Dr. Michael J. Taylor

First off, it is a great article....so if you have access to TAPA, go read it! TL;DL: The Greeks were quite hesitant to engage in pitched battle, because the consequences of defeat were grave.

One thing I've been thinking about in my own work on Roman imperialism is just how much it hinges on decisive set-piece battle: Zama, Cynoscephalae, Magnesia, Pydna. The Romans routinely take the risk, and it often pays off.

Good Roman generals seeking battle also sought it on their own terms. Scipio waited several days to lull the Carthaginians into complacency before making his assault at Ilipa; he waited perhaps 8 months before he could secure Numidian support to fight Hannibal at Zama

But even so, Roman generals seem quite prone to the high risk/high reward model. I suspect three basic things explain why. The first is demography. There is a reason why a lost battle is a disaster for a Greek polis: they don't have that many people!

Athens may have 50K adult male citizens, Sparta famously has only a few thousand full Spartiates. So if a battle goes badly, you are looking at extraordinary demographic damage.

But the Romans are very good at demographics; from 338 onward they take measures to expand the citizen body through annexation, so that there maybe as many as 350,000 adult male citizens by 218 BC. And half the army is recruited from Rome's Italian allies.

So a lost battle is bad, but simply not a disaster. It takes a LOT of lost battles to turn into a disaster, which happens to the Romans from 218-216 BC. Unsurprisingly, they stop fighting battles, at least against Hannibal, the so-called Fabian strategy.

But, a bit of demographic recovery....and we're back to battles.

Rome's political culture also likely plays a key role. We might think about the "discount rate" for a Roman general. For any general in the ancient world, there are big rewards for risking and winning a big battle. But, not every general has to fight a battle right now.

Take Spartan kings. They rule for life. If a Spartan king doesn't fight a pitched battle this campaign, well he literally has the rest of his life for another opportunity to arise.

Interestingly, Athenian strategoi aren't all that different. They can be re-elected again and again. I think 45 years is the record. So no need to force a battle this year...you will likely have plenty of opportunities ahead of you.

But a Roman consul has ONE shot. His one-year, and maybe a year or two afterwards as proconsul). After that, he has to wait ten years to run again. Which means a Roman general may be much more inclined to politically to risk a battle.

There may be one more, perhaps less important factor but still worth considering. One reason a battle is such a gamble for the Greek is that the phalanx are peculiarly vulnerable to sudden psychological collapse; mass panic.

Which means even a numerically superior, well positioned Greek phalanx can be suddenly and unexpectedly collapse--a big reason to avoid battle even if the odds are in your favor.

So if someone in the 1st maniple of the hastati shits his pants, maybe that maniple might freak out, but the principes and triarii are cool. Andre Du Picq observed before the Franco-Prussian war that this deployment likely insulated the Romans from psychological mass panic

So therefore the Romans may find battle a bit less of a gamble because psychological collapse happened less often, because generals had short-term incentives to risk battle, and because they had a huge pool of replacements.