LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

The campaign of Alexander the Great in the Balkans... 421
of the Danube in that spring-early summer of the year 335 BC was of about
5,500 soldiers: 4,000 infantrymen (phalanx and light troops: bowmen,
slingers, javelin throwers) and 1,500 horsemen (probably both heavy and
light cavalry that is eJtai’roi and mounted scouts and skirmishers named
provdromoi and sarissofovroi). We know also from Arrian’s same text
(An.4.4.3-8) that the same tactics of using skin rafts was to be deployed
once again by Alexander against the scythians named sakā (Sacae/Savkai)
in Central Asia, forcing the river tanais-Iaxartes/orexartes (today Syr-
Darya). nevertheless, there is a strong difference between the two military
operations: in 335 BC Alexander made a surprising night crossing of the
Danube, in order to obtain the element of surprise in his daring attack against
the Getae; in 329/328 BC, when Alexander crossed the Syr-Darya, it was a
plain daylight assault and forcing the crossing of the river, action protected
by the “artillery fire” of the catapults on his side of the river and from the
arrows and stones of his archers and slingers from the spearhead/vanguard
rafts. over the Danube Alexander brought phalanx troops, probably also
guards, and of course cavalry; over the Syr-Darya he brought only cavalry,
bowmen, slingers, and his beloved unit of Agrianian javelin men.
returning to the Getae, one learns from Arrian (An.1.4.1-2) that
Alexander led his soldiers in person through wheat field so high that his
phalanx soldiers with their long spears (sarissae/savrissai) put down the
wheat in order to enable themselves and the horsemen behind them to
advance. this was just before daybreak; probably at dawn or anyway in
the early morning, he and his men and horses emerged from the wheat
field and Alexander ordered his phalanx (commanded here by nicanor)
in an enlarged square battle formation and his cavalry (under his personal
command) he concentrated on his right wing; that makes one suppose that
his left flank of the phalanx was protected either by the course of the river
or by his light infantry troops (slingers, archers, javelin throwers). the
Getae, totally surprised by Alexander’s audacity of crossing the Istros/Ister
(Danube), did not even resist to the first assault of the Macedonian phalanx
(a hedgehog or porcupine of spears) combined with the irresistible charge
of the Macedonian cavalry that used the hammer and anvil tactics devised
by philip II: the hammer cavalry beat the enemy into the anvil phalanx, thus
crushing any opposition. the Getae fled to a fortified camp or settlement
of theirs located at about a parasanga (measure unit of distance that was
equal with thirty stavdia that is about 5400 m/5.4 km, because a stavdion is
approximately 180 m; in Greek the term parasavggh” was coming from the
old persian word farsang) from the river and during the following night
took their womenfolk and children on their horses and disappeared into the