The Battle of Taginae (552)

There was a hill there of small circumference that both armies would gladly have held, for the Romans had a strong interest in shooting the enemy from above, and the Goths, in the hilly terrain that I have already described, could attack the Roman army from the rear only if they moved forward on a country road that ran along right beside the hill.  Consequently, this point was necessarily of the greatest importance to both sides: for the Goths so that they could envelop the enemy during the battle and shoot at him from two sides, and for the Romans so that they could prevent this.  Narses acted before the enemy by selecting fifty men from an infantry regiment and sending them out before midnight to take and occupy this point.  They arrived there without encountering any of the enemy and established a defensive position.  A stream flows along in front of the hill close to the country road that I just mentioned and directly opposite the point where the Goths had set up there camp.  The fifty men halted there, closely pressed together to the extent that the narrow space allowed, forming a phalanx.

            Hardly had Totila become aware of them, at daybreak, that he prepared to drive them away.  He immediately sent out a squadron of cavalry with the order to drive them off as quickly as possible.  The cavalry charged upon them with much noise and shouting in order to overrun them in their first assault; but the fifty men, shield to shield in close formation, awaited the attack that the Goths, getting in each other's way in their rush, now attempted.  The wall of shields and spears of the fifty men was so thick ad tight that it brilliantly repulsed the attack.  At the same time, with their shields they made a great noise, scaring the horses while their riders recoiled from the spear points.  The horses, which became wild as a result of the close quarters and the noise of the shields and could move neither forward nor backward, reared up, and the riders could do nothing against this tightly formed band that neither wavered nor yielded, while they vainly spurred their horses on against them.  The first attack was therefore repulsed; a second one had no better success.  After several attempts they gave it up, and Totila sent forward a second