Hellenistic fortified camps

Synopsis: Hellenistic armies should have optional TF for camps.

Author: Duncan Head

Proposal:

Add the following line:

Ditch and/or palisade for camp – TF @ 1AP 0-12

to the following lists:

Later Hoplite Greek (After 379 {or 374} BC only)

Alexandrian Macedonian

Alexandrian Imperial

Asiatic Early Successor

Macedonian Early Successor

Lysimachid

Ptolemaic

Seleucid

Hellenistic Greek

Later Macedonian

Bactrian and Indian Greek

Pergamene

Commagene

Mithridatic

(12 elements of TF is the de facto standard for the current

published lists, though there are arguments both historical and

rules-related for larger numbers. If that standard changes, replace

12 with the new standard number.)

Justification:

The published lists do not generally allow fortified camps to

Hellenistic armies, with the exception of the Pyrrhic list (since

various sources suggest that Pyrrhos' camp layout inspired the

Romans to improve theirs). However, there are enough references to

camps defended with ditches, ramparts and/or palisades from the 4th

century BC onwards to support the idea that they were a well-known

practice for Hellenistic armies at least when circumstances were

thought to require protection, and so should probably be allowed

even to those for whom we do not have explicit evidence. I've not

undertaken a complete analysis of the sources, so there are probably

plenty of other examples to be found. However apart from the

Iphikrates anecdote cited below, there is little indication that any

Hellenistic army routinely set up a fortified camp every night as

the Romans did, so fortifications should not be compulsory.

Most 4th-century Greek armies encamped on the march without

fortification – as we see in Xenophon's Anabasis.

The Lakedaimonian Constitution attributed to him, and perhaps

written in the 380s, has quite a thorough discussion of the layout

of the Spartan camp but makes no mention of fortifications. But soon

after that date, some Greek armies were already palisading

themselves, at least on occasion:

- Iphikrates, we are told, "always fortified his camp, even during

truces; remarking that it was not appropriate for a good general to

say "I didn't think..."." (Polyainos 3.9.17). When in Iphikrates'

varied career this anecdote applies to is not stated. It may be

convenient, though, to use this – possibly the first evidence for

Greek armies fortifying camps other than at sieges – to justify a

start-date the same as the "Iphikratean peltast", currently 379 BC

though Luke's article -

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/Iphikrates1.html -

would suggest 374 as a more likely date.

- When the Thebans were ravaging Lakedaimon in 369 BC "the Thebans,

wherever they encamped, immediately threw down before their

positions as many of the trees that they cut down as they were able,

and so defended themselves." (Xenophon Hellenike 6.5.30)

- Phokion's Athenian expedition in Euboia in 348 BC: "... seized a

small rising ground, which was divided from the level plains about

Tamynai by a deep watercourse, and here he enclosed and fortified

the pick of his army... the Athenians within the camp came forward,

and falling upon {the enemy} put them to flight, and killed the

greater number as they fled among the entrenchments"

(Plutarch, Life of Phokion).

- Alexander before the battle of Gaugamela: "meanwhile fortified his

camp with a ditch and stockade, as he intended to leave behind the

baggage and all the soldiers who were unfit for fighting..." (Arrian

3.9). This is not the camp that would appear on a DBM/MM table,

though; it is a "base camp", from which Alexander advances the day

before the battle, camping the next night apparently in the open.

This suggests that camp fortifications were well-known, but were not

used routinely.

- Alexander's fleet sailing back from India: "Nearchos therefore,

fearing lest some of the natives might collect to plunder the camp,

surrounded the place with a stone wall" (Arrian, Indike

21). "The camp was entrenched, to keep off the natives" – ib.

23, at the battle with the Oreitai.

- Macedonian Early Successor: Kassandros' general Eupolemos, in Karia in

314, was defeated by a surprise night attack on his fortified camp (charax -

palisade - Diodoros XIX.68.7)

- Lysimachos: "Lysimachus, one of the heirs to Alexander's power,

having determined on one occasion to pitch his camp on a high hill,

was conducted by the inadvertence of his men to a lower one. Fearing

that the enemy would attack from above, he dug a triple line of

trenches and encircled these with a rampart. Then, running a single

trench around all the tents, he thus fortified the entire camp.

Having thus shut off the advance of the enemy, he filled in the

ditches with earth and leaves, and made his way across them to

higher ground" (Frontinus 1.5.11; and see Diodoros XX.108.7).

- Hellenistic armies in general: Polybios writes, in the context of

the Kynoskephalai campaign, on the impracticality of the Greek style

of palisade-stakes; "For the Greeks consider that stake the best

that has the most and stoutest offshoots all round the main

stem .... (so) the Greek stakes, when planted round the camp, are in

the first place easily pulled up..." (18.18.5-9). Clearly – poor

though their choice of stakes may have been – Greek armies were

familiar with palisaded camps. (Given the context, when Polybios

says "Greeks" he probably means Hellenistic armies in general,

rather than just the states of Greece proper.)

- Later Macedonians: After that same battle, when Polybios writes of

the Romans running to plunder the camp of the defeated Macedonians,

the word he uses for the camp is charax – a palisade (18.27.3).

- Seleucids: Antiochos III's camp before the battle of Magnesia was

heavily fortified: "... in case the Romans should attempt to force

his lines while he was waiting, he surrounded his camp with a ditch

six cubits deep and twelve wide, and outside the ditch he threw up a

double rampart, on the inner edge he constructed a wall flanked at

short intervals with turrets, from which the enemy could be easily

prevented from crossing the ditch" (Livy 37.37); and it put up a

determined resistance after the battle: "The first fugitives fled

mostly in this direction and the camp guard, trusting to their

support, fought all the more determinedly in front of their lines.

The Romans, who expected to take the gates and the rampart, were

held up here for some time, and when at last they did break through

the defence they inflicted in their rage all the heavier slaughter"

(37.43).

- Ptolemies: In 47 BC, after Caesar had subdued Alexandria and

joined up with Mithridates of Pergamon, he encountered Ptolemy

XIII's army: "The king had encamped in a place fortified by nature,

being an eminence surrounded on all sides by a plain. Three of its

sides were secured by various defences. One was washed by the river

Nile, the other was steep and inaccessible, and the third was

defended by a morass" (Alexandrian War, 28) ; and despite these

natural obstacles, the camp was also fortified by ditch and rampart,

since when the Romans took it: "Our men … entered the camp in

several places at the same time… The Alexandrians, endeavouring to

escape, threw themselves in crowds over the rampart in the quarter

next the river. The first of them, falling into the ditch of the

fortification where they were crushed to death, provided an easier

passage for those that followed." (Alex..., 31).

This fortified camp was even connected by a line of field-works to

what in DBM/MM terms would be a fortified BUA: "Next day he attacked

a fort, in a village not far off, which the king had fortified and

joined to his camp by a line of communication, with a view to keep

possession of the village" (ib. 30).