Chapter 5
In This Chapter
● Outfitting warriors with armour and weapons
● Training like a Spartan
● Fighting strategically on land
● Battling at sea
Timokritos was bold in war. This is his grave.
Ares the war-god spares the coward, not the brave.
-Anakreon of Teos (circa 550 BC)
Like death and taxes, war is something that seems likely to always be part of being human. Even today, with much of the world at peace, wars are still going on all around. For the luckier individuals and nations, war is something experienced from afar through newspapers, TV reports, and re-creations in films. You might know people affected by war - but for many, war is not a close-to-home experience.
In ancient Greece, however, the situation couldn’t have been more different. War was essentially ever-present. Depending on who you were, war was either a threat or an opportunity for glory. If you were male then, whatever your social status, your involvement was likely to be brutal, painful, and right in the thick of battle. In ancient Greece warfare was upfront and personal.
In this chapter I cover the basics of Greek warfare on sea and land, focusing on the experience of war and warfare in ancient Greece from the end of the Dark Ages (around 750 BC) through to the rise of Macedonia (around 350 BC).
I describe the activities and equipment involved in war, how various combat tactics developed, and why the Spartans (see Chapter 4) became famous for being so good at fighting.
I examine specific techniques as they relate to particular battles or time periods in other chapters. For example, Chapter 8 offers details on siege warfare, which was critical during the Peloponnesian War and when Athens was under siege by the Spartans.
Joining the Fight
When a war took place in ancient Greece it involved all men of fighting age. Most modern states have armed forces to fight wars for them, and fighting, patrolling, and eventually keeping peace after battle are these people’s jobs. But in ancient Greece, responsibility wasn’t divided up this way. If a town was attacked, it had to defend itself, and that meant that every male citizen who was old enough (and not too old) to hold a sword took part in the effort. Indeed, officers and (in the case of Sparta, kings) were required to fight in the front line in just the same way as common men. War was a great leveller in ancient Greece. The experience on the battlefield was the same for every man, regardless of station.
In short, the vast majority of the city states that I write about in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 defended themselves by using a citizen militia, an army made up of the male citizen population and led by officials chosen by the state or elected by the people. For example, if you wanted to stop somebody from attacking your farm and stealing your property, you had to protect it yourself. The only exception to this citizen-led system was Sparta, a city-state whose whole system was built around constructing and maintaining a fearsome standing army (a group of men who had no other responsibility than war, a professional force). See the later section ‘Living for Killing: The Spartans’ for more info.
One fascinating aspect of ancient Greek warfare is how little it changed over many centuries. Yes, tactics improved, as did the calibre of weapons, but if you took a soldier from 750 BC and put him in the middle of a battle with Alexander the Great in 350 BC, the basic experience was amazingly similar - even though 400 years had passed. So what I write about arms, armour, and tactics in this chapter goes for much of the historical period from 750 BC to 350 BC. (Of course, I make mention of any changes and differences whenever appropriate.)
Fighting like a Homeric hero
Ancient Greek males had to learn to fight and use weapons. Much of this was done through physical exercise in the gymnasium (see Chapter 16) as nearly all Greek sports were developed out of practising the skills needed to fight in war.
In particular, the Greeks considered Homer's Iliad, the epic poem of the Trojan War, a mine of information on all manner of subjects (for more on The Iliad and its influence, see Chapter 20). The only problem with using this great work of literature as a training manual is that the characters are a lot to live up to. Indeed, the Greek and Trojan warriors in The Iliad fight like superheroes - battling for hours and laying waste to scores of enemies, with seemingly no consideration for tactics, formations, or obeying orders.
In this typical scene from The Iliad the Greek hero Patroclus is tearing into the Trojan fighters.
Patroclus kept on sweeping in, hacking them down, making them pay the price for Argives slaughtered. There Pronus, first to fall - a glint of the spear and Patroclus tore his chest left bare by the shield-rim, loosed his knees, and the man went crashing down.
In the next thirty lines of the poem Patroclus kills another ten warriors in equally unpleasant ways without even stopping to pause for breath!
Although the weapons and armour described by Homer are similar to those the ancient Greeks actually used, everything else was very different. In particular, real-life battle focused much less on one-to-one combat, and those lengthy introductory speeches before a fight began probably didn't happen.
Nonetheless, the tales in The Iliad and indeed those elsewhere in mythology were a great influence on later Greeks because they regarded the nobility and skill of the warriors mentioned as the ultimate example of what they should aspire to.
Dressed to kill: Hoplites
Ancient Greek soldiers were referred to as hoplites. Hoplites were standard infantrymen who fought in formation at a battle (see the section ‘Getting tactical: Hoplite formations’).
By far the most important development in Greek warfare was the discovery of iron in approximately 1200 BC. Prior to this, all metal weapons were made of bronze. Iron is tougher, more hard wearing, and incredibly strong in comparison. When wielded by a powerful warrior, an iron sword could literally split a bronze weapon in two.
By the eighth and seventh centuries BC, the hoplite’s equipment (or panoply) had become fairly standard, as Figure 5-1 shows.
Figure 5-1: A Greek hoplite in full armour.
Armour
Ancient Greek armour was heavy but not as heavy as the gear worn by an armoured knight from the Middle Ages. The Greek soldier needed to be able to run fast and be as flexible as possible, so he kept his armour to a minimum.
The most important piece of armour was called the cuirass. This piece protected a soldier’s body but left his arms free to fight - rather like wearing a sleeveless t-shirt but much, much heavier.
The cuirass was made in two separate ways. One was to stitch together many layers of canvas and linen to fashion a kind of rigid shirt with strips of bronze sewn in to reinforce it. The other, much more expensive way was to cast the cuirass completely in bronze, muscled to fit the shape of the body.
The legs were protected by greaves, which were made of bronze and cast so that they fit the legs of the soldier without using any kind of straps. The greaves protected the front of the leg between the knee and ankle with a partial covering around the calves. Soldiers wore normal sandals with no extra armour or protection.
Helmet
Helmets were bronze, and many different styles existed. The most common was the Corinthian (see Figure 5-1), which had an opening at the front with a long strip of bronze as a nose-guard. Many soldiers wore a horse-hair crest on top of their helmet but this was purely for display rather than protection.
The arms trade
For the ancient Greeks, a complete panoply (all the armour and weapons I write about in this section) was really expensive. Every soldier had to buy his own panoply, and looking after this equipment was important. Only the very rich would have had somebody to tend to their equipment for them in the way that medieval knights did. For everybody else their panoply was their own concern and many men used armour and weapons that their grandfathers and fathers had bought because the cost of replacing these items was so great. Hence, the panoply that you owned in ancient Greece gave a good indication of the class you came from.
Anybody who owned a full hoplite panoply would've been from the wealthier middle or upper classes.
Although arms and armour were expensive, the poet Archilochos of Paros (circa 650 BC) made it clear what was most valuable to take from the battlefield:
I don't give a damn if some Thracian ape struts, proud of that shield that the bushes got. Leaving it was hell, but in a tricky spot. I kept my hide intact. Good shields can be bought.
Shield
The shield was known as a hoplon, and that’s where the hoplites got their name. By the seventh century BC, the typical shield was about 1 metre (3 feet) in diameter. It was round in shape, made of wood and reinforced with bronze. The inside most likely had two brackets. The soldier put his arm through one bracket and gripped the other.
Sometimes soldiers hung leather curtains from the bottom of their shields to use as a barrier against rocks, arrows, and missiles. The shield would’ve been really heavy, probably about 8 kilograms (17 pounds).
Weapons
Hoplites carried two main weapons into battle:
Spears: These were the most important weapon and quite big and cumbersome - about 3 metres long, made of wood, and tipped with iron at both ends (refer to Figure 5-1). Given their size, they weren’t thrown like javelins (covered in ‘Cavalry’ later in this chapter) but used for thrusting and defence.
Swords: These weapons were quite small, only around 60 centimetres long and would have only weighed about 1.5 kilograms but they were very deadly at close quarters. They were made of iron with a bronze handle and carried in wooden scabbards. Another version of the sword, called a kopis meaning ‘chopper’, was longer, heavier, and used with a slashing motion - usually from horseback.
Considering other troops
Although hoplites dominated warfare in ancient Greece, other types of troops took part in battle.
Cavalry
Cavalry weren’t a big feature of early Greek warfare, partly because providing and paying for horses was incredibly expensive. The endeavour was also very risky. The Greeks rode without stirrups and mostly only used cloths as saddles. Ancient Greek cavalry were excellent horsemen; they needed to be because their main weapon was the javelin - actually several javelins - that they threw while on the gallop. A cavalry soldier didn’t carry a shield or wear any armour. His only covering was a broad-brimmed hat that helped keep the sun at bay.
By the time of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), cavalry had become a vital part of the Greek war machine. For more on how the cavalry developed, see Chapter 10.
Light troops
Sometimes the Greeks used lightly armed troops for special missions, like scouting and ambushing the enemy. These troops were called peltastai because they carried the light shield called a pelte. The pelte was usually a goatskin stretched in a crescent shape across a wooden frame. It was incredibly light and only really useful for deflecting small missiles from the peltastai. Peltastaiwere most often armed with a small bundle of javelins, which they used strictly for hit-and-run operations.
Archers
Archers appear a lot in Greek mythology. The hero Odysseus was famed for his skill with the bow, and arguably the most famous of all Greek warriors, Achilles, was killed when he was hit in the heel by the Trojan archer Paris. It was this story that gave rise to the expression ‘Achilles heel’ because it was the only vulnerable point on his body. The most famous Greek archers were from the island of Crete.
Greek archers were very lightly armed. The bows themselves were made of cedar wood with animal sinew used for the string. The bow would usually be the only weapon carried by the archers because it was vital that they could move quickly as the battle changed, so they could attack fresh targets. Despite this, archers weren’t often used in Greek battles. The Greeks felt that it was more honourable to fight face to face and archers were sometimes of little use when a heavily armed phalanx (see the following section) was fighting in formation. Some Greek armies did use archers that hailed from Scythia, the large region to the north of Asia Minor. Athens kept a troop of Scythian archers, which Peisistratos (refer to Chapter 4) introduced. These archers were used mostly as a police force and not in battle.
Getting tactical: Hoplite formations
Films such as Troy (2003) and 300 (2006) can make it seem as if a Greek battle just involved everybody charging at each other in the midst of a general punch up. This was far from the case. Greek battles were fought along rigid tactical lines that meant each man knew exactly what his job was.
The hoplite infantrymen were dominant in ancient Greek warfare at the expense of all other types of fighting because they were so effective. The strength of hoplites came down to the shield. The hoplon shield was lighter than the larger shields that soldiers had used previously. As a consequence, men began fighting closer together in battle, and the hoplite phalanx developed - a powerful battle formation in which the hoplites lined up in files (see Figure 5-2), probably eight men deep.
In the phalanx the troops set out in an open formation, marching or jogging alongside each other with weapons sheathed until it was time for battle.
When a battle began, these open formations closed up, so that each man occupied only about 1 metre of space. Moving close together meant that the right-hand side of each man was pretty much covered by the shield of the man to his right - and so on all along the line. Tightening their formations produced the effect of a wall of shields that the hoplites then thrust their spears over or in between. Figure 5-2 shows how close the men were to each other and how they covered the man to their left.
Figure 5-2: The hoplite phalanx in battle formation.
Let battle commence!
Hoplite tactics were very regimented, reducing the role of the individual to that of a cog in a well-oiled machine. This was a complete departure from the super-heroes in Thelliad (see the sidebar ‘Fighting like a Homeric hero’ for more points of departure).
After battle began, the role of each hoplite soldier was to push forward against the man in front. If the man in front of you fell, you moved forward and took his place in the line.
The Spartan writer Tyrtaeus, who lived in the seventh century BC, wrote about fighting as part of a hoplite phalanx.
Everyone should close up to his man with his great spear or sword and wound and kill his enemy. Standing leg to leg, resting shield against shield, crest beside crest and helmet to helmet having dawn near, let him fight with his man with his sword or great spear.
The key element to the battle was to push forward and at some point force the line of the enemy to break. After this happened, the fight was usually all over.
Reports of ancient Greek battles usually suggest massive casualties for the losers and only very minor ones for the victors. Although the figures are probably inflated, an imbalance between winner and loser makes sense. After the losing line broke, the victorious army would chase its men down as the soldiers fled the field, resulting in most of the killing that took place. Cavalry and light troops were also brought in at this point to chase the enemy down.
Imagining the abject terror of fighting in a battle like this may be difficult given modern warfare tactics. On the ancient Greek battlefield, you had no hiding place; you were face to face with your enemy. If you didn’t kill or severely injure the man across from you first, he would kill or injure you. All around you, other men were dying of the most horrific injuries. You’d have had no time to save them or offer help.
'Are you calling me a coward?'
Any soldier who ran from the ancient Greek battlefield would drop his shield to move more quickly. The Greek word for this was rhipsaspis, or 'one who throws his shield away'. Calling somebody a shield-dropper was a huge insult.
Although ancient Athens didn't have an equivalent to modern laws of libel or slander, you could take somebody to court if he called you a rhipsaspis.
Living for Killing: The Spartans
As I note in Chapter 4, the people of Sparta were different from the rest of ancient Greece - and indeed the western world - in many respects. Their attitude was that you returned from battle with your shield - or on it (as a funeral bieror stretcher). The Spartans didn’t believe in half-measures, and their standards of military discipline were absolute.
Military training for Spartan boys began when they were just 7 years old. At this age, boys left home and joined the education system. This comprehensive curriculum including hunting skills, physical training, and also emotional training - designed to teach bravery.
One particularly brutal element of Spartan education was called ‘The Gauntlet’ and involved boys running around and being continually flogged by older children until they fell down or, in some cases, died.
The final Spartan training exercise, called the krypteia, involved sending young men (possibly as young as 14) into the countryside alone with no food or water and requiring them to live on their wits for a month. Sometimes a krypteia also included the task of killing helots (see Chapter 4 for more on these people) found wandering the countryside.
Although these young men probably stole food to survive, stealing was considered a crime. A story from Plutarch shows the lengths that one young boy went to in order to hide stolen property:
The boys take great care over their stealing, as is shown in the story of one who had stolen a fox cub and hidden it under his cloak, for he endured having his stomach lacerated by the beasts claws and teeth, and died rather than be detected.
Their training and ability to endure hardship made the Spartan army more feared than any other in Greece.
After completing their training, Spartan men became part of the army in which they had to serve until the age of 30. Between 30 and 60, they became part of the military reserve, which could be called upon at any time.
Sink or Swim: At War on the Waves
As I explain in Chapter 1, ancient Greece was very spread out, with people living as far apart as modern-day Spain and Turkey considered to be Greek. Consequently the wars that took place weren’t always fought on land, and the
Greeks developed quite complicated methods of naval warfare. (I only talk about war ships in this section; you can find information on other types of sailing in Chapter 13.)
Getting on board the Greek trireme
The standard Greek fighting ship was known as the trireme, which comes from the Greek word trieres meaning ‘triply equipped’ or ‘three oared’. The triple description comes from the three banks of oars that the crew used to propel the ship forward.
These ships were 40 metres long and about 4 metres wide - long, streamlined, and built to travel as quickly as possible. They relied on the power of oars, although sometimes they incorporated a sail. Before going into battle, the crew lowered both the sail and mast.
The construction of this sort of ship was time consuming but followed a very specific model. The keel (central long section) was assembled first and then all the additional planking fixed to it and sealed. As you can see from Figure 5-3, the finished ship couldn’t sit very low in the water because the lowest oars were only a few feet above the water. The ships were fast but not very robust and wouldn’t have been suited to surviving really difficult weather.
Figure 5-3: A Greek trireme circa 500-450 BC.
Meeting the crew
Each trireme had a crew of about 200 - a lot of people on board a small ship. The vast majority of the crew were on board to make the vessel move. Here’s the crew roster:
● Rowers (170): Unlike in the Roman empire, the men who rowed the ancient Greek warships weren’t slaves. They were well-trained citizens from the lower classes who ended up as sailors because they could not afford the panoply to be soldiers.
Rowing was hard, back-breaking work - continually digging in to heft the 4 to 5 metre (15 foot) oars. On a trireme, the rowers were arranged on three different levels: 62 upper rowers (thranites), 54 middle rowers (zygotes) and 54 lower rowers (thalamites).
● Flautist (one): Rather like the cox or skipper on a modern row boat, this flute-player helped the rowers keep time.
● Marines (14): These individuals were usually a mixture of hoplite soldiers and a few archers (probably Scythian).
● Deckhands (15): These soldiers had the vital work of keeping the ship functioning - making repairs and working the sails and tiller (steering).
● The captain: The captain of the ship was called the trierarch. He was responsible for everybody on board and the tactics in battle. He’d allocate duties to the various deckhands, all of whom would take turns on watch at night. Generally the trierarch took responsibility for navigating and setting course because that was considered a duty of command.
With all these people on board, triremes weren’t particularly useful for transporting land soldiers around. The majority of Greek wars were fairly localised, so most soldiers would march to battle but if they had to be moved across the sea, they travelled on normal merchant ships, guarded by triremes.
Being nautically tactical
Fighting at sea was completely different to land battles. The great strengths of the hoplite fighters (see the earlier section ‘Getting tactical: Hoplite formations’) weren’t very useful on the water. The two main attack methods were ramming and boarding.
● Ramming: Because the Greek ships sat low in the water, a ramming caused damage so severe that the rammed ship would sink. Surprisingly, if it was done correctly, it would cause very little damage to the attacker.
● Boarding: When fighting at close quarters, boarding was usually the preferred attack method and often took place after a ramming. Boarding usually involved grappling hooks, ropes, and other equipment to get a hold of the enemy ship. Eventually the Greeks developed something that the Romans called the corvus (Latin for ‘raven’), which was a kind of bridge that swung onto the enemy vessel. Hand to hand fighting did take place in naval battles but the sides would have to be close enough together to do so first! The marines could only really actively engage with each other when the ships had locked together.
With both sides relying on fairly similar equipment, the Greeks had to develop attack strategies to gain an advantage over their enemies. The three main strategies, illustrated in Figure 5-4, included:
● The diekplous involved targeting one ship in the enemy line and turning it, breaking open a hole in their line. Any enemy ship that turned to aid the stricken ship ended up exposing its flank to the attackers too.
● The kyklos was a defensive formation that was used when a fleet was outnumbered or being pursued by a faster fleet. The ships formed a circle with their rams facing outwards, projecting at their pursuers.
● The periplous was an attacking move that was designed to outflank the line of the enemy.
Figure 5-4: Three Greek naval tactics.