Qualla: Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC)

Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC): Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Roman legionaries reached down with their bare hands and grabbed the long pikes of the Pontic phalanx, wrenching them sideways out of position. They had been told they would be fighting slaves - the lowest insult Roman propaganda could find for the men Mithridates VI had armed and sent west - and according to Plutarch their fury at the indignity was what carried them through the press. They were 17,000 men, possibly fewer. The army facing them was at least three times that number, perhaps more, occupying the same plain where Philip of Macedon had broken the Greek world 252 years earlier.

Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC): Mithridates' War

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cristiano64, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mithridates VI of Pontus had spent a decade preparing the war Rome did not see coming. In 88 BC his agents organized the simultaneous massacre of perhaps 80,000 Romans and Italians living across Asia Minor in a single day - the Asiatic Vespers, an act of cold political violence t...

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Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC): The Plain Again

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Archelaus drew up on the broad plain west of Chaeronea with troops drawn from across Mithridates' empire: Macedonian-style phalanxes, Pontic missile units, Cappadocian and Galatian cavalry, and the corps of scythed chariots that were supposed to terrify the legionaries into break...

Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC): Hand to Hand

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pontic phalanx came on with sarissas - eighteen-foot pikes designed to keep an enemy at unreachable distance. Roman gladii were two feet long. The legionaries closed the gap anyway, crouched under the points, and worked their way into the phalanx with shields and short blades...

Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Chaeronea (86 BC): The Trophies of Sulla

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Sulla raised two stone trophies on the field, one on a hill called Thurium where the locals had guided Murena's flank attack. Archaeologists rediscovered fragments of it on Isoma Hill in 1990 - a square base of grey-white marble that once held an unfluted column topped with carve...

Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0