Our most detailed account of a Ptolemaic army is Polybios’ description of that of Ptolemy IV, reorganized for the Fourth Syrian War, against the Seleucid king Antiochos III, culminating in the battle of Raphia (217 bc). He notes (5.79) that the army consisted of 70,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry and 73 elephants. His account of the mustering of the army (5.63-65) provides more detail on its composition, noting the names of the commanders of each contingent (for example, Sokrates the Boeotian with the peltasts, Echecrates the Thessalian with a cavalry contingent) and their place of origin. The cavalry consisted of 700 royal guard, about 3000 Libyan and ‘‘native’’ (enchorioi) cavalry and approximately 2000 Greeks and other mercenaries. Undoubtedly the ‘‘native’’ cavalry included Graeco-Macedonian settlers in Egypt (kleruchs - discussed below) recalled to active service and perhaps regular cavalry (misthophoroi hippeis) based in the garrisons of Egypt itself (Clarysse & Thompson 2006: vol. 2, 153).
The infantry included 3000 royal guard (agema), and a phalanx of 25,000 plus 20,000 Egyptian phalangites. 3000 Libyan troops were ‘‘armed in Macedonian fashion,’’ so perhaps phalangites like the Egyptians. 8000 ‘‘Greek mercenaries’’ who trained with the phalanx may have been equipped in the same way. There were 2000 peltasts (lighter infantry, typical of Hellenistic Greek armies), and 3000 Cretans, 1000 of them ‘‘Neo-Cretans,’’ perhaps recently recruited, or troops fighting in Cretan style (typically archers). Finally there were 6,000 Thracians and Galatians. Thracians had long provided peltasts for Macedonian (and Greek) armies, and Galatians were eastern Celts who had settled in Anatolia in the third century bc, widely recruited as mercenaries. Polybios states that 2,000 of the 6,000 Galatians had been recruited recently, presumably as mercenaries, while the rest were settlers (katoikoi) and their descendants (discussed below). Elephants had been a regular component of Successor armies since Alexander’s use of Indian elephants late in his reign. Indian elephants had been captured by the Ptolemies in past victories (Diodoros Sikeliotes 19.84.4 records some were taken after the battle of Gaza, against Demetrios in 312 bc) but typically theirs were smaller African forest elephants, described by Polybios (at Raphia, 5.84) as weaker than opposing Seleucid Indian elephants. Inscriptions and papyri record the activities of Ptolemaic elephant hunters. OGIS 54, originally set up at Adoulis on the Arabian Gulf (c.246 bc), notes that the army of Ptolemy III Euergetes included ‘‘Troglodytic and Ethiopian elephants which he and his father were the first to hunt from these lands, and, bringing them back to Egypt, to fit out for military service’’ (tr. Bagnall and Derow 2004, no. 26).
For the battle of Raphia itself, the Ptolemaic army was drawn up with the phalanx in the center, flanked by the other infantry such as peltasts, Galatians, and Thracians. Cavalry from Egypt and Libya were on the left flank, with Greek and other mercenary cavalry on the right (Polybios 5.82). Thus far the dispositions of the armies might have been typical of Alexander himself. However, elephants were deployed in front of the friendly cavalry on each flank, to intimidate the enemy’s horses. While both commanders attempted to emulate Alexander with a decisive cavalry charge, the symmetrical character of the armies’ strengths and deployments led to the flanks neutralizing one another, the Ptolemaic force being victorious on their right, the Seleucids on the left (Polybios 5.84-85; see Sekunda 2007: 347). Thus the decisive clash of the battle, unlike those of Alexander, was between the respective phalanxes, with Ptolemy himself leading the center, emphasizing the importance of infantry trained in Macedonian fashion, and the king’s new willingness to enhance his army’s phalanx by incorporating Egyptians (Polybios 5.83; 85). Polybios (5.107) regards this as a radical innovation, but a two-edged one, providing the Ptolemaic army with a short-term advantage but longer-term problems feeding into the internal conflicts that plagued Egypt in the second and first centuries bc.
This significant employment of Egyptians marks a major difference between the army of Raphia and that of earlier battles, such as Gaza in 312 bc, with Ptolemy I allied with Seleukos I against Demetrios. Diodoros (19.80.3) records that the Ptolemaic army of 18,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry included Macedonians and mercenaries, along with a ‘‘mass’’ (plethos) of Egyptians, some of them carrying baggage, some with missile weapons and some ‘‘properly equipped for battle.’’ Their heterogeneous equipment, and their description almost as an afterthought reminds one of the poor-quality subject troops employed by Achaemenid Persian rulers rather than the properly trained machimoi employed at Raphia. At Gaza, Demetrios deployed most of his cavalry on his left along with most of his elephants. Initially Ptolemy and Seleukos concentrated their cavalry on their left, but shifted it to match the enemy, using a palisade and missile-armed light troops to counter the enemy elephants (Ptolemy had none). Again, efforts to launch a decisive Alexander-like flank attack were stalemated by the symmetrical deployments and the failure of the elephants on the rough ground. Ultimately, however, Demetrios’ cavalry was defeated and the Ptolemaic army won (Diodoros Sikeliotes 19.80.3-84). Diodoros says little about the role played by infantry in this battle, reflecting the importance of cavalry in (particularly) earlier Ptolemaic armies, despite the difficulty of achieving a decisive break-through. This importance is emphasized by the depictions of Macedonian-style horsemen in third century tomb paintings from Alexandria (Venit 2002: 55-8, fig. 42).
World History
