Battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC): Legion Against Phalanx

The Battle of Cynoscephalae was fought in Thessaly in 197 BC between a Roman army led by the consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus and King Philip V of Macedon. The Roman victory ended the Second Macedonian War (200–197 BC). Ancient writers, above all Polybius, used it to explain why the flexible Roman legion could defeat the famous Macedonian phalanx.

Background

Philip V had allied with Hannibal in 215 BC during the Second Punic War, drawing Rome into a first, inconclusive war with Macedon. After Rome’s victory over Carthage at Zama in 202 BC, Philip’s aggressive expansion in the Aegean alarmed Pergamon, Rhodes and Athens, which appealed to Rome.

In 200 BC Rome declared war. The first campaigns achieved little. In 198 BC the young consul Flamininus, only about 30 years old, took command, drove Philip from a strong position at the Aoös gorge and won over much of Greece by promising that the Greek cities would be free.

The armies

Both sides fielded roughly 25,000 to 26,000 men, according to ancient accounts. Flamininus had two Roman legions with Italian allies, Aetolian infantry and cavalry, and a small number of elephants. Philip relied on about 16,000 phalangites, soldiers armed with the sarissa, a pike around 6 metres long, supported by lighter troops, mercenaries and cavalry.

The phalanx descended from the army built by Philip II of Macedon. Packed tightly with pikes levelled, it was almost unbreakable from the front. Its weakness was that it needed level ground and could not easily turn to face an attack from the side or rear.

What happened

Both armies were moving through the hills near Pherae in thick fog when advance parties clashed on the ridges of Cynoscephalae. The skirmish grew into a full battle that neither commander had fully planned. Philip, encouraged by early reports of success, decided to commit his army.

The king led the right half of his phalanx up onto the ridge and charged downhill. Its weight pushed back the Roman left wing. His left wing, however, was still arriving in marching column over rough ground and was not yet in formation.

Flamininus saw the danger and went to his own right wing. Led by elephants, the Romans attacked the disorganised Macedonian left, which broke almost at once. Then an unnamed military tribune made the decisive move: he took about 20 maniples, the small units of the legion, turned them round and attacked the rear of Philip’s victorious right wing.

Unable to turn their long pikes, the phalangites were cut down. Some raised their pikes as a sign of surrender, but the Romans, according to Polybius, did not understand the gesture and kept killing. Philip escaped from the field.

Legion against phalanx

Polybius, who wrote a generation later, included a famous comparison of the two systems in his account. He argued that the phalanx could not be beaten head-on, but that real battlefields were rarely flat. The legion could split, reform and fight in small units, while the phalanx lost its strength once its formation was broken.

Modern historians broadly accept this view, while noting that chance played a large part at Cynoscephalae. The fog, the unplanned start and the divided Macedonian army all helped Rome. The same lesson was repeated at Magnesia in 190 BC and at Pydna in 168 BC.

Key people

Titus Quinctius Flamininus came from a patrician family and had served as a military tribune under Marcus Claudius Marcellus in the Second Punic War. He spoke Greek well and admired Greek culture, which helped him present Rome as the protector of Greek liberty. Plutarch wrote a biography of him, pairing him with the Greek general Philopoemen.

Philip V had become king of Macedon as a teenager in 221 BC. He was an energetic and capable commander, but his ruthless treatment of Greek cities, including the sack of several allied towns, made him many enemies. After Cynoscephalae he rebuilt Macedon’s strength quietly, and his son Perseus would fight Rome again in the Third Macedonian War.

Consequences

Philip asked for peace. Under the treaty of 196 BC he withdrew his garrisons from Greece, surrendered most of his warships, gave hostages including his son Demetrius, and agreed to pay 1,000 talents. Macedon survived as a kingdom but was no longer a great power.

At the Isthmian Games near Corinth in 196 BC, Flamininus proclaimed that the Greek cities were free. The announcement was greeted with wild enthusiasm. Yet the Aetolians, who felt their role in the victory had been undervalued, soon turned against Rome and invited the Seleucid king Antiochus III into Greece.

Timeline

• 215 BC: Philip V allies with Hannibal against Rome.
• 200 BC: Rome declares the Second Macedonian War.
• 198 BC: Flamininus defeats Philip at the Aoös gorge.
• 197 BC, probably June: Battle of Cynoscephalae in Thessaly.
• 196 BC: Peace treaty; Flamininus proclaims Greek freedom at the Isthmian Games.
• 194 BC: Roman troops withdraw from Greece.

Why it matters

Cynoscephalae showed that Rome could defeat a Hellenistic kingdom on its own ground. It began a period of Roman dominance in the Greek world that ended with the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy after Pydna and the annexation of Greece.