Phalanx: Did you mean...?

The Battle of Thymbra (547 BCE) was the decisive engagement between Cyrus II (the Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE) of Persia and Croesus (r. 560-546 BCE), King of Lydia. The Persian victory ended the Kingdom of Lydia, which was then absorbed into...

Brennus (c. 390 BCE) was the Gallic war chief of the Senones who sacked and occupied Rome in 390 BCE. Nothing is known of him outside of the accounts given of this event which immortalized him as coining the phrase, “Woe to the Vanquished”...

For almost a decade, Alexander the Great and his army swept across Western Asia and into Egypt, defeating King Darius III and the Persians at the battles of River Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. Next, despite the objections of the loyal army...

The Battle of Poitiers aka the Battle of Tours took place over roughly a week in early October of 732. The opposing sides consisted of a Frankish army led by Charles Martel (r. 718-741) against an invading Muslim army under the nominal sovereignty...

After the Gauls defeated the Romans at the confluence of the Tiber and the Allia rivers, the Gauls marched on to Rome. In late July 390 BCE, the undefended city fell to the invaders to be burnt and sacked. Only on the Capitol Hill, did a...

In ancient Lacedaemon, as in all enduring political communities, there was a symbiotic relationship between the form of government chosen, the way of life that this form of government fostered, and the grand strategy that the community gradually...

The battle of Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE concluded the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE) and consolidated Rome's power in the Mediterranean, finally resulting in Greece becoming a province of Rome in 146 BCE. This engagement is sometimes...

The Battle of Colmar (58 BCE): one of the first battles of the Gallic War, in which Caesar defeated an army led by the Germanic leader Ariovistus. In 58 BCE, Julius Caesar had invaded Central Gaul. The pretext had been the plan of the Helvetians...

Winning battles and forging empires was not just about numbers but also the quality of the troops at any commander's disposal. The best-trained, best-equipped and most experienced fighters could be moulded into devastating units that could...

At the time of Philip II’s death (reign 359–336 BCE), the Kingdom of Macedon had emerged as the dominant power in the Hellenic world. Through sustained military reform, most notably the development of the Macedonian phalanx, and a combination...