Battle of Tigranocerta - Disposition and Engagement

Disposition and Engagement

The two armies converged toward the Batman-Su river slightly to the southwest to Tigranocerta. Tigranes' army was positioned on the east bank of the river while Lucullus, who had left a rear guard to continue the siege of the city, met the Armenian army on the river's west bank. The Armenian army was formed of three sections. Two of Tigranes' vassal kings led the left and right flanks while Tigranes led his cataphracts in the center; the rest of his army stood in front of a hill which Lucullus would soon exploit to his advantage. Roman troops at first attempted to dissuade Lucullus from engaging in battle since October 6 marked the day of the disastrous battle of Arausio, where the general Quintus Servilius Caepio and his Roman army were delivered a crushing defeat by the Germanic Cimbri and Teuton tribes. Ignoring his troops' superstitious beliefs, Lucullus is said to have responded, "Verily, I will make this day, too, a lucky one for the Romans." Cowan and Hook suggest that Lucullus would have deployed the Romans in a simplex acies, that is to say a single line, so making the frontage of the army as wide as possible as a counter to the cavalry. He took several of his troops downriver, where the river was the easiest to ford, and at one moment, Tigranes believed that this move meant Lucullus was withdrawing from the battlefield.

Lucullus had initially decided to make a running charge with his infantry, a Roman military tactic that minimized the amount of time an enemy could utilize its archers and sling infantry prior to close combat engagement. However, he decided against this at the last moment when he realized that the Armenian cataphracts posed the greatest threat to his men, ordering instead a diversionary attack with his Gallic and Thracian cavalry against the cataphracts. With the cataphracts' attention fixated elsewhere, Lucullus formed two cohorts into maniples and then ordered them to ford across the river. His objective was to outflank Tigranes' cataphracts by circling counterclockwise around the hill and attacking them from the rear.

Lucullus personally led the charge on foot and upon reaching the top of the hill, he yelled to his soldiers in an effort to buoy their morale: "The day is ours, the day is ours, my fellow soldiers!" With this, he gave special instructions to the cohorts to attack the horses' legs and thighs, since these were the only areas of the cataphracts which were not armored. Lucullus charged downwards along with his cohorts and his orders soon proved fatal: the lumbering cataphracts were caught by surprise and, in their attempts to break free from their attackers, careened into the ranks of their own men as the lines began to collapse.

The infantry, which was also made up of many non-Armenians, began to break rank and confusion spread to the rest of the body of Tigranes' army. While the great king himself took to flight with his baggage train northwards, the entire line of his army gave way. The casualties reported for Tigranes' army are immense, with estimates given from 10,000 to as many as 100,000 men. Plutarch says that on the Roman side, "only a hundred were wounded, and only five killed," although such low figures are highly unrealistic. Cowan and Hook, while considering these losses to be ridiculous consider it to be clear that the battle had been won with disproportionate losses.