BATTLE OF CHAERONEA

CHAERONEA, GREECE 3 AUGUST 338 BCE

- Murray Dahm

The Battle of Chaeronea was one of the most decisive in the ancient world - it decided the fate of Greece. The country's future rested on two of its hitherto greatest military powers: Athens and Thebes. The result of Chaeronea was, however, to be a crushing victory for Macedonia that kept all of Greece compliant to Macedonian will for the next 15 years - this in turn allowed Alexander to embark on his unprecedented conquest of the Persian Empire in 334 BCE.

For such an important engagement we, frustratingly, do not have much surviving source material on it; our best sources for the period are lost and we are left with only summaries and anecdotes. What is more, the historians of Alexander, of which there are many, tend to rush over Chaeronea because of the greatness Alexander achieved after it.

According to the historian Diodorus of Sicily, Philip immediately set about reforming the Macedonian army after taking power-bringing together the Macedonians in a series of assemblies, equipping and organising them. He then held "constant manoeuvres" of his new invention: the Macedonian phalanx. This infantry formation comprised of six divisions (called taxeis, singular taxis), each of 1,500 men - some 9,000 men in total. These would be drawn up 16 ranks deep with each man armed with a long spear - the sarissa. The Macedonian phalanx could achieve remarkable flexibility and close order -called synaspismos - where each soldier occupied only 45cm of space. This was half the space of a usual hoplite unit where each man occupied 90cm. As such, this new formation had more penetrative power and brought more spearpoints to bear on a single spot on the enemy line.