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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;brassnautilus, post: 2160783, member: 74300&quot;]Commanders are generally evaluated by their tactical abilities these days. They are&nbsp; further divided into specializations because no one seemed to be perfect across the whole tactical level. Someone that excels in certain conditions are usually not so good doing other things, so you have these &quot;great generals&quot; that are known for one thing or another. Guderian and Von manstein good with blitz and using tanks. Walter Model a defensive specialist, Rommel did the unthinkable with artilleries, etc etc. </p><p><br /></p><p>In ancient warfares there were much less tactics involved. Things more often than not happened on strategical level. Things were generally unpredictable on the tactical level, that plus fog of war (no ways of communicating battlefield situations clearly), I think the most important attribute for a success commanding career was actually luck. </p><p><br /></p><p>You have these people that were exceptionally lucky, such as Julius Caesar and Lucius Sulla. They knew common sense, trained their troops well and avoided unwindable battles, but a lot of times their victories came from sheer random draws. When Caesar made a mistake by marching his unit too early, the unit got tired, stopped and regrouped. They not only did not arrive too late at the battleline to support flanks of adjacent units, but ended up bringing fresh blood to the fight at the critical time, turning the battle around... Things like these weren&#039;t predicted by the commander...</p><p><br /></p><p>Same with Hannibal Barca. His frontline was routed during the battle of cannae, but happens he had positioned more experienced units on the flanks, which crested inward and ended up enveloping the Romans who were basically chasing routers...</p><p>I mean, he was good enough to capitalize on enemy&#039;s mistakes, sending in cav to take advantage of rigidity of the encircled roman formations, but the roman mistake was main cause of that loss, not Hannibal&#039;s reactions. </p><p>In the following years, Roman made tactical adjustments to deal with these shortcomings, and Scopio Africanus took advantage of such adjustments. Hannibal&#039;s success ended not because he got worse, but because Romans got better. </p><p>During battle of Pharsalus. Pompey&#039;s cav (elites, just like Caesar&#039;s counter parts) took 15 minutes to regroup and reform after routing Caesar&#039;s right flank, allowing Caesar&#039;s defeated cavalry to reorganize and re-attack (not to mention with such timing that they attacked right when Pompey&#039;s cav were moving out to flank Caesar&#039;s line). Meanwhile, the main lines battled for an hour (majority of roman line fights took less than 10 minutes), so fatigues, that the troops couldn&#039;t deal with what&#039;s left of Caesar&#039;s cav after all the mess on the flank. </p><p><br /></p><p>Outside of luck, I think the way one&#039;s army fights makes hell lot of difference. Things are often hard counters in ancient battles. Put it in other words, the way one&#039;s army fights was often developed precisely for the purpose of defeating its opponents. This has very little to do with the ability of an individual commander. </p><p><br /></p><p>Phalanx hoplites better than less organized spear levy, sword shield &gt; phalanx formations. Long reaching armor piercing weapons (halberd and polearms) made sword-shield obsolete, they were then at disadvantages against two handed sword units such as zwandlers. These developments helped unbalancing battlefields, along with many other things, so victory over superior number really isn&#039;t a good way to evaluate tactical ability of a general. </p><p>I for one, don&#039;t really believe Alexander was that great a tactician. He had qualities, whether bravery or sheer madness, he made these crazy charges that turned the tides (chaeronea being a prominent example), but I believe a lot of his later success came from having superior troops. Phalanx hoplite formations were difficult to beat without better trained soldiers. </p><p><br /></p><p>Some commanders were real tacticians, but can rarely being accounted for successful. Apparently tactical abilities get you some wins, but being lucky lets one go much further.</p><p>Gaius Marius and Scipio Africanus were tactical geniuses, but they could only be as successful as the amount of battles available to them <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie3" alt=":(" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /> Mark Anthony, on other hand, much more famous for doing very little successfully on his own.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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