Inspired by the “Battle of the Bastards” episode from Game of Thrones, we are looking at ancient accounts of bodies piling up during battle.
In the search for piles of bodies in ancient battles, the analysis of Diodorus’s account of Leuctra is disappointing for its unreliability. Worse, it likely means Diodorus’s account of Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus may just as well be full of “rhetorical commonplace.”
As Alexander’s army fights the Persians, Diodorus tells us
The fighting qualities of Alexander’s group were superior, however, and quickly many bodies lay piled high about the chariot. No Macedonian had any other thought than to strike the king, and in their intense rivalry to reach him took no thought for their lives (17.34.4).
The most remarkable part of this ancient account is that it gives us some sort of measurement. Given that Diodorus was writing hundreds of years after the battle, he relied on the account of Cleitarchus, an Egyptian historian writing no earlier than 280 BC. While he did not attend any of Alexander’s expeditions, Cleitarchus had access to those that did. ((N. G. L. Hammond, Three Historians of Alexander the Great: The so-called Vulgate Authors, Diodorus, Justin, and Curtis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 51; W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great Volume II: Sources and Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 15, 43.)) Thus, it is possible that “many bodies lay piled high about the chariot” came directly from a historian closer to the event.
Either way, the description reads as though the bodies did not cover the chariot. So the historian–Cleitarchus or Diodorus–might have envisioned a pile anywhere from 3 to 4 feet high.
Unfortunately, Cleitarchus’s history is lost to us save for what has been preserved by the likes of Diodorus. The issues in Cleitarchus’s account are numerous. The order of battle and even topography clashes with sources that we know were present for the battle. As the late N. G. L. Hammond put it, Cleitarchus “waved his fairy wand” to change the topography, provided action that was “ludicrous fantasy,” and is “worthless” to historians. ((N. G. L. Hammond, Alexander the Great: King, Commander and Statesman, 3rd. ed. (London: The Bristol Press, 1989), 110.))
Regardless, he envisioned bodies piled high on a battlefield.