The general crisis noted above befell the Mycenaean states in Greece. With their destruction came the end of many of the attributes of civilization and, perhaps for a time, even sedentary agriculture, initiating the Dark Ages, a period of more than three centuries of development culminating in the creation of the civilization of classical Greece. The beginning of the Dark Ages saw a precipitous decline in the number of inhabited sites and a wave of migration throughout Greece. Some of these migrants left the peninsula and made their way to the coast of Asia Minor. Others came together and began to reestablish communities in Greece and return to a more sedentary lifestyle.
Given the nature of the disruption at the end of the Bronze Age, little is known for certain about warfare during the majority of the Dark Ages. There are, however, glimpses in the works of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Although Homer’s epics are set in the world of the Bronze Age Mycenaeans, much of the descriptions of warfare and social organization more likely refer to conditions in the eighth century bce, when the Homeric tradition assumed written form.
The warfare described in the Iliad is best characterized as aristocratic. Battles centered on individual combats between the leaders of various contingents. These heroic warriors were carried into battle on chariots but then dismounted to engage in hand-to- hand combat. Such combat cannot be representative of the Mycenaean period, whose elite fought from chariots as their Near Eastern counterparts did (see Chapter 1), rather than using the so-called battle taxi (chariot) tactics of the Iliad. But the basic nature of warfare in this period can be inferred from Homer’s description. Homer undoubtedly knew that, like the horse in his time, the chariot of the Mycenaeans was a status symbol as well as a mode of battlefield transportation. It might be assumed that Homer merely linked the chariot rather than the horse to the heroes of the Iliad, knowing that his own aristocratic warriors rode into battle on horses and then dismounted to fight on foot. Moreover, the manner of combat was to fight at close quarters with spear, sword, and battle-axe, with body armor and shield for defense. Only infrequently, and with a certain amount of disdain, did the bow, the weapon par excellence of the chariot warrior, appear.
The Homeric epics also provide evidence for the value system of the Mycenaean warriors of the eighth century bce. These aristocrats were clearly status warriors, men motivated to fight in pursuit of individual glory and honor. This type of warfare was generally rather small in scale and was dominated by raiding in search of booty, which was awarded to individual warriors by their leaders as a sign of status. The most famous Homeric example involved Achilles’ disagreement with Agamemnon, who claimed for himself the woman Achilles took as a prize after sacking her town and killing her husband and brothers. This affront to Achilles’ honor led Achilles and his men, the Myrmidons, to withdraw from the fighting.
Figure 3.1 The Mediterranean and the Greek World
Achilles’ men showed that, although the aristocratic warriors were the dominant force on the battlefield, they were not the only ones present. Commoners participated in warfare as aristocrats’ retinues, overshadowed by the nobility but constantly present. Large-scale combat was part of the warfare described in the epics, showing eighth-century warfare in a state of transition in which the common man began to emerge as a factor on the battlefield. Within a century, the transformation of Greek warfare was complete as the community of the Dark Ages became the polis (pl., poleis) of Classical Greece.
The eighth century BCE witnessed a rebirth of Greek civilization. By the end of that century, the number and size of urban centers had grown, colonies were being founded throughout the Mediterranean, and Greeks were once again writing, having adopted and improved on the alphabet they borrowed from the Phoenicians. But the key development during this period was the transformation of Greek communities into poleis, or city-states (Figure 3.1).
The Nature of the Polis During the Archaic period (c. 800-500 bce), many of the Greek communities grew from villages to full-fledged towns. The Greek term for such an urban center is asty (pl., aste). Most aste had two major components: The first was a gathering place, or agora, where public meetings were held and where market activities could take place. The second was a place of refuge, often located on an easily defended position such as a hilltop. The term for such a hilltop fortification is acropolis; the Acropolis at Athens is the most famous of many such places. Because it was the safest place within the asty, those buildings that were important to the entire community, such as temples and, later, treasuries, often were located there. Not every village became an asty; some were absorbed within the community of a nearby asty, becoming part of the agrarian hinterland that supported the urban center. These villages and agricultural land were known as the chora. In some regions, such as Laconia, an urban center never developed.
There also emerged a sense of community that tied together the members of the asty and the chora into a new institution, the polis. What made the polis distinct from the asty was that it was not just a tangible collection of buildings but a collection of ideas. It was an urban center, true, but it also included its hinterland and people, and it was recognized as a political entity with an independent foreign policy—hence our reference to the polis as a city-state. Moreover, although we generally refer to poleis by place names such as Athens, Corinth, or Sparta, the ancient Greeks thought of the polis as the community of people. Thus, inscriptions refer not to a place but to a people: “the council and assembly of the Athenians decree . . . ” or the “constitution of the Spartans says . . . ” are the ways in which the activities, laws, and decisions of a polis are stated. In fact, the idea of the polis was so important to the Greeks that it became part and parcel of what it meant to be Greek, along with speaking the Greek language. This is illustrated by Aristotle’s famous statement that “man is by nature an animal intended to live in a polis.”
Along with the development of the polis, there was a definite growth in the population of Greece. Although most poleis were initially ruled by elites of a sort, descendants of the earlier Dark Age aristocrats, there was clearly an increase in the number of ordinary farmers who occupied substantial portions of the polis’s land. This social change would extend and complete the transformation in warfare already visible in the epics.
The armies that defended the poleis of classical Greece were markedly different from those described by Homer. Gone were the heroes who sought out battle with their peers in the opposing camp, rode to combat in battle taxis (chariots), and cut bloody lanes through the ranks of the common troops of their opponent’s retinue. They were replaced by an army of heavily armed foot soldiers called hoplites, who fought in closely packed, disciplined formations called phalanxes.
Hoplite Warriors in Phalanx Formation
Note the overhand thrusting mode of spear wielding and the piper, to whose playing the phalanx would march in time.
A Hoplite Revolution?
How did this transformation come about? Did it follow or cause political change in the polis? One school of thought holds that sometime in the eighth century BCE, new types of equipment were introduced, including a large round shield known as the hoplon, the enclosed Corinthian helmet, and a bronze cuirass that protected the upper body. This panoply was not well suited to the type of heroic warfare described earlier—the shield was too large and heavy to move about quickly, the enclosed helmet was detrimental to the vision required in individual combat, and so on. The new equipment was much more suited to fighting in cohesive groups whose effectiveness would, moreover, be enhanced by greater numbers. Thus, by about 650 bce, the farmers who made up an increasingly important portion of the population and who could provide the necessary arms, hopla, were allowed to join the new phalanxes. Having become crucial to the defense of the community, these men then demanded a greater say in the community’s decision making, breaking the aristocratic monopoly on politics.
This model is problematic, however, for both military and political reasons. First, the introduction of new military equipment without a preexisting doctrine on how to use it, especially in a premodern economy where doing so would be a risky economic venture, seems highly unlikely. What seems more reasonable is that a form of fighting involving closely formed ranks, and probably substantial numbers of men, was already in the process of replacing the earlier form of heroic combat, as we have already seen emerging in Homer’s descriptions of war. The arms in use then evolved to be more effective in the new style of fighting. Moreover, as men from non-elite families became more important to the state economically as well as militarily, we can assume that they asserted claims to an ever-increasing role in the political life of the community over time. The enfranchisement of these individuals during the sixth and fifth centuries bce should not then be seen as something new based on their new role in defending the state, but rather as the culmination and formalization of an interlocked socioeconomic, political, and military process that had been taking place for nearly 300 years. In other words, development of a coherent community led to effective infantry tactics as much as infantry warfare built communities. The social reorganization of some poleis into economically defined groups systematized and made more efficient the link between politics and military manpower.
The Cause of Wars
As the individual poleis consolidated their territories and their populations expanded, most of the arable land in Greece was claimed. This led to small-scale border clashes over disputed land. But notions of polis honor and the micro-imperialism of the tyrants who ruled many city-states in the sixth century also triggered wars. And even in this period when most wars involved individual poleis fighting each other, larger alliance systems could develop, as in the Lelantine War, which some historians see as the first Greek world war. In short, the sophistication of states and their external policies probably developed, not surprisingly, more quickly than the tactical forms of warfare and military organization.
Strategy and Tactics
One of the aggrieved states would begin to muster its force of hoplites. These men were not professional soldiers—they were farmers or merchants, rich and middling. They supplied all of their own equipment, which likely varied within certain basic parameters. They were thus limited in the type of campaign they could mount. The campaign could not be fought during critical periods of the agricultural year, nor could it last too long. Campaigns therefore occurred in the few months after planting and before the harvest. As there was no formal command or logistical structure, hoplites were expected to bring along all they would need for the campaign, limiting actual campaigning to a matter of weeks at most. The hoplites would muster at a prearranged place, often in the company of family and clan members. They might be accompanied by slaves to help them with their panoply (armor and weapons) and supplies. This force would then march off to meet the enemy phalanx. If the enemy were obliging, the two phalanxes would meet on level ground— perhaps agreed on in advance. If the enemy were not ready to meet in open battle, deciding instead to remain behind their walls, the hoplite force would begin to ravage the territory of the enemy, though how much actual damage such ravaging caused is a matter of debate. But physical damage is probably a moot point, as the effect was psychological: It was simply not acceptable to the members of a polis for the land belonging to their fellow citizens, members of their community, to be trampled by the feet of an invader—in effect, the individual honor of Homeric heroes had become the collective honor of the community. Only a strong personality such as Pericles, Athens’ leader during the Peloponnesian War, could restrain hoplite forces from giving battle after such an insult.
Once the two forces had arrived at the level plain that was to be their battlefield, the hoplites would begin to order themselves within their respective phalanxes. There was no formal organization for the armies of most poleis. Instead, hoplites would form up in ranks with their kinsmen and, perhaps, fellows from their neighborhood or village. It was these ranks that likely provided the context for the training hoplites received, which would not have been large-unit drill but rather small-unit and individual practice, often formalized in competitions at festivals. In general, a formation of eight or so ranks was most common. The formation would include men of various ages, ranging from very young to very old. Each might contribute in his own way: Young men could be deployed as skirmishers while the presence of older, experienced men tended to steady the ranks.
Forming up took time, and while waiting for the order to advance, many hoplites would take the opportunity to lay down their shields and remove their helmets—some men would even indulge in a prebattle cup of wine. Once both sides were fully deployed, the order would be given to advance. Overseeing deployment and putting the phalanx in motion was the only real role for officers in the world of phalanx warfare; generals led either by virtue of their social and political position or, in democracies, were elected.
There was little need to do more once the phalanx was in motion, as maneuvering tended to be minimal: The phalanx simply moved forward toward the enemy. The hoplites were drawn up in tight formation with each man’s shield overlapping that of the man to his left. This led the phalanx to drift to the right as it advanced, as each man tried to stay as close to his neighbor’s shield as he could. The men on the extreme right wing, with no one to protect their unshielded side, ended up willingly overlapping the enemy left.
As the two phalanxes drew close to one another, they surged forward into combat. At this point, reconstruction of hoplite combat is controversial. Some historians stress tight formations and shock: In this view, as the two lines came together, there was a tremendous tumult as spears struck shields—and sometimes snapped—and shields clashed together. After the initial hand-to-hand combat of the charge, the othismos—a pushing—would occur as men supported their comrades in the front ranks or stepped up to replace the fallen. Other historians think looser formations prevailed, with spears wielded in a variety of ways and the fighting resembling a mass of individual duels. In either case, the battle continued until one side began to give way. At that point, panic tended to spread through the losing side, and it would break ranks and run. Casualties were often highest in the brief pursuit that followed, as men abandoned shields and turned their backs to their enemies.
Battle in ancient Greece was thus a struggle between the hoplite forces of contending poleis. The great majority of the men involved fought in the ranks of the phalanx. In the early period of hoplite warfare, there is little mention of other forces. Occasionally, light infantry forces are mentioned, usually consisting of men who were not able to provide the equipment required of a hoplite. Cavalry is rarely mentioned until later in Greek warfare.
Historians have sometimes called hoplite battle ritualistic, and it is easy to see why. All of the forces fought according to the same set of rules and even at agreed-on sites. Ritual, especially in the form of religious ceremonies before battle, formed an element of the cultural context within which battle took place. After the battle, truces were declared, allowing the defeated to claim their dead and the victors to erect a trophy, dedicated to Zeus, displaying arms taken from the enemy casualties. While this is certainly a formalized, ritualized style of warfare, it was not ritualistic, a term usually used to refer to warfare in which the spilling of blood is minimized—combat often ending with the first wounds inflicted. Such was not the case in Greek warfare. Battles were quite bloody, although limited pursuit and immediate postbattle truces kept forces from being annihilated. Such battles did, however, settle disputes, at least for a time, and have led some historians to credit the Greeks with inventing the idea of decisive battle, which is allegedly central to Western warfare (see the Issues box “A ‘Western’ Way of War?”). But long-term solutions were, in fact, rare, and war usually broke out again in the near future.
The Spartan Anomaly
Sparta was the one city- state in Greece that deviated from the pattern of warfare described above. By the sixth century bce, the Spartans had established the only real standing army in Greece, training hoplites who can be classified as professionals. Sparta’s deviation from the norm stemmed from a war fought in the eighth century in which Sparta had defeated neighboring Messenia. Sparta had then reduced many of the citizens of that region to the status of serfs, called helots. The helots, who lived quite a distance from Sparta, had to turn over half of their produce to their Spartan masters. In the middle of the seventh century, the helots, emboldened by a Spartan defeat at the hands of rival Argos, rebelled against Spartan control. The uprising by the Messenians nearly ended in defeat for the Spartans, but they were able to put down the rebellion. Afterward, Spartan attitudes hardened, and the Spartan system of the classical period developed.
The Spartans reduced the helots to the status of slaves of the state and allotted land and helots to work it to each Spartan. As a result, rather than serving part-time as citizen-farmers, the Spartans could spend their time training for war, preempting the threat of another war with Messenia or Argos. The Spartans also made use of terror to control the helot population and make them more docile servants of the state. For example, the Spartans annually declared war on the helots so that Spartans could kill helots with impunity. Even more frightening was the work of the Krypteia, the Spartan secret police. All men under age 30 served for two years in the Krypteia. Under certain circumstances, most likely when a helot revolt threatened, these young men were sent out armed only with a dagger and a supply of rations. They were to kill every helot they met, and they sometimes sought out particularly strong helots to slay.
There is, without doubt, a “Western” tradition of philosophy (reading “Western” as short for western European and later American) dating back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. There are also associated intellectual traditions in mathematics, art, and natural philosophy or science, dating back to cultural traditions established largely in fifth-century Athens and the wider Greek world of which it was a part. Is there also a “Western” way of war whose roots reach back to the classical Greek poleis and their warfare? Yes, at least according to historian Victor Davis Hanson, who sees two elements of Greek warfare as foundational to so-called Western warfare. First, there is the civic militarism of warfare conducted by a population of citizen-soldiers whose participation in politics and the military is intimately linked; and second, there is the tradition of face-to-face combat aiming at decisive battle that made Western warfare more brutal but also more effective than non-Western warfare, which tended to be more indirect in its strategic and tactical approaches. Hanson claims that these two characteristics in combination, embodied not just in military practice but in a military intellectual tradition, produced a style of military organization and warfare that has had unmatched success in world history and has dominated the globe from the nineteenth century on.
Hanson’s thesis has received widespread attention. It is also, in the opinion of this book’s authors and an increasing number of other historians, fundamentally wrong. It can be criticized on a number of counts. Perhaps most important, unlike the intellectual traditions mentioned above (and despite Hanson’s claims for a military intellectual tradition), historical continuity between classical Greek warfare and modern Western warfare is impossible to demonstrate. Any tradition of civic militarism was already dying in Greece after the Peloponnesian War (see below), and despite a revival in different forms in Macedon and the early Roman Republic, it was definitively dead in imperial Rome. Medieval and early modern European warfare cannot possibly be characterized by civic militarism. Only with the American and French revolutions does a relationship between military service and citizenship reappear in Western history, and that revival was hardly inspired by Greek models.
Hanson is also wrong about the effectiveness of Western warfare, even ignoring the civic militarism argument. Western armies, putative heirs to the Greeks, lost battles and wars throughout history to foes of all sorts—only through a highly selective use of examples can Hanson maintain an illusion of unbroken military success for Western arms. Hanson’s selectivity extends to who counts as Western. Carthage, geographically west of Rome, does not, since Rome eventually won the Punic Wars (despite losing most of the decisive battles to Hannibal). In addition, Byzantium, direct institutional and cultural heir to Rome, replete with a continuous tradition of military literature, does not, presumably because civic militarism could only be applied to Byzantium laughably, and Byzantine strategic and tactical traditions stressed avoiding battle. (Of course, the most famous Roman military writer in the West, Vegetius, also advised avoiding battle, in which advice he is indistinguishable from the Chinese writer Sun Tzu.) Also, Byzantium eventually disappeared. Who counts as Western exposes the unexamined philosophical assumptions underpinning the Western label, assumptions that prove, on closer inspection, to be both untenable and often Eurocentric. If civic militarism (that is, an intimate connection between political and military participation) and brutal military effectiveness are the essential components of a Western way of war, then the nomads of the Eurasian steppes are the supreme examplars of that tradition (see Chapter 6 for more on nomadic warfare).
Finally, modern doctrine in the U.S. army—presumably, a Western force—stresses not face-to- face mass charges, as in Greek phalanx warfare, but indirection, weak spots, and mobility, the very strategies and tactics that for Hanson characterize inferior, non-Western ways of war. It is hard to see what, other than a politically motivated polemic, can be salvaged from Hanson’s thesis—certainly, nothing of value for serious military history.
Spartan Hoplites
The effectiveness of all Greek phalanxes was built on the intimate social ties that bound the men of the phalanx together; the Spartans added rigorous training to that social solidarity.
In order to create the army necessary to enforce this system, the Spartans began preparing young men for war virtually at birth. All male Spartan newborns were inspected by the elders of their tribes; those deemed unfit were thrown into the gorge of Mount Taygetus. Those deemed fit lived at home until age 7 and then entered the agoge, the Spartan way of life. They were taught to live on modest rations and to endure being left alone, and they learned dances that involved the weapons of a hoplite to accustom them to moving to the sound of the flute (phalanxes marched in time to flute playing). At age 12, training became more intense—boys were deprived of food and encouraged to steal rations, since this would prepare them to live off the land (stealing was fine—but those who were discovered were whipped for having been caught). To prepare for the rigors of campaigning, the boys received but a single thin cloak to be used year-round and slept on a bed of reeds. At age 18 or 20, the young men joined a mess of about fifteen men. They would live in the barracks with their messmates until age 30, at which time they could start their own households (they could marry at 20 but still lived in the barracks).
This harsh system allowed the Spartans to create a superlative hoplite force. The Spartans organized their phalanx into companies and regiments unknown to other phalanxes and had a more formal command structure than anything seen elsewhere in Greece. They drilled in special maneuvers that made the Spartan phalanx much more effective and flexible on the battlefield. And the harsh training gave the Spartans a fearsome reputation as doughty soldiers capable of enduring hardship in silence.
There was, however, a price for this system: a perennial shortage of manpower. Some of this was made up for by the inclusion in the Spartan army of perioikoi (literally, “those who dwell around”), members of nearby towns who had surrendered control of their foreign policy to the Spartans in return for protection. They governed themselves but followed Sparta’s lead in foreign affairs. Sparta also had allies organized into a confederation known as the Peloponnesian League, although Spartan control of the league varied greatly. The nature and extent of Sparta’s manpower problems have been debated—there was probably no shortage of actual Spartans, just of ones well off enough to contribute to the mess and thus serve in the phalanx—but it was severe enough that at times the Spartans promised helots freedom and rights in exchange for military service, often far from home.
The essential nature of Greek warfare remained relatively static until the early fifth century bce. At that point, the rise of Persia (see Chapter 2) forced the Greeks to reconsider their way of war. The Persians first made contact with Greeks living in Ionia in Asia Minor in the middle of the sixth century when the Persians conquered the Lydian kingdom. This then brought the Persians into conflict with mainland Greeks. The Persians’ ability to wage war on a massive scale on land and at sea presented a threat of a type no Greek state had ever faced before. By the early fifth century, the Persians’ more sophisticated form of warfare forced the poleis of the Greek peninsula to adapt or face conquest. Greeks had to cooperate on a more extensive level than they usually had before and to think in terms of strategic, operational, and tactical options that their method of warfare did not often require.
The Persian conquest of Ionia in the 540s bce seems not to have had an immediate negative effect on relations between the Greeks of the region and the Persians. Indeed, when Darius I launched a disastrous campaign against the Scythians in 514, it was Ionian Greeks who secured his bridgehead over the Danube, allowing the remnants of his army to cross back to safety. But in 499, the Ionians rose up against the Great King, undoubtedly because the autocratic nature of Persian kings led them to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ionian poleis, something that was antithetical to the Greeks’ concept of autonomy. Political intrigues at Miletus triggered the revolt; Aristogoras, its ruler, sought aid from mainland Greece when things went badly. He looked first to the Spartans, but they declined. He then approached Athens, whose close ties to the Ionians led them to send twenty warships. The rebels and their allies did well initially, even taking and burning the local Persian capital of Sardis. But shortly thereafter, the Athenians withdrew; the revolt came to an end in 493 bce.
The Battle of Marathon
In order to avenge the burning of Sardis and prevent further Greek interference in Persian affairs, Darius I ordered an expedition against those Greeks who had come to the aid of the Ionian rebels. After securing his control over Ionia through symbolic concessions while waging a diplomatic and psychological offensive throughout Greece, in 490 bce, he dispatched a force of some 600 ships (one-third warships and two-thirds transports) and about 25,000 troops. The Persian fleet sacked coastal cities and established a base at Marathon, where there was a secure place to beach their ships and an open strip of land that would allow the Persian cavalry to maneuver.
Apprised of the landing, Athenians debated their course of action. With requested Spartan aid delayed and uncertain, ostensibly for religious reasons, some argued in favor of staying within the city walls and preparing for a siege, but a pro-Persian faction in the city made waiting potentially treacherous. Others, led by Miltiades, a general who had fought in the Ionian Revolt and knew the Persians, successfully urged marching out to meet “the barbarian.” The Athenians took up a position blocking the main route to Athens. What happened next is disputed, but it seems that after several days of waiting in sight of each other— the Athenians for Spartan reinforcements, and the Persians for a signal from the pro-Persian faction in the city—the Persians sent perhaps 10,000 men, including most of their cavalry, in the fleet to Athens. Learning from Ionian deserters of the fleet’s departure, Miltiades decided to attack the remaining 15,000 Persians the next day, risking all on a quick victory and a forced march back to Athens.
To counter the broader frontage of the Persian line, Miltiades thinned his ranks in the center, opposite the best Persian troops; the center would fight a holding action while the wings crushed the weaker Persian levies. The Athenian army advanced at first light, breaking into a run at about 150 yards when the first volleys of Persian arrows fell amid their ranks. The fighting was fierce, but the heavier armor and weapons and the tight formation of the Greeks proved decisive on the flanks. The center was on the verge of breaking when the victorious wings wheeled in, inflicting heavy casualties among the Persian troops. After a valiant fight, they broke and fled to their ships. The Persians lost 6400 killed, an unknown number of prisoners, and seven ships; the remainder of the fleet and army sailed home on hearing the news. The Athenians lost a mere 192 hoplites.
The Great Invasion, 480-479 BCE
The victory at Marathon left the “men of Marathon” convinced of the superiority of the hoplite phalanx defending its polis and of the ability of Greece to resist another Persian invasion using traditional methods of warfare. The heavy armor and weapons of the citizen- soldiers had given them an advantage over the lighter armor, wicker shields, and light spears and bows of the Persians—at least when the hoplites were able to choose their ground and negate the threat of the Persian cavalry.
Back in Persia, however, Darius set the powerful administrative machinery of his empire in motion, not for a small expedition, but for a major invasion of mainland Greece. For a decade, the Persians mustered their near-limitless resources, provoking rebellions with their demands for manpower, ships, money, and supplies. Darius died in 486, but his son Xerxes completed the preparations, suppressing the revolts, constructing more than 1300 warships, and calling for nearly 200,000 troops. He established numerous supply depots in friendly territories and sent envoys to Greece demanding submission and spreading the word of the size of his forces. In Greece, reactions to this threat were mixed. Some Greek states considered submitting or collaborating, at times for reasons of internal politics. Other states, notably Athens and Sparta, made clear their intention to resist by executing Persian envoys. For most of the decade, few concrete preparations took place, but by 481, Athens was cooperating with the Peloponnesian League; they met at Corinth to discuss matters. Poleis from all over Greece sent representatives to discuss the pan-Hellenic security problem and to determine a common strategy. Though the Greeks did not have any structure to discuss strategy—there was no alliance high command—they managed to cobble a plan together with Sparta taking overall command, although the lines of authority were informal and there was no way to coordinate logistical support. The league also sent representatives to the powerful Greek tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily. He promised to send massive aid: 20,000 hoplites, 200 triremes, and 8000 cavalry and light troops. But they never appeared because of an attack in 480 by Carthage.
Only in Athens did more substantial planning take place, and it was the work of one man—Themistocles. Themistocles was a politician who saw that the Greeks could win only if they could effectively counter the sophisticated Persian war machine on land and at sea. To do this, the Greeks needed a substantial fleet. In the years after Marathon, Themistocles worked tirelessly to isolate those who opposed his plans and to change the government at Athens, putting more power in the hands of the board of generals on which Themistocles frequently served. When Athenian silver mines hit a massive new vein of ore in 483, Themistocles got the money appropriated to building a fleet of nearly 200 triremes.
Xerxes mustered his army at Susa in 481 and began the long march to the Greek mainland. In 480, he crossed over from Asia Minor into Europe at the Hellespont on a pair of pontoon bridges built on the hulls of 600 of his warships. His army was huge, but what does that mean? It may have numbered as many as 180,000-200,000, made up of a core of Persian troops, including the 10,000 Immortals who formed the imperial guard, and supported by provincial levies designed to advertise the size and strength of the empire. A fleet of perhaps 700 warships and numerous supply vessels supported the army. Xerxes demonstrated his religious tolerance by providing gifts to various Greek religious sanctuaries along the way. All of these activities were part of the Persians’ systematic propaganda campaign.
The Peloponnesian League met again to try to firm up their strategy. The dubious loyalty of many Greek poleis rendered several northern lines of defense politically and strategically untenable. A force of several thousand, led by 300 Spartans under King Leonidas and with their seaward flank supported by Themistocles’ fleet, defended the pass at Thermoplyae for three days before Xerxes turned their inland flank using a little-used path. The fleet was compelled to withdraw.
The Greeks now had another strategic decision to make. The league decided to defend the Isthmus of Corinth, but this left Athens open to attack. Themis- tocles, however, convinced many of the fleet commanders to meet at Salamis rather than retreat to the Isthmus. He planned to evacuate Athens and stake everything on a naval engagement, which, if successful, would also keep the Isthmus line from being outflanked. Many Athenians agreed to evacuate to islands including Salamis and Aegina. Themistocles was able to entice the Persian fleet into a general engagement in the narrow straits at Salamis and win a decisive victory, which tipped the balance of naval forces in favor of the Greeks (see Chapter 5 for details of naval warfare).
The victory at Salamis had major consequences for the outcome of the war. The Persian fleet, having lost perhaps 200 ships to 40 Greek triremes, withdrew to protect the pontoon bridges over the Hellespont. The Persians still had a formidable army, but the loss of the fleet forced some of the army to return home for lack of logistical support. As Xerxes had ravaged Attica and sacked Athens just before Salamis, he withdrew claiming victory and leaving the subjugation of Greece to his lieutenant Mardonius.
Mardonius had some of the best Persian troops, including many of the Persian regulars and the Immortals. But the size of his army was greatly reduced, and in 479, the Greek allies risked battle near Plataea, on terrain that allowed the Greek phalanx relatively secure flanks. The Persian cavalry caused serious problems for the Greeks until their commander was killed and his coordinated attacks came to a halt. After a hard fight, the allies prevailed. At almost the same time, the Greek fleet landed troops in Ionia and defeated Persian forces there. The Persian threat was ended.
Comparison of the Greek and Persian Systems
Two very different military systems based on two very different societies fought the Persian Wars. The Greek victory at Plataea once again showed that hoplites on carefully chosen ground had an advantage over more lightly equipped Persian infantry, lending weight to a modern perception of the Persians as militarily ineffective Orientals—a view that is based heavily on anti-Persian rhetoric by later Greeks writers and politicians. On closer examination, however, the Persians were, in fact, a more capable military, at least on the strategic and operational levels, and they influenced the Greeks in these areas. On the strategic level, the Persian Wars, especially the campaign in 480 bce, showed that the Greeks were virtually incapable of any sort of concerted action. In the wake of the war, the Greeks created more formal leagues with voting structures and war chests. On the operational level, the superiority of the Persians in planning and executing joint operations between land and naval forces influenced the Greeks greatly—even the Spartans recognized the need for a navy by the end of the century. Lastly, on the tactical level, though the hoplite phalanx would remain the force of choice on Greek battlefields, Persian archery and cavalry had exposed the tactical limitations of armies built exclusively on heavy infantry, however effective, and Greeks made increasing use of cavalry and light troops in the fifth century bce.
In the remainder of the fifth century bce, Greek politics in mainland Greece and in the Aegean polarized around two great leagues—the Peloponnesian League, headed by Sparta, and the Delian League, headed by Athens. The Peloponnesian League had existed for some time. The Delian League formed at first to carry on the war against Persia and to form a bulwark against Persian aggression. Initially, all its states contributed men, ships, and money to a war chest; but, over time, Athens monopolized the league’s military force, converting allied contributions of men and ships to money and making it clear that membership in the league was no longer voluntary. The Athenians then reinterpreted allied monetary contributions as tribute, and the league became their empire.
The empire was crucial to the further development of Athenian democracy. The money the Delian League generated for Athens allowed it to pay the lower-class rowers of the Athenian navy that held together the empire, whose members were largely on Aegean islands and in Ionia. Money and military participation for the naval class, too poor for hoplite service, were closely linked to full and continuing political enfranchisement. Imperially based democracy and the cultural self-confidence Athens had gained from fifty years of military success since the time of Marathon were a crucial part of the context for the developments in philosophy, history, drama, and art for which Athens is best known. In short, the arts of war and the arts of peace went hand in hand.
The Causes of the War
The growth of Athenian power troubled the Spartans. Sparta was the status quo power in Greece. It had led, at least in name, the allies in the war against Persia in 480-79 bce, and it was the dominant power for at least twenty years thereafter. But as Athens’ power grew, the Spartans’ position was jeopardized. Tensions were heightened by the obvious political difference between democratic Athens and monarchical Sparta, a difference central to the internal politics of many of both cities’ allies. Thucydides explicitly states that Sparta was motivated by fear when it began the great Peloponnesian War in 431. When Corcyra, an Athenian ally, and Corinth, a member of the Peloponnesian League, went to war in 431, mediation failed, both leagues lined up behind their allies, and the war began. Some still opposed war: The astute Spartan king Archidamus noted that Sparta might need to go to war with Athens, but not at this time—if it did, it would be a war Spartans would leave to their children. He was proved right, as the changes in Greek warfare latent since the end of the Persian Wars transformed the limited engagements of the sixth century into a long and bitter conflict in which the customs of earlier Greek combat went by the boards.
Strategy
The Peloponnesian War saw numerous actions both on land and at sea, and in these actions, the impact of the Persian Wars can be seen. Strategically, the Greeks had learned much from the war with Persia, and both alliances planned and executed complex strategies. The war’s complicated alliances dictated operations on several fronts at once. The Athenian strategy formulated by Pericles at the beginning of the war would have been impossible sixty years earlier: He succeeded in convincing the Athenians to abandon Attica and remain within the walls of Athens, her fortified naval arsenal at Piraeus, and the famous Long Walls that connected them, relying on the fleet for supplies. He hoped that after two or three years the Spartans would give up when they could not draw the Athenians into a hoplite battle. Unfortunately, Spartan resolve lasted longer than Pericles anticipated, and something of a strategic stalemate developed between Spartan land power and Athenian naval power.
Subversion of allies and conversion of neutrals became important tools in the conflict; the correspondingly increased need to securely hold allies in place led both sides, especially Athens, into increasingly brutal measures against revolts and resistance. Both sides also looked farther afield for ways to break the stalemate. This proved disastrous for Athens when its expedition against Syracuse in 415-13 resulted in a major defeat for both its fleet and its army. Still, Athenian forces recovered in the years after Syracuse and remained more than a match for Peloponnesian forces at sea. But Sparta brought Persian naval forces and money into its war effort in 408, and a series of naval victories combined with a near-constant land siege of Athens brought the war to an end in 404.
Operations and Tactics
On the operational level, joint operations of land and naval forces became commonplace during the war. An Athenian expedition to Pylos culminated in the defeat and capture of a Spartan regiment, for example. Some of these expeditions were massive in scale: The Athenian expedition to Sicily involved hundreds of ships and thousands of troops. Ultimately, it was the Spartan ability to build and maintain a fleet—with financial aid from Persia— that allowed her to defeat Athens, as noted above.
Tactically, the effects of the Persian wars showed in the increased use of both light infantry, often mercenaries, and cavalry. The importance of these troops in scouting and carrying out the more complicated operations that were becoming common played a role in their increasing employment. On more than one occasion, light infantry or cavalry had a part in defeating more traditional hoplite forces. One of the best examples comes again from the operation at Pylos, where Athenian light infantry whittled down the Spartans, who were unable to respond. The Spartans later used young hoplites called ekdromoi to run out of the phalanx and drive off the enemy skirmishers.
Armies and Society
The prolonged nature of the war increasingly forced states to maintain standing forces that they retained even when the war ended. Argos may have led the way by raising a force of 1000 hoplites maintained at state expense. Sparta’s Peloponnesian allies followed suit, copying Sparta’s uniformity by adopting standardized shield blazons. Such state troops were called epilektoi. In Athens, the ephebes, young men performing compulsory service, manned Athenian defenses on the borders of Attica. The most famous of the new professional units was the Sacred Band of Thebes, formed from 150 pairs of men, one older and one younger, bound by training and relations best seen, on today’s terms, as bisexual (the older men were often married). This elite unit spearheaded Thebes’ rise to military dominance in the 370s bce.
Professional forces allowed greater experimentation with troop types and tactics. Iphicrates in Athens regularized the use of light supporting troops around the phalanx. Most famously, Epaminondas of Thebes invented the use of an oblique line of battle for the Theban phalanx, advancing and heavily weighting one wing, led by the Sacred Band, and withdrawing the other, creating a crushing preponderance of force on one flank that allowed him to roll up the opposition. He died in the victory over the Spartans that cemented Theban dominance, however, and his lessons passed to Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander. In general, it was the fourth century bce that saw the consolidation and maturation of the lessons of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
Such sweeping changes in the nature of war—long conflicts involving numerous states, the creation of standing military forces, and the use of mercenaries— had social and political implications for a polis system built around citizen militias that were profound and often corrosive. It was no longer possible for poleis to rely exclusively on citizen-soldiers. Consequently, there was a fundamental change in who was fighting: Mercenary soldiers begin to replace citizen hoplites, and their numbers increased greatly. Of course, when they could not find employment at home, many sought a living abroad. The Persians, who were happy to hire Greek mercenaries to augment their forces, employed many Greeks, sometimes whole armies. In the fourth century bce, the Persians paid tens of thousands of Greeks to serve in their forces (see the Sources box “Xenophon”).
The social and economic effects of extended war could also appear in more immediate and deadly form: The crowded conditions in the city of Athens attendant on Pericles’ strategy contributed to an outbreak of plague in 430 that killed the great war leader himself.
To many Greeks, such changes undermined the foundations of the polis. A school of philosophy developed, pan-Hellenism, that advocated finding a leader who could direct the attentions of the Greeks toward their real enemy, Persia. This would allow for the liberation of the Ionians and perhaps the founding of new poleis to transform the mercenaries into citizen hoplites once more. No Greek was able to achieve the vision of pan-Hellenism. But on the periphery of the Greek world a leader was about to come to power who would.
The following passages from Xenophon’s Anabasis show the professional nature of Greek mercenary forces after the Peloponnesian War. It is also useful to note the Persian reaction to Greek troops. We can assume that the descriptions are relatively accurate since Xenophon was both a participant and skilled soldier.
He (Cyrus the Younger) held a review in the plain of both his Greek and native troops. He ordered the Greeks to fall in and stand in their normal battle order; each officer should see to the order of his own men. So they stood on parade in fours, with Menon and his men on the right wing, Clearchus and his on the left, and the other generals in the center. Cyrus first of all inspected the native troops, who marched past in bands and also formation; then he inspected the Greeks, driving in a chariot along their front with the Queen of Cilicia in a covered carriage. They were all wearing bronze helmets, red tunics and greaves, and had their shields uncovered. He rode along the whole parade and then stopped his chariot in front of the center of the phalanx and sent Pigres, his interpreter, to the Greek generals with the order to make their troops bring their spears to the ready and for the whole phalanx to advance. The generals passed on the order to the soldiers, the trumpet sounded and, with their spears at the ready, they moved forward. Then as the soldiers quickened their pace and shouted, they found that they were actually running towards their tents. All the natives were terrified; the Queen of Cilicia fled in her covered carriage, and the people in the market ran away leaving their stalls behind them, while the Greeks went laughing to their tents. The Queen of Cilicia was amazed when she saw the brilliant show the army made and its discipline, and Cyrus was delighted when he observed the panic which the Greeks caused among the natives.
The following passage is a description of the Battle of Cunaxa where Cyrus the Younger, although his Greek mercenaries were victorious, was killed.
By now the two armies were not more than between six and eight hundred yards apart, and now the Greeks sang the paean and began to move forward against the enemy. As they advanced, part of the phalanx surged forward in front of the rest and the part that was left behind began to advance at the double. At the same time they all raised a shout like the shout “Eleleu” which people make to the War God, and then they were all running forward. Some say that to scare the horses they clashed their shields and spears together. But the Persians, even before they were in range of the arrows, wavered and ran away. Then certainly the Greeks pressed on the pursuit vigorously, but they shouted out to each other not to run, but to follow up the enemy without breaking ranks. The chariots rushed about, some going through the enemy’s own ranks, though some, abandoned by their drivers, did go through the Greeks. When they saw them coming the Greeks opened out, though one man stood rooted to the spot, as though he was at a race course, and got run down. However, even he, they said, came to no harm, nor were there any other casualties among the Greeks in this battle, except for one man on the left wing who was said to have been shot with an arrow.
source: Xenophon, Anabasis, Book 1, ch. ii and vii, trans. Michael F. Pavkovic.