The presentation of ambush in both the Iliad and the Odyssey relies upon a common tradition. Not only do the poems employ the same conventional form to narrate an ambush, but they both acknowledge as well its place in heroic warfare. Each poem presents a distinct perspective upon this stratagem, a perspective rooted in its priorities. The emphasis placed by the Iliad on the spearfighters winning a hero’s death does not mean it necessarily portrays ambush as a stratagem of desperation, cowardice or deceit. Night attacks and ambushes simply come from a separate epic tradition, and not all the stories made it into the Iliad. In the Odyssey, ambush is used to invest Odysseus with the heroic ethos of a Tydeus or a Bellerophon. The tradition recognises a very modern concept, that it is a stratagem by which the weak defend themselves against the injustice of a more powerful foe – in other words, intelligence is a force multiplier.
What we see here is not a diachronic development in which trickery is slowly introduced into the concept of warfare because morals have broken down, but the idea that both Homeric epics evince the existence of both qualities of a warrior: cunning and strength. This tradition continues throughout Greek history. In this sense, the Iliad and the Odyssey agree about the heroic quality of the ambush. As they are described in these two works, their form and characteristic features have the same narrative pattern. I suggest it is because there are two different types of fighting going on. One poem is about combat in war; the other is a travel narrative with no set-piece battles. This could just as easily be one of the reasons ambush serves as a theme of central importance in the Odyssey but not the Iliad.74 Another is because Odysseus has been set up as the quintessential wily deceiver while Achilles is the quintessential spearfighter. And although the two characters seem like polar opposites in their methods, each has a role to play in Greek warfare. The ambush reveals how metis succeeds when the force used in a polemos does not.75
CHAPTER 4
The Archaic Age and the Problem of the Phalanx
WITH THE END OF the Bronze Age and the Homeric heroes came a dark age in Greece that lasted nearly half a millennium. Greek warfare was transformed when the community of the Dark Ages became the polis of the Classical city-state. By the eighth century warfare was in transition as the nobles of the Iliad disappeared and the common man began to emerge as a factor on the battlefield. The armies that defended the poleis of Classical Greece were markedly different from those described by Homer. Gone were the heroes who went to battle with their peers transported on chariots. With the birth of the polis, the warrior function expanded to all citizens capable of equipping themselves. When men from non-élite families became more important to the state economically as well as militarily, they asserted claims to an ever-increasing role in the political and military life of the polis over time. The enfranchisement of these individuals during the sixth and fifth centuries was the culmination and formalisation of a socio-economic, political and military process that had been taking place for nearly 300 years.1 In other words, the development of a coherent community led to effective infantry tactics.2 The arms in use then evolved to be more effective in the new style of fighting.3
These citizen-soldiers developed into an army of heavily armed foot-soldiers called hoplites who fought in closely packed, disciplined formations called phalanxes.4 This is a rather unusual development in that ‘no other society of primitive or peasant agriculturalists, as far as we know, ever saw the need to submit to any such thing’.5 Many historians have made hoplites the central focus of Greek military history. These include especially those who adopt the approach of John Keegan, i.e. battle from the soldier’s point of view. There are scholars who believe that hoplite battle represented the ‘central and only truism in Greek warfare’.6 As we shall see, however, there are many other types of Greek military experience. Keegan opines that: ‘Military history … must in the last resort be about battle.’7 It does not, however, have to be about set-piece battles; military history may contain many other types of fighting. Since there is a great debate raging over when and how hoplites appeared, we cannot agree on exactly how the Greeks did or did not fight. What we should not do is discuss ambush as if it were only an exception to a hoplite ‘rule’.
Rules of Conduct
It is a commonplace assertion that, before the large-scale use of peltasts, Greek warfare was limited to pitched battles, and these were more or less pre-arranged. Pierre Ducrey, among others, refers to the ‘unwritten laws’ that governed treaties, truces and the like.8 H. Berve refers in a general way to ‘Hoplitenpolitie’ and notes that there were standards of warfare for conduct in inter-polis wars that were not observed in war against barbarians.9 F. W. Walbank has a invaluable paragraph in which he notes that, although the concept of a code of conduct for war was one of importance from early times, the actual details are generally beyond our recovery, because of the incidental nature of the remarks.10 More recently Hans van Wees has discussed the ‘rituals, rules and strategies’ of Greek warfare.11 So how did the Greeks fight?
The distinguished military historian of the Persian wars, G. B. Grundy, wrote in 1911 that it seemed ironic that the Greeks could inhabit a country made up of mountains and broken terrain yet did not develop light infantry or have it play a greater part in Greek warfare.12 A. W. Gomme also writes on the Greek failure to develop a mountain strategy in a country where almost every state had a mountain barrier defensible against hoplites.13 These judgements would indeed be correct if they were only discussing the larger poleis, just fifth-century warfare, or only hoplites. With the total cultivable area of Greece at only twenty-two per cent of the whole, it would indeed be strange if a typical Greek army was composed of a type of force that could not possibly have been effective in four-fifths of the area of the country. When we look more closely at the evidence, however, and do not focus solely on the phalanx, we see that a good number of the Greeks fought in a manner totally compatible with their geographical surroundings. Unfortunately, these warriors have been ignored by ancient and modern historians alike. Much of this has to do with the social and political implications of the hoplite reform for light-armed warfare, which gave it a subordinate role in the fifth century.14 The change to hoplite warfare brought on a corresponding change in attitudes towards bravery, and it reduced the importance of other combatants in the minds of historians both ancient and modern.15
When Did the Phalanx Appear?
The date of the appearance of true hoplites is still a hotly debated topic. Joachim Latacz introduced the idea that the phalanx was already in use in Homeric times and therefore the introduction of new armour did not ‘revolutionise’ warfare in any way in the Archaic Age.16 He argues that massed formations engaged in the long-range exchange of missiles, and then joined the battle in mass hand-to-hand combat in close-order formation. This latter phase decided the outcome of each major engagement and this differed in no significant way from the warfare of the phalanx.17
Others have challenged this early emergence of the phalanx and have argued that the ideology of hoplite warfare as a ritualised contest developed only in the seventh century BCE. This view was popularised by Victor Davis Hanson in his Western War of War.18 He believes that hoplite ideology dominated Archaic warfare as farmers agreed to decide disputes through pitched battles. After the creation of the hoplite panoply, for nearly two and a half centuries ‘hoplite battle was Greek warfare’.19
Finally there is the group that sees the transition to the classic hoplite form of battle coming in the fifth century and stemming from victories over the Persians. This was accompanied by the idealisation of massed hand-to-hand combat by the historian of the war, Herodotus. For this group the ideology of hoplite warfare, as a ritualised contest, developed not in the seventh century but only after 480 when non-hoplite arms began to be excluded from the phalanx. Everett Wheeler, for example, argues that the infrequency of large wars between major poleis while the phalanx was developing on the mainland, and the apparent absence of major battles in the Archaic peri
od, can discount the possibility that enough battles occurred to establish the kind of rules of conduct among forces that were necessary for hoplite battle. Most Greek city-states (except for the Spartans) had what he describes as essentially minutemen militias.20
Hoplite Phalanx or Mixed Contingents?
Another interpretation has emerged suggesting that the transition to the hoplite phalanx formation was a slow one, with mixed contingents being a common feature of Greek warfare.21 Hans van Wees shows that, although heavily armoured infantry appeared in the seventh century, they continued to fight in a loose formation and to mingle in action with horsemen and light-armed troops.22 He argues that the Archaic infantry in many ways was closer to Homer’s heroic clashes than to the battles of the Classical period. Peter Krentz describes it as ‘mass’ fighting but not ‘massed’ fighting, i.e. they did not deploy in a tight formation massed together, but rather advanced and retreated and advanced again in a formation loose enough to allow horses, perhaps even chariots, to approach the killing zone and withdraw again. Brave men moved forward while tired men, frightened men or wounded men moved back. Evidence from vase paintings suggests that spearmen and bowmen stood side by side, and played a more prominent role than they would in later centuries.23 The distinction between ‘light-armed’ and ‘hoplite’ was, quite simply, not always sharp. Stones, javelins and arrows flew, thrown and shot by some of the same men who then advanced to fight hand to hand.24
The first change came with the appearance of the bronze hoplite armour. According to van Wees, it was around 720–700 that a desire for greater protection in hand-to-hand fighting led to the introduction of the bronze panoply and the large, double-grip shield that created the hoplite. The shield was so heavy that it needed to rest on the bearer’s left shoulder as well as his lower arm. Hoplites, therefore, adopted a sideways stance: left shoulder and shield turned towards the enemy, left foot forward, right foot placed well back for balance.25 Van Wees cites poetic evidence for the stance of soldiers adapting to this new form of fighting.26 Archaic poets speak of shields striking against one another with ‘a terrible din’ as the protruding lower rims of the shields clashed in accidental collisions and in deliberate shoving matches designed to expose an opponent or throw him off balance.27
According to this line of argument, the hoplite shield did not pre-suppose or dictate a dense formation, but could be used equally to good effect in open-order fighting.28 For two generations after the introduction of the new shield, hoplites would have fought in a quite open formation because they continued to use their spears as missiles, which required a good deal of room for manoeuvre. Vase paintings show that a pair of spears continued to be standard hoplite equipment until at least 640. One or both of these weapons might be fitted with a throwingloop – a string wound around the fingers so as to make the spear spin when thrown, giving it greater speed and force – which leaves no doubt that they were designed to be used as missiles.29
The next crucial step in the development of the hoplite phalanx came soon after 640 when, as countless images show, the majority of soldiers abandoned the use of throwing spears and fought exclusively hand to hand with a single thrusting spear and sword. The evidence comes from Tyrtaeus, the Greek elegiac poet who composed during Sparta’s war of conquest in Messenia in the late seventh century BCE. For the first time, an explicit distinction was made by the poet between the light-armed and heavy-armed troops. Tyrtaeus encouraged the light-armed troops to use missiles, while he constantly appealed to the hoplites to fight the enemy face to face.30
By the late seventh century hoplites continued to fight in an order sufficiently open for light-armed men and mounted soldiers to mingle. The infantry was scattered here and there among the hoplites, ‘squatting’ for cover behind the latter’s shields in the manner of archers as represented in Homer and Archaic art.31 They did not have the separation of units one sees among the Persians where spearmen, archers and horsemen were in separate formations.32 The Greeks continued to have heavy-infantry, light-armed and horsemen together in a motley crew.33 In Athenian art, archers were an exceptionally popular subject which featured on some 750 surviving vases, most dating to between 525 and 500. These archers commonly stand, walk or run beside hoplites, and on about a hundred vases they take an active part in battle or ambush among heavy infantry. Sometimes hoplites fight over the body of a dead bowman.34 Without maps, plans or precise pictorial evidence, it is difficult if not impossible to describe in detail how a battle in antiquity unfolded with hoplites, light-armed troops and even cavalry entering in turn, but there seems no doubt that light-armed troops participated.35
All we can say about the Archaic period is that the distinction between ‘light-armed’ and ‘hoplite’ was not always sharp. The mix of warriors and weapons continued until the fifth century when hoplites and light-armed troops were divided into separate units.36 The strict separation of hoplites, light-armed and horsemen characteristic of the Classical phalanx, therefore, did not emerge until after the end of the Archaic period. Non-hoplite arms were excluded from the phalanx about the time of the Persian wars, when cavalry and light-armed troops started to fight in their own distinct units.37 The experience of the Persian wars enabled the Greeks to see the physical and psychological power of a massed infantry charge, and from then on began to exclude non-hoplite forces from their phalanx. But they continued to appreciate the value of organised contingents of horsemen and archers. They soon established a larger cavalry force and started an archery contingent. This was used with some success at Plataea where an archer killed the Persian cavalry commander, Masistos.38 By 431 they even had Persian-style mounted archers.39
True horsemen as opposed to mounted hoplites do not appear in Peloponnesian cities until the late fifth or early fourth century.40 The Athenian contingent of infantry archers first appears at Plataea in 479.41 Thucydides says that at the time of the Battle of Delium,42 Athens had no organised light-armed troops. Little more than a dozen years later, Athens had its own light-armed men and did not have to rely on Thracians or allies.43 At the Battle of Syracuse in 415, we see stone throwers, slingers and archers sent out as separate units, before the hoplite battle, to rout each other.
The impact of the Persian wars added two new ideological dimensions to hoplite claims of superiority: the notion that Greeks fought of their own free will, in obedience to the law, while barbarians only fought ‘coerced by the whip’, and the idea that a hoplite never gave ground but fought to the death, lunging with his spear until it broke, slashing with his sword until it snapped, then punching and biting until the end.44 By the time Herodotus wrote Mardonius’ speech about the Greek way of fighting, the hoplites had idealised their past into an ‘archaic way of war’ as a ritualised agôn, or contest.45 As we have seen, however, the Archaic way of war was not a single head-on collision of hoplite phalanxes, excluding cavalry and projectile weapons. It was only in the mid-fifth-century that the Greeks had invented the agôn. It is in this context that we see the development of the massed phalanx and possibly the tactic of pushing en masse to punch through an enemy phalanx.46
Mixed Troops and Ambush
The traditional view, that early Greek battles were effectively won by a handful of outstanding aristocratic warriors and that in Classical Greece the only soldiers who mattered were hoplites, is simply the view from an élitist perspective. In reality, a much wider range of soldiers and social groups played an active role in defending the Greek city-states. There may have been a social dividing line between those who were obliged to serve (and enjoyed the political privileges that went with this status) and those whose services were voluntary and did not have full political rights. It is usually assumed that this dividing line coincided with the distinction between hoplites and light-armed, but in fact it cut across the body of hoplites.47 We know very little about these social divisions because the historical accounts of the Classical period concentrated on the hoplites and ignored the light-armed. Although hoplites, cavalr
y, allied troops and mercenaries are often mentioned, the number of light-armed citizens is rarely specified, or sometimes their presence is ignored completely. It has been shown that hoplites were outnumbered by the light-armed whenever armies were mobilised by general levy.48 General levies of the Spartan army, for example, included light-armed hoplites. At the Battle of Plataea these outnumbered the hoplites 7:1.49 Although we are often told that light-armed troops participated in a battle, we are left in the dark about their exact part in the action because the narrator ignores them. In fact, most sources had an active dislike of light-armed infantry tactics and attitudes. Their hit-and-run charges, ambushes or quick fleeing on a battlefield was in direct opposition to the Classical hoplite ideal of standing one’s ground in battle at any price.50
If each Greek city-state fought exclusively with hoplites in a phalanx then there would not be much use for the ambush. But, as we shall see in the following chapters, there is much evidence to suggest that the Greeks went right on ambushing each other throughout all periods of their history, and neither the Classical nor Archaic Ages are exceptions. There is more than enough evidence to show that the Classical Age is filled with examples of all kinds of deception.51 The phalanx may have dominated the battlefield, but it was not the only form of fighting. Even hoplites themselves could be used for different types of fighting. The attention given to hoplite warfare is understandable, and for good reason. It was the dominant form of fighting in Greek armies and the type of fighting which brought most glory to the warrior. It was also the type of fighting that decided wars. The light-armed troops used in raids and ambushes did not decide major engagements. Therefore, when ancient historians gave detailed information about armed forces, they rarely acknowledged, let alone counted, the mass of ordinary light-armed citizens, ignoring the light-armed altogether along with the ambushes they may have performed.52
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