While some historians have attempted to include the psychological shock tactics in ancient Mediterranean warfare, there were a select few that attempted to give the topic more attention than others. One historian, Parth Bose, covered some psychological shock tactics of Alexander in his book, Alexander the Great’s Art of Strategy: The Timeless Leadership Lessons of History’s Greatest Empire Builder. He mentions psychological shock tactics not addressed by Tarn. Yet, this type of analysis is still waiting to be done for Greco-Roman military history.

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Ancient, as well as modern shock tactics undoubtedly have always had crucial effects on psychological developments throughout warfare. The psyche of troops on the battlefield depended largely on how their commander was able to maintain order, handle different situations, and prepare for battle. Troop morale was, and still is, extremely fragile, being swayed for better or worse with one simple act. Many of these factors also depended largely on the preparations made by army leaders before the battle began. Knowing that sheer force alone would not always give an army victory, every detail and possibility had to be examined to give a favorable outcome. Failure of an army to secure logistics or success of an army to raid an enemy’s logistics could easily give one army a morale advantage over another. I intend to explore the psychological tactics, also known as shock tactics, which were employed in the Ancient Mediterranean world through battles between the Greeks and Persians and the Wars of the Early Roman Republic, ending with an examination of how these shock tactics were employed within the battle of Zama.

Shock Force I: Chariots
The first mobile instrument to be used as a shock tactic in warfare was the chariot, which reached its zenith in the Hittite civilization and pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian civilization. Chariots revolutionized warfare, becoming the elite striking arm of most Iron Age armies. However, the chariot lost its psychological effectiveness before the Classical period, with regards to Greek and Roman warfare. The first of two attempts to use chariots that do occur in the time frame we are examining is that of King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela, in 331 B.C.E. These chariots had no effect on the battle, as the Macedonian army had developed efficient and effective countermeasures to deal with them. Darius had the chariots equipped with long blades (scythes), hence their name, “scythed chariots.” To be sure, these scythed chariots could cut a man in half, and an untrained army would have broken ranks at the first sight of their comrades being split in two. Unfortunately for Darius, his plan to use scythed chariots for shock tactics had no effect. Recognizing that chariots were more fragile and not as mobile as cavalry, Alexander’s center, the Macedonian phalanxes, assumed a wider formation, allowing the scythed chariots to ride past the first line and directly into the sarissa (long pike) of the second line. Horses and drivers were impaled, stopping the scythed chariots with ease and reducing their effectiveness in battle to nothing. The second attempt was by Antiochus the Great at Magnesia who, while fighting against the Romans, suffered the same result as Darius III. With these two battles as examples, we can safely say that scythed chariots and chariots in general, had lost their effectiveness and could no longer be used for shock tactics.

Shock Force II: Cavalry
Cavalry was first used effectively for shock by the Assyrian Empire, but was not adopted widely in Greece. Philip II of Macedon was the first to assimilate heavy and light cavalry into a Greek army. He also replaced the traditional seven-foot spear with the longer nine-foot spear (counter-weighted for added balance) that could easily outrange the spears of enemy cavalry. This reformation revolutionized warfare in the Greek world and later assisted Philip’s son, Alexander, with the conquest of the Persian Empire. Giving credit to Philip for successfully integrating cavalry into his army, we can certainly give Alexander credit for perfecting its use as a shock tactic. The most common use of cavalry in the ancient Mediterranean world was against other cavalry. The goal was to engage enemy cavalry with your own, with the hope that that your cavalry’s superiority would drive the enemy cavalry from the field. This would leave the infantry of both armies to fight until the winning cavalry flanked and routed the enemy infantry. This flanking maneuver was the most successful way of using cavalry as a shock tactic. The danger in this was twofold. First, a commander was gambling that his cavalry would defeat the enemy’s, and, second, that his cavalry would not pursue the enemy cavalry too far, lest it take itself out of the main battle at the critical moment. In 216 B.C.E., Hannibal Barca had successfully used this tactic to rout a much larger Roman force. The battle that not only showed the Romans the value of cavalry, but also demonstrated to a young, up-and-coming Roman leader named Publius Cornelius Scipio how to use this tactic.

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