In the fourth century BC the “March of the Ten Thousand” illustrated the increasing importance of cavalry and light troops, which was seen to the full in the defeat of the Spartan hoplites at Leuctra and in the armies of Philip of Macedon.
■ Ancient Authorities
Xenophon is our most valuable authority for the greater part of this period. After continuing Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War as far as the surrender of Athens and the events of the year 403 BC, Xenophon left an interval of two years – later to be filled in – before proceeding with his account of Greek history more or less uninterrupted down to the year 362 BC. Other contemporary historians are known to us through later writers such as Phularch, Diodorus Siculus and Cornelius Nepos. Nepos unfortunately mentions more sources than he used. But it is questionable whether the elegant fourth-century testimony of Ehphorus or Theopompus, even if it had survived in connected form, would be as valuable as that of Xenophon, who himself played an important military and political role in his own times and could consequently rely on his own experience of warfare among Greeks and non-Greeks, not to mention his close acquaintance with leading personalities of the epoch.
Apart from Greek history, Xenophon also set down in his Anabasis the record of a great military venture, the expedition of a Greek mercenary army into the heart of the Persian empire. The expedition was not successful and Xenophon inherited command of the Greek troops after their leaders had been treacherously killed. The qualities of leadership and military resource which he then displayed extricated the men for whom he had accepted responsibility and saved the adventure from ending in complete disaster. The story is told from the standpoint of a professional soldier.
Xenophon wrote two other works of professional military interest. One is the Hipparchus: a description of the duties and functions of a cavalry commander. The other is a more general work on horsemanship, together with its military applications. Composed in an epoch when the importance of cavalry in Greek warfare was being increasingly realized, these works are often illuminating, though curiously enough Xenophon seems to underestimate rather than exaggerate the importance of the cavalry arm. In this, he differs from most writers, who tend to insist on the importance of their own subject, if only as a form of self-advertisement. One would guess that Xenophon, for all his experience, was a conservatively minded officer, writing in the latter part of his life and still thinking in terms of warfare as it had been carried on in an earlier generation than his own.
The battle of Mantinea, with which Xenophon’s history closes, marks the end of the brief Theban hegemony which had superseded that of Sparta. In modern jargon, it may be said that the result was a “power vacuum” in Greece: a situation of which the ambitious king of semi-Hellenized Macedon in the north was well able to take advantage. For this period of history, we have excellent testimony in the surviving speeches of Athenian orators, most notably Demosthenes. He was violently opposed to the aspirations of Philip II of Macedon; it is fortunate that we also possess the writings of Isocrates, who regarded Philip with favour and saw in him a leader capable of uniting Greece. Isocrates was hardly an orator. His political writings were produced for distribution rather than declamation and he has been fairly described as a political pamphleteer. In any case, he offers the best antidote to Demosthenes’ unquestionably sincere but heavily one-sided view of the Greek political scene in the middle of the fourth century.
■ The Political Situation
Throughout the classical period the Greek peoples were beset by a dilemma which sometimes convulsed and sometimes paralysed their political activities. This was the result of a deep emotional conflict. They had never decided whether loyalty to their respective cities or to their common nationality had the prior claim. The Persian Wars had seen the unification of Greece against the invader. Those cities which had sided with the Persians had done so very much under stress of force majeure. However, the liberty which the Greek states had won by their victory over the Persians was the liberty to fight each other and, during the following century, they took full advantage of this liberty. Only at the end of the Peloponnesian War, when the Persian satraps bought back from Sparta their control of the Ionian cities, did the Greeks become once more conscious of Persia as a political force. Persia, by that time, was no longer the vigorous power that it had been and Greek strategists, looking eastward, saw in the empire of the Great King either an economic ally against their enemies in Greece or a tempting target for plunder and acts of aggression.
Persian policy towards Greece still based itself consistently on the principle of “divide and rule”. But Greek leaders were learning that the same policy could be applied to the Persians themselves. More than 10,000 Greek mercenary troops supported the claims of Prince Cyrus to the Persian throne on the death of his father, Darius II. When Cyrus was killed in battle at Cunaxa near Babylon in 401 BC, his elder brother Artaxerxes II was left as undisputed ruler and the two satraps of the Aegean coast, free from Cyrus’ discipline, were left once more to plot against each other. The way was open for any Greek commander in the eastern Aegean to take full advantage of Persian dissension.
Meanwhile, Sparta had become unpopular among the other Greek states. After the surrender of Athens in 404 BC, the Spartans, under Lysander’s guidance, had installed garrisons, established oligarchies and exacted tribute to pay mercenaries, nominally in aid of the common defence. In so doing, they were repeating the Athenian error of the preceding century. The difference was that their puppet régimes were oligarchic, not democratic. However, a change in Spartan policy occurred when Lysander, the victor of Aegospotami, fell from power and King Agesilaus, whom he had originally hoped to use as a political instrument, superseded him in authority. The lesson of Cyrus’ expedition was not lost upon Agesilaus. At Cunaxa, under the young Persian prince, an Asiatic force with the support of the Greek mercenary body already mentioned had defeated a Persian army reputedly some four times its own size, and would thereby have determined the Persian royal succession had it not been for the death of the pretender himself. After this, the Greeks, under improvised leadership, had been able to withdraw and return to Greece again, despite the difficulties of a thousand-mile march and in defiance of every attempt to bar their way. The fundamental military weakness of the Persians was exposed and successive Spartan commanders in the east Aegean took full advantage. No longer awed by the satraps or the Great King, they liberated from the Persians those Ionian Greek cities which Lysander had sold for financial support against Athens. Nor did the Spartans rest content with this patriotic achievement, but carried war far into the Asiatic mainland, where they reaped a rich reward in terms of booty. In such enterprises no one was more thoroughgoing and successful than Agesilaus himself.
The Persian reaction was once more economic and diplomatic rather than military. Harassed by Agesilaus’ offensive, the Persian satrap who had succeeded Tissaphernes transferred his financial subsidy from Sparta to Sparta’s enemies in north Greece. The result was the Corinthian War of 395–387 BC, fought in and around the Isthmus, as Thebes, Corinth, Athens and Argos struggled, in alliance, to overthrow Spartan supremacy. The Persian policy was eminently successful: even too successful to please the Persians, as it turned out. Agesilaus at once marched back to Greece by the route that Xerxes had taken more than a century earlier; with a highly mobile force, quite unlike the vast and cumbersome Persian array, he completed his march in only 30 days. He then defeated the opposing Greek forces at Coronea in 394 BC and the Spartan power on land was once more established. But the Corinthian War permitted the Athenians to recover their sea-power, together with some of their overseas allies and possessions. Conon, the Athenian admiral who had escaped from Aegospotami, defeated the Spartans in a naval battle at Cnidus, almost on the eve of Coronea, and in the following year he assisted in rebuilding Athens’ Long Walls between the city and Piraeus.
The Persians were much alarmed by this revival of Athenian power and again switched their support. A compromise peace was negotiated with the satrap at Sardis by the Spartan commander Antalcidas. Broadly speaking, the terms were that Persia should keep the Ionian islands and that Sparta should continue to dominate Greece, having proper regard to the independence of the Greek states and to Athens’ claim over her lately recovered Aegean possessions. The peace in practice was more of what a modern politician would call a “cold war” than a genuine peace. It was characterized by treacherous interventions and coups de main carried out by the Spartans. From these acts of aggression, Thebes suffered more than any other Greek state – as indeed she had done by the terms of Antalcidas’ treaty. The Theban reaction was violent: Spartan hegemony in Greece eventually received its death blow from Thebes at the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. Nor were the Spartans able to re-establish themselves when, after a decade of meteoric ascendancy, Theban power was suddenly extinguished.
■ Mercenary Troops and Xenophon’s Ten Thousand
Agesilaus, in his incursions into the Persian mainland, had re-employed many of the famous “Ten Thousand” who had served under Cyrus and followed Xenophon back to Greece. Xenophon himself, in fact, was serving with Agesilaus’ army at Coronea, although as an Athenian he should have been on the other side. These facts remind us of the ever-increasing importance of mercenary troops in fourth-century Greek warfare. Throughout the eastern Mediterranean and adjacent lands, Greeks had from very early times served as mercenaries. Even westwards, as far as Spain, as archaeological evidence shows, Greek arms and armour were appreciated. Even more appreciated were the men who knew best how to use them. So much is suggested by ancient Egyptian and Asiatic inscriptions. The Greeks themselves were making use of Thracian and Scythian mercenaries before the Persian Wars, and they were still making use of them during the Peloponnesian War. At Amphipolis in Thrace, in the action of 422 BC which saw the death of the Spartan general Brasidas and the Athenian Cleon, troops hired locally were employed on both sides. On the whole, the Greeks tended to export hoplites and import light-armed troops and cavalry. But the commerce was not carried on exclusively between Greeks and others. Greeks also hired Greeks. At Syracuse, the Arcadian mercenaries from Mantinea, now in the service of the Athenians, were in no way daunted or discouraged by the fact that other Arcadians were fighting on the opposite side from them.
The Spartans could indeed draw on forces from Arcadian cities like Mantinea and Tegea, in virtue of treaties which they had imposed upon these cities, but they also found it worthwhile to levy mercenary bodies from the same area, thus raiding forces greater than those to which their treaty rights entitled them. Brasidas, for instance, used Peloponnesian – almost certainly Arcadian – as well as local mercenaries, at Amphipolis. The Arcadians were a robust, pastoral people deprived by their inland position of trading outlets; in war they served mainly as hoplites. Another well-known source of Greek mercenary troops was Crete. The characteristic contribution of the Cretans was archers. Similarly, the Rhodian mercenaries specialized as slingers.
The expedition at Cyrus, in which Xenophon took part, marked a new era, mainly on account of its unprecedentedly large mercenary element. But apart from the question of professionalism, the tactical lessons which it taught pointed curiously in opposite directions. The battle of Cunaxa was conspicuous for the success of the Greek hoplites. It proved once again that the light-armed troops of the Persian empire were no match for the Greek heavy infantrymen. At Cunaxa (401 BC), Cyrus was killed in the moment of victory and his Asiatic supporters immediately fled. The Greeks were thus deprived of employment and leadership, but this does not alter the military significance of their exploits both up to and after Cunaxa.
As they made their way northward to the Black Sea coast, at first pursued by the regular Persian troops of Tissaphernes, then harassed by guerrilla mountaineers and finally in conflict with the forces of the northern satrap Pharnabazus, the Greeks learned not only the uses but also the limitations of a hoplite body. The lessons of the later phases of the Peloponnesian War were, in fact, reinforced. Xenophon came to understand increasingly the importance of the cavalry role; although he still perhaps underestimated it. Even more important was the potential effect of light missile troops, armed with bows, slings and javelins. In the circumstances, to men cut off from their base by many hundred miles of enemy territory, the supply of arrows and sling bolts presented a major problem. But the Cretan archers gathered the enemy’s spent arrows and used them with their own bows. Some of the villages through which they passed also provided bowstrings and lead for sling bolts. Frequently, the Greeks were obliged to improvise or fight under unaccustomed conditions. For the javelin-throwers it was important to win the advantage of high ground; when attacked by guerrillas from the rocks above, the Greeks’ own light troops, at a hopeless disadvantage, were hemmed in amid their hoplites, whose shields they needed for shelter. The army was only able to make its way down the deep mountain defiles when its light-missile troops had occupied the highest points, thus making the lower crags untenable to enemy guerrillas.
Various incidents in the march of the Ten Thousand testify to a fusion of traditional and changing attitudes. The soldiers formed a professional, not a citizen, army and they thought in professional terms. Xenophon’s appeal to the Rhodians to come forward and exercise their native skill as slingers was accompanied by an offer of improved pay and conditions; the Rhodians had not joined up as slingers and slinging was no part of their original bargain. On a later occasion one member of the Rhodian unit was ready with an ingenious suggestion for crossing a river by means of inflated skins; he expected to be paid well for his plan. Elsewhere, Xenophon, exhorting the troops to resolute action, conceded frankly that they had no ambition to be considered as heroes – merely to get safely home.
On the other hand, religious duties were scrupulously observed. Omens were consulted and Xenophon was conscientious in sacrificing to the gods before any impending trouble, even when there seemed to be very little time for the practice of strict piety. Such attitudes themselves bear witness to a kind of patriotism which was perhaps more valuable than the old, narrow allegiance fostered by independent city states. The gods were the gods of all the Greeks and the observance of Greek religious rites sprang from that sense of Greek solidarity which did so much to hold the Ten Thousand together.
Another Greek tradition, religious in origin, which the army upheld was the singing of the “paean” as they went into battle. The paean was a hymn which was sung on various solemn occasions. It was no doubt calculated to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy and certainly seems to have had this effect on Asiatic forces. The singing of the battle paean was not, in fact, a universal Greek practice; the Spartans replaced it with flute music, the object of which was to steady their own rather than shake the enemy’s nerves. But the paean was adopted by the Ten Thousand, although their leadership was largely Spartan. Xenophon recounts one amusing incident when the women whom the soldiers took along with them as mistresses joined in the battle cry after the paean had been sung.
The ululating battle cry was distinct from the paean. The latter was sung when the enemy were still at some distance. The battle cry was raised at the moment of entry into battle. A slogan for identification purposes was also used and was circulated before an engagement in the manner of a password. The Greek battle cry at Cunaxa was “Zeus the Deliverer and Victory”.
■ The Military Career of King Agesilaus
Xenophon was the friend and admirer of the Spartan king Agesilaus; Agesilaus for his part, was anxious to emulate Xenophon’s exploits in Asia. He, too, believed in the use of mercenaries and was glad when reluctant conscripts from subject Greek cities bought themselves out. The money thus raised could be used to pay for keen professional soldiers and good horses. Unlike the Spartan commanders of an earlier generation, Agesilaus believed in cavalry. Xenophon, at the outset of his homeward march from Cunaxa, had converted captured horses, used as baggage animals, to form a small cavalry unit 50-strong, but this force was apparently not sufficient to protect the Greek foraging parties who were set upon by Pharnabazus’ cavalry east of the Hellespont as the long journey was nearing its end. On this occasion the Greeks lost 500 men; when Pharnabazus’ horsemen were finally routed, their defeat was precipitated by a hoplite charge, thus confirming an axiom of Greek military wisdom that it was folly for cavalry to engage with heavy infantry.
Agesilaus, however, placed much more reliance on cavalry than did Xenophon. Indeed, he had more at his disposal. He scored one notable victory during his march through Thessaly to confront the rebellious Greek states who challenged him at Coronea in 394 BC. The cavalry which he had assembled in Asia easily overcame the Thessalian cavalry ranged against it. The Thessalian cavalry was the best in Greece, but Thessalian horses were no match for Asiatic breeds.
Agesilaus was eminently flexible both as a strategist and as a tactician. When operating against Tissaphernes in Asia Minor, he deceived the enemy by an ingenious double-bluff. His intention of attacking Lydia was proclaimed with such an obvious eye to publicity that the enemy took it for a feint and concentrated in Caria to the south. The offensive, however, was made against Lydia, as Agesilaus had from the first intended, and in the absence of any planned defence was easily pressed home.
This very unconventional Spartan king was equally ready to buy off his enemies or to fight them, employing either method freely as circumstances dictated. His swift return from Asia to Greece was expedited by opportunitism of this kind.
The tactics which Agesilaus adopted at Coronea exhibited a mixture of traditional usage and innovation. The battle was begun as a conventional hoplite engagement, with the almost predictable result that Spartan and Theban forces on the right wing each routed their enemies’ allies on the opposing left wings. The Thebans relaxed their pursuit, only to find that Agesilaus’ army stood between them and the safe mountain country whither their fleeing. Argive allies had already retreated. When they attempted to rejoin the Argives by a southward march to Mount Helicon, Agesilaus, wheeling round, made a frontal attack on them. But he was unable in this way to break their line. He therefore withdrew and reformed his army in open order, allowing the Thebans to pass through the gaps in the hope of attacking them on the flank. The flank attacks, however, were not very successful and the Thebans reached the mountains in good order. Agesilaus remained in possession of the field, but he had not destroyed the enemy.
The method of allowing an impetuous enemy to pass through one’s ranks, spending his force and exposing himself to flank attack, was one that had been used by the Ten Thousand against scythed chariots in Asia; it was to be used by the Romans against Carthaginian elephants at a later date. Xenophon criticizes Agesilaus for attempting a frontal attack on the Thebans in the first place. If he had been content to wait, he could have attacked their flank as they made their way southward, at moment of his own choosing and to his advantage.
Later, in the days of Theban supremacy when enemy forces had occupied Spartan territory, Agesilaus, with courage and resource, successfully organized the defence of Sparta itself, though the city had no permanent walls or impregnable citadel such as most Greek cities possessed. Indeed, the Spartans had always relied on fighting their wars on enemy territory. But on this occasion they fortunately had at their head a man well qualified to deal with unprecedented situations.
After the collapse of Thebes, King Agesilaus, at the age of 80, again led mercenary forces abroad, first into Asia then to the Nile Delta in support of Egyptian rebels against Persia. The rebels in Egypt quarrelled between themselves and Agesilaus was left in no very dignified position, hiring himself to one side against the other in a petty war. Even here, however, he demonstrated his flair for military stratagem. Being besieged by a vastly superior number of inexperienced troops, he allowed them to construct a wall and trench around his own encircled forces. When the circumvallation was complete but for a short gap, he suddenly led a sally through the opening. The enemy, for all their superior numbers, were hindered by their own ramparts from attacking him in the flank or rear. The Greek force with its Egyptian allies was not only extricated but inflicted losses on the besiegers, who were hemmed in between their own trenches.
Agesilaus died at the age of 84 on the way home from Egypt. There seems to have been something unhappily circular in the defence economy over which he presided: mercenary expeditions raised money by which the Spartan state was enabled to hire more mercenaries. However, it may be pleaded that Agesilaus was in fact trading military expertise for manpower.
■ The Challenge to the Spartan Hoplite
Agesilaus’ death marks the end of an epoch in Greek history. His skilful operations had to some extent concealed the serious decline in the fighting potential of the Spartan citizen army. The development of new forms of warfare had been itself an admission that the supremacy of the Spartan hoplite phalanx was at an end. Since the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan army had been substantially remodelled; this in itself reflected a decline in numbers to the fully enfranchised citizens who formed the backbone of the heavy infantry. The decline could in some degrees be paralleled by population decline in other Greek states, but apart from all general tendencies Spartan military strength had also been seriously affected by the losses suffered in as devastating earthquake which occurred as far back as 465 BC – before the Peloponnesian War had even begun.
The Spartan army in the fourth century consisted of six battalions (morai). Each of these was under the command of the polemarch and, according to contemporary historians, consisted of 400 or perhaps 600 men. Both citizens and non-citizens served in it. Within the mora, there was subdivision into smaller units, as previously with the lochos. During the Corinthian War, a Spartan mora, after escorting a contingent of allied troops back to the Peloponnese, was intercepted in the Isthmus and routed with crippling losses by the Athenian commander Iphicrates. In numerical terms, casualties of 250 out of a total strength of 600 men, which on this occasion the unit contained, were extremely serious. The strategy and tactics of Iphicrates were even more significant; his victory was gained against hoplites by the use of light-armed troops. The Spartan débâcle, which occurred outside Corinth, can be paralleled by others in Greek military history, where (as at Amphipolis in the Peloponnesian War) incautious troops marching close under enemy walls exposed themselves to a sally from the city gates.
The action, however, was still more reminiscent of Sphacteria. The Spartans were overwhelmed by missiles and never allowed to come to grips. At Sphacteria, Spartan lack of foresight, combined with some bad luck, had produced the fatal situation, but Iphicrates was the deliberate architect of his own victory, which vindicated to the full his new strategic and tactical concepts of light-armed warfare. Indeed, there is a third reason for regarding Iphicrates’ success on this occasion as historically significant: the troops he commanded were mercenaries and their victory was gained against a predominantly citizen force.
Another great professional commander of the fourth century BC was Chabrias the Athenian. He was distinguished for the resistance which he offered to Agesilaus in Boeotia during the Corinthian War. Expecting to be charged by the enemy, he ordered his men to kneel down and present their spears, with shields resting on their knees. Agesilaus was deterred from making the attack. Perhaps well-chosen ground, as much as the kneeling posture, deterred him. But Chabrias, honoured with a statue, was at his own request portrayed by the sculptor in a kneeling position such as he and his men had adopted on the battlefield. In fact, kneeling statues soon became fashionable even among victorious athletes.
Chabrias, in the course of his long military and naval career, had a fine record of patriotic service, but this in no way prejudiced his thoroughly professional outlook. He served with Agesilaus in Egypt, where he was put in charge of the Egyptian navy while the Spartan king commanded the land forces. Agesilaus was disappointed, for he had expected to command both by land and sea. However, there is no suggestion that either of the two men, while campaigning as comrades-in-arms under the same Egyptian monarch, was in the least troubled by the thought that they had previously encountered each other as enemies on Greek battlefields in their own land.
■ Light-armed Troops
The efficient organization and equipment of light-armed troops was an important fourth-century development. When one speaks of light-armed troops in the context of Greek military history, the term includes javelin-throwers, archers and slingers. Of these, javelin-throwers had the longest tradition of service in historic terms. They came to be called peltastai from the type of shield which they carried: the pelta, as importation from Thrace. Pisiastratus, autocratic ruler of Athens in the sixth century BC, had enlisted a mercenary corps from the Thracian hinterland after a period of exile in those regions; Athenian familiarity with the pelta seems to have dated from that time. The pelta was a small buckler made of animal skins stretched over a wicker framework. It had no metal fittings or trimmings and was light enough to be held in the left hand, without forearm support. Characteristically, it was formed in the shape of a broad crescent moon, but the word also applied to other shapes made of the same light material. The javelins which the peltasts carried were fitted with leather loops about halfway down the shaft. The first and second fingers engaged the loop, while the shaft of the javelin, supported on the hand, was gripped by the thumb and remaining fingers. This enabled the thrower to exert greater leverage and added to the force with which the missile was launched. Peltasts, like other combatants, also carried a sword (originally short) or dagger in case of emergency, although they did not normally count on coming to sword strokes with the enemy ranged against them.
Both the construction and use of bows and arrows varied considerably in Greece. In Crete, the practice of archery had been maintained since the earliest times, but in the rest of Greece it had generally been neglected. By the fourth century, the use of Cretan mercenary archers had become common. Before the Persian Wars, the Athenians had employed Scythians in the same capacity; but the Athenians, according the Herodotus, had no archers at the battle of Marathon. The Athenian police force, nevertheless, continued to rely on Scythian mercenaries and a policeman was ordinarily referred to as an “archer”.
The most common type of bow in ancient Greece was a composite fabrication, but bows consisting of a single flexible wooden staff, like the English longbow, were in use outside Crete. Homer describes a bow made from a pair of wild goat’s horns. Horns, united by a core of pliant wood, might certainly have provided an effective bow. But other evidence suggests a less simple process of manufacture, involving strips of horn, wood and dry gut – apart from the bowstring, which was normally made of gut or sinew. Among the Scythians, not only the fabrication but also the use of the bow was complicated. The Scythian, although holding the bow in his left hand, normally contrived to rest his arrow on the left side of the bow when taking aim. Moreover, the archer usually held the arrow on the bowstring between the first and second fingers of his right hand using his first three fingers to draw the string – the conventional Mediterranean loose. Scythian arrows were short with small bronze tips, unlike the heavy arrowheads of the Cretans, but in his capacious quiver the Scythian carried both his bow and a great many diminutive arrows.
Different usages prevailed among archers in different parts of the Persian empire. In some of the hill tribes that Xenophon encountered, archers gained extra leverage by bending the bow against the foot. The arrows of some tribal archers were so long that they could be gathered and used as javelins by the Greeks. Persian arrows were shot from longbows. These missiles could be re-used by Xenophon’s Cretan archers, who practised high-trajectory shooting for greater range. It was perhaps possible, even with the short Cretan bows, to draw the long Persian arrows to the ear, if not to the right shoulder. Greek archers normally drew the bowstring only to the chest. Unlike the Cretan archers, the Greek slingers from Rhodes, when properly equipped, had the advantage of their opposite numbers in Asia. A leaden Greek sling bolt had twice the range of the heavy stones used by the Persians in their slings. Sling bolts of this kind have been discovered by modern excavators, sometimes inscribed with the name of the commander for whose service they were destined. Sometimes, also, they were ironically addressed to the recipient, with some such inscription as “Take that!”.
■ Hoplite tactics and the Theban Phalanx
Despite the new developments in light-armed and cavalry warfare, Spartan supremacy in Greece was finally brought to an end by developments in hoplite warfare itself. At Leuctra in 371 BC, under the inspired leadership of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the Thebans massed a phalanx of 50 ranks in depth on their left wing, against a Spartan phalanx only 12 deep. As it attacked, the Theban line was deliberately slanted forward towards the left, so that the Spartan right wing (the traditionally strong wing of a Greek phalanx) was overwhelmed before the less reliable contingents of Thebes’ allies had time to engage. When Cleombrotus, the Spartan king in command, saw what was intended, he tried at the last moment to reinforce the threatened wing and to envelop the attacking Thebans, but the prompt and vigorous charge of the Theban corps d’élite (known as the “Sacred Band”) gave the Spartans no time to complete the necessary manoeuvre. The Spartans were caught in disarray and Cleombrotus was killed early in the battle.
Consideration of what happened at Leuctra prompts some general observations on the evolution of hoplite fighting. When Xenophon, on the outward march to Cunaxa, mounted a military display to entertain a vivacious Asiatic queen, his hoplite formation was drawn up four deep. This he refers to as being normal practice. At first sight, it would seem surprising that descriptions of ancient hoplite battles in which the depth of formation is mentioned nearly all specify eight or more ranks. But such formations may well have earned mention precisely because they were not normal at the time of writing; although perhaps, as the fourth century advanced, they tended to become normal.
At Coronea, Agesilaus’ allies on the left wing, who included veterans of Cyrus’ expedition, routed the enemy ranged against them when, as Xenophon tells us, they came to “spearpoint” with them. However, when the Spartans clashed with the Thebans in the second stage of the battle, shield was set against shield. It was a question of pushing rather than thrusting. The Thebans knew as well as the Spartans how to use the shield as an offensive weapon and they gained added weight from the depth of their formation. These tactics, although still in process of development, were certainly not new to the Thebans. They had defeated the Athenian at Delium with a phalanx 25 deep – against which the Athenians had ineffectively mustered a mere eight ranks.
A phalanx was not necessarily drawn up in uniform depth throughout. At Mantinea in 418 BC, the depth of the Spartan line was left to the decision of the junior commanders who were in charge of different sectors. The depth of formation here must have depended, at any given point, on whether a thrusting spear-fight or a pushing shield-fight was intended. The junior commander knew the individual soldiers of his unit and could judge for which type of combat they were better qualified. On the other hand, the lack of uniformity could have a disorganizing effect. This was particularly evident at Nemea, during the Corinthian War, when Athenian, Argive, Boeotian, Corinthian and Euboean allied contingents apparently wished to adopt the formation to which each was accustomed, without regard for the coordination of allied tactics as a whole.
■ Citizen Morale and the Sacred Band
The dramatic defeat of Sparta at the battle of Leuctra lent new impetus to the revival of citizen morale throughout Greece in general and in Thebes in particular. But realization that the Spartan hoplite phalanx was not invincible dated, as we have seen, from the Corinthian War. Sparta owed it to the ability of Agesilaus both as general and statesman, rather than to her traditional methods of warfare, that she had obtained peace with honour at the end of that war. Even so, the peace had been dictated by a Persian arbitrator, not a Spartan victor. In military terms, despite the growing use of mercenary troops, the revival of citizen confidence meant revived confidence in the effectiveness of citizen armies.
Lysander had been killed invading Boeotia early in the Corinthian War and there was no Spartan admiral of comparable ability to replace him. This fact enabled the Athenians, after the rebuilding of the Long Walls, to re-establish their old imperial system based on the combination of sea power with the encouragement of ideologically sympathetic governments in the Aegean states. When the Spartans, by an unprovoked coup de main in 383 BC, installed a puppet government at Thebes, they were attempting to imitate Athenian methods. But their action was too clumsy and too blatant and in the long run it turned out to be counter-productive, making them the objects of bitter resentment at Thebes and of hostile suspicion in the rest of Greece. Thebes was also humiliated by the Persian king’s peace, which, to satisfy Sparta, deprived her of her traditional control of the smaller Boeotian cities.
Once the Spartan puppet government had been violently liquidated and the Spartan garrison expelled from Thebes, Theban patriotism expressed itself in the military organization of the citizen body, relying much more heavily on civic loyalty than on mercenary or allied support. The most striking feature of the Theban military revival was the corps d’élite known as the “Sacred Band”. The Greek words might perhaps be explained as meaning the “Dedicated Band”; but ancient historians have given other explanations. “Sacred” was an epithet that was commonly applied to the citadels of Greek cities; it was said that the Sacred Band at Thebes had originally been instituted as a guard for the citadel. At the time of the battle of Leuctra, the Sacred Band had been organized and trained by Pelopidas, although it was reputedly created by another Theban leader, Gorgidas, earlier in the same decade.
According to tradition, the 300-strong Sacred Band was formed by pairs of lovers – for the Greeks did not regard homosexuality as perverse. The ideas of a lovers’ squad was, in fact, older than Pelopidas’ Sacred Band. In Homer’s Iliad, it is suggested that a unit composed of close kinsmen would be good for military morale; Plato records the view, not necessarily his own, that a regiment composed of lovers would fulfil the same purpose more effectively. Each partner of a loving couple would find in each other’s presence an inspiration which would spur his efforts and forbid him to disgrace himself on the battlefield. Xenophon, however, who hated homosexuality, would have none of this and protested that a friendship based on anything more than admiration of mind and character could only corrupt, not raise, a fighting man’s morale.
At Chaeronea, the battle which in 338 BC finally put an end to the independence of the Greek city states, the Sacred Band suffered severely, each man falling in the place where he had fought. The victor, Philip II of Macedon, is said to have shed tears over them, exclaiming: “Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything that was base!” Philip evidently professed Xenophon’s views as to the nature of friendship.
■ Epaminondas in the Peloponnese
After Leuctra, Epaminondas, serving as commander-in-chief of the Theban armed forced, repeatedly invaded the Peloponnese and could have captured Sparta itself if Agesilaus had not been present to improvise its defence. The military and political strategies of Epaminondas were linked to each other in a way which disciples of Clausewitz must approve. He encouraged those areas in the central and western Peloponnese which had long been dominated by Sparta to assert their liberty; this end was secured by the construction of fortified cities in what had previously been wild and rural areas. It was a case of the punishment fitting the crime, for the war had been provoked by Sparta’s refusal to recognize Theban supremacy over the Boetician townships.
The cities of Mantinea, Megalopolis and Messene, which Epaminondas established or restored, stood like a chain of fortresses barring Sparta’s north-westward communications. Mantinea had been a flourishing Arcadian centre before Agesilaus besieged it in 385 BC. The Spartans at that time diverted the river which ran through the city, so that its waters lapped against the outside walls and eroded them. When the Mantineans surrendered, they were forced to abandon their homes and accept dispersal in villages. Epaminondas restored the scattered people to their city and saw to it that they were well protected by fortifications. These, indeed, were much needed, for Mantinea lay in the middle of an open, featureless plain.
Messene was originally the name of a territory, not a city, but on Epaminondas’ initiative a city of that name was raised near the old Messenian stronghold of Mount Ithomé. As for Megalopolis (as the Romans called it), it was a new city. The Greek form of the name was He Megale Polis, meaning simply the Big City. It was situated in a plain through which the Alpheus river flowed north-westward towards Olympia and the Eurotas river south-eastward to Sparta and the Laconian Gulf. Rivers and river beds were used by the ancient Greeks as substitutes for roads – which they conspicuously lacked. Megalopolis thus enjoyed good communications while obstructing those of Sparta. Its population was drawn from the inhabitants of 40 Arcadian villages. Unfortunately, the villagers did not take any more kindly to city life than the citizens of Mantinea, dispersed by Agesilaus, had done to village life.
The ruins of the three cities just mentioned are all visible today. Those at Messene are particularly impressive. It is disappointing that the archaeology of fortifications in Greece cannot always be so neatly related to history. The walls of Aegosthena in Attica resemble those of the Messene in style, but their date and purpose remain mysterious. During the fourth century, fortifications became increasingly sophisticated, as is demonstrated by surviving technical treaties on the subject, like that of Aeneas Tacticus (about 357 BC) or of Philon of Byzantium in the following century.
During the Peloponnesian War and earlier, fortifications had been intended mainly for the protection of cities and citadels. In the fourth century they were often built to enclose large areas of territory adjacent to the city centres. The fortifications themselves exhibited many of the features which we associate with medieval castles, being provided with turrets, battlements, moats, posterns and sally-ports. Sallies were made from the right-hand side of a projecting bastion, so that issuing troops had their shield arms towards the enemy. Walls were characteristically of brick superimposed upon masonry. Apart from city defences and the larger territorial enclosures, the ruins of many smaller fortresses are to be found in Greece, dating from the fourth or fifth centuries. These were sometimes watch-towers or signal towers and, where they occur on the coast, may well have been built as a defence against pirates.
■ The Mantinea Campaign and its Consequences
Both the strategy and tactics of Epaminondas sometimes appeared indecisive, but this appearance was deceptive. He aimed always at surprising the enemy and was often unwilling to strike where he could not achieve surprise. In 363 BC, a dispute broke out in the northern Peloponnese arising from the misuse of temple funds at Olympia. As a result, the Arcadian cities were divided, Mantinea and Tegea appearing respectively at the heads of rival coalitions. Tegea supported Thebes; Mantinea was pro-Spartan: this produced a corresponding ideological conflict of democratic and oligarchic sympathies.
The Athenians, who eight years earlier had received the news of Leuctra with less enthusiasm than had many Greek states, were now in open alliance with Sparta. Epaminondas hoped to intercept the Athenian contingent in the Isthmus as it marched to help Sparta, but in this he was disappointed, for the Athenians decided to make the journey by sea. With an army drawn from Boeotia and other northern Greek territories, he now established his headquarters and base at Tegea, in a walled and well-supplied city, where he was advantageously placed between the Spartans and their allies at Mantinea. When Agesilaus, at the head of a Spartan force, marched northwards via Pellene in Laconia, Epaminondas made no attempt to confront him but, avoiding the enemy, led his army straight on Sparta itself, expecting to find it stripped of defenders. Unfortunately for the Thebans, information of the move had reached Agesilaus through a deserter and the king hurried back to Sparta – just in time.
The element of surprise had been lost and Epaminondas did not press his attack on the city but, returning by an abrupt night march, renewed his threat to Mantinea. Here again, the advantage of surprise eluded him. An Athenian cavalry unit had just arrived in support of the Mantineans and it clashed with Epaminondas’ advance guard of Theban and Thessalian horsemen, forcing them back. Sparta, aided by her allies, now had time to assemble an army before Mantinea, blocking the way northward at a point where the plain was constricted on either side by mountain slopes one mile apart. In the ensuing battle, Epaminondas at last achieved the surprise which he had been seeking. After marshalling his army for battle, he suddenly swerved westwards and, taking up a position on the adjacent foothills, commanded his troops to ground arms. It appeared that he had abandoned the intention of fighting that day and the enemy was thrown off guard. Then, unexpectedly, Epaminondas attacked, as at Leuctra, with a heavily loaded left wing, trailing his right. The unforeseen move brought him victory, but he was mortally wounded in the battle and died urging his countrymen to make peace. Ironically, the ruse which succeeded against the Spartans at Mantinea was very similar to that which they themselves had long ago used against the Argives at Sepeia, and not so long ago against the Athenians at Aegospotami in 405 BC.
Epaminondas’ death may almost be said to have turned his victory in to defeat. The enemy was not pursued. As if from that moment, Theban military power, naval ambitions and political influence went into a swift decline. Unified leadership meant so much to a Greek city state. Always harassed by the jealousy of fellow citizens, only a man of outstanding qualities could retain a commanding position long enough to implement a consistent policy. One may make comparisons with Pericles at Athens, with Lysander and Agesilaus at Sparta. Epaminondas’ policy had stemmed from his realization that for the Thebans attack was the best method of defence.
Thebes now fell back on its old strategies, content if it could dominate the smaller cities of Boeotia; its vitality was soon sapped by petty and exhausting warfare with the neighbouring peoples of northern Greece.
■ Autocrats and their Armies
The character of Epaminondas was much admired both by his contemporaries and in later antiquity – perhaps because he was a dedicated constitutionalist. The ancients, even under the Roman Empire, never ceased to cherish a sentimental regard for constitutional government, which – very much as we do – they equated with the ideal of political liberty. From a military point of view, however, constitutional governments often find themselves at a disadvantage when confronted with despotic régimes. The despot is not embarrassed by consultative procedures and is often better placed to take prompt decisions. His decisions, of course, are not necessarily right. But in time of war, it may happen that even a wrong decision is better than indecisions and vacillation.
The political evolution of the Greek cities in Sicily and the western Mediterranean contrasted sharply with that of mainland Greece. Under despots the Sicilian Greeks had repelled threats from Carthage and Etruria, and despite interludes of moderate democratic government, constitutionalism was alien to their way of life. Autocrats who could not rely on the loyalty of local citizen armies naturally tended to recruit mercenaries, and with mercenary armies they developed the use of cavalry, light-armed troops, sophisticated fortifications, siegecraft and artillery devices – as well as shipbuilding and naval tactics. We have already seen that in this respect the Syracusans proved themselves more than a match for the Athenians. Hoplite forces, of course, were also in use, and these often consisted of citizen troops interspersed with mercenaries. The concentration on hoplite armies in mainland Greece was the outcome of constitutional conservatism. It meant that warfare (and therefore, to a large extent, foreign policy) was in the hands of a well-to-do citizen class, which could afford to pay for arms and armour. When the citizens of Syracuse rebelled, they sought aid from the Greek mainland. Dion, the friend of Plato, mustered a small officer corps in Greece, with which he sailed to Sicily and led the democratic revolt against Dionysius II. At a later date, the Syracusans appealed for help to their mother city, Corinth; Corinth sent them the brilliant general Timoleon, who successfully championed the Sicilian Greeks both against their own despots and the Carthaginians. But the mainland and central states were on the whole more inclined to export leadership and ideology than they were to import technical development.
The military advantages enjoyed by despots became increasingly evident during the fourth century. In the east, the decline of Persian power especially facilitated the rise of local autocrats. In Cyprus, Evagoras, once a tributary of Persia, emerged as an independent prince and contributed significantly to the Athenian victory at Cnidus (394 BC) and the demise of Spartan naval power. More important still was Mausolus of Halicarnassus. Although once ranking as one of the Great King’s satraps, he came to rule his own empire, seduced several of the Aegean naval states from their Athenian allegiance and involved Athens in wars with her former allies.
An even greater threat to the Greek city states was posed by the despotisms of the northern Greek peninsula itself. The massive military preparations of Jason of Pherae in Thessaly were beginning to alarm the whole of Greece when his career was cut short by assassination in 370 BC. The inevitable blow to Greek constitutional liberty was finally struck by Philip II of Macedon. It might well have come earlier from Jason, but Philip was able to proceed further with his plans before being assassinated.
■ Philip II of Macedon
Philip of Macedon was a man of many-sided genius. His conquests were founded in the first place upon solid political and economic organization. He created an army on a new model and used it in war with brilliant strategic and tactical ability. The political unification of Macedonia itself – by no means a cultural or ethnic unity – was a great achievement. Philip’s first expansionary moves placed at his disposal the trading wealth of the Chalcidic peninsula and the precious metal deposits of Thrace.
His fighting force, remarkable for its sheer numerical strength, among other things, was based on a combination of the phalanx with cavalry and light troops which protected it from flank attack and which could themselves easily develop an outflanking movement against the enemy. The word phalanx, as used by modern historians, is often applied to the Macedonian phalanx in particular. This differed significantly from earlier Greek fighting formations. When moving in open order it could be more mobile. It made use of extremely long pikes,1 which the phalangists grasped with both hands. This type of pike – called a sarissa – must have given the formation greater thrusting power, with a denser array of spearheads projecting beyond the shields of the first rank. The depth of the Macadonian phalanx developed in time from eight to sixteen ranks; it is noteworthy that in this respect Philip did not find it necessary to imitate the very deep Theban phalanx. It would seem that the Macedonian formation was equally prepared to thrust with its pikes or push with its shields. Since both hands were used to grip the heavy pike, one assumes that a phalangist’s shield was hung around his neck and perhaps manoeuvred with his elbow or forearm as required.
Another Macedonian speciality was the corps of hypaspistaio. A hypaspist was originally a shield-bearer or squire to a heavily armed fighting man. In Philip’s army, the hypaspists were foot-guardsmen, perhaps armed more lightly than the phalangists but more heavily than the peltasts. They played a prominent part in the tactics of Chaeronea where, by a feigned withdrawal, they lured the inexperienced Athenian left wing forward, thus creating a fatal gap in the opposing Greek line, which allowed the Thebans on the right to be surrounded and annihilated.
Philip II of Macedon came to power in 359 BC in difficult circumstances. However, he rid himself of his dynastic rivals, bought off the Paeonian tribal invaders, and repelled the Illyrians. As a boy of fifteen, he had been a hostage at Thebes and had there acquired an admiration for the Greek way of life and a knowledge of Theban military tactics – particularly the use of massed infantry as developed by Epaminondas.
By his seizure of Amphipolis in 357 BC, Philip controlled the approach to the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus, thus securing Macedon’s economic and political future. He secretly offered Amphipolis to the Athenians in exchange for Pydna, a valuable port, and when they acquiesced, occupied both Pydna and Potidaea (356 BC), but did not surrender Amphipolis. He presented Potidaea to Olynthus, the leading city of the Chalcidic Confederacy, but in 349 BC, when the time was ripe, he besieged and ruthlessly destroyed Olynthus, subjugating the other cities of the Confederacy.
Seizing another opportunity, Philip intervened in 353 BC on behalf of Thebes and her satellites against the adjacent state of Phocis. The original quarrel was religious in character, relating to temple property at Delphi. Philip was at first unsuccessful in his war with the Phocians, but in 346 BC he crushed them completely and usurped their place on the Amphictyonic Council of states which was responsible for administering the Delphic temple and its property.
In 340 BC, Philip was diverted by war on his north-eastern front, when Athens, as well as Persia, alarmed and resentful at his policies, encouraged Perinthus and Byzantium to defy him. Though he was unable to capture either of these cities, he conducted successful wars against the Scythians and other Balkan tribes, and in 339 BC his opportunism again enabled him to intervene in Delphic disputes. Thebes was directly threatened by Macedonian armed strength, and sensing their own danger, the Athenians, urged by Demosthenes, made common cause with their traditional Theban enemies. Philip, however, overwhelmed the Greek armies combined against him at Chaeronea in 338 BC.
Philip was now master of northern Greece. After a congress at Corinth, he presided over a Pan-Hellenic confederacy which he used as a pretext for garrisoning the strategic points of Thermopylae, Chalcis, Thebes and Corinth. He was assassinated in 337 BC as a result of a domestic intrigue. Olympias, his queen, repudiated in favour of a rival, was later accused by political enemies of complicity in Philip’s murder, but the Macedonian people continued to revere Olympias, despite her admittedly vindictive nature. She was later murdered herself.
Philip was not affected by the reckless impulse which repeatedly involved Greek states in war against each other. He was well able to check his intentions and sentiments until the moment for action arrived. But though in this respect an accomplished hypocrite, he was free from self-deceit. His admiration for Greek culture was genuine, and he probably believed in all sincerity that Greece needed him as a leader. Indeed, there were eminent Greeks who shared this view, and such sympathizers contributed in an important degree to his success. His son, Alexander the Great, continued his policy and carried out conquests such as he had planned – though perhaps to an extent which Philip had not dreamed.
REFERENCES
1 It is not possible to give a precise measurement as estimates vary.