Battle of Raphia

In 217 BC, the armies of two of the great Hellenistic kingdoms clashed at Raphia, near Gaza, in one of the largest battles of the ancient world. On one side stood Ptolemy IV of Egypt, and on the other Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, who was trying to seize the region of Coele-Syria, roughly modern Lebanon, Israel and southern Syria, from Egypt. Each side fielded around 70,000 men, along with war elephants. Antiochus had larger Indian elephants, while Ptolemy's army used smaller African forest elephants, which were driven back in the fighting. Antiochus won on his own wing and chased the defeated enemy too far, as Demetrius had done at Ipsus. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic phalanx defeated the Seleucid center. The battle was notable because Ptolemy had trained around 20,000 native Egyptians to fight in the phalanx for the first time, and they played a key role in the victory. Egypt kept Coele-Syria for the time being. The confidence the Egyptian soldiers gained contributed to later native revolts against Ptolemaic rule.