not the power that they were but because they were so remote from what else was happening elsewhere in the hellenistic world they're almost a sort of a footnote or a side note in a way that probably athens wasn't simply because athens was also this cultural center and the romans being the romans of course the first thing they do when they get to attica is they begin appropriating all the cultural manifestations of athenian culture either nicking it and taking it back to rome in terms of statues

and finery or nicking ideas. Later, of course, Athens becomes one of the key cultural centres of the whole Roman Empire in a way that Sparta just becomes forgotten in the same way that Mycenae would have been forgotten to the classical Greeks. Well, there you go. There you go. We had to mention Sparta, so we have mentioned it right at the end. Simon, this has been a great chat, all about Romans and Greeks and the clashes in the Hellenistic period. Last and certainly not least tell me a bit about the book which covers all of this. So one of my most recent books is

Ancient Greeks at War which is a full colour glossy hundreds of colour plates book which tells the story of the ancient Greeks at war from the time of the Minoans. So we're looking at about sort of I don't know 2000 BC onwards through the Mycenaeans and the Sea Peoples and then into the world of Dark Age Greece and then Archaic Greece and then Classical Greece.

And then we took a look at the rise of Macedon and then Philip II and Alexander and then the Hellenistic kingdoms and the rise of Rome. So it covers an incredibly huge geography and it covers an incredibly huge chronology. And it's an absolutely beautiful book. Highly recommended. Highly

recommended indeed. Well Simon, pleasure as always. Thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well there you go. There was Dr Simon Elliott explaining all about these clashes between the Greeks and the Romans in the last few centuries BC, military reforms and so much more. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, last but certainly not least, if you'd like more ancients content in the meantime, well, you can subscribe to our weekly ancients newsletter via a link in the description below, where every week I write a little bit of a blurb for that newsletter,

explaining what's been happening in ancient history hit world that week. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on either Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts from, I would greatly appreciate it. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.