Mithridates the Great by Philip Matyszak Read Free Book Online

with its wealth and large iron reserves could afford to be generous in this regard.
    On rough ground, where the phalanx feared to tread, it was the job of the peltast to rush in. Because they required rather less training than the rigorously drilled phalanx, peltasts were often recruited from semi–Hellenized tribes, or newly levied citizens. Because their mobility was the peltasts’ prime asset, it was also easy for the peltasts to rush out again if they encountered opposition stronger than they could handle. They wore minimal armour, and carried a spear twice as tall as themselves (so about 11 feet), the better to deal with cavalry. (Cavalry, though useless against formed troops, was death on hooves to skirmishers and troops which had broken ranks.) The prevalence of bowmen in oriental armies meant that peltasts also needed large, light shields and metal helmets. By contrast, the phalangites had discovered that raising their pikes tobetween forty-five degrees and vertical managed to deflect a surprising amount of incoming arrows, and they therefore coped with just a minimal shield strapped to a forearm.
    Dealing with enemy bowmen, as opposed to enduring them, was the job of psiloi . These were very lightly-armed, highly mobile troops, often armed with missile weapons themselves. The close ties between the Mithridatids and Crete meant that Pontus always had a good supply of Crete’s famous mercenary archers on tap, and within Pontus itself, it was a rare shepherd who was not proficient with a sling.
    A special class of mercenaries were the Galatians. Thanks to their warrior culture, the Galatians were usually happy to fight against anyone, and between themselves if no-one else was available. The wealth of Pontus meant that the Galatians could combine business with pleasure, and large numbers of them were usually available to fight under the Mithridatid standard. It appears that the Galatians still fought in traditional Gallic style. Though skilled metal workers, all but tribal leaders generally fought naked. This is less silly than it seems when one considers that many deaths in ancient battles resulted from dirty clothing being forced into the bloodstreams of the wounded. Slashers to a man, every Gaul who could afford it wielded a long sword which some did not even bother putting a pointy end on to. The Gauls made excellent shock troops, as it took experienced opponents to stand firm against a headlong charge by hundreds of large sword-wielding warriors who wore nothing but spiky lime hairstyles and ferocious expressions. The bad news was that the Galatians had only a rudimentary grasp of military discipline, and tended to regard setbacks as an invitation to go home.
    The perfect mixture for an ancient army was generally regarded as about fifty-five percent heavy infantry, twenty percent light infantry and skirmishers and twenty-five to thirty percent cavalry. Not many ancient armies managed to get to the thirty percent cavalry mark, but thanks in part to the south Pontic Cappadocian plains and the plains of Lycaonia, the Pontic army managed this without difficulty. Because horsemen in the ancient world fought without stirrups, any attempt to charge at high speed with a couched lance would have propelled the lancer backward over his horse’s buttocks on impact. Therefore cavalrymen fought with swords or with long spears which they wielded at shoulder height. The exceptions were heavily-protected horsemen known as cataphracts (literally ‘covered-overs’), who were virtually an armoured phalanx on hooves. However, Mithridates seems not to have made much use of this innovation in warfare.

    His cavalrymen still varied as much as did the infantry. From the very east of the country, Armenia Minor provided both armoured heavy cavalry able to stand and fight all but heavy infantry, and light horse archers, capable of emulating their Parthian cousins and firing over the rumps of their horses even as they galloped away from