What happened at the Battle of Cynoscephalae?
In 197 BC Philip V of Macedon and the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus marched for days on either side of a range of hills near Scotussa in Thessaly without seeing each other. In thick mist their advance guards collided on the ridge called the Dog’s Heads, and the skirmish grew into a full battle. Philip’s right wing drove back the Roman left, but his left wing was routed while still in marching column, and a Roman tribune with about twenty maniples took the victorious phalanx in the rear. Philip lost about 8,000 killed and 5,000 captured, made peace and gave up his hold on Greece.5
Polybius chose this battle to explain, in a famous digression, why the Macedonian phalanx kept losing to the Roman legion, and Britannica calls it one of the first times the two formations met in open combat. How the phalanx and the legion compared across all their meetings is set out in our comparison of the phalanx and the legion, and how the kingdom ended in the Battle of Pydna, 168 BC.6
Philip V and Rome
Philip V had fought Rome once already, while Rome was busy with Hannibal. Britannica sums up what came next: hoping to build on that first war, he moved against Rhodes and Pergamum, and the Rhodians beat his fleet off Chios in 201 BC. Envoys from Rhodes and Pergamum persuaded Rome to declare war on him in 200 BC.7
In his life of Aemilius Paullus, Plutarch describes Philip as a king who in his youth seemed able to restore Macedonia’s old greatness and to check the power of Rome on his own. The first two years of the new war brought the Romans little. In his life of Flamininus Plutarch writes that the earlier commanders invaded Macedonia late in the season and wasted their time manoeuvring for roads and supplies.8
A young consul and the Aous gorge
Titus Quinctius Flamininus was elected consul for 198 BC, Plutarch says, when he was not yet thirty, and he drew the war with Philip by lot. He took with him 3,000 veterans of Scipio’s campaigns in Spain and Africa and found Philip holding the narrow gorge of the river Aous in Epirus, a position Plutarch compares to the Vale of Tempe.9
Local herdsmen showed the Romans a path round the Macedonian position, and when the turning force signalled from the heights with smoke Flamininus attacked from below. Zonaras, epitomising Cassius Dio, says Philip had built a wall across the whole pass and fell back into Macedonia at once. Plutarch counts no more than 2,000 Macedonian dead, since the ground made pursuit impossible. In Livy, Philip later reminds his men that the phalanx itself had not been beaten there.10
Two armies of the same size
For 197 BC Flamininus’ command was extended, as Plutarch tells, and he marched into Thessaly to seek a decision. Livy, following Polybius, gives Philip 16,000 men in the phalanx, the prime strength of the army and of the kingdom, with 2,000 peltasts, 2,000 Thracians, 2,000 Illyrian Trallians, about 1,000 mercenaries and 2,000 horse. Kromayer and Veith add it up to 23,500 foot and 2,000 horse. Mommsen writes that Philip had enrolled boys and old men to fill the ranks of the phalanx.11
The Romans were about as numerous. Plutarch gives Flamininus over 26,000 men, of whom the Aetolians supplied 6,000 foot and 400 horse, and Britannica counts about 8,000 Greeks among the 26,000. Livy says the Romans were superior only in cavalry, thanks to the Aetolians. Kromayer, who traces both sets of figures back to Polybius, puts the Roman army at about 24,000 foot and 2,400 horse. Polybius and Livy also mention elephants on the Roman side.12
Marching blind round the hills
The armies first met near Pherae. Livy, following Polybius, describes a cavalry fight among walls, gardens and trees in which the Aetolians did well, and both commanders decided the ground was useless for a battle. Philip turned west towards Scotussa to gather supplies, and Flamininus marched the same way to destroy the corn there before him.13
A range of hills ran between them, and for two days neither knew where the other was. Livy names their camps: the Romans at Eretria in Phthiotis and then near the Thetidium, the sanctuary of Thetis in the territory of Pharsalus, the Macedonians on the river Onchestus and then at Melambius in the territory of Scotussa. Then came violent rain, and after it a darkness like night. Britannica adds that Philip was trying to cross the hills towards Pharsalus.14
Plutarch adds an omen. Before the battle Philip climbed a high mound outside his camp to address his men, not noticing that it was a common grave, and the soldiers took it so badly that he put off fighting that day. Kromayer, who travelled over the ground, wondered whether a tumulus the villagers called Kukurialo was that mound.15
The Dog’s Heads
Polybius calls the hills where the battle was fought the Cynoscephalae, the Dog’s Heads, rough and broken and of considerable height. Plutarch explains the name by the shape of their sharp, close-set tops, and Strabo places the spot in the territory of Scotussa. The same ridge had seen a battle before: in 364 BC Pelopidas of Thebes was killed there in his victory over Alexander of Pherae, as Plutarch tells in his life of Pelopidas and Kromayer discusses at length.16
Kromayer and Veith, who explored the area for their study of 1907, described a broad, gently rolling saddle of farmland between the Karadagh heights near Scotussa and the Mavrovuni hills to the west, and placed the fighting on the heights near the road from Larissa to Pharsalus. Mommsen speaks of the plateau of the Karadagh. Kromayer also dated the battle, from the season and the Roman calendar, to late May or early June.17
Fighting in the mist
Philip set out in the mist but soon stopped, fortified a camp and sent a covering force to hold the summits between the armies. Flamininus, unsure where the enemy was, sent ten squadrons of horse and about 1,000 light infantry to scout. On the pass they ran into the Macedonian covering force. Livy says both parties stood still in fright for a moment, as if unable to move, and then began fighting, each sending back for help.18
The Romans were getting the worst of it, so Flamininus sent the Aetolians Archedamus and Eupolemus with two military tribunes, 500 horse and 2,000 foot. Now the Macedonians were driven up to the summits and called on the king. Philip, who had not expected a battle that day and had sent many men out to forage, sent his Thessalian and Macedonian cavalry and all his mercenaries except the Thracians under Athenagoras. The Romans were pushed back down the slope, and Polybius and Livy credit the Aetolian cavalry, which Livy calls the best in Greece, with stopping the rout. Kromayer reckons that the Macedonians now had at least 3,500 foot and 1,400 horse in the fight.19
Philip decides to fight
Messengers kept running to Philip shouting that the enemy was in flight and the day was his. Polybius says the king did not like the ground and foresaw the trouble it would bring, but let himself be carried along and led his army out of the camp. Livy adds that he called it rash and said he liked neither the place nor the time.20
Flamininus drew up his whole army below the hills and gave a short speech. Livy reports it, after Polybius: were these not the Macedonians the Romans had driven from their positions before, in Eordaea and in Epirus? He then left his right wing where it was, with the elephants in front of it, and led the left forward to support his retreating advance troops.21
One wing wins, the other never forms
Philip climbed the hill with the peltasts and the right half of the phalanx and told Nicanor, nicknamed the Elephant, to bring up the rest at once. At the top he found the summits empty, for his covering force had chased the Romans far down the other side, and then saw his own mercenaries running back with the legions behind them. Polybius says he had to decide the fate of the whole army on the spur of the moment, with most of the phalanx still on the march. Kromayer puts the half of the phalanx under the king at 8,000 men, with 2,000 peltasts beside it.22
He placed the returning troops on his right, ordered the peltasts and phalanx to double their depth, from the eight ranks of the march to sixteen as Kromayer explains, and close to the right, and then, by Polybius’ account, to lower their pikes and charge. Livy, who is otherwise following Polybius here, writes instead that they laid their long spears aside and fought with swords. The charge from higher ground was overwhelming. Polybius says the Roman left could not stand against the weight of the formation and its arms, and Plutarch that it could not withstand the interlocked shields and projecting pikes.23
On the other wing things went the other way. The Macedonians there had only just come over the ridge, still in marching order and with no one giving orders. Flamininus rode across to his right, sent the elephants against them and followed with the legions. Polybius says they broke before coming to close quarters, scattered by the elephants alone. Britannica sums up the moment: each side was now winning on one wing.24
Twenty maniples
The decision came from an officer whose name no source gives. Polybius describes one of the tribunes on the victorious Roman right who, taking not more than twenty maniples and judging on the spur of the moment, left the pursuit, turned towards the fighting and fell on Philip’s victorious phalanx from behind. Britannica takes a maniple as about 120 men.25
Polybius explains why that was fatal: it is impossible for the phalanx to turn about or fight man to man. Livy adds that the pursuers had left the hilltop open behind them. The Romans in front, who had been giving way, now turned and pressed too. Caught from both sides, the Macedonians threw away their shields and fled. Plutarch compares the phalanx to an animal of invincible strength while it remains one body, whose men lose their force once it is broken into parts.26
Raised pikes
Philip watched from a little distance and, when he saw the Romans already on the summits behind his left, rode off with what Thracians and Macedonians he could gather. On the ridge Flamininus saw the Macedonians holding their pikes upright, which, Polybius explains, was their sign of surrender or of going over to the enemy, and he held his men back. Before he had made up his mind, Roman soldiers further forward fell on them from above. Most were killed and very few escaped.27
Mommsen thought this misunderstanding explains why so many of the Macedonian losses were dead rather than prisoners. The Roman soldiers who reached the Macedonian camp found that the Aetolians had plundered it first, and Polybius and Plutarch both make the quarrel over the booty the start of a long ill feeling between Flamininus and his allies.28
Counting the dead
Polybius puts the Roman dead at about 700 and the Macedonian losses at about 8,000 killed and not fewer than 5,000 captured. Livy gives the same numbers and says so: he rejects Valerius Antias, who gave 40,000 killed and 5,700 prisoners with 249 standards, and Claudius Quadrigarius, who gave 32,000 killed and 4,300 prisoners, and follows Polybius as a safe authority, especially for events in Greece. Plutarch also gives 8,000 and 5,000. Livy and Plutarch are therefore not independent confirmations of Polybius but repetitions of him.29
The Aetolians told the story their own way. Plutarch quotes an epigram by one Alcaeus on the dead lying unburied on the ridge, thirty thousand of them, laid low by the Aetolians and the Latins, which Plutarch calls an exaggeration and which annoyed Flamininus more than Philip. Zonaras, in Dio’s tradition, says the battle would have ended undecided had the Aetolians not made the Romans prevail. Mommsen estimated the Macedonian loss at 13,000 killed and captured together.30
Polybius explains the phalanx
Right after the battle Polybius stops his story to keep a promise made in his sixth book and compare the two systems. When the phalanx keeps its proper order, he writes, nothing can withstand its frontal charge. Each man takes up three feet, the pikes are fourteen cubits long in practice, and the first man has five pike points in front of him. A Roman, who needs more room to wield his shield and sword, faces two men and ten pikes.31
Why then did the Romans win? Because, Polybius answers, the phalanx has only one time and one place where it can do its work: level, open ground without ditches, ridges or water courses. The Romans never put their whole line against it at once. Part of their force waited, and when the phalanx pressed forward or fell back it left gaps that the reserves could exploit from the flank and rear. A Roman soldier could fight with the whole army, a part of it, in a maniple or alone.32
The argument has framed the debate ever since, and Cynoscephalae is its model case. Kromayer saw the same pattern at Pydna, where an uneven advance again broke the phalanx, and Davide Morelli argues that in 168 BC Aemilius Paullus deliberately followed a plan modelled on Cynoscephalae.33
Peace and the freedom of the Greeks
Philip fell back to Gonni at the entrance of the Vale of Tempe, and Polybius praises him for sending word the night before to burn the royal papers at Larisa so that nothing could compromise his friends. He asked for a truce, and the Aetolians demanded that he be removed from his throne. Livy and Mommsen both have Flamininus refuse, arguing that Macedonia protected Greece from the Thracians, Illyrians and Gauls.34
The senate’s decree, as Polybius gives it, freed the Greeks in Europe and Asia, made Philip withdraw his garrisons, surrender all his warships except five light vessels and his great sixteen-banked ship, and pay 1,000 talents, half at once and half over ten years. Plutarch adds that his son Demetrius went to Rome as a hostage. At the Isthmian Games of 196 BC a herald proclaimed the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Phthiotic Achaeans, Magnesians, Thessalians and Perrhaebians free, and Polybius describes a burst of cheering beyond belief, while Plutarch says the shout reached the sea.35
A portrait in gold
Flamininus left a likeness of himself in Greece. The British Museum holds a gold stater with his bearded head and the name T. QVINCTI, struck in Greece in 196 BC on the model of the Macedonian gold coinage begun by Alexander. Its curator writes that the coin was probably issued in the wake of Cynoscephalae and is the earliest coin portrait of a Roman.36
The Archaeological Museum of Delphi shows a marble head that it identifies as Flamininus and describes him as the man who defeated Philip V in 197 BC and was celebrated as the liberator of the Greek cities. Philip kept his throne and, as Plutarch tells in his life of Aemilius Paullus, spent his last years preparing another war. His son Perseus fought it and lost the kingdom at Pydna in 168 BC.37
