We slotted into our place in time to watch some of our Psiloi get driven off the ground by allied skirmishers. It wasn’t a hot fight, but the enemy had cavalry mixed in with their Psiloi, and they were killing our lads in short rushes.
Laodon shook his head, pointing at the ground. ‘I’m not taking my knights into that,’ he said. ‘We’ll kill more horses then men.’
I had to agree – he was older, and I thought he was right.
But the Athenian cavalry was in there, and they were having a field day against our javelin men. Finally the whole pack of our light armed gave it up and fled. They ran right through us, and rallied behind us.
Then we got to endure arrows and javelins. We pulled back, found a better piece of ground and the Athenian cavalry formed to face us and just sat there. We hooted at them, they hooted at us – our numbers were even, and neither of us had anything to gain from a charge.
Our light armed were ready to go forward again, and their leader was talking to Laodon, when a man came galloping towards us from the Athenian ranks. He halted a few horse lengths from our line.
‘I am Kineas, son of Eumenes,’ he called out. He declared his whole lineage – how he was descended from Herakles via the heroes of Plataea. He had beautiful armour, and a pair of white plumes in his helmet.
He was challenging us to fight man to man.
Laodon spat. Looked away. Young enough to be embarrassed – too professional to accept.
Not me. I took my good spear from Polystratus. I gave Kineas of Athens a proper salute, and we went at it. We charged each other from about half a stade – a long ride, when you’ve nothing to do but contemplate mortality.
He got me. I won’t spin it out, you must have heard the story from your uncles – turned my spear, got his spear up and swept me off Poseidon’s back. The Athenian infantry at the top of the hill roared, and I was unconscious.
I knew he was the same man I’d faced twice in two days. So I got my sorry carcass mounted again as soon as I was able to think and see straight – he’d creased the top of my helmet so badly that I couldn’t get it on my head properly and had to discard it, and I had a lump like an egg.
I got back on Poseidon with Cleomenes holding his head, and that was just in time to see Laodon’s troop of companions crash into the nearest troop of Athenians – head to head, no manoeuvre. And their second troop was lining up, and there was no time to worry. My head hurt, but not enough to stop me doing my job.
The boys were quite kind, all things considered. I got some back slaps and some ‘get the bastard next time’ comments, and then I was in my spot at the head of the wedge. The Athenians were formed in a rhomboid, and they had some slope behind them.
And then we were off.
Troop to troop, same weight of horseflesh, same ground, not much to tell in skill – it might have been a bloodbath. It wasn’t. We smashed into them, and I never got sword to sword with Kineas – we struck a few horse lengths from each other, and I was into the Athenian ranks before I had time to think about it, cutting to either side, taking blows on my armour and a heavy cut to my bridle arm – see the scar? But I kept my seat and burst out the other side of their formation and found that old Philip had started his infantry forward.
There was a third troop of horse – Thessalians under Erygius – and they smashed into the flank of the melee, bowling Athenian Hippeis right over with their long lances, and suddenly the whole pack of them was in flight, and the hypaspists cheered us.
I could see Philip, just a few horse lengths away. I saluted with my sword, and he waved. A handsome boy came running from his side.
Up close, I could see it was Attalus’s pretty cousin, Diomedes. To me, he looked more like Ganymede.
‘The king thanks you and orders you back to the left,’ he said.
I saluted, and my trumpeter started blowing the recall.
It was all going according to plan, until the hypaspists slammed into the Athenians and the Athenians rolled them right back down the hill.
My lads were just behind them, crossing back from our right to our left by the shortest route, and we felt it when the hypaspists went into the Athenians. Not for them the sarissa – they had the hoplite spear, the dory and the bigger, heavier hoplite aspis. But they were not all individual athletes like the Athenians, and nor did they have a front rank in leg armour, sometimes arm, face and hand armour – a rich Athenian can look like a bronze automaton.
I heard all the excuses that night – there was a line of animal holes, men fell, the Athenians had dug pits in front – for whatever reason, our front rank stumbled and the Athenians gave a great shout and pushed, and our best were stumbling back.
We companions had to hotfoot along to get clear before they slammed into us and all order was lost. Laodon turned back at this point – against orders, I’ll add – and manoeuvred to cover the flank of the hypaspists, in case the enemy light troops got brave. It was a smart move.
Whether Philip had intended it or not, his extreme right – his hypaspists – had engaged first, so that the entire army was echeloned from right to left, with the best troops leading the way and the worst following well behind. I’ve done this on purpose, but on that morning, I still think it was the result of the king being on the far right when he gave the signal to advance, so that the rightmost files stepped off first and started a sort of marching cascade.
It scarcely matters why – except that the whole army sawthe king and the hypaspists recoil. And the Athenians raised a great cheer, sang the paean, and their whole line moved forward.
I couldn’t rein in and watch – bad for discipline. But it didn’t look good.
I kept turning my head and looking back as we rode – and the hypaspists were driven down and down the ridge, even as our rawest troops were marching forward into the Thebans.
When I reached Alexander, he was alone except for Hephaestion, well in front of all the cavalry.
‘What in Tartarus is happening?’ he demanded.
What exactly do you say? ‘The hypaspists seem hard pressed, lord,’ I said.
Alexander nodded sharply, eyes everywhere.
With a pots-and-pans sound audible even from a stade away, the centres met. The allies had the smaller town contingents and some dubious mercenaries in the centre. We had foot companions. Ours were better, and almost instantly they started to push the allies back.
Why?
The smaller a town is, the smaller its phalanx. Some towns have as few as three or four hundredhoplites. That means they’ve never served in a bigger phalanx – they usually don’t form deep enough, and they aren’t used to the terror of a dozen spear-butts with long bronze points licking around their heads. Oh – the rear ranks can be difficult.
But the worst is that the danger spots in a phalanx are always the joins – the places where two contingents line up – say Athens and Thebes. Those two files don’t know each other – don’t trust each other, don’t lap their shields or anything like it. In fact, believe it or not, men from different towns or nations will often leave a gap, even though they know – they know– that the gap is a death warrant. Their distrust for other men is so physical they cannot close that gap. I’ve watched contingents of Medes and Persians do it, watched Aegyptians do it – and at Chaeronea, the centre of the allied army had a dozen little contingents and they had more joins than an old pot that’s been thrice repaired.
In our army, of course, we had contingents of about two thousand – every one the same. All Macedonian, or like enough. We drilled them together. We had nojoins. Our pots never needed repair.
Their centre fractured, as an old pot will when it takes a blow.
That transformed the battle, but it didn’t give us a victory. The hypaspists and our right were still reeling back – the Athenians scented victory, and who could blame them? Traditionally, when an army’s strong right was broken, the game was won, and the hypaspists were barely hanging together. They were still plodding backwards. The noblest thing I can say about them is that they didn’t break, and I think anyone else would have.