The tradition of the phalanx

The phalanx and the Romans had a complicated history, one mixing fact and tradition, but more importantly one that is an integral part of the fundamental way in which Roman identity is constructed. It will come as no surprise that Romans were – or liked to portray themselves as – inclusive and accepting of different cultures. As Greg Woolf puts it, ‘Romans did not conceive of their identity as underwritten by a unique language or a common descent in the same way that some others (including Greeks) did, and their traditions of origin stressed the progressive incorporation of outsiders.’Footnote ⁶ The Romans themselves (or other authors talking about them) asserted time and time again that they had ‘borrowed’ many cultural elements, almost always from peoples they had defeated. Diodorus Sicullus illustrates this when he tackles the cultural achievements of the Etruscans as part of a survey on the customs of various peoples, pointing out that they invented the insignia of rule, the peristyle and divination, but the Romans augmented all these things and added them to their cultural repertoire.Footnote ⁷ Livy also recounts the story of the Romans sending men to study Solon's law code and to understand the institutions and laws of Greek cities, before elaborating their own Law of the Twelve Tables.Footnote ⁸

Regardless of whether all this is historically true or not, the function of the two stories is similar, showing how Romans of the late Republic and early Empire wanted to share in the cultural capital of the Greeks and Etruscans, by claiming that Roman practices were either taken over from or sanctioned by them. This can be seen as a mark of the self-same Roman inclusivity, and it is precisely what Sallust wants us to believe when recounting a similar story. At the climax of the Bellum Catilinae, when Cato and Caesar are arguing about the fate of the conspirators in the senate, Sallust has Caesar praise the Roman maiores who imitated the customs of others (albeit not indiscriminately, since he considers that applying the Greek death penalty led to the development of the Porcian laws that would safeguard against such extreme measures):

As in Diodorus, one of the borrowed elements pertains to warfare – something at which the Romans claimed to excel, and which could be considered quintessentially Roman. In fact, in another passage, Diodorus records the debate (a significant detail for our context) during a peace negotiation between Romans and Carthaginians, where the Roman envoys make the point that the Romans are notoriously good at surpassing others at their own craft, with a specific focus on warfare:

The phalanx is a central part of the practices that the Romans adopted, and the same story is told in a more elaborate form by the second-century AD Ineditum Vaticanum, with the Roman Caeso adding the fact that ‘in war, we agree with our enemies to fight on their terms, and in foreign skills we surpass those who have practised them for a long time’ (τοῖς πολεμοῦσιν εἰς τὰ ἐκείνων ἔργα συγκαταβαίνομεν, κἀν τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἐπιτηδεύμασι περίεσμεν τῶν ἐκ πολλοῦ αὐτὰ ἠσκηκότων).Footnote ¹¹ Livy also hints at the Romans fighting in a phalanx when discussing Servius Tullius’ reforms, with some of the equipment being strikingly similar to that of Classical Greek hoplite soldiers:

Then, in a later passage, he more explicitly mentions the Romans adopting something that resembled a Macedonian phalanx:

It is clear, then, that the Romans themselves thought they had not only fought as a phalanx, but that they took over the phalanx from the Etruscans. Some scholars have indeed tried to identify when this transition happened.Footnote ¹⁴ For example, Peter Connolly believes that the members of the first class of the Servian army were essentially armed and operated like Greek hoplites.Footnote ¹⁵ He references several wall paintings and sculptures from Etruscan graves – such as those at Falerii Veteres and Chiusi – as well as discoveries of hoplite equipment, to support this point.Footnote ¹⁶ Although hoplite panoplies have been found in Etruscan graves, I believe Nigel Spivey's and Simon Stoddart's interpretation of them as ‘indicators of rank’ and ‘luxury acquisitions, either from the Greek world, or produced under Greek influence’ is far more attractive than the idea that all Etruscan cities must have had a phalanx-type army.Footnote ¹⁷ In other words, it is more plausible that the Etruscans borrowed Greek arms and armour because this made them look more Greek, or because it gave them a level of cultural sophistication considered on par with the Greeks. Moreover, what all the authors seem to suggest is that this discourse on borrowing – and on the phalanx – is also one of cultural victory and cultural domination. The phalanx can be seen as a one of the markers of a sophisticated cultural identity – just as it might have been for the Etruscans – and what the Romans argue is that they took a piece of that cultural identity and de facto made it better than it initially was, with both the Ineditum Vaticanum (κἀν τοῖς ἀλλοτρίοις ἐπιτηδεύμασι περίεσμεν τῶν ἐκ πολλοῦ αὐτὰ ἠσκηκότων, ‘and in foreign skills we surpass those who have practised them for a long time’) and Diodorus making this explicit (ὧν τὰ πλεῖστα Ῥωμαῖοι μιμησάμενοι καὶ πρὸς τὸ κάλλιον αὐξήσαντες μετήνεγκαν ἐπὶ τὴν ἰδίαν πολιτείαν, ‘and these things were adopted for the most part by the Romans, who added them to their embellishment and transferred them to their own state’).Footnote ¹⁸ The ‘Roman’ phalanx, the Roman lictors and Greek laws, initially items of cultural capital, were augmented by the addition of Roman culture. To talk about the phalanx would, therefore, mean to talk not only about competition, but also about integration into Roman tradition, as the utmost mark of defeat at the end of that competition. In Roman tradition then, the phalanx was, at the same time, something Roman and something foreign, something to be defeated and something to be improved, a cultural item that created a link between Greek, Etruscan and Roman, but also ultimately proved the domination of the culture of the Romans over those of the others.

But there was also a different, less ‘mythical’, part of the phalanx story, to be found in the first real encounter between it and the Roman legion, during the Second Macedonian War. In a dramatic build-up to the battle between Flamininus and Philip V, Polybius makes a brief parenthesis to consider the two armies, and to give an encomium to the phalanx, which set in place a comparative framework that would be referred to by both ‘military manuals’ and others. At this point, Polybius has already made his argument about the interconnection of the events of the world (symplokē) at the time of the 140th Olympiad, suggesting that, from that point in time onwards, one must understand events of the known world as a whole and how they influence one another, in order to understand any subset of them.Footnote ¹⁹ Therefore, the interactions between phalanx and legion must be understood as part of this overarching framework.

In the section in question, Polybius attempts to find the reasons for the success of the Romans in the battle, examining how ‘the Roman and Macedonian equipment and formation … differ for the better or worse’ (τοῦ καθοπλισμοῦ Ῥωμαίων καὶ Μακεδόνων, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῆς συντάξεως τῆς ἑκατέρων, τί διαφέρουσιν ἀλλήλων πρὸς τὸ χεῖρον καὶ τί πρὸς τὸ βέλτιον).Footnote ²⁰ He advertises the phalanx as an invincible force and (under ideal circumstances) superior to the Roman, because a Roman soldier faces an impenetrable wall of pikes which is very difficult to attack.Footnote ²¹ The reason the phalanx cannot always win is, according to Polybius, because it cannot always adapt to all the circumstances and terrain dictated by battle.Footnote ²² The comparison between the Roman maniples and the phalanx reaches its climax when we see the reasons why the Romans are able to win, which can be attributed to their flexibility – precisely what the phalanx lacked:

Despite that, the phalanx remains more than a worthy challenger to the Roman battle array, and Polybius’ description of its charge as nearly invincible is striking:

In fact, in Polybius’ view, the reason why Philip was unable to defeat the legion, despite initial success, was because the Macedonians were ‘unable to form a proper phalanx, owing to the inequalities of the ground’ and to the fact that, ‘being engaged in trying to come up with the actual combatants, they were still in column of march’ (οὔτε συστῆναι δυνάμενοι καὶ λαβεῖν τὸ τῆς φάλαγγος ἴδιον σχῆμα διά τε τὰς τῶν τόπων δυσχερείας καὶ διὰ τὸ τοῖς ἀγωνιζομένοις ἑπόμενοι πορείας ἔχειν διάθεσιν καὶ μὴ παρατάξεως).Footnote ²⁵

If we believe Craige Champion's argument about Polybian symplokē, all this is high praise for the phalanx. He convincingly makes the case that Polybius has a flexible scale of barbarism and Hellenism, whose main criteria are a set of virtues and vices which stem from (or are deeply interconnected with) the political organisation of a certain polis/people/group. In Polybius’ interconnected world, certain Hellenes can behave as barbarians, if they display unbridled passion and irrationality, and certain barbarians can be more Greek than actual Greeks, if they manifest self-restraint, discipline, organisation and foresight, or – in short – logismos as opposed to thumos.Footnote ²⁶ The Romans, Champion argues, are a prime example of this, as their hyper-efficient and highly organised constitution – of which the army is an organic part, as evidenced in book 6 – makes them (at least) equal to any Greek state.Footnote ²⁷ The legion and phalanx, then, are an example of competition in logismos, both displaying impeccable organisation, with the result that it is virtually impossible to tell which one is superior and, much in line with Polybius’ variable and circumstantial scale of Hellenism and barbarism, one can only conclude that certain situations yield certain results, which would not necessarily be replicated in different situations. This kind of analysis (alongside Plutarch's influence, as we shall see next) will lay the groundwork for future discourse about the phalanx and Greek versus Roman military practices, raising the idea of comparison, competition and influence, but also of the impossibility of choice of an absolute best. Understood within this Polybian framework, the phalanx yet again becomes a way of discussing cultural superiority or, in this case, the difficulty in ascertaining it.

In conclusion, two different stories about the phalanx emerge, both with deep cultural connotations. The ‘mythic-traditional’ one portrays it as an antiquated element of warfare and a cultural marker that the Romans adopted, improved and overcame. The ‘historical’ one, found in Polybius, portrays it as a near-invincible battle formation which Flamininus was able to defeat only under very specific circumstances, but also as an expression of a deeply organised and rational culture, which normally was the domain of the Greeks, but which was challenged by the even more organised legion and the Romans, in a battle for military and cultural supremacy.

It must be said that it is no accident that this story of the phalanx develops in Diodorus and Polybius, since both authors are interested in universal history and interconnectivity, and it is within this context that we must understand Aelian and Arrian's different attempts to write about the phalanx, and the stakes involved. Their texts are not only about a military practice but also about cultural appropriation and dominance. The literary and cultural atmosphere at the time of their writing – with even more emphasis on comparison and connexions – serves as a catalyst for these issues, and it is to this that we must turn next.

The ‘comparative context’

Although we have established that the phalanx had always been an integral part of the way Romans thought about warfare – and more broadly about themselves – the question of why Aelian and Arrian would choose to write about it at the beginning of the second century AD in particular still begs answering. One answer, which has been offered several times before, would be that Trajan and Hadrian were particularly ‘military’ emperors who would have taken an interest in such matters, despite the topic being somewhat obsolete.Footnote ²⁸ While that must surely play a part, I believe the reason must also be found in the broader cultural phenomena of the period, which had even earlier roots, in the definition of ‘Greekness’ and in the interest of several authors of the period in the same kind of comparison and interconnectivity that we see in Polybius.

In Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution Antony Spawforth argued that Augustus’ focus on Athens and Sparta with the refurbishing – and reconfiguring – of their physical shape deliberately promoted an image of Greece that conformed to Roman values.Footnote ²⁹ As part of this reconfiguring, Augustus and Agrippa focused on certain past aspects of Athenian and Spartan life that were considered essential by the Romans themselves, thereby constructing a type of ‘Roman Greece’ of which military values were an integral part.Footnote ³⁰ Spawforth makes the point that the position of the new Agrippeum at Athens commissioned by Augustus linked it closely to the newly established temple of Ares. Ares was a deity not traditionally worshipped in Athens, but his Roman counterpart, Mars, was obviously an important part of Roman identity, so that anyone who used the Agrippeum would have been encouraged to think about the martial glory days of Classical Athens. Thus the Athens which Augustus was recreating was in line with Roman moral values, of martial virility and victory; in Spawforth's own words: ‘The Atticising décor, the statues of Greek/Athenian warriors and the newly arrived cult of Ares: this use of analogy signalled the donor's [i.e. Agrippa's] stylistic preference for the Attic muse and his ethical linkage of the style with the virtus and bellica laus of Classical Greece.’Footnote ³¹

Hadrian too gave special place to Athens when it came to Greekness, as seen in his attention to the physical shape of the city, but also to Athens’ place in relation to the Greek world in general.Footnote ³² The latter is most obvious in Hadrian's creation of the Panhellenion, a cultural league of cities which had Athens as its leader and whose membership was granted based on Greekness.Footnote ³³ However, as Spawforth argues, Hellenism was ranked by Hadrian using a very particular conception of Greece, with places that were in mainland Greece or colonies of such states considered more ‘Greek’ than others (Athens and Sparta being in the centre). This view also favoured Greekness by birth and descent to ‘cultural Greekness’, meaning that some cities and communities – particularly in Asia Minor and the Roman near east – which did not have a strong connection to mainland Greece, and had adopted the Greek ‘way of life’ and paideia, were considered less ‘Greek’.Footnote ³⁴ While there were cities such as Pergamum, Ephesus and Smyrna, who were ostensibly not part of the Panhellenion, and individuals who were very proud to be from Asia Minor and rejected ‘Atticism’, there are also many examples of people seeking to align themselves to this Hadrianic view of ‘true Greece’.Footnote ³⁵ To a certain extent, then, Athens (and Sparta) were used as a token for Greekness itself by both Augustus and Hadrian, and certain elements of their history and values were highlighted as being particularly in line with Roman values.

But viewing Ancient Greece in general – and Athens in particular – through a Roman lens was not only appealing to the Romans. In his rhetorical exercise On the Fame of the Athenians, in the same vein as the Agrippeum's emphasis of the military legacy of Athens, Plutarch also sets out to show how Athens (and more broadly speaking Greeks) should not only be appreciated for her cultural achievements, but more so for her practical and military ones, essentially making the case that ‘men of action’ are more important than ‘men of letters’. For example, he wonders, is it right ‘to prefer Hypereides’ Plataean oration to Aristides’ victory at Plataea? Or Lysias's speech against the Thirty to Thrasybulus’ and Archinus’ slaughter of those tyrants?’Footnote ³⁶ He goes on to compare the painter Euphranor, who ‘painted also, not without some animation, the cavalry battle against Epaminondas at Mantineia’, with Epaminondas himself, pointing out that he would not think ‘you would award judgement to the painter in comparison with the general, nor would you bear with those who prefer the picture to the trophy of victory, or the imitation to the actuality’.Footnote ³⁷ Plutarch's focus on ‘men of action’ continues in his Parallel Lives, and Robert Lamberton argues that they place Athens in the position of Rome in the Italian peninsula, equating the deeds of the two great cities, and hailing both as leaders of empires.Footnote ³⁸ Susan Jacobs likewise argues for a reading of the Lives as ‘pragmatic biographies’, whereby contemporary statesmen could also learn from the deeds and not just the moral behaviour of both Greek and Roman ones from the past.Footnote ³⁹ For example, Jacobs maintains that Fabius Maximus and Pericles are ‘presented as positive role models in most areas of political and military leadership’ and in his parallel Plutarch invites the readers to compare the two as leaders, and to judge their actions on the basis of the consequences that they entailed for their two respective states.Footnote ⁴⁰ The military sphere plays a central role in the two lives, where Pericles is presented as guided by two principles, maintaining the status quo and avoiding conflict that can be resolved through other means (which – as Jacobs points out – would have been important lessons both for those involved in military affairs in the Empire and those wanting to limit conflict between cities), whilst Fabius is similarly credited with an ability to identify and defend the best military strategy.Footnote ⁴¹ In the synkrisis Plutarch points out the strengths and weaknesses of both figures in the military realm, paying special attention to their foresight (or lack thereof).Footnote ⁴² Jeffrey Tatum also points out that the synkriseis of the Lives concentrate the readers’ attention on ‘a contest between two specific exemplars of particular virtues’, not just the virtues themselves, and ‘invite the reader to ponder which was better: the Greek or the Roman’.Footnote ⁴³

Therefore, comparison, between past and present, Roman and Greek, and emphasis on shared values becomes an integral part of thinking about the relationship between the two at the end of the first and beginning of the second century AD, as part of what has been dubbed the ‘Second Sophistic’. More specifically, it seems that the comparison fostered by Plutarch has an important component tied to leadership and military achievements, as it is deeds in warfare – or tangential to it – that seem to have a significant place.

Plutarch is also not the only one to look at Greek and Roman figures through a comparative lens. In his Strategemata, Frontinus promises to discuss the sollertia ducum facta (‘the clever deeds of generals’), in this case the deeds of all generals (not just Roman and Greek, but with a significant number of Greek figures), and naturally this time the military element is not only significant but at the forefront of the exercise.Footnote ⁴⁴

I believe Aelian and Arrian too enter this trend of comparison, giving more weight – like Plutarch – to the Greeks, but from an even more practical standpoint. Whilst Plutarch focuses on deeds and moral actions in a general way, their contribution is to show the details in which the Greeks were actually men of action, specifically focusing on how they won in war, and thereby taking the theoretical discussion from De gloria Atheniensium into the technical realm. But at this point, discussing whether Greek or Roman practices were ‘better’ in terms of warfare was problematic. Unlike geography and medicine, which were considered Greek disciplines, the Romans having only a later claim to them, the primacy of Greek military science was contested by the Romans.Footnote ⁴⁵ For example, when talking about one of his treatises, Frontinus claims to have been the only one interested in military science to set it in order (cum ad instruendam rei militaris scientiam unus ex numero studiosorum eius accesserim), without acknowledging any previous Roman – let alone Greek – contribution.Footnote ⁴⁶ In a famous passage in the Aeneid, Vergil has Anchises emphasise to Aeneas in the Underworld that, while others (i.e. the Greeks) were better at working bronze and marble, astronomy and rhetoric, what the Romans excelled at was parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos (‘sparing the conquered and crushing the proud’) – namely war and rule.Footnote ⁴⁷

One might, then, conclude that any author who wanted to enter a comparative approach that would emphasise Greek military achievements specifically would not only have to contend with Roman claims of superiority, but would have to point out a great – if not the greatest – military accomplishment of the Greeks. The way to do this was by choosing something as a topic of focus which could stand as a token for (or stereotype of) all Greek military achievements, in the same way in which Athens could be seen as a stereotype of ‘Greekness’, but also relate to the Romans on a personal level. The phalanx constitutes the optimal choice, not only because of its prominence in Greek warfare, but because it was already part of a comparative framework which created the perfect opportunity to remind the Romans of their ideas about borrowing elements of warfare and interconnectivity.

Aelian's and Arrian's phalanx

It is not at all unimportant that Livy talks about a phalanx similis Macedonicis. Unlike Diodorus, he does not refer to the borrowing of the phalanx from the Etruscans – is this purely for convenience, because a Macedonian phalanx would have been more familiar to his readers? Or is it to show that, indeed, the Romans did incorporate and surpass this type of phalanx, widely considered to be the best version? Or it may simply be the case that Livy did not understand the difference between what might have been a Greek phalanx and a later, Macedonian, one – he famously mistranslates Polybius’ explanation of the lowering of sarissae at the battle of Cynoscephalae to mean that the phalanx abandoned them altogether, and fought with swords.Footnote ⁴⁸ It is impossible to say which one of these interpretations is more likely, but it is of some consequence that Arrian refers to both the Greek and Macedonian phalanx (τῶν πάλαι Ἑλληνικῶν τε καὶ Μακεδονικῶν τάξεων, ‘Greek and Macedonian formations of old’, and ταύτῃ τοι καὶ ἡ Μακεδονικὴ φάλαγξ φοβερὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις, ‘thus, the Macedonian phalanx seemed fearsome to its enemies’,) while Aelian specifically talks about that of Alexander the Great (ἐν ᾗ καὶ τοῦ Μακεδόνος Ἀλεξάνδρου τὴν ἐν ταῖς παρατάξεσιν ἐπιβολὴν θεωρήσεις, ‘in which you will observe Alexander the Macedonian's approach in marshalling his men’).Footnote ⁴⁹

One might think that choosing Alexander's phalanx could be seen as a departure from the ‘Classical Greek past’ and Greekness as well, as one might question how ‘Greek’ were the Macedonians. One immediate explanation is that Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire was one of the prevalent and recurring historical themes in what has been called the ‘Second Sophistic’, and the Macedonian king was seen as ‘an icon of Hellenism’ in this particular Roman context.Footnote ⁵⁰ Indeed, Plutarch insists on Alexander's willingness to appear as a leader of the Greeks and as sharing in their cultural capital. He recounts the famous story of the dedication of the 300 shields sent to the Athenians after the battle of Granicus, which were inscribed ‘Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks, except the Lacedaemonians, from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia’, with Plutarch adding that this was done in order to share his victory with the Greeks (κοινούμενος δὲ τὴν νίκην τοῖς Ἕλλησιν).Footnote ⁵¹ At Gaugamela, he has Alexander pray to the gods in front of the Greeks ‘to defend and strengthen the Greeks’ (ἀμῦναι καὶ συνεπιρρῶσαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας). Plutarch's Alexander also clearly wants to be Greek culturally, by associating with the defining moments in Greek history: firstly in rebuilding Plataea ‘because their ancestors had furnished their territory to the Greeks for the struggle on behalf of their freedom’ and then in deciding not to put up a fallen statue of Xerxes, because of his expedition against the Hellenes.Footnote ⁵² Both Plutarch and Curtius Rufus also tell the story of the burning of Persepolis, the primary reason for which was Alexander's desire to avenge the burning of Greek cities in the Persian Wars.Footnote ⁵³

But perhaps an even more persuasive argument is that Alexander (as well as being an icon of Hellenism), along with his army and its achievements, constituted a strong counterbalance to those of the Romans, and this had already been emphasised by Roman authors, such as Livy. The discussion is part of a larger exercise in imagination on which Livy embarks when talking about L. Papirius Cursor, namely what would have happened had Alexander met the Romans in battle.Footnote ⁵⁴ While the essential factors in the clash would have been, according to Livy, the valour and number of the soldiers, the abilities of the commanders and Fortuna, the two actual battle arrays constitute an important point of comparison as well, and we see how Livy is picking up on Polybius’ earlier parallel:

It is interesting that emphasis is placed on the fact that both armies would have been made up of many statarius miles, servans ordines, so the focus in the analysis is, again, on heavy infantry, not cavalry or any other branch – which is central to both Taktika. In contrast to Polybius’ analysis though, Livy is clear on the fact that the Romans would have won, and makes no mention of the phalanx being formidable on level ground. He instead insists – as one would expect him to – on the moral superiority of the Romans; yet again we have a situation where the phalanx (along with its ‘technical specifications’) is worth mentioning as an adversary of the Romans, and would constitute an important part of the fight. But what is more interesting is that we get the impression that the face-off between Alexander and the Romans is picking up a topic that was hotly debated, with some Greeks naturally claiming that the former would have come out victorious:

Despite Livy acknowledging Alexander as a great commander not only here (haud equidem abnuo egregium ducem fuisse Alexandrum, ‘indeed I do not deny that Alexander was a great commander’) but also in a humorous anecdote which has Hannibal claim he would have been better than Alexander had he defeated Scipio, the Romans ultimately would have possessed more of the technical qualities of warfare which would have allowed them to win:Footnote ⁵⁷

The prominence of Alexander as a great figure who might have opposed the Romans can also be seen in two of Plutarch's dialogues as well, On the Fortune of the Romans and On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander.Footnote ⁵⁹ The former argues that Fortuna aided and guided the Romans in acquiring their empire and obtaining their position as masters of the world. The latter does just the opposite, showing how Alexander succeeded through his own qualities, even when Fortuna was against him. Christopher Jones and James Hamilton point out the rhetorical purpose of these speeches, and that Plutarch did not actually see Alexander as perfect, nor was he trying to set him up as a paragon of Greek virtue (as evidenced by his treatment in the Lives).Footnote ⁶⁰ They also emphasise that Plutarch did not mean to say that Alexander won by virtue, while the Romans triumphed by sheer luck. Hamilton also suggests that the speeches have no value whatsoever in terms of representing Plutarch's views,Footnote ⁶¹ but their historical importance lies in the fact that Plutarch is picking up on themes which were debated by Greeks and Romans alike – as evidenced by Livy's earlier text as well – which he leaves open for more debate by emphasising the comparison.

This is true in particular for the end of On the Fortune of the Romans, where Plutarch – again, like Livy before him – also wonders what would have happened had the Romans and Alexander fought. Even though he leaves the question unanswered, in contrast to Livy, he suggests that Alexander would have won, or at least that the Roman state would have had a very difficult time, as we can see the Fortuna that takes Alexander's life (ἐγὼ δὲ <ταύτης> [i.e. τῆς Τύχης in the previous sentence] τίθεμαι καὶ τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου τελευτήν, ‘and to Tyche I ascribe also the death of Alexander’) as parallel to the Fortuna that saves the Romans from destruction at the hand of the Gauls, for example (τί δέ; οὐχὶ καὶ περὶ τὰς μεγίστας συμφορὰς ὤρθου τὴν πόλιν ἡ Τύχη; Κελτῶν μὲν περὶ τὸ Καπετώλιον στρατοπεδευόντων καὶ πολιορκούντων τὴν ἀκρόπολιν …, ‘And why not admit that Tyche also retrieved the city in times of the greatest disaster? When the Gauls were encamped round about the Capitol and were besieging the citadel …’).Footnote ⁶²

Alexander is, then, another peril against which Fortuna defends the Romans, and in any case Plutarch sets him up as a viable contender for supremacy:

“οὐ γὰρ ἀναιμωτί γε διακρινθήμεναι οἴω” [Od. 18.149], συμπεσόντων ὅπλοις ἀνικήτοις φρονημάτων ἀδουλώτων.

Therefore, even if we do not take Plutarch seriously when it comes to the general message of the speeches, it would be difficult to disagree with Tim Whitmarsh in seeing Alexander as a hyper-Greek figure, and with Diana Spencer, who argues for a resurgence of the figure of Alexander, especially in the second century AD. Spencer also emphasises that Alexander ‘could stand for the cultural supremacy of Greece, and Greek military prowess, and his fame could demonstrate the lasting greatness of Greece over Rome’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Thus, when put together, Alexander and his phalanx constitute one very powerful token of Greco-Macedonian military achievements.

So, by focusing on Alexander's phalanx, what could come out of Aelian's text is that the Romans did not really defeat the best version of the phalanx, nor did they adopt and perfect it – the Macedonians and Alexander did. In fact, in a different passage, Diodorus again explicitly elaborates on this idea:

So it was Philip who perfected not some Etruscan version of the phalanx, but built on the most ancient practices of the Greeks, dating back to the Trojan War, and any Roman achievements would pale in comparison.

Furthermore, in his work, Aelian provides a challenge to arguments such as Livy's, based on skill in warfare, by showing the technical details of Alexander's army, and especially to the idea that the Romans were better at aciem instruere. The treatise is permeated by ways in which Alexander made it easy to organise, command, march and manoeuvre one's army, from the ways in which individual units should be divided and led (9.1–11.2), choosing the right place for each man (13.3–14.7), organising complex turns and counter-marches and restoring order (25.1–33.5), to how commands should be given so that order can be preserved (34.1–35.6).

However, this insistence on organisation and especially order is closely linked to the Polybian concept of symplokē as seen in the previous section. It is clear that Aelian was not only familiar with Polybius – he is one of the previous writers of Taktika mentioned in the preface – but also that he shares Polybius’ ideas of what taxis should mean. He claims that the most important concern in tactics is ‘to choose from a multitude of men, which comes to hand unorganised, the fittest and dispose them into appropriate places – that is to order them into files and units’ (παραλαβόντα πλῆθος ἀνδρῶν ἄτακτον τοὺς ἐπιτηδείους ἐκλεξάμενον καθ’ ἣν ἕκαστον προσήκει χώραν τάξαι – τοῦτ’ ἔστι καταλοχίσαι καὶ συλλοχίσαι).Footnote ⁶⁶ This is identical to Polybius’ definition of tactics, which Aelian reproduces in a subsequent chapter, namely ‘whenever anyone takes an unorganised crowd, organises it, divides it into files, and grouping them together, gives them a practical training for war’ (ἐάν τις πλῆθος ἄτακτον παραλαβὼν τοῦτο συγκρίνῃ καὶ καταλοχίσας συλλοχίσῃ παιδεύσῃ τε χρησίμως τὰ πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον), and is distinctively different from the definition given by Aeneas Tacticus as ‘the science of military movements’ (ἐπιστήμην πολεμικῶν κινήσεων).Footnote ⁶⁷ As Champion proves, for Polybius, organisation was very much an integral part of what it meant to be Greek, and he had shown the Romans to be even more Greek than the Greeks in light of their use of logismos. In the Taktika, we can see Aelian as being guided by Polybius’ principles but giving back the same logismos to the Greeks, by describing the mathematical order and precision of the phalanx. Perhaps the best example of this is the discussion of the precise number of men which is required in a phalanx, namely 16,384, as this allows an exact division in half, as well as a further division and ordering into 1,024 files of 16 men each.Footnote ⁶⁸ Naturally, an implicit comparison with the Romans results, who are conspicuous by their absence. Aelian does mention borrowing practices from others and perfecting them but, this time around, it is not the Romans who are the protagonists, but Philip and Alexander. We see that it is Philip who took the wedge cavalry formation from the Thessalians and Schythians and gave it to the Macedonians, and the self-same Philip and then his son, Alexander, borrowed and perfected the Laconian counter-march:Footnote ⁶⁹

It would be impossible not to compare the passage to Diodorus’ and Sallust's stories about the Romans perfecting the Etruscan phalanx, as here we see Philip and Alexander essentially taking over and improving a practice pertaining to the Spartan phalanx, which, given the Roman focus on Spartan military prowess, would have undoubtedly been considered the best.

In the context of a Polybian framework, however, the phalanx is not just a military formation, it is an example of organisation and logismos, and this is exactly what his definition of tactics – quoted by Aelian – suggests: that through the phalanx a group of unruly men is made organised and civilised. Therefore, Aelian's is not only a discourse about the phalanx, but also a discourse about the civilising and cultural power of Philp, Alexander and the Greeks, which is made to rival if not surpass that of the Romans. Furthermore, what one might understand is not only that the Greeks and Alexander are given back their logismos, which is the essential quality of Hellenism, but also that Alexander and Philip are better at being Roman than the actual Romans. A reader might see Philip and Alexander as playing the part of the Romans, appropriating and perfecting a practice of a defeated people (which is also a quintessential part of Roman identity), but one that is vastly superior to what the Romans themselves could ever claim to have appropriated and bettered, therefore making the two Macedonian kings (and implicitly the Greek and Macedonian people) culturally superior in having beaten the Romans at their own game.

It is no less significant that Philip's and Alexander's status as conquerors is emphasised in a treatise dedicated to the emperor Trajan, who, if Cassius Dio is to be believed, envied Alexander and wanted to surpass him:

In mentioning Alexander's role as conqueror of all of Asia, Aelian is perhaps reminding Trajan that Alexander not only developed a better phalanx than the Romans, but, in doing so, was also a more successful ruler. However, one might also interpret the passage as emphasising how Alexander and Philip expanded their own empire, by deviating from a Macedonian practice, and instead relying on the ‘military wisdom’ of the Spartans. The two kings perfected the Laconian practice, thereby making it their own and adding it to their ‘military identity’ – what was previously ‘Laconian’ becomes, after Alexander and Philip, both ‘Laconian’ and ‘Macedonian’, in light of their victories. The message here to Trajan could, therefore, also be that recognising the merits of other peoples’ practices and knowledge is what he should himself strive for in order to become a complete commander. But more generally, what comes across is that history shows how empires are built upon other empires’ knowledge, which should not be dismissed but accepted and honed. Much like the rest of Aelian's text, this can be read as both a criticism and a praise of Roman culture.

If Trajan was indeed concerned with surpassing Alexander, how could one better aid him in doing it than by offering him all of Alexander's military knowledge? Aelian can be seen as trying to help the emperor by dedicating to him a text which would not only give Trajan a description of Alexander's phalanx, the ‘code’ of Alexander's success, but also the key to breaking it, namely Aelian's clarifications, as he himself emphasises: σαφηνείας τε γὰρ ἕνεκα διαβεβαιούμενος λέγω τοὺς ἐντευξομένους τῇδε τῇ συγγραφῇ ἔνθεν μᾶλλον ἢ παρὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων στοιχειωθήσεσθαι (‘For on account of its clarity I boldly affirm that those chancing upon this work will be instructed by it more than by those of my predecessors’).Footnote ⁷² In reading Aelian's very detailed analysis, with technical points that matched those in the debates found in Livy and Polybius, the emperor would be able to analyse and appreciate all the strengths and weaknesses of the phalanx. Gaining an understanding of Alexander and his army, which, as we have seen, were considered worthy contenders with the Romans and their legions, would enable Trajan himself to master and appropriate the phalanx in its best form, but more importantly would give him a better grasp on how to create order and become a more successful ruler than Alexander.

While Aelian had focused on Alexander's practices alone, in concluding the first section of his treatise Arrian lets the reader know that he has revealed ‘enough about the Greek and Macedonian formations of old’ (ἱκανὰ ὑπέρ γε τῶν πάλαι Ἑλληνικῶν τε καὶ Μακεδονικῶν τάξεων), and he will go on to talk about the ‘drills that the Roman horsemen practice’ (τὰ ἱππικὰ γυμνάσια, ὅσα Ῥωμαῖοι ἱππῆς γυμνάζονται), since he has already discussed the Roman infantry in a different treatise.Footnote ⁷³ Here too we can find evidence of Polybian symplokē, as Arrian puts together the histories of two practices and shows how they are interconnected and influence each other.Footnote ⁷⁴ This is most evident in the latter half of the treatise, in a passage where he expresses difficulty in explaining the names of Roman taxeis because they had borrowed so much from others that Roman practices had become a collection of those of many other peoples:

While one can read this in a negative way, as there does seem to be an opposition between the clearly defined ‘formations of Greeks and Macedonians of old’ (τῶν πάλαι Ἑλληνικῶν τε καὶ Μακεδονικῶν τάξεων) and Roman ones, one could also see the passage, alongside Arrian's previous statement that he has to discuss both Greek formations and Roman cavalry dills, as more positive with regard to the Romans. Arrian could be seen as capitalising on the idea that military progress is a cumulative endeavour, and he encourages his readers to think how ‘empires of knowledge’ are built. It is the taxis (i.e. mainly phalanx) of the Greeks and Macedonians that is discussed, with the clear implication that it is the latter who have perfected the practices of the former. The addition of the Roman element in the last place suggests that it is really the Romans who have taken these practices further. Therefore, much as in Polybius’ narrative, one has to understand that the history of all these types of practices is interconnected, and one can only fully comprehend them if they are analysed together. Arrian hints at this when he juxtaposes the disposition of the phalanx by depth and length at Leuctra and Mantinea with what one should do in Arrian's own time when fighting the Sarmatians and Scyths:

which is mirrored by:

Arrian is not only showing how the practices of the present are indeed possible due to Epaminondas’ innovations in the past, but also how these innovations have been perfected in a Roman context (and it is no small matter that he is the one doing the perfecting!). This is even clearer in the discussion of the synaspismos – the phalanx way of closing ranks and fighting in compact order – and the Roman testudo in the same chapter. The latter is presented as the next logical step (and hence a matter of praise for the Romans), but at the same time it is made clear that it would not be possible without the former: καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦδε τοῦ συνασπισμοῦ τὴν χελώνην Ῥωμαῖοι ποιοῦνται ‘and from the synaspismos the Romans make a tortoise’. While it is apparent that this also refers to the mechanics of the manoeuvre, namely that one has to lock shields, then go into the testudo, the ἀπὸ τοῦδε τοῦ συνασπισμοῦ in the genitive strongly suggests origin, and indicates that it was the synaspismos that allowed the Romans to develop their manoeuvre. In fact, at the beginning of the section on Roman practices, Arrian reminds his readers of the ‘borrowings’ of the Romans, which contributed to the enrichment of their culture, in a passage similar to Diodorus’:

So while the improvements of the Romans are recognised, the tone of the passage – much like the one discussed before – is one that rather encourages the readers to focus on the elements that the Romans build upon in order to achieve their cultural dominance. This duality of interpretation can also be seen in the juxtaposition of the ἱππικὰ γυμνάσια of the Romans with the Ἑλληνικῶν τε καὶ Μακεδονικῶν τάξεων. A more contentious interpretation would argue that, while the Greeks and Macedonians developed ‘order’, the Romans simply γυμνάζονται, ‘play’ at order in a simulation of real combat. As in the case of Aelian, I believe that one does not have to make an interpretative choice, and it is likely that Arrian intended both these readings to be equally valid, both praising and contextualising (rather than diminishing) Roman achievements. The idea of a symplokē between the Greek and Roman military world that seems to transcend time is completed in the end of the treatise, where Arrian informs his readers that a quote from the poet Terpander is much more appropriate to describe the age of Hadrian than Classical Sparta.Footnote ⁷⁸

The more contentious interpretation, however, also allows a reader to see the joining together of Greek and Macedonian practices along the same lines of Plutarchan synkrisis. However, as Tatum points out, a synkrisis is usually between two elements that are very closely similar, with the intention of finding out which one is the best, whereas Arrian mentions the Roman infantry but purposefully parallels the cavalry to the Greek phalanx, thereby creating an imbalance.Footnote ⁷⁹ The terms in which the two are described also differ greatly and could be read as an attempt to give an edge to the phalanx and Greek practices.

The Roman cavalry is described as provoking visual pleasure in several places: the appearance of the standards (ταῦτα τὰ σημεῖα οὐ τῇ ὄψει μόνον ἡδονὴν ἢ ἔκπληξιν παρέχει, ‘these standards not only bring pleasure and consternation to the eye’), the colour and beauty of the standards and the manoeuvres (καὶ οὕτω ποικίλαι μὲν αἱ ἐπιστροφαί, πολυειδεῖς δὲ οἱ ἐξελιγμοί, πολύτροποι, ‘thus the colourful wheelings about, the multiform folding back again, and the versatile charges here and there’), the beauty of the turn (τὸ δὲ κάλλος τοῦ δρωμένου ἐν τῷδε ἐστίν, ‘the beauty of the deed is in this’), the posture of the rider (ἥ τε καθέδρα ἡ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἵππου αὐτοῦ τοῦ ἱππέως ἀεὶ εὐσχήμων καὶ ὀρθὴ, ‘the posture of the rider is always elegant and straight’) which enables the ‘weapons’ brilliance, the horses swiftness and the good curvings in the turn’ (τῶν ὅπλων ἡ λαμπρότης καὶ τῶν ἵππων ἡ ὠκύτης τε καὶ τὸ ἐν ταῖς ἐπιστροφαῖς εὐκαμπές) to be seen, the rider being graceful (εὐσχημόνως), and the rider's blow being astounding and the counter-march appearing graceful (καὶ ὁ ἐξελιγμὸς ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε εὐσχήμων φαίνεται, ‘and the counter-march appears graceful in this’).Footnote ⁸⁰

This emphasis on beauty contrasts the functional, dry description of the phalanx in the first part of the treatise (1–32). The contrast is most evident when the Macedonian phalanx is described as ‘fearsome’ also in its appearance, τοι καὶ ἡ Μακεδονικὴ φάλαγξ φοβερὰ τοῖς πολεμίοις οὐκ ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ ὄψει ἐφαίνετο (‘the Macedonian phalanx seemed fearsome to its opponents not only in practice but also appearance’), as opposed to the standards of the Roman cavalry which bring ‘pleasure to the sight (τῇ ὄψει … ἡδονὴν)’.

Pliny the Younger associates visual pleasure in military exercises with moral corruption in his Panegyricus, where we see the current elites being criticised for allowing themselves to be softened by Greek practices which are afflicted with precisely that attention to spectacle:

Greek influence, then, transformed Roman virtues into exercises geared towards pleasure – and the ad oculos, ad voluptatem reminds one of the artes mentioned by Vergil – thus causing Roman discipline to be lost in the process. This idea is, of course, more famously expressed by Horace, who describes the loss of Roman ferocity to the Greek artes: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes | intulit agresti Latio (‘captive Greece captured its fierce victor and brought the arts to wild Latium).Footnote ⁸² However, in Arrian there is a reversal of stereotypes, much like Polybius’ flexible scare of barbarism and Hellenism. The phalanx – y compris that of the Greeks and Macedonians – manifests discipline whereas the Roman cavalry is more concerned with the beauty of the manoeuvres executed, so Arrian too gives the Greeks back their logismos. However, unlike Aelian, Arrian further problematises the two stereotypes, making his readers think about the difficulty of comparison and of making value judgements. He explains that the colourful banners of the cavalry are both beautiful and also vital in allowing the riders to maintain unit cohesion:

Therefore, much like Polybius and then Plutarch, Arrian invites his readers both to understand the history of and connection between Greek, Roman and Macedonian practices, and also to compare and contrast them in order to determine for themselves which one is better. Like Aelian's, his discourse is not only about the practices themselves, but about the power and dominance of the respective cultures, and about challenging and potentially breaking stereotypes.