PART I
CHAPTER 1
LOUIS RAWLINGS
THIS chapter surveys some of the main elements of warfare conducted by the Greeks between the eighth and third centuries B.C. (all dates henceforth are B.C.). There were as many as fifteen hundred autonomous or semi-autonomous communities (poleis) in the Greek world, with much variation in social and political organization and size. It would be impossible to discuss all the myriad forms and complexities that warfare took in these communities through five centuries. The modern study of Greek warfare has been extremely vibrant precisely because the sheer breadth of the subject makes it difficult to generalize satisfactorily, or for any reconstruction to account for all variations. This is compounded by the diverse array of evidence that survives: literary, epigraphic, iconographic, and archaeological—which is often partial and contradictory. This material is frequently the product of sophisticated and complex cultures, members of which had their own interpretations and controversies about the nature of warfare, and the cause and course of the many wars that occurred. What follows is necessarily a partial discussion and the reader should not be surprised if in subsequent chapters there are differences of emphasis and interpretation.
FIERCE VALUES AND THE CAUSES OF WAR
For the Greeks, a reputation earned for prowess in combat was no bad thing. In the epic poetry of Homer, the son of Castor, the child of a master and a slave-concubine, boasted that “being first to leap forward to strike an enemy with a spear” brought fear and respect in the community. It led him to an advantageous marriage into a wealthy family, “since I had martial excellence” (arete; Od. 14.220–1, 233–4, 211–13). There were broad social pressures for males to prove their manliness (andreia) and excellence (aretē) by marching off to war. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus proclaimed that any man who displayed excellence (arete) by “holding firm and standing unshaken in the front of the phalanx … encouraging his neighbor with words,” was “good in war” (agathos en polemōi) and was regarded as acting for the “common good of the polis and the whole people (demos)” (Tyrt. fr. 12.13–20). For Tyrtaeus the bravery of individual Spartans received communal respect and gratitude, manifesting in deferential treatment of the “spear-famed” by all members of the polis. The social eye of peers and compatriots ultimately observed and judged martial achievement in all communities. At one point Chares stood before the Athenians to display his penetrated shield and his wounds, evidently expecting this to generate respect (Plut. Pel. 2.3). By contrast, his rival Timotheus could only admit that a long-range catapult bolt had landed near him (Plut. Pel. 2.3).
Violence could be exciting, intoxicating, even addictive. Indeed, it was supposed to have been the case that during battle, “nothing equals the sheer delight of routing, pursuing and killing an enemy” (Xen. Hiero 2.15). Whole communities could be characterized as particularly bellicose, thus the Trojans, according to their opponents, were a people “whose fighting strength is full of blind fury, nor do they ever have their fill of the close mêlée of deadly warfare” (Il. 13.633–5). The practice of “fierce virtues” so habituated some men to violence and war that they could not bear the quiet life. In the Odyssey, the son of Castor organized a raiding expedition to Egypt soon after returning from the Trojan War, explaining that “labor in the field was never to my liking, nor the care of a household … but oar-swept ships and wars, and pitching spears with treated hafts and arrows, dismal things that are shuddering and bitter to other men, to me were sweet” (Od. 14.223–7). This epic example has its historical parallels (e.g., Clearchus, in Xen. An. 2.6.6; Tritle 2000: 60, 68–71). The restlessness of Alexander the Great and his successors stemmed from their habituation to military activity and the construction of their personal and public identities in martial terms, so much so that many personally involved themselves in the thick of the fighting (Lendon 2005: 147–9). Pyrrhus engaged in single combat (Plut. Pyrrh. 7.4–5), while Eumenes personally despoiled the body of his rival Neoptolemus whom he had slain during battle (Plut. Eum. 7.4–7; Diod. 18.31.1). In fact, the drive to excel in war was such that it was not an uncommon event for generals of Greek armies in all periods to be killed or badly wounded. Ten of the fourteen Seleucid kings died in this way (Baker 2003: 375–6), while the Athenian Sophanes, who in his youth had fought a single combat during the war with Aegina (ca. 491) and had distinguished himself as “the best fighter” among the Athenians at Plataea, years later fell fighting against the Thracians (ca. 465; see Hdt. 6.92; 9.74–75).
Alongside the honor, martial identity, or sheer enjoyment to be had from violence were other motivations. The hybristic acts of the enemy were widely regarded as sufficient provocation for war. The desire to inflict violent humiliation on enemies or to pay them back for any such actions stand as a fundamental feature of the Greek honor code and of reciprocal ideology (Lendon 2000). Those who felt victimized, having lost out materially through hostile action or been shamed and humiliated in some way, were expected to feel outrage and to demand revenge. The inhabitants of Acharnae, a frontier district of Attica, demanded that the Athenians face off against the much larger army of the Peloponnesian League and defend their land, which lay directly on the invasion route (Thuc. 2.20–1). Thereafter, vengeance was an Acharnian mantra (Ar. Ach. 179–85, 225–32). Even the failure to show proper respect could be construed as an insult that necessitated revenge. The Corinthians went to war with the Corcyreans in 433 because they hated them for not “giving them the traditional privileges at common festivals as did other Corinthian colonies” (Thuc. 1.25). Such motives, of course, could be combined with others. According to Herodotus (6.132), Miltiades persuaded the Athenians to give him seventy ships to attack Paros, partly because he had been slandered by a Parian at the Persian court, partly because of revenge for them joining the Persians at Marathon, and partly for the prospect of plunder.
Warriors were often motivated by the chance for self-enrichment through booty. The son of Castor’s successes in war brought him “abundant riches” (Od. 14.232). It was the attraction of the wealth of Persia which apparently motivated the Athenians to undertake the campaign in support of the Ionian revolt in 499 (Hdt. 5.97), just as later the prospect of an “everlasting source of pay” generated enthusiasm for the Sicilian expedition (Thuc. 6.24). Indeed Thucydides (4.59) observed that “nobody is deterred by a fear of war if they expect to gain by it.” Pleonexia, the desire for more, has been seen as a fundamental aspect of Greek society, affecting both individuals and whole communities (Balot 2001). This was not merely a greed for more wealth; men might equally wish to accumulate greater honor and fame. According to the Spartan officer Teleutias, “Nothing is more enjoyable or honorable than … to live from booty taken from enemies; it provides sustenance and renown” (Xen. Hell. 5.1.16).
The Greeks saw war as part of the natural order of things. Heracleitus (fr. 53) claimed that “War is the father of all and king of all”; that “one should understand that war is common and justice is strife.…” Wars manifested as natural expressions of man’s innate hostility to others (Arist. Pol. 1253a) and the desire to dominate (Thuc. 5.105). Plato even went so far as to make one of his speakers in the Laws contentiously argue that Greek states existed in a universal and undeclared state of war with one another (Leg. 625e–626a; see van Wees 2004: 3–5, especially 253, n. 5). Such a view has led some scholars to argue for the existence of a harsh and anarchic international system, in which recourse to war was often the most common method of attempting to resolve tensions between states (Eckstein 2006).
We should not take this picture of rampant aggressiveness too far. Aristotle described a man who was war-mad as an isolated game piece, asocial and separate from those more cooperative people who preferred to live in a polis (Pol. 1253a). Most Greeks, particularly those who spent much of their lives farming, may have experienced war rarely (Hornblower 2007: 22–5). While the son of Castor had a fascination for martial pursuits, he readily admitted that weapons were “dismal things, shuddering and bitter to other men.” Even Achilles understood that:
Men can raid cattle and sturdy sheep, and men can win tripods and bay horses by the head; but there is no raiding or winning a man’s life back again, when once it has passed the guard of his teeth (Il. 9.406–9).
Other Greeks echoed these sentiments. Euripides’s Suppliant Women (949–54), exhorted “mortals to live quietly and to cease from the toils of battle, since life is so short.” Xenophon, no stranger to warfare, remarked that although “it is fated by the gods that wars should exist, man should be cautious about beginning them and anxious to end them as soon as possible” (Xen. Hell. 6.3.6).
Of course war was only one of several relationships that could exist between states in antiquity, and whether the default position was one of hostility and competition seems problematic. There were evidently peaceful relationships ranging from noncontact or disinterest, active neutrality, or friendship (philia); some states even claimed kinship (syngeneia) and traced common historical or mythological roots. There were also numerous defensive or aggressive alliances (symmoriai, symmachiai).1 While some peaceful relationships were technically of limited duration—for instance, the ten-day renewable armistices during the Peace of Nicias (Thuc. 5.26), or the fifty-years’ peace agreed at the time between Athens and Sparta (Thuc. 5.23)—others were intended to be “forever” (e.g., the treaty of the Sybarites and Serdaioi, ML 10 = Fornara 29). From the fourth century there emerged the concept of a “common peace” (koine eirene) among Greek states (Ryder 1965, Jehne 1994). There were repeated attempts to impose such peace agreements, but few were universal or long-lived.
Most agreements between communities were accompanied by the mutual swearing of oaths (horkoi), the invocation of gods as guarantors, and the pouring of libations (spondai). These elements are apparent as early as the Homeric poems, but continue into the Hellenistic period. Written treaties first appeared in the archaic period (inscribed on stone or bronze and placed in a prominent position in the community), and gradually became more complex and legalistic, reflecting developing diplomatic and political sophistication (Adcock and Mosley 1975).
The mechanisms by which negotiations could be carried out were hardly perfect. Despite direct negotiations (using heralds [kerykes] and ambassadors [presbeis]) and third-party arbitration, there was no international institution capable of enforcing such arbitration or agreement. The position as guarantor assigned to the Persian king, and later to Philip and Alexander, in the “common peace” agreements had only a limited impact in reality. The values of participants and the communities they represented could get in the way, particularly if honor was felt not to have been satisfied. During negotiations parties frequently adopted a rhetoric of aggressive deterrence or made opening demands that seemed unreasonable and inflexible, and these might exacerbate mistrust and fear. The belligerent posturing by Agesilaus toward Thebes in 387, in attempting to enforce the King’s Peace, was an important step in the downward spiral in relations between the Spartans and Thebans (Xen. Hell. 5.1.32–3).
Whether believed to be god-given, or born from a desire to assert martial virtues, or from greed, vengeance, or other differences, ultimately people choose to start wars. It is therefore possible to regard the outbreak of war as the product of politics, insofar as members of the community, after consideration of the issues as they understood them, decide to support or acquiesce to conflict. Decisions were rarely unanimous (e.g., Thuc. 1.87), so a declaration of war was “primarily a legal, ceremonial, and ideological statement,” an expression of communal solidarity and responsibility, at least in principle (Shipley 1993: 1–24). In reality, along with those who disagreed in the assembly, there was often a significant proportion of any community who were not included in the decision making: those excluded on grounds of wealth, status, gender, or age, as well as those who could not attend the voting. Many of these might have supported the resolutions of the assembly nevertheless and, if they were not involved in the subsequent campaigns, they might stand on the side to cheer the men off to war (e.g., Thuc. 6.30–31). However, should a conflict end in failure, there could be recriminations within the community. When the news of the catastrophic defeat in Sicily (413 BC) eventually reached Athens, the people “turned against the speech-makers who had advocated the expedition, as though they themselves had not voted for it” (Thuc. 8.1).
PATTERNS OF WARFARE
War took many forms. The type and degree of military operations varied considerably, yet almost all polities were at some time involved in warfare ranging from “private” raids and border provocations comprising handfuls of warriors to clashes on the battlefield of rival power blocs consisting of many thousands of allied soldiers. This variation is evident as early as the Homeric poems. The siege of Troy looms large in the poems, with its coalition of Greeks faced by the Trojans and their allies, but stories of the campaign of the Seven against Thebes, the attack on Egypt, and even Odysseus’s conflicts with the Suitors and their kin, all play their part in revealing a rich tapestry of violence. The murders, ambushes, raids, battles, and sieges represented in the poems had their counterparts in reality throughout Greek history.
Local Horizons
Aristotle observed that some communities prohibited those in frontier regions from debating with the issue of war with their neighbors “since their own personal concerns prevent them from giving good counsel” (Arist. Pol. 1330a20–3). Cross-border raiding appears to have been a common form of intercommunal violence. Indeed the Persians on their reconquest in 494/3 “compelled the Ionians to make agreements among themselves: that they would abide by the law and not rob and plunder each other” (Hdt. 6.42). In the spring of 414, the Argives launched a raid on the long-disputed border region of Thyrea, taking a great deal of plunder from the Spartans (Thuc. 6.95). This region had been originally taken from the Argives in the mid-sixth century after a curious episode in which both sides had agreed to a combat limited to three hundred warriors a side. This Battle of the Champions appears to display a ritualized, games-like approach to warfare and some scholars have argued that many local wars, particularly in the archaic period, were bound by rules and conventions, turning them into agones (competitions) for limited prizes: tracts of borderland, the plunder of agricultural resources, or the honor and prestige of victory (Connor 1988; Hanson 1995: 327–55). The latter is suggested by such elements as the commemoration of victories in the erection of trophies on the battlefield, and in the awarding of prizes of valor (aristeiai) among the victors.
The Greeks’ agonal approach to warfare appears in remarks attributed to the Persian general Mardonius in a debate before the Persian king Xerxes:
As far as I have heard, the Greeks are pugnacious enough and start fights on the spur of the moment without sense or judgement to justify them. When they declare war on each other, they seek out the most attractive and most level territory and go down and have their fight on it—with the result that even the victors never get off without heavy losses; as for the losers—well, they’re wiped out. (Hdt. 7.9b)
Yet Herodotus is putting words into Mardonius’s mouth that are ironic, since the Greeks later opposed his army and defeated it at Plataea, where he himself was killed. Indeed, he appears to misunderstand the Greek approach to war on every point. During the Persian invasion of 480/79, the Greeks showed some appreciation of strategy and did, indeed, try to use terrain by attempting to block the passes at Tempe and Thermopylae (Hdt. 7.173, 176–8). Even at Plataea, rather than find the flattest plain, they had attempted to keep to the high ground (Hdt. 9.56). One thing that Mardonius does not mention (though his rival Artabanus did [Hdt. 7.10a]) was that the Greeks, especially the Athenians, possessed navies. Triremes were technologically sophisticated and expensive warships, and were deployed in substantial numbers by the Greeks, who defeated Xerxes’s fleet at Salamis, Mycale, and, again, at Eurymedon in the early 460s.
Persian warfare is rarely seen as agonal by modern commentators, and, according to Mardonius, it is the Greeks who have absurd and militarily irrational practices. Yet at Plataea, Mardonius supposedly sent a message to the Spartans challenging them to a combat of picked warriors intended to that would decide the fate of Greece (Hdt. 9.48). This challenge seems to reflect the “silly things” his fellow Persians accused him of believing about the Greeks (Hdt. 7.10g) and the Spartans ignored the invitation.
At best, Mardonius’s understanding of Greek warfare was outdated, but Herodotus had already undercut the story of the Battle of Champions, upon which the Spartan agonistic reputation (in Mardonius’s mind) appears to have been based. As Herodotus tells it, after the battle, in which the combatants had almost wiped one another out, both sides argued over who had won, citing contradictory criteria (two Argives to one Spartan left alive at the fall of night, but the Spartans claimed their man had remained on the battlefield overnight). So the point of Herodotus’s version of the story was that neither side could agree on the rules. Instead they followed the agon with a more general battle (Hdt. 1.82), in which victory enabled the Spartans to take permanent control of the Thyrea.
Agonal warfare appears more a modern construct than an ancient reality (cf. Krentz 2002; Dayton 2006). It is clear from Herodotus and other sources that the sixth century was filled with examples of ambushes, deceptive stratagems, bloody pursuits, and massacres. These pursuits were practiced from the time of the Homeric poems until the Hellenistic period (Ma 2000: 353–7). Of course the Greeks often liked to think of themselves as acting honorably. Sometimes individuals did, but this did not prevent others from maximizing their advantages by any means they could devise. While good intentions might win praise, results often counted for more. Stratagems, the “thefts of war” (klemmata), were to be admired and emulated. The Spartan general Brasidas is made to say: “the most successful soldier … makes his attack not so much in an open and straightforward fashion, but by seizing the opportunity of the moment; and these thefts (klemmata) … have the most brilliant renown in war” (Thuc. 5.9; Wheeler 1988: 43–53; Krentz 2000). The use of deception and stratagem was common, limited not so much by a sense of honor as by the composition and experience of the military forces and the imagination, acumen, and daring of the generals.
Rarely did states completely subdue and conquer neighboring rivals (van Wees 2004: 29–30). In some cases there may have been a sense of neighborliness, or, rather, a sense of keeping disputes in proportion for fear of escalation and its unpredictable consequences. But mostly it seems there were few opportunities to push things to a final finish. Many communities tried nonetheless, but one reason for this failure to annex appears to have been the relative size and resources of communities (Ma 2000: 352–3). Many of the thousand or more poleis that we know about were small, which limited their capacity to conquer. Those which did effect military or peaceful mergers (synoecisms) eventually found their territories constrained by similarly expansionist rivals or, having grown to the limit of their plains or valleys, they were encircled by natural hindrances such as mountains or the sea. It is striking that one of the most successful annexations of territory, the Spartan subjugation of Messenia in the seventh century, led to a situation in which, by 479, a mere eight thousand hoplites (Hdt. 7.234) ruled some 8500 km2 or the lower third of the Peloponnese (Cartledge 2002: 6, 178). They held on through a combination of collusion with the perioikic communities of Laconia (which played an active role in the phalanx: five thousand at Plataea) and the acquiescence of the conquered helots, of which a staggering thirty-five thousand were claimed to have been deployed at the battle of Plataea (Hdt. 9.10–11; Cartledge 2002: 138–68). However, Spartan society became fixated on the enemy within, with stories of the ephors annually declaring war on the servile helot population (Plut. Lyc. 28), or of the elimination of potentially subversive elements (Thuc. 1.128; 4.80). On several occasions the Spartans had to deal with unrest and active warfare from the Messenian helots and even some perioikic communities (Cartledge 2002: 131, 187, 250, 253, 255). The citizen body, the Spartiates, adopted the mentality of a permanent warrior band of homoioi (“the uniform”) in lifestyle and ethos (Plut. Lyc. 24.1–2; Rawlings 2007a: 208–11). Few other states were ready to bear such a social burden; it was easier to negotiate a settlement from a position of military strength that preserved the existence of both communities than to try to govern a conquered territory in the teeth of resentment and potential revolt. After failing to “helotize” the Tegeans in the early to mid-sixth century (Hdt. 1.66), Sparta turned to a system of coercive alliances, in which allies undertook to “go by land and by sea wherever the Spartans might lead” (suggested by a clause in the treaty between Sparta and Erxadieis circa 426/5 [Peek 1974]), although from circa 507/6 the Spartans apparently sought allied consent before calling on them to assemble for war (Hdt. 5.91–3; cf. 5.74–5).
International Vistas
If it had ever been the case that archaic warfare was agonal, it was clearly inappropriate against the vast army of the Persian aggressor in 480. Political decisions to resist or to Medize might have life or death consequences. Communities on the invasion route hurried to evacuate; those who failed to evade the Persians in Phocis, for example, were subjected to the horrors of rape and massacre (Hdt. 8.33). Both Phocis and Attica were devastated and much of Athens itself was destroyed. Again, an aspect of Mardonius’s false impression was the inability of the Greeks to bury their differences through negotiation, yet the pan-Hellenic response, albeit partial, was effective enough during and after Xerxes’s invasion. There were precedents. The Greeks had the Trojan War from their mythical past as an example of international cooperation, while during the archaic period the semi-legendary First Sacred War, waged over control of the Oracle at Delphi (Fornara 16), and the Lelantine War had apparently involved large coalitions of Greek states (Thuc. 1.15). During the sixth century Sparta had assembled its regional hegemony, the Peloponnesian League, which it deployed against various rivals (see further Cawkwell 1993).
Such associations formed the core of the pan-Hellenic alliance that resisted the Persian invasion of 480–479. With a widening of the war, particularly into the eastern Aegean, the Athenians took over leadership of the non-Peloponnesian allies in 478. The Delian League continued the war against Persia, on and off, until 449. Its success was founded on the vigor and skill of the Athenian and allied fleet, which struck Persian territory in the Aegean and beyond. Acquiring the techniques of siege warfare as well, the Delian League took Persian naval bases and strongpoints at Eion, Sestos, and Abdera (Hdt. 9.115–20; Thuc. 1.98; Plut. Cim. 12, 14). In the 470s and 460s it was involved in campaigns and sieges in Ionia, Caria, Cyprus, and even Egypt (Diod. 11.60.1–6; Thuc. 1.104, 109–110).
Thereafter, there were repeated wars involving large agglomerations of states, of which notable examples are the Peloponnesian wars (459–446, 431–404), the Corinthian War (394–386), and the Greek support for Alexander’s invasion of Persia (336–323). These ran alongside or swept up the disputes of local rivals. It had been the Thessalians, owing to their long-standing bitterness toward the neighboring Phocians, who had encouraged the Persians to ravage their territory in 480. Local rivalry seemed so intense that Herodotus commented: “if the Thessalians had chosen to resist, no doubt the Phocians would have deserted to Persia” (Hdt. 8.32–33).
Prior to the involvement of Rome, the Greek mainland experienced only two brief periods of direct invasion by “barbarians” (the Persian campaigns of 490, 480–479, and the Gallic forays of 281 and 279/8), nevertheless Greeks had frequent military contact with foreigners (barbaroi). Some states hired barbarian Thracian, Scythian, Iberian, or Celtic mercenaries, while the armies of the Successors not only employed such mercenaries in large numbers, but also variously drew on the manpower of the non-Greek regions they controlled (on mercenaries see further Trundle, 330–50). Many of the slaves who followed their masters into war and sometimes fought at their side were also of non-Greek origin (Hunt 1998). Furthermore, the potential vistas for Greek warriors were broad. The Homeric poems describe overseas operations: at Troy (a substantial distance from the west coast of Greece, such as Odysseus’s Ithaca) and the Cretan raid on Egypt (Od. 14.245–72; cf. Hdt. 2.152); there was, perhaps, an assumption among the poet’s audience that travel abroad for military purposes was not improbable. The archaic period witnessed overseas expansion and, sometimes, the violent establishment of Greek communities throughout the Mediterranean including Spain, Southern France, Sicily, North Africa, as well as the coasts of the Black Sea (Rihll 1993). The armies of Near Eastern states, such as Lydia, Babylon, Egypt, and, from the sixth century onward, Persia, and Carthage in the west, recruited considerable numbers of Greeks as mercenaries, allies, or subjects. Some of these men returned to their families or communities (such as Antimenidas, brother of Alcaeus), but many stayed, such as the Greeks settled at Pelusium by the pharaohs (Heph. Ench. 10.3; Libanius Or. 13.5; Str. 13.2.3; Hdt. 2.154, 163; Kaplan 2003). These vistas and the opportunities for foreign adventure were greatly enhanced by the conquests of Alexander and his successors.
After the Macedonian conquest of the Persian Empire, communities of veterans, often Greek mercenaries deposited as garrisons or discharged with kleroi (allotments) of land, were sprinkled across the landscape from Asia Minor to Bactria (Chaniotis 2005: 84–6). Some were given kleroi for service, others in the expectation that they or their descendants might be called up (Cohen 1987). The wars of the Hellenistic kings traversed huge distances, and were often conducted on a grand numerical and material scale (see below Serrati, 179–98). Yet war in the Hellenistic period could be just as much a local as an international affair (Ma 2000; Baker 2003). Communities continued to make war on their neighbors, made alliances, joined leagues and sometimes took sides in the large-scale rivalries of the Successor kingdoms.
All this indicates the tremendous variety of warfare in Greece and beyond. Although the patterns of warfare seem to recur, the methods of warfare underwent a number of significant developments. These were underpinned by several important trends: the growth of state institutions and apparatus, and the process of tactical and technological innovation.
WAR AND THE STATE
A twofold picture of private and public is evident in the Homeric presentation of military organization and preparation for the conduct of war. Sometimes individual lords mounted their own expeditions, as when the son of Castor targeted the Egyptian coast (Od. 14.259–72). At other times expedition leaders might recruit allies from nobles of other communities, as Agamemnon does with Odysseus (Od. 24.115–19). But it is clear that community assemblies also made decisions to send contingents on campaign, as indicated by the Mycenaean vote to support the Seven against Thebes (Il. 4.376–81) and the Cretan assembly’s undertaking to send men to Troy, even compelling “with harsh words” Idomeneus and the son of Castor to be the expeditionary commanders (Od. 14.237–9). The “catalog of ships” emphasizes the connection between named commanders and communal contingents (Il. 2.494–759).
Although Homeric leaders on campaign had their followers (therapontes), a seemingly personal relationship of subordination, generally the mass of warriors were drawn from the community. They did not always follow their commander’s orders, particularly on raids (Od. 9.43–61; 14.259–72), and it is suggested that they followed such men as Agamemnon or Menelaus as a “favor” (charis: Il. 1.156, cf. 5.306–7). They often were addressed as comrades (hetairoi: Il. 9.630–1, 12.122) or friends (philoi: Il. 2.110; 19.78) to their faces, stressing their personal relationships with the kings, though also with a sense of a shared stake in the conflict (see Geddes 1984: 32; van Wees 1992: 48, 337 n. 80). But there is an element of social nicety in such representations. Charis has its aspects of deference and of giving proper respect to a superior, while the kings appear to regard their followers as “counting for nothing in war or council” (Il. 2.201–2).
In the archaic period there was a gradual extension of state control over violence, although it rarely achieved a monopolization, even in later periods (Gabrielsen 2007: 249–52). The private modes of violence described in the Homeric poems were still a feature of sixth-century Athens, where “those who come together for the pursuit of booty” were even accorded legal rights (Gaius Dig. 47.22.4). The codification of such rights was, of course, an indication of state interest. Similarly, Dracon’s law on homicide (ML 86) indicates how, in Athens, state institutions were employed to regulate violent activity (the state assuming the role of avenger, prescribing punishments for murder within the polis). From the archaic period onward, in many Greek communities, at least where some form of representation existed, eligible citizens were expected to cast votes in their assemblies to sanction the mustering of military forces and the launching of campaigns against those they regarded (and designated) as their enemies (Garlan 1976: 43). Communities also developed more formal conceptions of military authority, often with limited powers and periods of office. War officials, principally generals (hegemones, strategoi), officers (e.g., taxiarchoi, lochargoi, dekarchoi, trierarchoi), and administrators such as booty sellers (laphyropolai) and accountants (tamiai) came to be appointed through election or selection by the state. In theory, such officials carried with them on campaign the authority of the state in order to allow them to fulfill their allotted tasks. Yet the power of these officials was often heavily circumscribed and even the ability to discipline troops was limited, since the common soldiers often regarded themselves as fellow citizens and equals (isonomoi) in the eyes of the law (Pritchett 2: 232–45; Hornblower 2000). Mechanisms also developed to check their behavior, as in the scrutiny of generals during and after their terms of office by other state officials (e.g., Spartan ephors and symbolai) or the general assembly of the people (Pritchett 2: 36–8). These became common in the fifth and fourth centuries. The trials of Athenian generals are reported frequently enough to suggest an underlying expectation that generals were agents of the community and accountable to it. There was a sense that abuses and individual ambitions of generals needed constant supervision and control. It was, however, military failure that often encouraged prosecution (Pritchett 2: 4–33, esp. 24; Hamel 1998).
State authority, although an important concept in its own right, in reality rested on a collusion of interest groups. It might be undermined by competing factions, usually made up of powerful individuals and their supporters, who might have the capacity to mobilize substantial forces in order to pursue their own interests. Indeed the frequency of violent internal conflict, stasis, between such interest groups is remarkable. Hansen notes that in the archaic and classical periods, there were 279 outbreaks of civic violence in 122 different poleis (Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 124–9; Hansen 2006: 125–6). In Syracuse, often a particularly volatile mix of regularly disenfranchised and persecuted political factions, mercenaries, and transplanted populations, there were twenty-seven occurrences of civil war between 670 and 279 (Berger 1992: 34–53). Such disputes indicate the fragmentary and fragile nature of political consensus. Warfare might act as a unifier against external threat, but it often allows one group or individual to take control, be it through gaining glory and influence with the general populace in victory, overturning the status quo in defeat, or even by cutting a deal with the enemy during the war itself.
The success of Philip and Alexander, and the latter’s conquest of Persia, opened up vast possibilities for the adventurous, talented, and well-connected general. A number of veteran officers of Alexander’s campaigns exploited the problems of succession on Alexander’s death in 323 to divide up his empire. They looked to their own resources and to the loyalty, inspired and purchased, of their armies (Chaniotis 2005: 60–8). The Macedonian elements of these forces had considerable influence. Traditionally the Macedonian army had ratified the succession by acclamation, as it did with Philip, Alexander, and Arrhidaeus (Hatzopoulos 1996: 276–9), but at times it acted as kingmaker, or even undid the claims of its commanders, such as when the Argyraspides (the Silver-Shields) betrayed Eumenes at Gabiene in 316 (see further Heckel, 173–6).
Eventually the rivals were whittled down by the vagaries of military fortune and political intrigue and several great kingdoms emerged. The Seleucids in Asia, Ptolemies in Egypt, and Antigonids in Macedonia became the main players, but there were also a number of lesser kings, such as the Attalids of Pergamon and the rulers of Bactria. Kingdoms large and small continued to compete militarily, and required standing armies and a network of local militias and garrisons to ensure their continuity. The political organization of these kingdoms often reflected their martial origins, with officials displaying their relationship to the king through military terminology (Chaniotis 2005: 64). The kingdoms were organized so that their military power rested on two central aspects. First, the essential manpower for armies, navies, and garrisons was provided by the Macedonians and Greeks who had been settled or were currently serving in the kingdom, supplemented where necessary by the employment of indigenous populations (Bar-Kochva 1976). Second, exploitation through taxation of the wealth of the regions allowed the long-term maintenance of elite forces, and a large surplus gave the kings the ability to hire and outfit many more troops for specific campaigns.
Economic Structures
The Iliad suggests that the besiegers of Troy supplied themselves through raiding neighboring communities (Il. 9.329–30, 20.90–2, 21.35–8) and by trading, on an individual basis it seems, their booty for supplies brought from nearby friendly islands (7.467–75, 9.71). The Greeks of the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods also left it to private exchange in order to satisfy many of their logistical needs on campaign. Soldiers marched out with their own rations and purchased more from merchants and temporary markets on the way. This haphazard approach to supply frequently limited the scope and duration of campaigning. The Peloponnesian invasions of Attica during the Archidamian War, for instance, lasted on average only thirty days. For the most part, soldiers equipped themselves at their own expense, meaning that an army on the march reflected the economic differences in society at large. Rich men rode horses, wore elaborately decorated armor, and had attendants to carry their equipment and supplies, whereas the poorest armed themselves with whatever came to hand. Of course large items such as artillery, warships, and war elephants were usually state-owned. In Athens, fourth-century inscriptions record catapults stored in a state armory (IG II2 1487B.84–99) and there are lists of public warship hulls and equipment, though other states, such as Rhodes, subsidized privately owned warships.2
Toward the end of the sixth century, financial systems based on coinage allowed states to store up military potential for the future. In other words, they could hire or support men in military activity at relatively short notice from reserves of bullion, minted into coin (Trundle 2010). Some of the first to exploit the military potential of money were tyrants, who used it to raise armies of mercenaries to seize and maintain their power. Alcaeus alludes to a loan of two thousand staters from the Lydians for an attempt to take over Lesbos (Alc. fr. 69). Pisistratus used personal connections to raise sufficient money and troops to back his third attempt at tyranny in 546 (Hdt. 1.61; Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 15.2). However, it was the Persian Empire that demonstrated the power of money to the Greeks. Many thousands were attracted to serve in the armies of the Great King. Some of these men could rise quite high: a certain Phalinus, an expert in drill and infantry tactics, in the service of the satrap Tissaphernes after the battle of Cunaxa, conducted discussions on the Great King’s behalf with the Ten Thousand, themselves mercenaries recruited by the pretender Cyrus (Xen. An. 2.1).
The Persians may have shown the Athenians the power of tribute (Raaflaub 2009: 98–101). Vast financial resources drawn from the empire backed the Persian military, allowing it to mount the expeditions of conquest that overwhelmed Egypt and attempted to annex Greece. In response, from its creation the Athenians assessed and regularized the financial contributions of individual members of the Delian League (Thuc. 1.96; Diod. 11.47.1). Although a few states contributed ships, the vast majority instead paid for the Athenian crewed and commanded fleet (Plut. Cim. 11; Meiggs 1972: 524–61). Athens compelled its allies to render coin or bullion to the treasury, which stimulated them to develop systems of generating the money through taxation (Rawlings 2007a: 164–5). Similarly the Athenians created a system by which their landowning rich citizens were expected to pay liturgies, principally trierarchies (ship commands), which forced such men to create methods of converting their agricultural surplus into cash crops (Osborne 2002: 125–8). From the fifth century the most regular expense for Athens was the wages of soldiers and sailors (citizens or otherwise). An ample supply of coins also enabled states to maintain troops in campaigns longer than the traditional summer window of operations (e.g., the siege of Potidaea 432–430/29; Thuc. 2.70). Pay enabled soldiers to purchase supplies and foodstuffs from merchants, although recourse to pillage, where available and diplomatically appropriate, was often an option and sometimes a necessity (Rawlings 2007a: 74, 76, 118).
The fifth century was the high point for Athenian military finance. In 431 the Athenians had reserves of 6,540 talents. But conflict could be expensive. Just three years into the Peloponnesian War, most of this money had been consumed, and the Athenians were forced to raise tribute, taxes, and obtain loans from wealthy temples (Wartenberg 1995: 31–2). After its defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the loss of its empire in 404/3, its straitened circumstances often led to inadequate finance for the expeditions that it sent out, and which were expected to live off their wits (Millett 1993, 191–4). In the mid-fourth century, Athens had become out-resourced by Philip II, who drove the expansion of Macedon with the profits of his lands and conquests, particularly of the mines around Damastium (captured 358), Pangaeum (357), and Philippi (356). As Demosthenes observed (3.50; 8.11), Philip’s wealth meant his army could operate all year round. His money also opened the gates of a good number of walled cities, such as Olynthus (347/6; Diod. 16.52.2; Dem. 8.40, 19.265, 342; cf. Diod. 16.53.3). However, it was the spectacular success of Alexander in his conquest of Persia that transformed the economy of war. While the Delian League produced 480 talents of silver annually, rising to 1,460 at the height of the Peloponnesian War, the annual revenue of Alexander’s empire was supposedly 30,000 talents; the Successor kingdom of Egypt was worth 14,800 talents a year to its kings in the mid-third century (Aperghis 2001: 78; Davies 2006: 81). Such resources dwarfed those of individual Greek states and allowed the Successors to raise huge armies and navies to confront one another and to further their territorial and hegemonic aspirations (Austin 1986).
MILITARY EQUIPMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WAR
The Greeks did not possess a concept of progress founded on technological innovation. Such development in the ancient world was therefore limited and piecemeal. Toward the end of the eighth century, however, two evolutions in the tools of war were of fundamental importance. The first was a warship designed primarily to engage ships directly in combat: the trireme of the classical era grew to become the quinquereme of the Hellenistic era (see further de Souza, 370–82). The second was a panoply of armor and weapons that became closely associated with, if not synonymous, for the Greek heavy infantryman, the hoplite (see further Jarva, 395–417 and J. Lee, 147–51). These developments, outlined here, appear to have had a variety of military, institutional, and ideological ramifications.
Warships and Navies
The early archaic period witnessed the development of polyremes, wooden warships constructed of two or more banks of rowers and fronted by a ram. By the late sixth century, the ship of the line was the three-banked warship, the trireme or trieres; each “three” needed 170 oarsmen and thirty other crew, and a contingent of marines (Rawlings 2007a: 123–4). Triremes were expensive to construct and maintain, and were effectively beyond the personal resources of all but a handful of the wealthy elite; their increasing deployment is indicative of the process by which naval warfare became an instrument of state. Early navies appear to have been assembled from privately owned ships, mostly penteconters (“fifty”-crewed), but gradually states came to assert control over the ownership of warships and related infrastructure (de Souza 1998). A large fleet of triremes was a manifestation of the economic and institutional sophistication and power of the polis. Few states could match the resources of the wealthiest players: Phoenicia and Egypt (under Persian control), or Athens, whose fleet was initially created through Attic silver mines and later supported by the tribute of an empire (Gabrielsen 1994: 129). They also appear to have been able to bear the cost of training their crews to a higher technical standard than their rivals.
For Athens, the commitment to trireme fleets had important repercussions. The fleet allowed Athens to maintain a thalassocracy (“sea domination”) in the Aegean. The side effect of empire was that the city became a center of trade and imports of luxuries. The wealth of the empire was turned not only to maintaining imperial control, but to constructing magnificent buildings in the city (Kallet-Marx 1989: 252–66). However, Isocrates (Peace 8.102–3) argued that sea power could corrupt, leading to injustice, lawlessness, laziness, greed, covetousness and a tyrannical attitude. The fleet required a heavy demographic commitment from common Athenian rowers, supplemented by hired oarsmen from the empire and beyond. Some elite writers regarded the citizen poor as a naval mob that held power in the city because of their military contribution (Xen. [Ath. Pol.] 1.2). It is unclear, however, whether the rowers ever constituted any kind of politically self-aware group. Nevertheless it was sometimes said that the harbor town of the Piraeus was more democratic than the inland city of Athens itself (Arist. Pol. 1303b10–12; Roy 1998).
By the Hellenistic period there had developed a naval arms race in which ships became ever larger. In the third century, while “Fours” and “Fives” were predominant, larger ships such as “Sixes” and “Sevens” were also frequently deployed. The fleets of Demetrius and Antigonus Gonatas included even larger ships: “Nines,” “Elevens,” “Thirteens,” and even “Fifteens” and “Sixteens”; the very largest ships (“Twenties,” “Thirties,” and even a “Forty” with a crew of four thousand are reported) were perhaps more for show than actual wartime service (Morrison 1996: 273–7). Such ships advertized the resources and power of the kings and it was the vast reserves of gold and silver of the conquered Persian Empire, as well as the continued exploitation of its territories, that funded this gigantism and the explosion in naval construction (Bugh 2006: 275–7). Athens could not compete against such power and wealth (defeat at Amorgos in 322 ended its naval power: Diod. 18.15.8–9; Plut. Dem. 11.3, Mor. 338a; Morrison 1996: 13–19), and only Rhodes henceforth succeeded in maintaining an independent fleet, one that mostly eschewed the use of superships for smaller and swifter hemioliai (“one and a halves”) and triemiolai (“three-banked hemioliai”?), ships capable of securing trade routes and rooting out piracy (Gabrielsen 1997: 42–4; 85–111).
The Panoply, the Hoplite and the Phalanx
On land the appearance of the panoply-wearing infantryman has been regarded as one of the most significant developments in Greek warfare. The seventh-century poet Tyrtaeus (fr. 11.38) calls them panoploi, “the panoplied,” while the term hoplites, “the armed,” first appears in the early fifth century (Lazenby and Whitehead 1996: 32; on arms and armor see Jarva, 395–415). For the most part, the panoply (ta hopla) consisted of a spear and large, usually circular, shield (the hoplon or aspis), with, perhaps, a bronze, leather, or reinforced felt helmet. Greaves and a chest-protecting cuirass of bronze, leather, or, from the end of the sixth century, stiffened linen, were probably expensive extras, as was a sword, carried as a secondary weapon. Hoplites were well suited to direct hand-to-hand combat where they benefited from the personal protection offered by the panoply. It was the intention to fight in such a close up and direct fashion that marked the hoplite as a dangerous, courageous, and intimidating foe (figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 A scene depicting hoplite battle and the warrior’s panoply, a fragment of a sixth century B.C. Corinthian krater. Metropolitan Museum, New York (accession number 12.229.9). Photo Credit: Museum.
Aristotle (Pol. 1297b10) argued that the appearance of a tactical system for infantry could be linked to the extension of political and citizen rights. Indeed he argued that the mezoi (“middle class”) tended to form nonexclusive oligarchies based upon their hoplite status (Pol. 1321a1). Whether we should accept Aristotle’s view of early military developments and their connection to political rights is not easily answered. His formulation can be criticized as an overly schematic philosophical construct, a hypothetical reconstruction conditioned by his fourth-century world view, with limited knowledge or understanding of the conditions of the seventh, sixth, or even fifth centuries. His analysis, however, puts into sharp focus a central controversy of the so-called “Hoplite Revolution”: was it the rising prosperity of farmers that led them increasingly to demand and obtain more rights, with a consequent egalitarianization of social and political life, which, in turn, came to be reflected in the adoption of the cooperative close-fighting tactics of the phalanx and the development of hoplite equipment? Or was it the changing face of battle, where massed formations of hoplites superseded individualistic “aristocratic” warfare, which led the farmer-hoplites to demand more political rights in recognition of their military contribution (Cartledge 1977; Salmon 1977; Snodgrass 1993; Hanson 1995)?
In an attempt to cut this Gordian knot, it may be argued that developments on the battlefield ought not to be linked so closely to political changes, and that civic rights and hoplite service were not intrinsically connected (van Wees 1995: 170–1). In the classical period, not all members of the phalanx possessed equal (or any) political rights. In the fifth century Athenian democracy, for instance, the lowest property class, the thetes, could not be elected to high political office, but some of them could afford to fight as hoplites. Democratic Athens was a relatively large hoplite state. According to Thucydides (2.13), in 431 there were approximately thirteen thousand hoplites and sixteen thousand reservists (the youths, the old, and the metics [the latter were resident foreigners without any citizen rights]). However, the oligarchic regimes of 411/10 and 404/3 restricted political rights to five thousand and three thousand citizens respectively; most of those who were excluded were poorer hoplites (Thuc. 8.65–6; Xen. Hell. 2.3.20). By comparison, from the sixth century, if not earlier, Spartiates and perioikoi marched out as hoplites together, but the latter did not have the same political rights as the full citizens of the Spartan polis (Oliva 1971: 55–62; Cartledge 2002: 153). Sparta had around eight thousand citizen hoplites at the time of Plataea (Hdt. 7.234), plus, perhaps, an equivalent or greater number of perioikoi.3
Another important aspect of this debate centers on how the phalanx was organized and operated in battle. Most scholars see a development from an unformed and somewhat disorganized mass to a formation displaying a degree of eutaxia, good order, with formal concepts of rank and file. Although the term phalanx (in the plural, phalanges, meaning “lines” or “ranks”) occurs thirty-four times in the Iliad (Pritchett 4: 22), battle in the Homeric poems appears to have been a loose and fluid affair (van Wees 1997, Rawlings 2007a, 34–9). There is some debate about how long this period of the proto-phalanx lasted. Some scholars see a move to the tactical formation suggested by Aristotle (Pol. 1297b10; see above), in the mid-seventh century; others regard the change as coming later, even, perhaps, at the end of the sixth century.4 The sources are not decisive, though the majority of the representations of violence on archaic painted pottery, and in the poetry of Tyrtaeus (fr. 10–12, 23a) and Callinus (fr. 1), suggest that, for much of the seventh and sixth centuries, engagements could be fluid and the phalanx may have remained an unformed and undifferentiated mass of lightly armed warriors and even horsemen (van Wees 2000a; 2004: 60, 169–77, 196).
Figure 1.2 Detail of hoplite phalanx advancing, circa 390–380 B.C. Nereid Monument, Lesser Podium. British Museum, London (BM Sc. 868b). Photo Credit: L. Tritle.
By the time of the Persian Wars it seems that the “panoplied” had become sufficiently differentiated from the rest of the combatants in form and function to be termed hoplites.5 Yet engagements involving phalanxes of hoplites operating as discreet units (taxeis, lochoi) of set depths (usually eight or twelve men deep) are first described in any detail by sources writing in the latter third of the fifth century (fig. 1.2). It does appear that, as early as Marathon in 490, the Athenian army consisted of ten tribally organizedtaxeis(Hdt. 6.111; Lazenby 1993: 62–3). Other states organized their hoplites in similar units, such as “the five lochoi” of the Argives who deployed alongside “the older men” and a thousand-strong band of “picked men” (logades) at the first battle of Mantinea (418; see Thuc. 5.67, 72). The Argive logades were trained at public expense and, in the latter part of the fifth century, we hear of a number of such specialist bands of elite hoplites in a number of states (Pritchett 1974: 222–4; Tritle 1989). However, few states could afford large numbers of such men. Most hoplites were primarily farmers and were little more than militias that were capable of only rudimentary drill or discipline.
Phalanx formations in the classical period were subject to variation, in terms of width and, particularly, depth. The Thebans sometimes adopted super-deep formations of twenty-five or fifty shields (Thuc. 4.93; Xen. Hell. 6.4.12). The Spartans developed a complex command structure, organizing smaller commands that enabled articulation of movement and independent responses to battlefield conditions (see further J. Lee, 151–7). It is unclear how many states other than the Spartans maintained units below thelochos.
The imposition of lesser officers on groups who regarded themselves as political and civic equals might be socially difficult, nor was there opportunity to develop chains of commands or tactical subtleties prior to the assemblage of militia armies on campaign. Consequently, many farmer-hoplites found maneuver in formation difficult to achieve effectively when under pressure. Only the Spartans had apparently mastered the ability to march in time toward the enemy, even to the point of contact (van Wees 2004: 187). Most phalanxes broke into a run when they approached the enemy, which could be as far as a couple of hundred meters (Hanson 1989: 139–40; Goldsworthy 1997: 10; Rawlings 2007a: 91–2). This had the effect of opening and elongating formations, introducing fluidity and chaos to the initial moments of contact. Nevertheless, phalanxes were reasonably effective in battle. Hoplite cohesion did not rely so much on the ability of officers to discipline their men, but on the moral pressure from comrades in arms, who were often neighbors and relatives, and from a regard for the wider attitude of the community to those who acted in a cowardly or shameful manner in combat (Hanson 1989: 117–25; van Wees 2004: 111–12, 162–4; Rawlings 2007a: 205–13).
Specialization and Flexibility
Hoplite phalanxes were a major feature of warfare in the fifth and fourth centuries, though not the only aspect. There were many occasions when hoplites operated outside of the phalanx, particularly when they participated in sieges, raids, and acted as marines in naval battles (Rawlings 2000). Contact with the far more sophisticated military methods of the Persian Empire forced the Greeks to employ the rudiments of military methodology, first against these barbarians but then against each other. Increasing use of other forces such as cavalry, light infantry (including peltasts), and mercenaries made for more complicated engagements. The specialization of such groups, including hoplites, is indicative of a developing sophistication in strategy and tactics. Indeed, to cope with the increased use of maneuver on the battlefield, hoplite equipment became lighter. Linen corselets commonly appear in representations from the end of the sixth century, as do open-faced helmets. These allowed for more mobility and visibility than the bronze “bell” corselet and Corinthian helmets of the archaic period.
In the mid-fourth century the hoplite was superseded by a new form of heavy infantryman, the specialist phalangite, who needed both hands to use a much longer spear, the sarissa, and who relied less on his shield in combat and more on the density of the phalanx for success. These pikemen swept away both the old hoplite order and the military system of the Persian Empire on the battlefields of Greece and Asia. Sarissa fighting required a high level of discipline, where the formation was paramount. Unlike hoplites, these phalangites did not charge at the run into battle, but presented an intimidating hedge of pikes, the formation itself often sixteen men deep. The high level of training was, perhaps, only possible to achieve in monarchies, which might have the will and coercive power to compel their subjects to stand the rigors of drill. Certainly few Greek states adopted the sarissa, and then only later in the third century (Ma 2000: 346–7, 361). Philip, Alexander, and the Successors were also backed by sufficient wealth to sustain such forces for long periods of time, which gave their phalanxes the opportunity to develop the skills and cohesion to dominate enemies in combat (see further Serrati, 182–8).
In the archaic period, the light-armed seem to have fought among those with armor in an undifferentiated mass. Thus a bow-armed Teucer sheltered behind the shield of his brother Ajax (Il. 8.266–72) and Tyrtaeus (fr. 11.30–8) represents the “armored” (panoploi) and the “naked” (gymnētes) fighting side by side. By the classical period, the light infantry had been separated from the phalanx, as psiloi or, more specifically, akonistai (javelin-armed soldiers), toxotoi (archers), or sphendonētai (slingers). Most of these men came from poor, low-status backgrounds. Despite the limited attention they are given in our literary accounts, large numbers seem to have been present on campaign and at most battles. At Delium (424), more than half of the combatants on the Boeotian side were light troops; the Athenians suffered in the battle, in part, because many of their own non-hoplite infantry had already returned home (Thuc. 4.93). Indeed, Aristotle (Pol. 1321a14–26) claimed that the light-armed poor could easily get the better of “wealthier” hoplites and cavalry (particularly during stasis) and so urged the better sorts to train their sons as light infantry. As early as the mid-fifth century troops described as peltasts also begin to make an appearance in Greece.
Cavalry in the second Peloponnesian war did much to limit the Spartan ravaging of Attica, and to help keep up morale within Athens (Spence 1993). Athens possessed a relatively large cavalry force, approximately one thousand, plus two hundred horse archers, whereas most central and southern Greek states had limited numbers. Indeed, Sparta only organized a cavalry force in 425, evidently in response to Athenian naval raids on Laconia (Thuc. 4.55; Spence 1993: 11–15). The main reason for this failure to develop substantial cavalry forces, particularly in the Peloponnese, was that horses were expensive to breed, train, and feed (see further Hyland, 493–504). Consequently horses were generally only owned by the wealthy, a demographically small element of society.
Horsemen were further marginalized in the martial ideology of states with substantial forces of hoplites. From the sixth century, if not earlier, Spartan kings fought with their bodyguard of hippeis (horsemen), but did so collectively and symbolically on foot. Many generals and wealthy equestrians of other states also dismounted to fight in the phalanx. Mantitheus, a well-to-do Athenian, made a point of refusing to serve in the cavalry, fighting instead as an infantryman, since, “I saw that everyone believed that the cavalry would be the safer option, but that the hoplites would have to face the real danger.… I thought it shameful if the majority had to face peril, to go to battle thinking of my own safety” (Lys. 16.13).
For men like Mantitheus, things had changed somewhat in Athens since the Peloponnesian War because of the oligarchic regime of 404/3, in which the cavalry had been heavily and bloodily implicated. For a generation, any Athenian who was a member of the “cavalry class” (hippeis) could be suspected of antidemocratic sympathies. In the 360s Xenophon wrote a manual which attempted, in part, to rehabilitate and offer advice on improving the effectiveness of the Athenian cavalry. By then, however, large and powerful cavalries were coming to dominate battlefields and campaigns in northern Greece and were soon to contribute to the victory of Macedonia over the Greeks at Chaeronea (338/7) and to its meteoric conquest of the Persian Empire.
Macedon’s emergence as the dominant military power in Greece underlines the developments in military practice and organization in the fourth century. The Macedonian army appears to have been reformed by Philip II. He gave the army greater discipline, mobility, and tactical and strategic flexibility than contemporary Greek states. The Macedonians had already possessed good cavalry because their terrain and social structures favored its development. Under Philip and Alexander we hear of the Companions (hetairoi), heavy cavalry—able to charge enemy cavalry and to fight hand to hand with thrusting spears, rather than skirmishing with javelins (Brunt 1963). As territorially recruited units, the Companions were mostly landowning noblemen or Macedonians and Greeks who had been granted estates by the king. These were augmented by Thessalian cavalry, good quality horsemen whose role in battle was to secure the left flank, while the Companions tried to win the battle with a timely charge on the right.
The Macedonian army, in the hands of a bold and ambitious general like Alexander, backed by a war-toughened cadre of officers and Companions who had learned their trade under Philip, won spectacular successes against the Persian Empire. In battles at Granicus, Issus, and Gaugamela, in sieges such as Tyre and Gaza, and even in the difficult years of campaigning in eastern Iran and Afghanistan, the army dominated its enemies, as the empire of the Great King fell into Alexander’s hands (Milns 1976). After Alexander’s death, however, the army split into several factions, and thus the armies of the Successors tended to be comparable in quality and organization. The armies of the Hellenistic dynasts exhibited an understanding of the integration of cavalry, light and heavy infantry, trained and officered to execute the strategic visions of their commanders. This flexibility was, to some extent, constrained by the quality of training and organization of the troops and their officers.
Furthermore, the influence of Philip and Alexander’s battle deployments and grand tactics remained strong. Elite units of cavalry, usually deployed on the right, were readied to strike a decisive blow, although by the end of the third century their importance as winners of battles had diminished. Despite the subtlety of deployment and the close integration of the various contingents, for the most part major battles of the Hellenistic period, such as Paraetacene (317) and Raphia (217), involved the centers of armies—sarissa-armed phalanxes—grinding into one another, each attempting to overpower the other. The evolution of the close-quarters spearman, begun in the eighth century, reached its apogee in the Macedonian pikeman. As Polybius observed, the sarissa phalanx was almost unstoppable on level terrain (18.29.1–30.4; 31.3–5). Yet it relied on close collaboration with light forces and cavalry to protect its flanks, without which its vulnerability and inflexibility was all too apparent (see, e.g., Polyb. 18.26.4; Livy 44.41).
It was a great shock when the phalanx encountered the heavy infantry legions of Rome, which employed a flexible system of reserves and relied primarily on a combination of missile bombardment, “an iron downpour” of the fearsome heavy pila (Macrob. Sat. 6.1.52 = Enn. Ann. 8. frg. 281 Warmington = 287 Vahl.), and close combat with body-covering shields and cut-and-thrust swords. The legion was also relatively comfortable in rough terrain, but the pike block was, in this respect, overspecialized (Polyb. 18.31–2). This was demonstrated at Pydna (167), where the Roman legionary maniples were able to infiltrate the ranks of the phalanx and cut it to pieces (Plut. Aem. 20.7). Furthermore, even the large armies fielded by Hellenistic kingdoms struggled to match the vast manpower reserves of the Romans. As Pyrrhus discovered to his cost, their capacity to absorb heavy losses and defeats seemed like that of the many-headed hydra (Plut. Pyrrh. 19; cf. Flor. 1.13; Rawlings 2007b; Sekunda 2007; see further Howarth, 32–3).
CONCLUSION
Greek warfare could be a local, regional, or international activity. Greeks participated in sieges and battles, raids and skirmishes, civil conflicts and guerrilla actions. They launched campaigns with motives of intimidation, reprisal, predation, conquest, and annihilation, against one another and foreign targets. The desire to engage an enemy face-to-face manifested at all levels: from individuals to whole communities. Such combat contexts may have been characterized by less conspicuous acts of gallantry than those of the Athenian hero of Aegina and Plataea, Sophanes; nevertheless they did allow participants to test their personal qualities, and their actions were witnessed by their peers. The Greeks shared a wide range of customs, beliefs, and religious rituals; it was what they thought helped to set them apart from foreigners, but it did not prevent them from killing one another in any way that they could. The burning of six thousand Argives, who had run for shelter into a sacred wood after their defeat at Sepia, indicates how brutal the realities could be (Hdt. 6.78–80, 7.148). War has always been unpredictable and the fear of consequences—economic, social, political, and personal—were powerful checks on aggression and positive inducements to negotiate. However, there were contrary pressures that could prove overwhelming. Many members of Greek communities might relish the opportunity for war: young men lacking understanding of the realities, old men with accumulated bitterness toward their neighbors, and ambitious members of the elite wishing to win a reputation or to bolster their support and popularity; all might be seduced by the luster and profit that a victorious campaign might bring.
There were many developments in the practices of war in this period, from the introduction and modification of equipment, group formations and tactics, to the elaboration of institutional structures of states and empires. The economic and agricultural configuration of communities placed constraints on the types and duration of warfare they could conduct, but from the sixth century monetarization and the development of complex financial structures allowed some states to extend their capabilities. There was an increasing articulation of state authority, exemplified in the appointment and scrutiny of war magistrates (generals and other officers). Polis structures facilitated the creation of navies and may have played a role in the emergence of exclusively constituted hoplite formations, with increasing emphasis on ordered files and ranks. In the classical era, the process of combat skill specialization was an essential prerequisite to the increasing interdependence of troop types on campaign and in battle. These developments gave the Greek and Macedonian armies the capacity to resist and then overcome the Persian Empire and contributed to the essential character of warfare in the era of the Successors.
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