The Armies at Paraetacene

[Patrick Waterson]

Tangentially, Herodotos claims that Xerxes' Persian and other West Iranian cavalry were armed like their infantry, which taken at face value means they had spear, bow and shield (aspis), in which case the Greeks ought have been very long familiar with shielded cavalry by Paraitakene; but as the Persian infantry's shield was the sparah pavise (or so the received wisdom has it), it's hard to imagine the same really being used from horseback.

The Achaemenids did employ more than one shield type: the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, identifies three: 1) the spara, 2) the 'violin' shield (seen here, here and here) and 3) the crescent shield carried by some light infantry.

The CAIS also has this illustration, showing some infantry with the spara and others with the 'violin' shield.

Note how the 'violin' shield appears to come in two sizes: shoulder-to-hips and chin-to-knees; the smaller version would seem suitable for use by cavalry.

[Andreas Johansson]

There's also the fact that Achaemenid art rarely if ever shows cavalrymen with shields.

ETA: It also seems unlikely that Herodotos would refer to the crescent shield as aspis.

[Duncan Head]

Phil Sabin takes his figures from Diodorus.
"The entire army of Eumenes consisted of thirty-five thousand foot soldiers, sixty-one hundred horsemen, and one hundred and fourteen elephants." - Diodorus XIX.28.4
Of the 35,000 foot, some of which were light troops accompanying the elephants, 17,000 are listed as phalangites and the remainder are simply not listed.  We can surmise a combination of light troops, peltasts and maybe even some local tribal types similar to those in Diodorus XIX.16.3

At Diodoros XIX.14.5, Peucestes satrap of Persia joins Eumenes with

At this time Peucestes had ten thousand Persian archers and slingers, three thousand men of every origin equipped for service in the Macedonian array, six hundred Greek and Thracian cavalry, and more than four hundred Persian horsemen.

Shortly after this, at XIX.17.4-6,

Keeping this river in front of them as a protection and holding the bank from its source to the sea with pickets, they awaited the onset of the enemy. Since this guard because of its length required no small number of soldiers, Eumenes and Antigenes requested Peucestes to summon ten thousand bowmen from Persia. At first he paid no heed to them, since he still bore a grudge for not having received the generalship; but later, reasoning with himself, he admitted that should Antigonus be victorious the result would be that he himself would lose his satrapy and also be in danger of his life. In his anxiety, therefore, about himself, and thinking also that he would be more likely to gain the command if he had as many soldiers as possible, he brought up ten thousand bowmen as they requested.

Unless there is some kind of duplication in Diodorus, the army under Eumenes now contains twenty thousand Persian light infantry. Which accounts for the 18,000 non-phalanx infantry, with a comfortable margin for losses and detached outposts.

It's worth checking back through Diodoros at least from the start of Book XIX to see the assembly and development of the two armies.
(This point originally from Luke U-S at http://lukeuedasarson.com/EumenidDBM.html ).

[Chris]

Duncan,

Thanks for the excerpt from XIX.14 and the link to the work of Luke U-S. Yet more to digest!

Chris

[Patrick Waterson]

ETA: It also seems unlikely that Herodotos would refer to the crescent shield as aspis.

The crescent shield seems to have been a late addition for Achaemenid light troops, i.e. after Herodotus' time.  The 'violin' shield might just fall into the category of shields for which aspis is a faute-de-mieux description.

At Diodoros XIX.14.5, Peucestes satrap of Persia joins Eumenes with

At this time Peucestes had ten thousand Persian archers and slingers, three thousand men of every origin equipped for service in the Macedonian array, six hundred Greek and Thracian cavalry, and more than four hundred Persian horsemen.

Shortly after this, at XIX.17.4-6,

Keeping this river in front of them as a protection and holding the bank from its source to the sea with pickets, they awaited the onset of the enemy. Since this guard because of its length required no small number of soldiers, Eumenes and Antigenes requested Peucestes to summon ten thousand bowmen from Persia. At first he paid no heed to them, since he still bore a grudge for not having received the generalship; but later, reasoning with himself, he admitted that should Antigonus be victorious the result would be that he himself would lose his satrapy and also be in danger of his life. In his anxiety, therefore, about himself, and thinking also that he would be more likely to gain the command if he had as many soldiers as possible, he brought up ten thousand bowmen as they requested.

Unless there is some kind of duplication in Diodorus, the army under Eumenes now contains twenty thousand Persian light infantry. Which accounts for the 18,000 non-phalanx infantry, with a comfortable margin for losses and detached outposts.

It's worth checking back through Diodoros at least from the start of Book XIX to see the assembly and development of the two armies.
(This point originally from Luke U-S at http://lukeuedasarson.com/EumenidDBM.html ).

Useful contribution there, Duncan: thanks.  (Saves me having to extract details from that part of Book XIX.)

[Chris]

Discovered the following while "digging around" for more source material. The one applies to the quality of the  Silver Shields, the other applies to the terrain in as much as visibility might be a consideration. (Reminded me of recent reading done about Adrianople.) Anyway.

He urged on the Greeks and barbarians, and was himself likewise exhorted by the phalanx and the Silver Shields to be of good courage, as the enemy would not stand up to their onslaught. For these were the oldest of the troops of Philip and Alexander, and, like athletes of war, they had never yet been defeated or thrown. Many of them were seventy years old and none was younger than sixty. So as they charged Antigonus' forces they shouted, 'It is against your fathers that you sin, you scum!'62 and falling on them angrily they smashed almost their whole phalanx, as no one stood up to them, but most were cut down at close quarters. At this point, then, Antigonus' forces were being overwhelmed. His cavalry, on the other hand, were getting the upper hand. And since Peucestas fought in such a lax and cowardly manner, Antigonus got control of the whole of Eumenes' baggage train, owing both to his own sober head, despite the dangers, and to the aid afforded by the terrain. For the plain was vast and its earth neither very deep nor hard and firm but sandy and full of a dry, salty substance, which with the trampling of so many horses and men during the battle raised a cloud of lime-like dust, which turned the air white and reduced visibility.

Found here:
http://www.mustreading.net/The_Age_of_Alexander/136.html, "chapter" 16.

Chris

[Patrick Waterson]

That is from Plutarch's Life of Eumenes, chapter 16, and actually seems to be referring to the Battle of Gabiene a year later (cf. Diodorus XIX ch. 41-43).  Plutarch skirts around or skims over Paraetacene without specifically mentioning it, somewhat to the annoyance of military historians.

[Chris]

Ooops. 

Thanks for the correction, Patrick.

[Patrick Waterson]

It's OK, Chris: I made exactly the same mistake once.

[Dave Beatty]

This is brilliant, I have 3000 x 15mm troops painted up and ready to go already... now to find a venue with a table large enough...

As I plot out the coordinates for this, it looks as if it is in the southwest suburbs of modern Esfahan.

The map in Lost Battles leaves a bit to the imagination, and since there is no mention anywhere of a river (the Zayandeh Rud bends from the south to the east just west of the purported battlefield) I suppose that Eumenes might have deployed north-south facing west perhaps astride the modern Ghaemieh Street with his left flank anchored on the hill line north and east of the modern power plant, or perhaps further east astride the Agharabparast Expressway or Highway 65. This latter would put a line of hills to Eumenes' rear about 3 miles away (just south of the modern Hemmat helicopter base).  It has been 40 years since I was out that way and it has changed a lot, but as I recall that is not much of a river in the summer even though there are several modern bridges across it.

Anybody else have an idea of the precise layout of the battlefield?

Dave Beatty

[Patrick Waterson]

I think you are the only one among us who has actually seen it, Dave.

Diodorus offers the following terrain clue:

"On his left wing Eumenes stationed Eudamus, who had brought the elephants from India, with his squadron of one hundred and fifty horsemen, and as an advance guard for them two troops of selected mounted lancers with a strength of fifty horsemen. He placed them in contact with the higher land of the base of the hill ..." - Diodorus XIX.27.2-3

That apart, we have little to go on, other than the following:

"As Antigonus looked down from a high position, he saw the battle line of his enemy and disposed his own army accordingly." - idem XIX.29.1

So there should be another 'high position' in the vicinity - not necessarily for Antigonus' army (though see below), but one from which the man himself can see Eumenes' deployment.

Once the battle gets under way:

"... as soon as Eumenes' Silver Shields and the remaining body of his infantry had routed those who opposed them, they pursued them as far as the nearer hills ..." - idem XIX.30.8

and

"... [Antigonus] assembled those of his soldiers who were fleeing and once more formed them into a line along the foothills." - idem XIX.30.10

This means we want a range of hills, or at least foothills, behind Antigonus' position in addition to the one on which Eumenes rests his left.

The river is conspicuous by its non-participation.

[Dave Beatty]

The absence of any mention of a river in the primary sources is a bit troubling and I wonder if the precise location of the battlefield is really not known. "Paraitakene" is, as I understand it, the name of a province or area north of the head of the Persian Gulf rather than a specific place. Isn't Gabiene (the next battle between Eumenes and Antigonus, in 316) the ancient name for Esfahan?

Can anyone identify the precise location of these battles?

[Patrick Waterson]

Paraitakene/Paraetacene is supposed to be near modern Esfahan/Isfahan; of Gabiene we now only that, in the words of the Wikipedia article, "In the middle of Persia, the two armies camped about four and a half miles apart from each other on an uncultivated, flat sandy plain."

Isfahan, Ptolemy the Geographer's Aspadana, started life as a Jewish colony planted during Nebuchacnezzar's deportations.  It remained primarily a Jewish colony - and probably provided troops for Antiochus' 'elephant victory' over the Galatians - until mediaeval times (specifically, the Jewish colony and nearby Persian settlement merged around the time of the 11th century AD).  Aspadana encompassed several minor waterways and was close to the Zayandehrud River, which would seem to rule out dry and dusty Gabiene.

What we seek would appear to be a range of foothills close to Esfahan/Isfahan/Ispahan/Aspadana rather than anything in the environs of the city itself.  This scalable topographical map shows Esfahan in the middle of various clusters of ranges of high ground (a good reason to check altimeter settings!) and my eye is drawn to the ridge south of Garmase and east of Route 51 as a possibility for the 'line of foothills' to which Antigonus' troops withdrew; the pink-and-purple high ground to the north-east of it (east of Garmase) has a yellow southward projection which could anchor the left of Eumenes' army, while the gap in the range could have been the route through which Eumenes brought his army to deploy (currently the route to get from Abrisham to Abnil).  The Zayandeh River curls behind what I see as Antigonus' foothills (or rather ridge) so would not have featured in the battle but would be in the right place to supply Antigonus' army with water prior to the action - and, for that matter, Eumenes' army from its curl further north (about where the Isfahan-Zarinshahr road becomes the Zobahan Freeway).

[Duncan Head]

The Median tribes are these: the Busae, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, the Magi. Their tribes are this many.

Neighbouring Susis is the part of Babylonia which was formerly called Sitacenê, but is now called Apolloniatis. Above both, on the north and towards the east, lie the countries of the Elymaei and the Paraetaceni, who are predatory peoples and rely on the ruggedness of their mountains. But the Paraetaceni are situated closer to the Apolloniatae, and therefore treat them worse.

The apparent lack of "rugged mountains" in the battle description is a bit of a surprise.

[Patrick Waterson]

Good research, Duncan.

I suspect the 'rugged mountains' were spectating from several points of the compass, the armies themselves having found a convenient flattish bit so they could do what Hellenistic armies had to do.