CHAPTER 20

GREEKS UNDER SIEGE

CHALLENGES, EXPERIENCES, AND EMOTIONS

ANGELOS CHANIOTIS

THE very first image in European literature is a city under siege; some of the earliest narrative scenes in Aegean art also concern cities under attack or siege (Mylonas Shear 2000: 41, fig. 62; Bleibtreu 2002; Schulz 2002). Descriptions of besieged cities or forts abound in Greek literature, for example, the siege of Babylon by Cyrus, the sieges of Plataea, Sphacteria, Melos, and Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, those of Tyre and the Sogdian Rock by Alexander (327), the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius (305–304), and the siege of Abydos by Philip V (201).¹ From the countless literary and visual narratives inspired by the siege and sack of Troy to the best sellers of the fifteenth century inspired by the siege of Constantinople or their even more numerous equivalents inspired by the sieges of Candia and Vienna in the seventeenth century, from Gogol’s Taras Bulba (1835) to La citadelle de la mémoire of Aris Fakinos (1992), and from the medieval manuscripts illustrated with the siege of Jerusalem to the claustrophobic celluloid images in Nicholas Ray’s 55 Days at Peking (1963), Cy Endfield’s Zulu (1964), Boris Sagal’s Masada (1981), Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), and Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven (2005), the observation of the emotions, the behavior, and the fate of human beings in besieged cities—hope and despair, heroism and cunningness, self-sacrifice and brutality, solidarity and betrayal, hopelessness and unexpected turns of fortune—have exercised an enormous fascination on readers and audiences.

Figure 20.1 A city besieged with detail of woman crying for help. Nereid Monument, Lesser Podium frieze. British Museum, London (BM Sc 869). Photo Credit: L. Tritle.

Is this fascination a survival of the thrill the prehistoric hunters must have felt when they surrounded their game—or their anxiety when they sought refuge in caves surrounded themselves by wild animals? I leave this to ethnologists to explore. For the historian of ancient Greece sieges are of particular interest for other reasons: they abolish the boundaries of age, gender, and legal and social status; they affect women and men, children, young warriors and elderly individuals, town dwellers and farmers seeking refuge behind the city wall, citizens, foreign residents, and slaves, the wealthy and the poor alike; they challenge the leadership, social cohesion, inventiveness, and emotions of the besieged, bringing them to the edge of their abilities and endurance.

Two of the rather rare images of besieged cities in classical art, on the frieze of the Nereid Monument at Xanthus (ca. 400–380), somehow capture this complexity. One of them depicts a woman on the walls of the besieged city along with the warriors. The other shows another important aspect of siege: the application of technical devices (scaling ladders) by the besiegers (figure 20.1).²

Sieges were far more common in Greek warfare than one might think.³ A few exceptional and memorable events—such as the sieges of Plataea, Rhodes, and Syracuse—have left such an impression that they have overshadowed the innumerable blockades of cities in the course of the classical and Hellenistic periods. The very diverse Greek vocabulary concerning blockades and sieges of towns (e.g., περιστρατοπεδεω, προστρατοπεδεω, προσκαθζοµαι, πολιορκω, προσεδρεω, συγκλεοµαι, all meaning to invest, encamp about, i.e., to besiege) reflects the heterogeneity of this type of military operation as regards dimensions and tactics (Garlan 1974: 5f., 33). Many sieges did not affect the entire city but only the fortified citadel or the fort of a garrison. Whether a siege became memorable depended on an extraordinary feature: usually its length, as in the case of Bactra, besieged by Antiochus III for two years (ca. 208–206), or the application of extraordinary technical devices by the besieger or the defender, as in the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes or during the defense of Syracuse by Archimedes; sometimes the unexpected fall, as in the case of Tyre (333) and Aornos (327), or the unexpected rescue as in the case of Phleious (369); the brutality after the fall of a city, as of Melos (415) and Xanthus (42); the exceptional bravery of the besieged as at Abydos (201);⁴ or the sudden reversal of fortune as in Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War, when the Athenian besiegers ended up being chased by the besiegers and their defeat became the beginning of the end of the Athenian empire (Thuc. 7.75.7):

This was the greatest reverse ever suffered by a Greek army; for they had come to enslave others, and now they were going away frightened of suffering this fate themselves; and instead of the prayers and the paeans with which they had sailed out, the words with which they were now leaving were directly contrary; they were travelling on land instead of sailing, trusting in hoplites rather than in ships.

In this chapter I explore the importance of siege not primarily as a phenomenon of ancient military tactics and warfare, but as a phenomenon of cultural and social history. The focus is on the challenges it presented for political and military leaders, technological innovators, and authors seeking to instruct and to please. A siege was a challenge also for the emotions of men and women, mortals and gods, those who experienced it and those who found pleasure in writing or reading narratives about it.

SOCIAL CHALLENGES

One of the pieces of advice given to generals by Philon of Byzantium, the author of a military treatise (late third century), is to regard the money spent for a siege and for bribing potential traitors as a good investment (Philon D 65 = Garlan 1974: 322: “do not spare money for bribery or for other expenses; for when you take the city you will get a multiple of this money”). In another passage, Philon takes for granted that not the entire population can be trusted:

And it is the right thing to change the bivouac and the watch service of those soldiers or citizens, whom you do not trust; they should not know, which part of the wall they will be guarding, so that they will be unable to betray the city to the enemies. (C 34 = Garlan 1974: 311)

The fear of civil strife and treason during a siege is mentioned several other times in his work (D 12, 15, 72, 83). Similarly, Aeneas Tacticus (mid-fourth century), author of a treatise on How to Endure a Siege, places social harmony on the top of the list of his recommendations:

They (the soldiers) must be devoted and supporters of the existing order; this is extremely important, since such a group can act like a citadel against the connivance of the other party; for they would scare the opposition within the city. Place in the leadership and in charge of those troops a man who is not only prudent and vigorous, but also one whom a change of government would expose to the greatest dangers (1.5–7).… It should be noted whether there is concord among the citizens, for this is one of the greatest advantages during a siege. (10.20)

The fear of a revolution is continually referred to by Aeneas (2.1, 2.7, 3.3, 10.3, 10.15, 10.25, 11, 17, 22.5–6, 22.17, 30.1; Urban 1986; cf. Boëldieu-Trevet and Mataranga 2003), who advises the political and military leaders inter alia to place trustworthy persons in locations of critical importance (3.3), to exercise close control over exiles, foreigners, and slaves (10.5–13), to let those who were dissatisfied with the regime to leave freely (10.19), and to remove the most influential leaders of the opposition from the city by sending them away under some pretext (10.20), to take measures in order to win the loyalty of the mass of the citizens (14).

Philon does not elaborate on the motifs of traitors, but our information about the common background of civil strife in the ancient world makes political factions, social conflicts, and, from the fourth century onward, the indebtedness of large parts of the population the most likely candidates. This is directly attested by Aeneas, who recommended the appointment as keepers of the gates of men who had something to lose and not men who might be inclined to revolt because of poverty or debts; he adds that Leucon, ruler of the Cimmerian Bosporus, discharged guards who were in debt (5.1–2). Under certain circumstances, a city should consider the reduction of interest or even the cancellation of debts (14.1).

A siege itself did not create political dissent, but the partisans of the opposition, for whom a foreign enemy was a lesser evil than a local opponent, found both an unexpected ally and the opportunity to strike; treason during a siege was a very realistic fear (Garlan 1974: 179–83, 202–3, 345–6). The arrival of an Arcadian army at Olympia in 365 encouraged the Elean democrats to capture the acropolis, but their enemies soon drove them out and into exile (Xen. Hell. 7.4.14–16). A siege also did not generate social conflicts, but it did enhance existing ones, brought to the surface latent dissatisfaction, and made social and economic inequalities more visible. Thucydides sketches the mood in Syracuse at the beginning of the siege by the Athenians:

They took no final decision, and as it often happens with men who are in a difficult situation, now that they were more closely besieged than ever, some overtures were made to Nicias, and there was still more of this kind of talk in the city. For they were also somewhat suspicious among themselves because of the present evil and they deposed the generals under whom this had happened, attributing the harm either to their bad luck or because of their treachery, and replaced them with others. (6.103.4)

An opposition that became particularly evident during a siege is that between city and land, urban population and farmers. Relevant evidence is provided by the comedies of Aristophanes during the Peloponnesian War, after the agrarian population of Attica had been forced to withdraw behind the Long Walls and watched the fields being destroyed by the Spartan army (Ach. 512; Pax 447–53, 479–80, 511). Such calamities affected different social groups in different ways; the great landowner with holdings in different locations lost only part of his revenues and could always use his savings; the small landholder, on the contrary, often lost everything;⁵ the concentration of population in the city increased the demand for urban trades, but the regular flow of supplies was interrupted or limited. Pericles realized the potential danger from the dissatisfaction of the population (e.g., Thuc. 2.16, 2.52, 2.59.1–3, 2.65.2–3) and promised to donate his estates to the city, should the enemies spare them in order to stir up prejudice against him (Thuc. 2.13; Plut. Per. 23).

A specific social group that saw in siege and, more generally, in war, a chance to improve their situation were the slaves. Some found an opportunity to run away (e.g., Ar. Pax 451–452; Aeschin. 2.79; Ducrey 1999: 77 n. 6, 216), others hoped to be given their freedom by making themselves useful for the defense or to be rewarded by the besieger if they betrayed their masters (e.g., App. B Civ. 4.81). Messenian helots, for example, brought food to the Spartans who were besieged by the Athenians in Sphacteria (425; Thuc. 4.26.5–8); the Abydenes freed their slaves during the siege of 201, “in order to have men who would fight with them with no hesitation” (Polyb. 16.31.2–4). The presence of slaves in the besieged Carian city of Theangela (ca. 310) was such an important factor that a special provision was made for them in the treaty that ended the siege (Austin no. 33: “for all the slaves who came to the city in peace the clauses of the treaty between Eupolemus and Peucestas shall apply; for those who came in war there shall be an amnesty”). Unfortunately, the vague formulation of the treaty allows us only to observe that the slaves were a substantial factor and to speculate about the background (Couvenhes 2004: 107–9; Chaniotis 2005: 126).

It is for this reason that the maintenance of harmony in a besieged city was as high a priority as procuring engines for the defense or mercenaries (cf. Boëldieu-Trevet and Mataranga 2003). In order to instigate discontent and to win the cooperation of dissatisfied groups the besieger should make announcements for the besieged to hear: the man who would provide information on the weapons of the defenders or kill military engineers should expect honors and rewards; rewards also awaited leaders of the opposition, who would join the enemy; the slaves were to be promised freedom, the soldiers promotion, the foreign residents crowns and rewards. This is the recommendation given by Philon (D 12–13 = Garlan 1974: 317), who also describes its effect: the defenders were thus prevented from giving weapons to slaves and foreigners; the number of the defenders decreased; the food supplies were consumed fast; conflicts arose in the city.

The same Philon, changing the perspective, urges the participation of the entire population in the defense of the city. Should enemies enter the city, the inhabitants should close the gate doors behind them and attack them with all available forces: “the boys, the female slaves, the married and unmarried women shall strike then from the roofs (of the houses) and all should be active in the town” (C 31). Philon does not mention the male slaves, because he takes for granted that they have already been recruited as soldiers, and this is indeed a measure known to have been taken in critical situations (Garlan 1972, 1974: 384).

Philon’s recommendations correspond exactly to measures taken by the Rhodians at the beginning of Demetrius’s siege (Diod. 20.84.2–4): they allowed metics and foreigners to join the army, promised freedom and citizenship to slaves, sent away those who were of no service in order to save the supplies and to avoid betrayal by those who were not satisfied; thus they achieved the desirable concord.

In critical situations, the authors of Greek decrees, usually members of the political elite, tended to apply a rhetoric of unity and concord. A Hellenistic decree from Cos concerning the collection of funds for the defense of the island (ca. 201), appealed to the participation of all: citizens and their wives, illegitimate children, inhabitants lacking citizenship, and foreigners. In Athens (243?) the entire population was asked to contribute money for the collection of corn and thus for the rescue of the city and the protection of the countryside.⁶ Such appeals to the entire population in times of need created the illusion of accord; if only rhetoric could abolish legal inequalities, conflicting interests, and social divisions.

LOGISTICS AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

During the Second Punic War Roman troops under M. Claudius Marcellus besieged Syracuse (214). He led a fleet of sixty quinqueremes filled with all sorts of weapons and missiles; eight galleys fastened together supported a platform, on which he erected a huge engine (mechane). Marcellus had failed to take into consideration that one of the city’s inhabitants was one the greatest minds of Classical antiquity, Archimedes. Plutarch tells that all his army and supplies “were of no account for Archimedes and his engines” (Marc. 14.3). Archimedes put his genius in the service of Syracuse, inventing technological devices that made the life of the besieger difficult (Plut. Marc. 15–17). All sorts of missiles and stones were thrown with incredible speed upon the Romans; their ships were destroyed by beams suddenly projected from the walls; iron claws seized their ships at the prow, lifted them up into the air, and then let them fall; a siege engine, called sambuca because of its resemblance to a musical instrument, was destroyed by huge stones hurled against it from the city. If Marcellus ultimately managed to capture the city, it was because during some negotiations he noticed a tower which was not well guarded, estimated its height, had scaling ladders prepared, and attacked while the Syracusans were celebrating a festival; the sound of trumpets on all sides created the impression that the entire city had been captured (Plut. Marc. 13.2–3). Both the attack during the festival and the use of trumpets and noise to create confusion among the enemy are stratagems recommended by authors of relevant treatises (Philon D 27; Garlan 1974: 397). In Syracuse the cunning of the general outwitted the inventiveness of the geometrician.

Thucydides’s famous description of the siege of Plataea resembles a competition in inventiveness between Spartans and Plataeans (429; Thuc. 2.75–78.1; Aen. Tact. 2.2–6; Garlan 1974: 115–16, 146). The Spartans built a stockade around Plataea and raised a mound for seventy days against the city. The Plataeans responded by constructing a higher wall with bricks and timber; coverings of skins and hides protected the workers and the construction from incendiary arrows. The mound and the wall were competing with each other in gaining height. When the Plataeans made an opening in the wall at the point where the wall and the mound met, and began to draw the earth in, the Spartans threw into the breach clay packed in reed mats, which could not filter through like the loose earth. Thereupon the besieged dug a mine beneath the mound drawing away the earth to their side from underneath. When the besiegers brought up engines over the mound and shook down part of the wall, the Plataeans threw nooses over them and pulled them up; the heads of the battering rams were broken off by beams suspended on the wall.

Thucydides’s description is closely paralleled, for example, by Arrian’s and Diodorus’s narratives of the siege of Tyre by Alexander and Diodorus’s account of the siege of Rhodes.⁷ We encounter again a similar competition in inventiveness, technical expertise, and tricks. In Tyre, the Greek army devised new catapults and troop carriers equipped with scaling ladders and built a mole; the Tyrians devised anticatapult engines, built high wooden towers on the battlements; divers swam under the surface and cut the ropes of Alexander’s boats. In Rhodes, Demetrius constructed chelonai, towers, ballistic devices, and the greatest helepolis ever; the Rhodians responded by arraying catapults and balistae of all sizes, and filled light boats with inflammable material in order to burn the engines of the enemy. When Demetrius’s sappers undermined the wall, the Rhodians undertook mining operations preventing the enemy from advancing. Both parties applied deserters and traitors. With their courage—and a little help from their friends—the Rhodians saved their city.

While an element of improvization dominates in the narratives of the Classical period, the employment of technology is more prominent in the case of Tyre and later of Rhodes and Syracuse, and reflects indeed the enormous advancement of technology in the fourth century and then in the Hellenistic period (Garlan 1974: 169–83; Cuomo 2007: 41–76). That military needs often promote technological innovation is too well known to our world, from Wernher von Braun’s contribution to space travel to the invention of email. No other form of warfare had such an impact on ancient technology as the art of siege and, in response to it, the measures for the defense of a besieged city. The best known among the numerous engines used for the siege of a city in the Classical and Hellenistic periods were the krios, the battering ram for damaging walls and gates, and the helepolis, a tower-like wooden structure, consisting of many storeys and carried on wheels, equipped with devices against fire and with gangways which were thrown over to the wall to enable the troops to get into the city wall or a tower. Simple wooden towers (pyrgoi), which lacked artillery, served the transport of gangways and scaling ladders. An impressive lifting device (sambyke), developed in the Hellenistic period, enabled small detachments of soldiers to be lifted to the wall. For the destruction of city walls the Greeks, and later the Romans, also used the “tortoise” (chelone), an engine equipped with a drill. A new type of a sling (kestros) was invented during the Third Macedonian War, and other Hellenistic inventions include the torsion catapult, the repeating catapult, and the flamethrower. There were also ramps and scaling ladders for the assault of troops and incendiary devices; even elephants were tried, but with limited efficiency.⁸The development of fortification walls and towers was a response to the advance of siege tactics and technology, especially in the fourth century.⁹

If we can use the term “science of war” in connection with Greek warfare, it is because of the contribution of scientists to the art of siege. Many of such specialized military engineers responsible for the construction, deconstruction, and transportation of artillery and other equipment for siege,¹⁰ are anonymously referred to in the historical narratives—such as the specialists from Cyprus and Phoencia assembled by Alexander to Tyre for the city’s siege (Arr. Anab. 2.21.1) or the engineers (technitai) from Asia Minor recruited by Demetrius Poliorcetes for the siege of Salamis on Cyprus in 306 (Diod. 20.48.1). Some are known by name because of their achievements, for example, Diades, one of the engineers of Alexander (Vitr. 10.13.3, Lat.Alex. col. 8, 12–15), and Epimachus of Athens, the constructor of a helepolis, nine storeys high, for the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes (Lendle 1975: 33–47; 1983: 71–7, 107), and Zoilus and Callias of Aradus, who also demonstrated their skills during the same siege (Garlan 1974: 209).

Dionysius I of Syracuse was the first to enhance technical innovation in grand scale for more effective sieges during his wars in the early fourth century (Garlan 1974: 156–69), and it was in his court that the catapult was either invented or dramatically improved (399 B.C.; see below), and his example was followed by Philip II of Macedon (Garlan 1974: 201). Hellenistic kings, keen promoters of what we today call “applied science” both for their self-representation (e.g., automata for processions, luxurious ships; Hesberg 1987 and 1996: 88–96; Pfrommer 1996) and for the sake of warfare, often hosted in their courts mathematicians and engineers exactly for this purpose (figure 20.2). Examples include Daimachus, author of a work on the art of siege, who probably was in the service of Antiochus I (Poliorketika hypomnemata: FGrHist 65, with Garlan 1974: 210), Ctesibius of Alexandria in the court of Ptolemy II (Lendle 1983: 113–16), and Archimedes in the service of Hieron II of Syracuse. Biton, the author of a book on siege engines, found it appropriate to dedicate his treatise to a king (Ath. 14.634a).

Although for the largest part of the Greek world, the world of the city-states and the confederations, warfare was to a great extent an affair of citizen militias (Chaniotis 2005: 20–6), the role of mercenaries, special troops (e.g., archers, peltasts), and specially trained personnel for the navy and above all for the artillery, increased dramatically from the fourth century onward, in particular after Alexander. The catapult, invented or dramatically improved in the early fourth century (Diod. 14.50.4; Garlan 1974: 164–8; Campbell 2011), became one of the most effective siege engines. Its operation was not possible without training (IG XII5. 647; cf. IG II² 1006 lines 34f.) and was entrusted to specialists, the katapaltaphetai, mentioned in the treaty between the dynast Eupolemus and Theangela in Caria (ca. 310; Staatsverträge 429 ll. 14f.).

The advance of the “art of siege” and the dramatic improvement of fortifications went hand in hand with the introduction of a new genre of technical literature: the treatises dedicated to the siege engines and to the defenses of a besieged city (Meissner 1999). The earliest known work of this genre is a book concerning strategies for the defense of a besieged city by Aeneas Tacticus (possibly an Arcadian general) in the mid-fourth century. An epitome of his military writings was later composed by Cineas, in the court of Pyrrhus, and the king himself and his son Alexander were the authors of works on Tactics. Philon of Byzantion composed treatises on engineering (Mechanike syntaxis), explaining in particular the construction of artillery and missiles (belopoikia), harbor building (limenopoikia), the construction of defensive siege works (paraskeuastika), and offensive siege works (poliorketika). Other such technical manuals besides Biton’s The Construction of War Engines (Kataskeuai polemikon organon) include The Construction of Arrows (belopoikia), and The Construction of Artillery (Cheirobalistras kataskeue) by Heron of Alexandria (first century A.D.?).¹¹

Figure 20.2 Reconstruction of the largest of the Ephyra catapults as a “four-foot” euthytone arrow-shooter, based on descriptions of Heron and Philon. Painting by Brian Delf, from D. B. Campbell, Greek and Roman Artillery 399 B.C.–A.D. 363, p. 26, plate B. © Osprey Publishing Ltd.

Despite the importance of technology, inventiveness and the application of tricks and stratagems never lost their importance and efficacy. Aeneas the Tactician devotes a substantial part of his treatise to counter-devices against the enemy’s engines (32), measures for the detection and prevention of mining operations (37), and various stratagems (39–40). For instance, the officers should disguise women, arm them, and have them march around the wall in order to deceive the enemy about the number of soldiers (40.4; cf. 40.6). He also provides practical advice concerning inter alia the treatment of useless open spaces (2.1), the preparation of evening food for the farmers who would come to the city when the enemy approaches (7.3), the use of tokens of recognition (24–25), measures for guarding the gates (28), and patrol duty. Those who patrol during the first watch, he writes, should do their duty before they have had their supper, because otherwise they are more careless (26.2); officers should avoid making their rounds at a fixed hour (26.11). In the chapters on military architecture, Philon not only explains the construction of towers, gates, and ditches, but he also gives practical advice concerning the storage of food and water, especially the dry storage of barley and grain, and the purchase of adequate supplies of grain; he gives recipes for the preparation of nutritious bread and food which does not cause thirst: he recommends the planting of gardens in sacred precincts (B 1–10, 25–48, 54; Garlan 1974: 366–76); he does not forget to mention what is the best material for writing letters and sending them unnoticed to potential traitors (D 77), a subject to which Aeneas the Tactician devotes the longest chapter of his treatise (31); and the city should employ doctors with adequate medical equipment, experienced in the treatment of wounds and in the removal of arrowheads (C 72). Some of his tricks are simple but effective: the defenders should bury in the ground hollow tiles, in front of the last ditch (A 76); men could still walk on them but the heavy “tortoises” would sink into the ground; the defenders should also try to poison the enemy’s water (B 53). One of the most common suggestions was to launch an attack during a festival or a day in which the defenders would be unprepared, out of the town, or drunk. This is the very first recommendation given by Philon (D 2–4):

The one who wishes to capture a city, should, if he so wishes, launch the attack preferably during a festival celebrated outside of the gates, or else during the harvest or the vintage. For if you capture many people outside the city, you shall capture the town very easily. Otherwise approach secretly the walls, having prepared scaling ladders, during bad weather or when the enemies are drunk in a public festival, and occupy some of the towers.

Aeneas Tacticus confirms that an attack during a festival outside a town was one of the common dangers (10.4; cf. 17; 22.16–18; 29.3), and we know in fact from the historical and documentary sources of attacks during a festival or on New Year’s Day (I.Cret. I.ix.1: cf. Chaniotis 1996: 195–201; IOSPE I² 343; Aen. Tact. 4.8,17.1–5, 29.3; cf. 22.15–16). Unknowingly, the Arab states followed this pattern in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

LEADERSHIP, VALOR, MASCULINITY

Sieges were usually remembered for the technical achievements involved. Polybius, almost apologetically, explains why he describes the siege of Abydos by Philip V in 201 (16.30.2–3).

This event did not become the object of admiration as regards the size of the preparation and the variety of the devices in the constructions, which the besiegers and the besieged usually invent and devise against each other, but it is more worthy of being commemorated and described to posterity than others because of the bravery of the besieged and their exceptional courage.

After the cross wall had fallen, the defenders continued the fight with desperate heroism:

For the foremost of the Abydenes mounted the bodies of their dying enemies and fought with the outmost courage, not only did they fight desperately with sword and spear alone, but whenever any of these weapons was damaged and became useless or when they were forced to drop it, they took hold of the Macedonians with their hands and threw them down in their armour, broke their pikes and stabbed them repeatedly with the fragments … or struck them on the face or the exposed parts of the body with the points and threw them into total confusion. (16.33.2–4)

Their city ultimately fell, and the men fulfilled the oath they had taken at the beginning of the siege, killing women, children, and themselves (16.34.9–12). Although in Abydos heroism was proved futile, as futile as technology in the siege of Rhodes, this episode still shows the importance of the human factor both during the events themselves and in their commemoration. Diodorus’s account of the siege of Rhodes is as much a narrative of heroic deeds of courage and self-sacrifice (Diod. 20.96.1–2, 99.2–3, 100.3–4) as it is a description of siege engines and artillery.

Indeed, the first recommendations given by Aeneas Tacticus in his work on How to Endure a Siege concern the human factor: the appointment of prudent advisors of the magistrates; the selection and arrangement of the troops; the establishment of social harmony; and the selection of a military leader, prudent, vigorous, and satisfied with the regime (1.4–9). The moral and physical capacities as well as the experience of all the men who assumed some responsibility in the defense of the city, from the military commander to the day scout, is a recurring theme in the first chapters of his work (Aen. Tact. 1.4, 3.4, 5.1, 6.1, 6.3).

It was in the desperate situation of a siege that valor, foresight, inventiveness, and strategic thinking revealed who possessed the qualities of a leader. These qualities are highlighted in an Athenian honorary decree for a prominent citizen, Callias of Sphettus (SEGXXVIII 60; Austin no. 44; 287). Already before the arrival of Demetrius Poliorcetes and his army, Callias had shown foresight by bringing troops and collecting the corn in the countryside; during the siege itself, he showed courage and self-sacrifice:

At the time of the uprising of the people against those who were occupying the city, when the people expelled the soldiers from the city, but the fort on the Museion hill was still occupied, and war raged in the countryside because of the soldiers from Piraeus, and Demetrius was coming with his army from the Peloponnese against the city, Callias, on hearing of the danger threatening the city, selected a thousand of soldiers who were posted with him at Andros, gave them their wages and food rations, and immediately came to the rescue of the people in the city, acting in accordance with the goodwill of king Ptolemy [I] towards the people; and leading out into the countryside the soldiers who were following him, he protected the gathering of the corn, making every effort to ensure that as much corn as possible should be brought into the city. And when Demetrius arrived, encamped around the city and besieged it, Callias in defence of the people attacked with his soldiers and was wounded, but refused to avoid any risk at any time for the sake of the people’s safety. (lines 12–32)

Initiative, strategic thinking, and heroism earned Callias the gratitude of his fellow citizens, honors, and authority. Similar qualities were demonstrated by Acrotatus, the young son of King Areus, during the defense of Sparta in 272. The city was besieged by Pyrrhus with the help of its exiled king Cleonymus; the situation was desperate. Cleonymus’s friends were already decorating the exiled king’s home expecting him to dine there soon; his estranged wife Chilonis had withdrawn from the rest of the women, with a halter around her neck that she might not come to the power of Cleonymus (Plut. Pyrrh. 27.2.5, after Phylarchus). In a critical moment of the assault, when Pyrrhus’s son with two thousand men tried to force a passage into the city, a young man saved Sparta: Acrotatus, the son of King Areus, and lover of Chilonis (Pyrrh. 28; Beston 2000: 316–17; Chaniotis 2005: 107).

The young man saw the danger, and running through the city with three hundred men got round behind Ptolemy without being seen because of some depressions in the ground, and at last fell upon his rear ranks and forced them to turn about and fight with him. And now the Galatians crowded one another into the trench and fell among the wagons, and finally, after great slaughter, were successfully driven back…. The elderly men and the host of women watched the brilliant exploit of Acrotatus. And when he went back again through the city to his allotted post, covered with blood and triumphant, elated with his victory, the Spartan women thought that he had become taller and more beautiful than ever and envied Chilonis her lover. Moreover, some of the elderly men accompanied him on his way, crying: “Go, Acrotatus, and take to thyself Chilonis; only, see that thou begettest brave sons for Sparta.”

Later, Acrotatus inherited the royal title from his father, but the respect of the citizens he earned with his strategic thinking and his valor.

A striking feature of this narrative is the explicit association of success in the battlefield with beauty, masculinity, and potency (Roy 1998: 120; Beston 2000: 316–17; Chaniotis 2005: 102–4). That we encounter this association in connection with a siege is perhaps not a coincidence. The Greek city has several associations with the feminine. Her fortune (Tyche) is a woman wearing as a crown the city walls; the walls surround the city like the belt around a woman’s dress, and when they fall they leave the most defenseless of the inhabitants, the women, to be taken by the victor. The divine patrons of rescue in war (Soteira) are two virgin goddesses, Athena and Artemis: they drive away from cities and territories (in Greek, both words are feminine: polis and chora) the male intruders with the same effective violence with which in myths they drive back the men who attempted to violate their own virginity.

The success or failure of the besieger can also be described in terms of masculinity or lack thereof. The behavior of King Prusias II of Bithynia in his war against Pergamum is characterized by Polybius as unmanly: “after doing nothing worthy of a man in his attacks on the town, but behaving in a cowardly and womanish manner both to gods and men, he marched his army back to Elaea” (32.15.9; cf. 36.15.1–3; 28.21.3). Similarly, the besieger par excellence, King Demetrius, was remembered also as a man with a strong masculine sex drive and potency (Plut. Demetr. 9.3–4) and also as the user of the helepolis, a mobile siege machine with a long, projecting beam ending in a cone decorated with a ram’s head, with which the besieger attempted to penetrate the city wall of Rhodes.

If the heroism of the defender was greatly praised, the courage of soldiers and officers during an assault was also appreciated and remembered (Garlan 1974: 84–6, 203f). Ancient historians occasionally mention who was the first to climb up the walls during the final assault or who showed great courage (Admetus in Tyre: Arr. 2.23.4; Neoptolemus in Gaza: Arr. 2.27.6). The soldiers were encouraged in the attack by the prospect of great rewards (Arr. 4.18.7), which is also recommended by Philon (D 9). Philon also advises the commander to continually encourage the soldiers, praising the brave ones, and castigating the others, but himself staying away from the reach of the arrows (D 68–69).

Hellenistic comedy exploits the comic effect of typical, but also exaggerated, characters. Two of them were men who boasted of their success in taking cities: the Hairesiteiches, “the Capturer of walls,” was the protagonist of a homonymous comedy of Diphilus—now lost—(Ath. 11. 496 ef), and Pyrgopolynices, the protagonist of Plautus’s Miles gloriosus, bore a name that referred to his exploits during the assault against towers. For him, women proved to be a more resistant target.

EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES AND DRAMAS

Technical treatises are dispassionate texts. Thus it is all the more striking how often Aeneas Tacticus describes, refers to, or alludes to emotions in his How to Endure a Siege; how often he clarifies which emotions can be helpful (loyalty, zeal), and which should be taken into consideration (mistrust); how often he explains the means by which certain emotions can be provoked and others avoided, the enemy frightened, and the defenders encouraged.¹² The importance of the emotional state of the besieged is the background of some of his recommendations. Soothsayers were not allowed to sacrifice without the presence of a magistrate (10.4), in order to avoid the disconcerting effects of unfavorable signs. The money reward for the denunciators of potential traitors should be openly displayed in the marketplace or placed on an altar to increase their motivation (10.15). The relatives of hostages should be removed from the city in order not to have to see the hostages being brought forward by the enemy and killed (10.23). The general should avoid angry scolding, because this disheartens the soldiers; if he has to reprimand the soldiers for neglect or lack of discipline, he should chose wealthy and influential men, making them an example to the others (38.4–5). Similarly, Philon has the psychology of the besieged in mind when he admonishes the generals to prevent their soldiers from burning the fields or taking fodder, in order to encourage the besieged population to capitulate while their fields are still intact (D 6–7).

The interest in the emotions of besiegers and besieged is a recurring pattern in descriptions of sieges in classical and Hellenistic historiography. The continual change from hope to despair and from fear to joy fascinated the historians. Descriptions of sieges are small dramas in which one finds essential elements of tragedy: hybris—the self-confidence of the combatants (Plut. Marc. 14.4: Marcellus in Syracuse); phobos—the prevailing emotion of the besieged (Plut. Marc. 15.1); peripeteia—the sudden changes of fate (Thuc. 2.77.6: the Spartans besieging Plataea); eleos—the compassion both of the victorious and of the readers and audiences of the narratives for the fate of the defeated (Plut. Marc. 19.1–3). The antithesis between expectations and outcome and the impact of this contrast on the emotions both of the objects of their narrative and of their audiences was a major concern of Thucydides, Polybius, and Diodorus.

Thucydides’s long narrative of the siege of Syracuse by the Athenians in 415–413 is a case in point. Thucydides describes how the rapid construction of a fort by the Athenians at the beginning of the siege terrified the Syracusans (6.98.2) and how the initial failures caused mistrust and distress in Syracuse (6.103.4). A passage in the letter of Nicias to Athens (414/3) allows Thucydides to comment on the paradox of the situation after the arrival of the Spartan Gylippus: the besiegers were now besieged (7.11.4). But then another change of fortune occurs, when Athenian reinforcements arrive, terrify the besiegers (7.42.1), and launch an unexpected attack against Epipolae. This attack leads, however, to an unexpected disaster; the Syracusans are filled again with courage (7.46.1). The reader is then informed about the reasonable plan of the Athenians to depart, when there is still time, but, alas, an unexpected moon eclipse delays their departure and seals their fate (7.50.4). To encourage his soldiers, Nicias can only remind them of the unpredictable element in warfare (7.61.3). During their final attempt to escape, the Athenians present again a paradoxical spectacle: the besiegers resemble the population of a sacked city (7.75.5). Emotions and emotional changes and reversals are a continuous theme in the entire narrative (e.g., Thuc. 7.3.1, 7.37.1, 7.75.3, 7.76.1).

Among the later historians, only Polybius approaches Thucydides’s historical mind and art. One of the sharpest critics of Hellenistic “tragic historiography,” Polybius did not miss the opportunity to highlight dramatic elements in his own description of the siege of Abydos by Philip V and the city’s sack in 201 (16.30–34; see Chaniotis 2005: 198–9). At the outset of his narrative he describes the self-confidence of the Abydenoi, confirmed by their initial success. But then their fortune turns, and when Philip demands their surrender, they swear to die fighting, together with their women and children. Similar oaths of heroic and desperate sacrifice had been taken in the past by the Phocians and the Acarnanians, who were, however, ultimately saved. The historian did not fail to observe the tragic quality of the daring courage shown by the Abydenes; as a matter of fact he uses in this context the word peripeteia, which describes sudden changes of fortune in ancient drama:

In the case of the sudden change of fortune (peripeteia) of the Abydenes one feels inclined to blame Fortune (tyche) at the most, who, as if in pity, set right at one the misfortunes of the aforementioned peoples [i.e., the Phocians and Acarnanians], by granting both victory and safety to those who had lost hope; in the case of the Abydenes, however, she chose to do the opposite. For the men were killed, the city was taken, and the children together with their mothers fell into the enemy’s hands. (Polyb. 16.32.5–6)

The longest description of a siege in Hellenistic literature is Diodorus’s narrative of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes (20.81.4–20.88.9, 20.91.1–20.100.2). It is perhaps not a coincidence that this campaign of the most tragic and theatrical of kings (Chaniotis 1997: 244–5; Thonemann 2005) is assimilated with a spectacle and a drama. The spectacular element in Demetrius’s operations is also underlined by Plutarch’s Hellenistic source (Plut. Demetr. 20–22):

His enemies stood on shore and admired his ships of sixteen and fifteen rows of oars, as they sailed past their land; and his elepoleis were a spectacle to the besieged … (20.4). (The helepolis) astounded the mind and delighted the eyes of those who watched. (21.2)

Diodorus first impresses the reader with a detailed description of Demetrius’s forces (20.82.4–5); the expectation of the assailants (20.82.5: “as the land of the Rhodians had not been sacked for many years, a large number of those who were accustomed to make their profit from the misfortune of those defeated in war came together”) is contrasted to the fear of the defenders (20.83.1: “the whole space between the island and the opposite shore was seen to be filled with his ships, which brought great fear and panic to those who were watching from the city”).

Diodorus keeps the interest of the reader alert by continually alternating from descriptions of Demetrius’s technical devices and tactical measures, which let the reader anticipate the city’s fall (Diod. 20.83.4, 85.1–4, 86.2, 88.7, 91.2–92.2, 95.1–5), to unexpected turns of fortune caused by storms, Rhodian stratagems, and the heroism of the besieged.¹³ Similarly, the emotions of the besieged Rhodians continually alternate between horror and hope (fear: 20.88.3, 92.1, 98.7–8; hope: 20.96.3). The most dramatic of these accounts is a description of a battle in the theater of Rhodes (20.98.8–99.1):

When day came and Demetrius raised the ensign, the men who were attacking the harbor and those who had been placed all around the wall shouted the battle cry, giving courage to the men who had occupied part of the area near the theater. In the city, the crowd of children and women were terrified and in tears, under the impression that the city was being taken by storm.… At first neither side withdrew from its position; but afterwards the number of Rhodians constantly increased and they were eagerly facing the danger, like men fighting for their fatherland and the most valuable things. As the king’s soldiers were in distress, their commanders, Alcimus and Mantias, received many wounds and fell; most of the others were killed, some were captured, and only a few escaped to the king and were saved…. Demetrius thought that fortune had stolen from his hands the capture of the city.

A phrase in Diodorus (20.83.2) nicely epitomizes the dramatic, theatrical, and emotional aspect of the narrative of this siege. The historian describes how Demetrius’s fleet approached the city of Rhodes:

The soldiers of the Rhodians occupied the walls awaiting the approach of the enemy fleet, while the old men and the women watched from their houses, as the city is built like a theater; and all of them terrified at the size of the fleet and at the bright light reflected by the shining weapons were in great agony.

In this passage the besieged Rhodians take their places in their city, like the audience in a theater, terrified by what they are watching. They were at the same time the spectators of their own war and a spectacle for the historian’s readers.

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