Corinth 197 BC

[Duncan Head]

Battle: Corinth, 197 BC

Achaian League (Nikostratos) vs Macedonia (Androsthenes)

Background
This was a small action during the Second Roman-Macedonian War, fought in the Peloponnese while the main Macedonian army was engaged with the Romans in Thessaly.

Numbers: Achaians, 5,000 infantry and 300 cavalry; against 6,000 Macedonians.

Source: Livy XXXIII.14-15. Note that this is one of the sections that is not included in the popular Penguin translation. The translation here used is Sage's 1935 version at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ with occasional modifications.

Translation:
14. At the same time, and, as some have related, on the very same day, the Achaeans routed the king's general Androsthenes in a pitched battle near Corinth. [2] Philip intended to hold this city as a stronghold against the Greek cities, and when he had invited there the leading citizens under pretence of discussing with them the number of cavalry the Corinthians could furnish for [3] the war, he had held them as hostages, and in addition to five hundred Macedonians and eight hundred auxiliaries of various nations, the [4] number that had already been there for some time, he had sent there a thousand Macedonians and twelve hundred Thracians and Illyrians and eight hundred Cretans, for this people fought on both sides. [5] Added to these were one thousand Boeotians, Thessalians and Acarnanians, all provided with long shields ("scutati omnes"), and seven hundred of the youth of the Corinthians themselves, filling up his numbers to six thousand armed men, and these gave Androsthenes confidence enough to risk a decisive battle. [6] Nicostratus, the praetor of the Achaeans, was at Sicyon with two thousand infantry and one hundred cavalry, but, seeing himself inferior both in numbers and in the quality of his troops, he would not leave his fortifications. [7] The king's infantry and cavalry were roaming about and ravaging the lands of Pellene, Phlius and Cleonae, and finally crossed into the territory of Sicyon, taunting the enemy with cowardice; [8] likewise they skirted with their ships the whole coast of Achaea and laid it waste. [9] When the enemy was thus engaged in scattered groups and, as often happens in cases of over-confidence, with a lack of vigilance, Nicostratus, in the hope of attacking them unexpectedly, sent secret messages to the neighbouring states, naming the day and [10] fixing the numbers from each state to assemble at Apelaurum —this place is in the land of Stymphalia. [11] When all was ready on the appointed day, he at once set out by night through the country of the Phliasii and arrived at Cleonae, no one knowing what he was planning. [12] He had with him five thousand infantry, including .. (a gap in the text here).. light-armed troops, and three hundred cavalry. With these forces, after first sending out scouts to find out in which direction the enemy was moving, he waited.

15. Androsthenes, in ignorance of all this, had left Corinth and encamped on the Nemea, which is a stream separating the lands of Corinth and Sicyon. [2] There he ordered half of his army, divided into three columns, and all his cavalry to lay waste at the same time the country of Pellene, Sicyon and Phlius. [3] The three separate columns marched out. When this was reported to Nicostratus at Cleonae, he immediately sent out a strong force of mercenaries to close the pass which gives access to Corinthian territory, [4] and posting the cavalry ahead of the infantry to lead the way, himself followed rapidly in two columns. [5] In one marched the mercenaries with the light infantry, in the other the shield-wearers ("clipeati"): these constitute the chief strength in the armies of those states. The infantry and cavalry were now not far from the camp, and some of the [6] Thracians had made an attack upon the enemy, foraging and scattered through the fields, when sudden panic gripped the camp. [7] The commander was afraid, inasmuch as he had nowhere seen the enemy except in small detachments in the hills in front of Sicyon, not daring to march their column down into the plains, and had never believed that they would attack from Cleonae. [8] He gave orders that the foragers should be recalled by a trumpet-blast and, hastily ordering the troops to arm, he marched out of the gate with his depleted column and formed his battle-line above the river. [9] The rest of the force, assembled and formed with difficulty, did not oppose the enemy's initial charge; the Macedonians had rallied in the largest numbers of all to the standards, and for a long time they rendered the prospect of victory uncertain; [10] at last, exposed by the flight of the rest, with two lines [11] of the enemy advancing from different directions, the light infantry from the flank, the heavy infantry and peltasts ("clipeati caetratique") from the front, as the hope of victory diminished they at first retired slowly, but then, as the pressure increased, they broke, and most of [12] them threw away their arms, abandoning hope of holding the camp, and made for Corinth. [13] Nicostratus sent the mercenaries to follow them and the cavalry and Thracian auxiliaries against the raiders in the territory around Sicyon, and caused great slaughter there also, greater, almost, than in the battle itself. [14] Part of the troops, too, who had ravaged Pellene and Phlius, returning in disorder and ignorant of what had transpired, when near the camp, drifted into the enemy's outguards in the belief that they were their own, while part of them, suspecting from the confusion what the truth was, scattered in flight [15] in every direction, with the result that as they wandered about they were set upon even by the country-people. The losses that day were fifteen hundred killed, three hundred captured. [16] All Achaea was freed from great terror.

Commentary
Corinth had been the centre of Macedonian power in the Peloponnese throughout the third century, its citadel Acrocorinth being one of the "Three Fetters of Greece". The city had briefly been a member of the Achaian League but had returned to Macedonian control in 223.

One of the interesting aspects of this passage is Livy's use of different words for "shield-bearers" to identify different troop-types in the two armies. The Achaian heavy infantry are clipeati, bearers of the round shield – clipeus in Latin. If this passage comes from a Greek original, certainly if it comes like much of Livy's descriptions of events in the Hellenistic world from Polybios, then clipeati is probably a translation of an original Greek hoplitai. We know from Plutarch's Life of Philopoimen that the Achaian hoplites were re-armed in the late third century in the Macedonian style, and Polybios describes them fighting with sarisai at Mantineia in 207.

Livy also mentions caetrati in the Achaian army. This is the Latin for peltastai, as Livy explains (at XXXI.36), and we hear of Achaian League peltasts on a number of occasions, notably at Magnesia. Here, perhaps for the only time, we find the peltasts specifically fighting alongside the phalanx. Whether these Achaian peltasts were lighter pikemen like their Macedonian counterparts, traditional javelin-throwers, Iphikrateian-Asklepiodotan spearmen, or something else, is another question.

Finally, "Boeoti Thessalique et Acarnanes mille, scutati omnes"."Scutati", "long-shield men", must be Livy's rendering of the Greek "thyreophoroi". There are relatively few explicit references to thyreophoroi in Hellenistic battle-lines. The presence of Boiotians is intriguing since inscriptions from Boiotian cities stop mentioning youths being drafted into the thyreaphoroi about the middle of the third century, listing peltaphoroi instead.