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How long did ancient battles last? Any examples and sources would be appreciated.
I'm sure campaigns lasted months or years, but I found little information on how long the decisive pitched battles lasted. Perhaps a few hours to a day (maybe, a couple of days at the most)?
Kristian D\'\'Amato
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Depends a lot from battle to battle.
Apparently in longer battles, there were considerable lulls in action, allowing parrticipants catch their breat, so to speak.
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Excepting sieges, which could drag on for months, most battles in the pre-gunpowder ago were pretty short affairs of a few hours or a day at most - the physical effort of hand to hand fighting would leave opposing armies exhausted after much longer. Keeping formation - let alone continuing to fight - during the hours of darkness would also be difficult.
There are a few longer battles recorded - at the second battle of Bedriacum in AD69 the fighting lasted from the afternoon of one day through the night until shortly after dawn on the second day. In this case, hostilities were prolonged by the arrival of fresh reinforcements on both sides at intervals. Lugdunum in 197 - supposedly one of the biggest battles in Roman history - apparently lasted two days. Nisibis in 217 (Macrinus against the Parthians) went on, according to Herodian, for three days with fighting from dawn till dusk. It ended as a stalemate, partly because the field was so littered with heaps of dead men, horses and even camels that the opposing armies could no longer see each other. This is perhaps not such an exaggeration: on a dusty plain, piles of decomposing corpses could effectively confuse the formation and organision of battle lines - not to mention the caltrops that the Romans had been using against the Parthian cavalry, which would have left the ancient equivilent of minefields strewn about...
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Nathan Ross
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Issus in 333 was pretty short; the manoeuvers leading up to it must have taken the whole day, as the soldiers had to march over the pass known as Pillar of Jonah, which is about four soldiers wide - a bottleneck. Deployment must have taken hours. Battle cannot have started prior to 1600, and must have been over by 17.00, when the sun set.
Jona Lendering
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Hi,
As already mentioned it depends, but generally it can be said that most battles lasted a few hours.
Vegetius mentions that most battles were decided in ca. 2-3 hours (Veg. III. 9). Nevertheless there were many shorter battles (some of them even decided by the first charge) and many longer battles. Labienus for example turned the Treveri with first onslaught to flee (Caes. B.G. VI.8) , on the contrary Caesar's battle with Morii and Menapii lasted 4 hours (Caes. B.G. IV.37), battle at Ilerda lasted 5 hours (Caes. B.C. I.46), Crassus' battle at Carrhae started may be around noon (Cass. Dio XL.23.4) and lasted till coming of the night (Cass. Dio XL.24.2; Plut. Crassus 27).
Most battles (including pursuit of the broken army) ended with sunset. Although there is a couple of references of night fights and pursuits during nights (Plut. Lucullus 31) or even battles lasting more days, these are rare occurrences.
For discussion about duration of battles and more examples see:
Zhmodikov, A., 2000. Roman Republican Heavy Infantryment in Battle (IV-II centuries BC). Historia, 49, 67-78.
Goldsworthy, A.K., 1998. The Roman Army at War 100 BC-AD 200, Oxford.
Sabin, P., 2000. The Face of Roman Battle. Journal of Roman Studies, 90, 1-17.
Greetings
Alexandr
