Battle of Pynda
Dated: May 11, 2003.
A contribution from Pascal B.N.A. of France.
Webmaster's notes: "This interesting battle puts to use some of our figures from 2 of our Ancients series. Our Alexander the Great vs. Persians series is dated circa 330BC, and our Republican Roman vs. Carthaginians series is dated during the early 200s BC. This battle, piting the Republican Romans against the Macedonians is dated 168BC.
Interesting facts:
The Roman general Lucius Aemilous Paullus' father was killed at Cannae by Hannibal.
The Macedonian King Perseus was a 2nd generation loser to the Romans. His father, Philip V also lost to the Romans.
Divergent destinies: Rome was already a world power with many victories under her belt. There would be many more. Future victims would include kingdoms yet to be discovered and even kingdoms not yet in existence at this time. Macedon, with memories of Alexander the Great being 150 years old was to become a Roman province after Pynda.
The famous historian Polybius was captured by the Romans after Pynda and went on to become our best source of Republican Roman militaria.
Roman forces included 2 legions, plus allies from Italy, Pergamum (Western Asia Minor), and Numidia (Africa) - the coalition forces of their day (or the Axis of Evil from the Macedonian point of view). The Romans also had the elephants, so the following pictures show the elephants on the wrong side.
Macedonian forces were composed of phalangites, peltasts and cavalry.
This was a superficially a battle of pike vs. pilum or legions vs. phalanx, and the Romans won. Technically the Romans won because their maniples were more flexible and were able to infiltrate the phalanxes over broken ground, but arguably the Macedonians lost because of poor generalship - after all Alexander the Great won his battles with the same tools. Armchair generals please feel free to put in your 2 cents."
Many thanks to Pascal.