The Strategos

by H A CULLEY

  The fight had reached stalemate when the light infantry charged into the flanks of the Athenian hoplites. Those attacking the left flank had less success but, as shields were carried on the left arm, the right was exposed and the tagma of skirmishers on that side killed several hundred before they were driven off. When they attacked a second time many of the threatened Athenians turned to face them. This left them very exposed to the hoplites to their front.

  Seeing this, Parmenion had expected his chiliarch to order the advance before the skirmishers attack petered out, but he heard that he was dead and the pentakosiarch commanding his tagma with him. There was no sign of his immediate commander, the lochagos, either. Parmenion decided that if he hesitated the moment would be lost and yelled out the order to advance himself. The left hand tagma of the Amphipolitan line swept forward. The Athenian right, assailed on two sides, crumpled and men started to flee. The rot set in and the trickle became a torrent as the whole chiliarchy was routed. This infected the chiliarchy behind them and the one behind that and soon a third of the Athenian army were in headlong flight, throwing away weapons, helmets and armour as they went.

  Parmenion could see that his tagma’s blood was up and that they were intent on chasing the fleeing Athenians, but he had the sense to realise that in doing so they were putting their chance of victory in peril. He found a man with a keras, a horn used to transmit orders, and told him to play the recall repeatedly. Most of the tagma responded and Parmenion organized a concerted attack in close formation on the left flank of what had been the Athenian centre. The light infantry now launched pin prick attackers on another chiliarchy of the Athenian formation and the inexperienced troops in the rearmost ranks panicked and fought their way through the skirmishers before they too fled.

  Zoilus realised that the battle was lost and ordered a general retreat. The Amphipolitan light infantry attacking the rear were unable to stand against six times their number of heavy infantry and they were forced to allow the Athenians to escape. The latter’s cavalry covered their withdrawal and Deimos wisely allowed them to go. The Athenians had lost nearly three thousand men whereas the Amphipolitan losses were in the hundreds. It was a great victory.

  Deimos had been puzzled when he heard that all the senior officers in the chiliarchy on his left flank had been killed so, as soon as he had secured the battlefield and seen the captives rounded up, he set off to investigate how an apparently leaderless formation had won the day for him. He quickly came to the conclusion that victory was largely due to the quick thinking of Parmenion. The remaining phylearchs told him that he was the one who had taken command of his tagma and used it so effectively.

  Parmenion said nothing, wondering if he would be reprimanded for being presumptuous and taking command when he was practically the most junior phylearch in the tagma. On the contrary, Deimos was extremely impressed; so much so that he took the unusual step of promoting the eighteen year old phylearch to lochagos on the battlefield, ahead of all those much more senior to him. However, his euphoria was somewhat tempered when he was then posted to the light infantry to replace a man that had been killed, instead of staying with the more prestigious hoplites.

  -o0o-

  The Athenians might have been defeated and the gold and silver mines saved, but nine thousand Athenians were still encamped around the beleaguered city of Amphipolis. Deimos’ army wasn’t strong enough to attack the besiegers now that they had dug defensive earthworks to protect their camp, but the Athenians were unable to penetrate the city’s defences. It was a stalemate. Deimos therefore decided on a new tactic.

  Parmenion and his lochus of skirmishers crept forward through the dense undergrowth trying to make as little noise as possible. They were in a forest that bordered the main road that led along the coast before heading south to the port of Potidaea near Olynthus, which the Athenians were using as their main supply base by sea. Normally an army in the field fed itself from the surrounding countryside, but the Athenians had lost so many foraging parties to ambushes that they were unable to gather enough food that way. Instead they were now largely dependent on their supply convoys.

  Deimos had therefore decided to ambush the heavily guarded supply columns. Whilst Parmenion’s lochus waited on one side of the track the other lochus in his tagma were in position on the far side. The pentakosiarch in command of the tagma was further up the track with a small escort waiting to give the signal by keras when the convoy was fully into the killing area.

  Parmenion had been disappointed to be sent to the light infantry but he soon realised that, in the present circumstances, he would see far more action with the skirmishers than he would have done with the heavy infantry. The only other part of the army who were doing anything useful at the moment were the cavalry, whose task it was to locate and destroy any enemy groups sent out to forage.

  Once in position his men were quiet as they waited patiently for the convoy of ox carts to reach them. Deimos had scouts watching the road near the border with Chalkidike, mainly goatherds and shepherd boys so as not to arouse suspicion. Once they spotted a resupply column a team of runners would race back to inform Deimos. Parmenion was therefore fairly certain that the information about the convoy was accurate and that it would arrive soon.

  An hour later he heard the sound of marching feet as a lochus of hoplites led the long column of carts pulled by oxen along the road. A further hundred or so hoplites marched alongside the carts and the remainder of the tagma brought up the rear. He wasn’t worried about the leading troops; peltasts waited to ambush them further up the road.

  He watched as the hoplites marched past. They obviously weren’t expecting trouble as their shields were being carried on their backs and their helmets were tilted onto the back of their heads. They were followed by a crowd of slaves, carrying their personal kit. The road was wide enough for two carts to travel side by side but, even so, they seemed to go on forever. Parmenion started to worry that he hadn’t spread out his men far enough to cover the carts and the rear guard.

  Finally he heard three blasts on a keras, which was the signal to attack. He and his men rose almost as one from their hiding places and charged out onto the road. A startled hoplite turned towards him open mouthed and died with the point of Parmenion’s spear in his throat before he had a chance to react. It was the same all along the column and up ahead he could just make out the sounds of battle and the cries of the vanguard as they too came under attack from lead pellets, arrows and javelins.

  He looked around but it seemed that all the guards spaced along the convoy had been killed. Ignoring the terrified carters he caught sight of the lochagos commanding the skirmishers on the other side of the road. He gestured towards the front of the column and the man nodded, collected his men and head off in that direction. Meanwhile Parmenion ordered those of his phylearchs within sight to gather their men and to follow him towards the rear. As he pounded down the road he saw that about thirty men from each lochus had been engaged by the Athenian rearguard. As they outnumbered the Amphipolitans by five to one the latter were on the point of breaking. It was only the confined space of the road that had prevented the light infantrymen from being outflanked so far.

  Unlike the heavily armed hoplites, who were wary of dense woods, Parmenion’s men had no compunction about crashing through the undergrowth and he sent five files into the forest to take the Athenians in the left flank. He pressed on with the other seventy men to relieve those of his men who were already engaged with the enemy. The exhausted men fell back, only too glad to let their comrades through to face the hoplites.

  The heavily armoured Athenians should have been able to overcome the virtually unarmoured skirmishers, but the attack from an unexpected direction had unnerved them and they started to stage a fighting withdrawal. Parmenion had engaged a giant of a man with a straggling brown beard. He had expected him to be slow and clumsy but the hoplite was surprisingly quick on his feet. He batted away Parmenion’s spear with his shield and then
tried to bring the bronze rimmed shield down onto Parmenion’s feet to break his toes.

  The lochagos hopped out of the way just in time and smashed his own shield into the bending giant’s face. The cheek plates and nose guard of his helmet prevented serious damage but his nose was smashed and began to bleed profusely. With a roar of rage the man dropped his unwieldy spear and pulled his sword from its scabbard. He slashed at his opponent and followed it up with a quick thrust at Parmenion’s face. The young man ducked and the blade skittered off the crown of his helmet, taking some of the horsehair crest with it.

  Parmenion leaped backwards out of reach and brought up his spear just as the giant tried to follow him. The sharp iron point slid upwards off the polished bronze cuirass but lodged in the man’s throat. Parmenion pushed his spear deeper and had the satisfaction of seeing the tip reappear at the back of the man’s neck. The giant gurgled and fell to the ground. Parmenion couldn’t pull his spear out so he let go of it and drew his sword instead. He whirled round seeking his next adversary but he saw that it was all over. The last of the Athenians were withdrawing in good order down the road, back the way they had come, and his men were content to let them go. They had got what they came for – the supply column.

  Someone clapped the exhausted Parmenion on his shoulder as he bent over to recover his breath.

  ‘Well done, lad. You saved the day at the rear here. I think we’d all have been killed if you and your men hadn’t arrived when you did. Killing that huge beast was some achievement too. He had done for five of my men before you tackled him.’

  Parmenion realised that he was being addressed by his pentakosiarch and he tried to stand to attention, but the man told him to relax and offered him the water skin he held in one hand. The younger man took a deep swallow and then coughed and spluttered when he tried to swallow too much at once. The soldiers around him laughed and he smiled ruefully at them. Then they surprised him by hoisting him on their shoulders and carried him around singing an impromptu paean of praise for his exploits.

  -o0o-

  The loss of the supply column was the final straw for the Athenians. The oligarchs in Athens were already blaming Zoilus for his failure to seize the gold and silver mines and they had run out of patience. Many had funded the expedition, expecting to recover their investments many times over when they took possession of the mines. They were now no longer prepared to throw good money after bad and, if Zoilus hadn’t decided the lift the siege and return to Athens, he would have been recalled anyway.

  Parmenion watched the last of the Athenians march off into the distance with mixed feelings. The only professional soldiers that Amphipolis had were the city watch and they numbered a mere six hundred. The rest of the army was made up of citizens who answered the call to arms when needed. They trained for a few days each year during peacetime. Unlike nearly everyone one else, Parmenion didn’t have a civilian occupation. His father owned an estate to the north of the city but he and his eldest son were more than sufficient to manage it; they didn’t need Parmenion as well. He knew that when he first left to become an ephebe that he was on his own and he would have to find his own career after finishing at the academy.

  Orestes was in the same predicament and, once they were discharged from duty, they went off to a tavern to celebrate the victory and try and decided what to do next.

  Chapter Two – Mercenary

  380 BC

  Parmenion and Orestes rode into Pella two months later accompanied by their two body slaves. Both wore armour but no helmets and the shields on their backs were painted white, indicating that they had no tribe and no master. Pella wasn’t quite what they were expecting.

  The city stood on a promontory which jutted out into the sea which surrounded it on three sides. The walls on the landward side were made of crude bricks laid onto a stone foundation. The city was dominated by three hills and was laid out in a grid pattern with a wide central street sixteen yards wide leading to the agora which was itself a large space: perhaps eighteen acres in all. A colonnade ran all the way around the agora to provide shade for the stall holders and shoppers. The side streets varied in width but most were nine or ten yards wide. Every house, even the humblest, consisted of rooms surrounding a central courtyard with a door or entrance gates facing the street.

  They would later discover that most houses had running water piped to them and sewage ran away to the sea in covered gutters. In Amphipolis water had to be collected from distribution points dotted around the city and waste was collected on a cart by slaves and dumped outside the city at night.

  The royal palace occupied the whole of the central hill in the northern part of the city and there were temples to Aphrodite, Demeter and Cybele on the other two hills. The palace itself consisted of seven different complexes. It wasn’t just the residence of the king and his family but it also housed all the government offices, including the military headquarters. The two young men found a respectable tavern in which to spend the night and reported to the army headquarters the next morning. They were a little bleary eyed from drinking too much wine the previous night but, other than their red eyes, they looked quite presentable.

  ‘What do you two want?’ the peevish clerk manning the reception desk in the colonnade outside the headquarters demanded in a thick accent. Annoyed by his belligerent tone, Orestes was about to stand on his dignity and tell the slave to watch his tongue when Parmenion gripped his arm and spoke first.

  ‘We understand that Zoilus is looking for mercenary officers.’

  When he returned home Zoilus had been blamed for the fiasco at Amphipolis the previous year and he had left the city in a huff. King Amyntas had taken a different view of his abilities and had appointed him to raise an army of mercenaries to supplement the citizen army of Macedon ready for another campaign in Chalkidike in 379. It was this that had brought Parmenion and his friend to Pella in search of employment.

  ‘Yes, proper soldiers, not ephebes still wet behind the ears,’ the clerk sneered.

  Orestes drew his word and thrust the point against the clerk’s fat neck. A sentry standing at the entrance to the building looked in their direction, and was about to intervene when he suddenly stiffened to attention.

  ‘My friend here was a lochagos in the Amphipolitan army that defeated Zoilus and our victory was in large measure due to him. I too was an officer in that army. Now where do we go to be interviewed by someone who won’t be wasting our time?’

  A slow handclap drew everyone’s attention to a tall man with fair hair dressed in a fine red linen knee-length chiton with a belt around his waist from which hung a sword in a scabbard decorated in silver. The sword itself had a hilt wound in gold wire with a jeweled pommel. This was no ordinary soldier.

  Behind him looking amused stood another officer, this time in uniform. From his red cloak, brass cuirass inlaid with designs in silver, and the stiff red and black striped horsehair crest Parmenion thought that he was probably a chiliarch. He was to discover later that he was, in fact, the taxiarch who commanded the Macedonian cavalry. Taxiarch was higher than chiliarch and only one rank lower than strategos.

  ‘Kindly put my poor clerk down and follow me,’ the man with the expensive sword told them.

  The sentry grinned at them as they entered the building. He evidently didn’t like the fat clerk either. The two admired the painted frescos on the walls and the tiled floors as they followed the two officers down a corridor with several doors leading off it. At one point Parmenion thought that they were looking through an archway at the countryside until he realised that that the lifelike pastoral scene was painted onto the wall of a false archway.

  Eventually they reached a doorway guarded by two hoplites. They sprung to attention and one opened the door for the two officers to enter. The second officer muttered something to them and the two young men were allowed to follow the other two into what turned out to be a spacious office with a portico. Beyond it lay a central courtyard with a fountain, a table
and six chairs. The two officers sat down, the second one removing his helmet as he did so. He had a tanned face with a livid scar running across one cheek and black hair. The first man indicated that they should also sit down.

  ‘Now, who are you and why do you want to serve a man you have just claimed you were instrumental in defeating. More importantly, why in Hades name should I employ men who are my enemies and who appear to have come seeking employment as mercenary officers with no band of men to command?’

  Parmenion and Orestes looked at each other in confusion. The former swallowed nervously and looked back at the man he know knew to be Zoilus.

  ‘We are not your enemies, strategos. Macedon is not in dispute with Amphipolis at the moment. In any case we are mercenaries, so it doesn’t matter where we come from. As to the men, we didn’t realise that we had to recruit our own. Engage us and allow us a couple of months and we will find them. How many do you want?’

  The strategos looked at him for a long moment before replying.

  ‘Your friend said that you were a lochagos, though you do seem extraordinarily young for such a position, so I suppose that two hundred and fifty would seem appropriate. Can you manage that?’

  ‘There are enough men out there looking for employment, the problem is going to be to find those who are already experienced soldiers. Give us two months. What can we promise to pay them?’

  ‘Not so fast,’ the other officer interrupted before whispering in Zoilus’ ear. When he had finished the strategos nodded.

  ‘My name is Alcetas and I am the taxiarch commanding King Amyntas’ cavalry,’ the second man explained. ‘You haven’t told us what sort of lochus you commanded nor what rank your friend was. I’d also like to know more about this claim that you were instrumental in defeating the Athenians. For someone who is little more than a boy that sounds like an empty boast to me.’