Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) - Battle

Battle

Details of the battle itself are scarce, with Diodorus providing the only formal account. He says that "once joined, the battle was hotly contested for a long time and many fell on both sides, so that for a while the struggle permitted hopes of victory to both." He then recounts that the young Alexander, "his heart set on showing his father his prowess" succeeding in rupturing the Greek line aided by his companions, and eventually put the Greek right wing to flight; meanwhile, Philip advanced in person against the Greek left and also put it to flight.

This brief account can be filled out, if Polyaenus's account of the battle is to be believed. Polyaenus collected many snippets of information on warfare in his Strategems; some are known from other sources to be reliable, while others are demonstrably false. In the absence of other evidence, it is unclear whether his passage regarding Chaeronea is to be accepted or rejected. Polyaenus suggests that Philip engaged the Greek left, but then withdrew his troops; the Athenians on the Greek left followed, and eventually, when Philip held the high ground, he stopped retreating and attacked the Athenians, eventually routing them. In another 'stratagem', Polyaenus suggests that Philip deliberately prolonged the battle, to take advantage of the rawness of the Athenian troops (his own veterans being more used to fatigue), and delayed his main attack until the Athenians were exhausted. This latter anecdote also appears in the earlier Stratagems of Frontinus.

Polyaenus's accounts have led some modern historians to tentatively propose the following synthesis of the battle. After the general engagement had been in progress for some time, Philip had his army perform a wheeling manoeuver, with the right wing withdrawing, and the whole line pivoting around its centre. At the same time, wheeling forward, the Macedonian left wing attacked the Thebans on the Greek right and punched a hole in the Greek line. On the Greek left, the Athenians followed Philip, their line becoming stretched and disordered; the Macedonians then turned, attacked and routed the tired and inexperienced Athenians. The Greek right wing, under the assault of the Macedonian troops under Alexander's command, then also routed, ending the battle.

Many historians, including Hammond and Cawkwell, place Alexander in charge of the Companion cavalry during the battle, perhaps because of Diodorus's use of the word "companions". However, there is no mention of cavalry in any ancient account of the battle, nor does there seem to have been space for it to operate against the flank of the Greek army. Plutarch says that Alexander was the "first to break the ranks of the Sacred Band of the Thebans", the elite of the Theban infantry, who were stationed on the extreme right of the Greek battle line. However, he also says that the Sacred Band had "met the spears of phalanx face to face". This, together with the improbability that a head-on cavalry charge against the spear-armed Thebans could have succeeded (because horses will generally shy from such a barrier), has led Gaebel and others to suggest that Alexander must have been commanding a portion of the Macedonian phalanx at Chaeronea.

Diodorus says that more than 1,000 Athenians died in the battle, with another 2,000 taken prisoner, and that the Thebans fared similarly. Plutarch suggests that all 300 of the Sacred Band were killed at the battle, having previously been seen as invincible. In the Roman period, the 'Lion of Chaeronea', an enigmatic monument on the site of the battle, was believed to mark the resting place of the Sacred Band. Modern excavations found the remains of 254 soldiers underneath the monument; it is therefore generally accepted that this was indeed the grave of the Sacred Band, since it is unlikely that literally every member was killed.