The archive · Volume I

Ancient

From Kadesh in 1274 BC to the Catalaunian Plains in AD 451, each battle with its documented history, its record and the full lyric.

The oldest wing. Most of what is here I hold alone, because the people who could have written it down either could not write or were never asked.

Kadesh in 1274 BC is the first fight anyone recorded well enough to follow, and even that was carved by a king describing his own victory. Everything earlier than it exists because I was standing in it.

Seventeen centuries in this volume, and the afternoon barely changes. A line holds until it does not, and the ground takes whoever was standing on it.

The Tanagra TrilogyThe Ancient Chronicles

Battles, oldest first

  1. 1274 BC The Battle of Kadesh The Egyptian and Hittite wars in Syria Inconclusive. Both kings went home and carved the day as a victory on their own monuments
  2. 479 BC The Battle of Plataea The second Persian invasion of Greece Decisive Greek victory. Mardonius was killed, the Persian army broke and the second invasion of Greece ended
  3. 457 BC The Battle of Tanagra The First Peloponnesian War Spartan victory, costly enough that the road home was the whole of what it bought
  4. 457 BC The Battle of Tanagra The First Peloponnesian War Spartan victory, costly enough that the road home was the whole of what it bought
  5. 457 BC The Battle of Tanagra The First Peloponnesian War Spartan victory, costly enough that the road home was the whole of what it bought
  6. 331 BC The Battle of Gaugamela Alexander's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire Decisive Macedonian victory. Darius left the field alive and the Achaemenid Empire never recovered
  7. 326 BC The Battle of the Hydaspes Alexander's Indian campaign Macedonian victory, and Alexander's last major battle. Porus was reinstated as a satrap, and within months the army refused to march further east
  8. 216 BC The Battle of Cannae Second Punic War Decisive Carthaginian victory: the classic double envelopment
  9. 451 The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains Attila's invasion of Gaul Attila was checked and withdrew from Gaul. He invaded Italy the following year and died in 453

All battles, in order