take your time

[mdroberts18]

it seems few sourses tell us much about how long anciant battles lasted,i seem to remember Pydna is suggested took just one hour ,do people know sourses that give an idea of times in the well attested anciant combats ,thanks

[Jona Lendering]

Marathon was, according to Herodotus, "a long battle" - but it can not have been very long, because the soldiers managed to return to Athens before sunset.

Issus can not have lasted more than half an hour, plus a pursuit of about an hour. This is my personal calculation, derived from the fact that (a) Alexander had to approach from the Pillar of Jonah and (b) it was 5 or 6 November. He can not have reached his position until 16.30 and dawn was at 17.45.

Second Cremona, on the other hand, took an afternoon and a night, and was decided at sunset.

[Susanne]

One also has to take into account the time of the year when the battle was fought. An army would be far more endurable during the winter when the temperature was more suitable for combat. And therefore longer battles would thus take place in the fall / winter.

Preparing for a battle in the hot summer would be comparable to buying a ticket to suicide.

So when reading a source, note the time of the year if there is such information.

[Nicholas Gaukroger]

Probably worth looking up some of Phil Sabin's work as he has considered this as part of his "Roman Face of Battle" work on the Punic wars.

[Paullus Scipio]

Susanne wrote:-

One also has to take into account the time of the year when the battle was fought. An army would be far more endurable during the winter when the temperature was more suitable for combat. And therefore longer battles would thus take place in the fall / winter.

Preparing for a battle in the hot summer would be comparable to buying a ticket to suicide.

So when reading a source, note the time of the year if there is such information.

...that would seem logical enough,Susanne, but in fact few ancient campaigns were carried out in Winter.
The "Military campaigning season" right up until relatively modern times was generally summer/autumn, with few armies stirring out of 'winter quarters' until late Spring at the earliest.....
The reasons?
Armies need food for the troops and forage for all the horses and other beasts of burden, so can generally only move around when crops are available.......
Living outdoors is much easier in those months than Winter....just ask Napoleon's men who survived the winter retreat from Moscow ( having advanced there in summer), or Hannibal's men who suffered greatly crossing the Alps, reaching the Italian plain during the first weeks of November 218 BC, having left their Winter quarters in sunny Spain in June 218 BC.....

Nik wrote:-

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

O.K. Nik, I'll bite, what is this????????..........and what does it mean etc :?

[Paralus]

...that would seem logical enough,Susanne, but in fact few ancient campaigns were carried out in Winter....

Armies need food for the troops and forage for all the horses and other beasts of burden, so can generally only move around when crops are available.......
Living outdoors is much easier in those months than Winter....

Absolutely: on all counts. Susanne's point does have some merit though.

The campaign in Iran during the second Diadoch war is a cse in point. Antigonus' forces had been routed at the Coprates River in high summer. Diodorus (via Hieronymus) then relates the lengths Antigonus must go to find an area of the Iranian plateua, or highlands, where he can can rest his army who were suffering severely (with significant loss of life) from the mid-summer heat.

Ironically, the climactic clashes occurred in the very late Autumn/winter.

At the time of the Coprates disaster a major engagement most certainly will have finished off Antigonus. Eumenes had the forces and, more importantly the Silver Shields, to do so but chose not to. The reason will have been the suicidal nature of a Paraetecene or Gabiene under a blistering sun and in temps that well exceeded 100(F) and dropped not too far below it at night in this region.

Likely the exception to prove the rule...

[hoplite14gr]

Mauch manuvering to "take good position" usually is not counted part of the battle. Perhaps right perhaps wrong.

In places were elite units fight in both sides battles ar usually long and bloody. Thyrea comes to mind.

Kind regards

[PMBardunias]

Nik wrote:-
Quote:
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"


O.K. Nik, I'll bite, what is this????????..........and what does it mean etc

Don't ask, you'll wake him! And if you think this has no bearing on ancient Greece, I came across this little passage from Pausanias 3.21.5:

[5] After Croceae, turning away to the right from the straight road to Gythium, you will reach a city Aegiae. They say that this is the city which Homer in his poem calls Augeae. Here is a lake called Poseidon's, and by the lake is a temple with an image of the god. They are afraid to take out the fish, saying that a fisherman in these waters turns a man into a frog-fish.