The Battle of Magnesia took place in the winter of 190-189 BC. It probably took place at the beginning of the year 189 BC. It opposed the Romans, led by the consul Scipio the Asiatic, and a Macedonian-type army of the Seleucid dynasty, led by King Antiochos III. It was the decisive battle of the Antiochian War, which lasted from 192 to 189 BC. J.-C..
The battle took place in a plain, at the confluence of the Hermos river and the Phrygia river, not far from the city of Magnesia of Sipylus, in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), forty kilometers northeast of Izmir.
Our knowledge of the battle is essentially based on the texts of three authors:the Roman Livy, the Greek Appian, and the Byzantine Zonaras.
From the point of view of military history, Magnesia was , along with Cynoscephales and Pydna, one of the three great victories that the Roman armies won over the Hellenic armies in the 2nd century BC. These victories are generally considered to be due in part to the superiority of the Roman legion over the Macedonian-type phalanx.
Origins of the Antiochian War
The Antiochian War, or Syriac War, pitted Rome against the Seleucid kingdom. At the origins of the war, there are the antagonistic interests of the Romans and the Seleucids in Asia Minor and Greece.
King Antiochos III was in the process of restoring his empire, which had gone through a phase of decline. For several years he had been waging a war of reconquest in territories that had once belonged to his dynasty. After restoring his authority in Iran and defeating the Egyptian army, he now subjugated the cities of Asia Minor that had escaped his rule.
At the same time, the Romans were expanding. Following the Second Punic War, they had extended their influence over much of the Mediterranean, and after the recent conflict in Macedonia - the Second Macedonian War had just ended - they had entered the game of Hellenistic Eastern policy. Rome had become the protector of small Greek or Hellenized states such as Rhodes and Pergamum (in Asia Minor), which were threatened by Seleucid expansion.
To the rivalry of the two rising powers (Romans and Seleucids), were added the conflicts between the regional powers in Greece. The new order imposed by Rome following the battle of Cynoscephali did not only make people happy. For example the Aetolian league, which, after having fought on the side of Rome during the second Macedonian war, had not been rewarded up to its expectations, sought to redistribute the cards by inciting Antiochos to go to war against Rome.
Military operations before Magnesia
Antiochus landed in Greece in October 192, with 10,000 men. He won some meager successes, but his position was difficult:he had few allies in Greece, while the Romans could count on the Achaians and Philip V of Macedon. The arrival of a Roman army of reinforcements ruined the hopes of Antiochos. The latter withdrew to Thermopylae, but he was defeated in 191 and evacuated Greece with what remained of his expeditionary force, joining the army of his son Seleucus which was laying siege to Pergamon, the capital of King Eumenes, the ally of the Romans in Asia Minor.
A naval war between the Seleucid fleet and the allied fleets of Rome, Pergame and Rhodes, prepared the landing of the legions in Asia. Once landed, the Roman army, led by the Scipios, marched towards Pergamum and drove the Seleucids away.
Antiochus avoided battle and for a while sought to deal, while recruiting additional troops. Faced with the intransigence of the Romans, he resolved to fight. He chooses a terrain where his army could make full use of its numerical superiority, and where his cavalry and tanks could maneuver unhindered by the terrain.
Strengths present
Antiochos' forces were certainly superior in number. The numbers can be estimated at 60,000 men for the Seleucids and 30,000 for the Romans. That said, the Seleucid troops were partly freshly recruited, and therefore singularly lacking in training, not to mention experience. The soldiers of the Roman army, on the contrary, were mostly veterans.
The Seleucid army brought together a multitude of units from various parts of the empire:Medes, Galatians, Cappadocians, Phrygians, Arabs, as well as Greek and Cretan mercenaries, etc. The center was composed of the phalanx, and the wings were formed by various troops of cavalry, by light infantry, peltasts and the corps of argyraspids. In front of the left wing were also two "exotic" units, battle tanks and camels mounted by Arab archers.
But probably the most important body of this army was the phalanx. It was arranged in ten units of 1,600 men, each ordered in 32 ranks of 50 men, making a total of 16,000 phalangites. Between the Phalangite units were elephants.
The Roman army was relatively homogeneous. The left wing, which numbered 20,000 soldiers, was made up of heavy infantry, two Roman legions and two Latin alae of 5,000 men each. In the center, there was the light infantry composed of the auxiliaries of Eumenes and the Achaian peltasts, 3,000 men in all. On the right was the cavalry, 3,000 cavalry from Rome, Italy and Pergamon. In front of the front line, there were 500 Tralles and Cretans arranged as skirmishers. In addition, four squadrons of Roman cavalry had been positioned to the left of the legions, between the left wing and the Phrygia river. Finally, 2,000 Thracians and Macedonians had been assigned to guard the camp.
Battle progress
It was Antiochus who began hostilities, with an attack from both wings. On the right, he led the formidable mass of cataphracts and cavalry of the Agêma, as well as the 1,200 Dahae mounted archers. 5,200 horsemen against the Roman left wing formed by the two Roman legions and the poor 120 horsemen. We prefer to believe Appian who sees one or more Roman legions bend before the king's charge - while Livy, we recall, places the allied legions on the left, and thus does not taint the role of the Roman legions.
On the Seleucid left wing, chariots and dromedaries led the charge against Eumenes' right wing. Livy minimizes the role of the king of Pergamon in the battle as much as possible. However, it was his light infantry and skirmishers who surrounded and machine-gunned the horses in the carriages with their projectiles, and not their drivers. In their flight, the Scythian chariots will cross the line of the cataphracts of the Seleucid left wing which in turn flee without fighting and Eumenes will then begin a bloody pursuit of these troops. For the rest of the battle we will follow Appian rather than Livy for several reasons.
While Antiochos had crushed all the Roman cavalry on the left wing as well as an entire legion with his cataphracts, he decided, as at the Battle of Raphia, to pursue the fugitives to the Roman camp rather than surround the Roman army, which certainly cost him the victory. The Seleucid Phalangists in the center are overwhelmingly victorious and ruthlessly push back the Roman hastati who are hastily retreating, having suffered heavy losses. The Roman cavalry positioned themselves on the Seleucid left wing to encircle the Phalangists, who were far too strong to fight from the front. Eumenes will, with the help of Domitius, harass the phalanx which, according to Appian, was correctly formed into a defensive square by welcoming the Seleucid skirmishers into its midst, while Livy does not even mention it. The remaining Allied and Roman legionnaires are unable to fight against the phalanx, and the tactic employed consists in flooding the phalanx with projectiles of all kinds.
Antiochos and the right wing are stopped near the camp. Livy explains to us that it was the military tribune Marcus Aemilius Lepidus who, by his courage and 2,000 unknown brave men, rallied the fleeing allies to form a counter-attack. At Appien, Antiochos is the winner without hesitation and it is the prefect of the camp, perhaps simply a prefect of the allies, who intervenes at the head of fresh troops. And one can only be surprised by the error of Livy who forgets to erase the nature of the troops guarding the camp:they are 2,000 Macedonians (certainly mercenaries or volunteers) and Thracians. The Roman camp is therefore saved by auxiliary troops while the Romans are fleeing, a sad reality that Livy's tricks only partially conceal!
Eumenes, aware of the uselessness of his tactic of harassing the phalanx (the projectiles being blocked by the long sarisses of the last rows leaning obliquely forwards), then decides to concentrate all the shots towards the elephants. The pachyderms, panicked and injured, will then sow panic inside the square of sarisses. The Romans will then pursue and massacre the disorganized Phalangists. Antiochus, according to Appian, proudly returned to the center, enthusiastic, but there saw the catastrophic situation of his left wing and his phalanx.
The bloody fight continues to the gates of the Seleucid camp that are looted by the men of Eumenes, which Livy condemns. Antiochus did not flee the battlefield until after the capture of the camp, and well after the flight of his son Seleucus, who commanded the left wing. Appian says that tradition puts the Seleucid losses at 50,000, including prisoners whom Livy estimates at 15,000, that a few elephants were killed and fifteen captured. Roman casualty figures are 24 knights killed in action, 300 legionnaires, and Eumenes lost only 15 cavalry. However, it is clear that these figures, so disproportionate, certainly do not correspond to reality.
Political consequences
The defeat at Magnesia prompted Antiochos to treat. Peace was signed at Sardis in 189. A second treaty, supplementing the first, was signed in 188 at Apamea. The Seleucid pledged to renounce Thrace and evacuate Asia Minor as far as the Taurus. In addition, he had to pay an indemnity of 15,000 talents and deliver twenty hostages, including Hannibal, who had taken refuge with the Seleucid monarch after the Second Punic War. Finally, the Treaty of Apamea provided for a limitation of Seleucid military capacities, both on land and at sea, and the settlement of relations between Antiochos III and the allies of Rome (Pergamon and Rhodes).
The main consequence of the Peace of Apamea was the territorial reorganization in the East. All of Asia Minor was evacuated by Antiochus. Rome did not annex the conquered territories but distributed them to its allies, Pergamum and Rhodes in the first place. The kingdom of Eumenes, considerably enlarged, became a kind of buffer state between Macedonia and the Seleucid kingdom.
Ancient springs
Appian, Syr. 30-36.
Livy, 37, 37-44.
Zonaras, 9.20.