Surprise attack is not meant to be ubiquitous or widespread. It must be used selectively. The Greeks were not getting ‘sneakier’, rather their armies were simply getting more specialised and professional. They were learning to operate overseas, and on varied terrain and to hire specialised troops as needed. It is along these lines that Greek commanders would develop in the coming centuries.
* Half a mile, or one kilometre.
CHAPTER 6
Night Attack
THERE IS NO BETTER time to sneak up on the enemy than at night, and there are numerous and varied examples of night attacks, or night marches and dawn attacks being used by the Greeks.1 Considering that night attacks are what the Greeks supposedly did not do, according to many scholars, there are more than enough examples to prove their assumptions false. Herodotus alone lists fifteen examples of night attacks, forty-four appear in Thucydides and another twenty-one in Diodorus, Plutarch and Xenophon.2 This chapter will look at the fifth-century examples, i.e. those that occur in the Classical Age, when the majority of scholars discuss only hoplite battles. Certainly, large battles were customarily broken off at nightfall, but night attacks were used by all combatants in the fifth century, both Greek and foreign, Athenian and Spartan, and such operations could be highly successful when executed correctly in the proper situations.3 This collection of examples suggests that moving troops at night to sneak up on a foe or to escape from an enemy was actually standard operating procedure during the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
Herodotus
The eminent Greek scholar Henry Immerwahr noted in 1966 that battles occupied centre stage in Herodotus’ Histories, but we should add that rarely were they major hoplite battles.4 Many of the encounters that appear in Herodotus are ambushes involving non-Greek combatants or Asiatic Greeks drafted into the Persian army by Cyrus or Darius.5 In 513, for example, in a classic tactic, the Scythians attacked the Persians who were out foraging for provisions. We are told the Scythians attacked in this manner by night as well as by day.6 In the same campaign, Darius left the wounded and the donkeys behind in a camp while he proceeded to the Ister river to set up for a battle against the Scythians. When the animals found themselves deserted, they brayed loudly and the Scythians were convinced that the Persians were still in the camp. The deception was used to cover up Darius’ night movement to get to the Ister river and set up for the battle. The next day, however, the Scythians discovered Darius had tricked them, and they made straight for the Ister.7
While we are told by modern commentators that, under normal conditions, large battles were broken off at nightfall, the war itself continued after sunset.8 The Greeks were aware that they could be attacked at night, and they would have been foolish not to protect themselves against such ambushes. Plus, if they wished to be more proactive, they needed to ambush their enemies first. Not surprisingly, we see that the Greeks were not only successful in setting up night ambushes but that they also killed many important members of the Persian army this way. In 496, for example, the Carians learned that the Persians were marching against their cities, so they set themselves up on an ambush along the road in Pedasa, and a number of Persian generals were killed. We are told it was the Greek Heraclides of Mylassus who planned the ambush and led it himself.9 In Mardonius’ invasion of Macedonia in 492, he lost his fleet off Mt Athos and then the Byrgoi of Thrace attacked him in a night ambush on his camp and wounded him.10 The wounding of an important general has serious effects upon a campaign.
Operating at night was not without its difficulty or dangers. Night, in general, was a scary time for any army. During Xerxes’ march from Sardis to Abydos in 480 (see map 1), for example, he stopped at Troy to make a sacrifice to Athena of Ilion. His army was ‘struck by fear’ during the night, perhaps in a thunderstorm (as in Herodotus 7.42) and he did not resume his march until daylight. Polyaenus demonstrates how soldiers could be made resistant to night fears. He tells that when Clearchus was in Thrace the typical ‘nocturnal fears’ seized his army. He gave orders that if an uproar occurred during the night no one was to stand up. Whoever did stand up was to be killed as an enemy. This order taught the soldiers to feel contempt for nocturnal fear, and so they stopped jumping up and becoming agitated.11
Night operations were no more a magic bullet than daytime ambush. They were not easy to execute properly, and they could cause as much confusion as success. In 494, when the Chians landed at Mycale and entered the land of the Ephesians (see map 8), they marched by night and came upon women who were keeping the Thesmophoriae, a festival held in Greek cities in honour of the goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The Ephesians had not been given any advanced warning about the landing of the Chians and the city was lightly guarded during the festival. They thought the invading army consisted of robbers coming after their women, so they mustered all their forces and slaughtered the Chians.12
The great attack on Thermopylae in 480 by the Persians required a night march across the Asopus river (see map 3). The Persians took the path called Anopaia (of the same name as the mountains it runs through) that had been revealed to them by the spy Ephialtes. They reached the summit at dawn and surprised the 1,000 Phocian hoplites who knew nothing of their movements until they heard the noise of the enemy’s approach because of the noise their feet made in the oak leaves.13 That same night, the Persian fleet discovered the dangers of night manoeuvres when it tried to sail around Euboea and was caught in a storm on the open sea and destroyed.14
Even defensive military operations were carried out at night. After Thermopylae, when the Peloponnesians heard that Leonidas’ men were dead, they came out from their cities and encamped on the isthmus, their general being the brother of Leonidas, Cleombrotus, son of Anaxandrides. They broke up the Scironian road for materials, and built a wall across the isthmus. They carried stones and bricks and logs and crates full of sand, and we are told that they worked both night and day.15
Night operations might consist of a simple departure of troops by night, as happened in 479 when the Spartans made a night march towards the isthmus. The ephors commanded that 5,000 hoplites, each attended by seven helots, should march under the command of Cleombrotus. They were sent north to assist the Athenians against the Persians. They did not even tell the envoys who had requested their help that they were leaving.16
Another tactic was making a change in the position of troops just before a dawn attack in order to surprise the enemy at sunrise. At Plataea in 479 the Spartans and Athenians decided to change positions and so switched places at the first signs of dawn. But the Boeotians detected the movement and reported it to Mardonius. He immediately shifted his Persian troops to the other wing, so that they would still be facing the Spartans. When Pausanias saw what the Persians were doing he realised that the enemy had discovered the change. He therefore marched his Spartans back to the right wing so that the Persians and Spartans were once again facing one another in their original positions.17 In this case, the night movement did not work because operation security was lacking.
Mardonius did not miss the opportunity to berate the Greeks for their ‘sneakiness’, and sent a herald to the Spartan line telling them:
… everybody about here seems to think you are very brave. Everyone admires you for never retreating in battle and for never quitting your post: you stick to it, so they say, until death – either your enemy’s or your own. But it turns out that all this is nonsense: for here you are, running away and deserting your post before the battle has even begun or a single blow been struck, and giving the place of danger to the Athenians, while you yourselves face men who are merely our slaves. This is by no means what brave men would do; indeed, we have been sadly mistaken about you. Your reputation led us to expect that you would send us a challenge, in your eagerness to match yourselves with none but Persian troops. We should have accepted the challenge, had you sent it; but you did not. We find you instead slinking away from us.18
This moralising speech, put in the mouth o
f Mardonius by Herodotus, does not accurately represent either the Persian or the Greek position, but merely sets up the familiar theme of blaming one’s enemy for using a sneaky tactic, while continuing to use it yourself. From the examples we have seen, it is clear that both Greeks and Persians (and indeed everyone else) used night tactics to escape and save their men when they found themselves in sticky situations.
Herodotus records a night flight by the Persians during the siege of Sestos in 479 (see map 1). The Persians were blocked up in Sestos by the Athenians. They were not prepared for a siege and had not expected the arrival of the Greeks, which caught them unawares (another Greek surprise!). The people in the town were suffering and had been reduced to eating the leather straps off their beds. Artayctes and Oeobazus, the leading Persians, made their escape by night, letting themselves down from the wall at the back of the town where the enemy lines were weakest. On the following day the men of the Chersonese signalled to the Athenians from their towers to let them know what had happened; they also opened the gates. The greater part of the Athenian force went in pursuit of the fugitives while the remainder took possession of the town.19
Of all the notable night attacks in Herodotus, perhaps the most memorable is the one that used a technique that appears nowhere else in Greek history. Herodotus relates an incident that occurred just before the Battle of Thermopylae in 480. The Thessalians and their allies invaded Phocis. The Phocians had the diviner Tellias of Elis in their camp, who devised a stratagem involving a night attack on the Thessalian camp.20 Six hundred of the bravest Phocian hoplites whitened themselves and their armour with chalk. Then they went out to attack the Thessalians at night, having been instructed to kill everyone who was not whitened. The Thessalian sentinels were the first to see them and fled, supposing they were seeing ghosts, then the rest of the army followed suit. The effect enabled the Phocians to discriminate between friend and foe in the mêlée, which was the difficult matter in night attacks. The incident gives us one of the most stark and vivid examples of what a night attack can achieve. Indeed, this is a technique that would not have worked at any other time except at night.
The Peloponnesian War
Thucydides gives an excellent example of the confusion that can happen during night fighting even when verbal signals are used for security.21 The attack was set up by Demosthenes against the Syracusans on Epipolae in 413 (see map 5). Thucydides says this was the only such attack that took place in the Peloponnesian war between large armies.22 Demosthenes had been using siege engines against the counter wall, but they were being continually set on fire by the defenders.23 No matter where they attacked the wall in the daytime, they were turned back. Demosthenes realised that it would be impossible by day to avoid being seen both in the approach to and in the ascent of Epipolae, the ancient fortified plateau west of Syracuse. Thus he decided on a surprise night attack.24
He got the consent from his fellow commander, Nicias, to take enough provisions for five days, and assembled masons, carpenters and any military gear he considered necessary, like arrows. At first watch, about 10:00 p.m., he set out for Epipolae with the whole army, leaving Nicias in the lines.25 They ascended the first hill of Euryelus unobserved by the enemy guards (see map 5). They took the first of three forts by surprise, putting to the sword part of the garrison.26
Escapees spread the word that the Athenians were on the plateau in force. The first to be informed of the Athenian attack were the 600 hoplites formed the year before to act as guards for Epipolae. The groups from the other forts advanced against the assailants, but when they encountered Demosthenes and the Athenians they put up a spirited defence; they were, however, routed.27
The Athenians now raced ahead to exploit their success, an initial corps cleared the way while a second force headed swiftly for the counter wall.28 The Syracusans guarding it fled, allowing the Athenians to capture and tear down parts of it.29 The Syracusans and their allies, including Gylippus and his men, came up to help from the outworks, but the night attack was unexpected and some men panicked and were initially forced back. In the dim light of the moon the advancing Athenians could not tell whether the men running toward them were friends or foes, a problem that was compounded by the fact that the generals appear not to have placed anyone at the pass to direct traffic.30 So as the different companies came onto the plateau, they found some Athenian forces advancing eastward unchecked, others running back towards Euryelus in retreat, and still others who had just come up through the pass and were not yet in motion. No one instructed the men newly arrived on the plateau which group they should join.31
With large numbers of similarly equipped hoplites milling about in a relatively confined space, it was impossible to tell which side anyone was on, even though there was a moon.32 The leading Athenians were already in flight, but those coming up behind, including some still making the ascent, did not know what was happening and there was no one to direct them. Hearing a distinctive Dorian paean added to the panic.33 The Argives and the Corcyreans on the Athenian side sounded just like the enemy.34 They began to take anyone coming towards them as hostile, and their constant demands for the password soon gave it away to the enemy. The result was that they ended by fighting among themselves, and the rout was compounded by the narrowness of the escape route.35
All this disorder and panic ended in a general flight. As the Athenians were being pursued by the enemy many hurled themselves down from the bluffs and perished because the way down from Epipolae was narrow. Those familiar with the terrain made it back to their camp, but recent arrivals who did not know the lay of the land wandered around in the dark and were gathered up by the Syracusan cavalry the next morning and killed.36 The result was the greatest disaster suffered by the Athenians in the war up to that point. Between 2,000 and 2,500 men were killed, and all hope of a quick victory at Syracuse abandoned.37
Thucydides admits that it was not easy to find out what happened from either side, even afterwards.38 As he says, even in daylight those taking part in a battle know only what is going on in their immediate vicinity, but at night how could anyone clearly understand anything? His account is a classic illustration of the difficulties and dangers of fighting in the dark. A night attack is notoriously difficult to co-ordinate, even when those engaged know the terrain, have good maps and modern means of communication. Since no one on the Athenian side was as familiar with the plateau as the Syracusans, and the men who had just arrived with Demosthenes and Eurymedon had no knowledge of it at all, this ignorance was disastrous. In the darkness advance turned to retreat, and retreat to rout.
The difficulty of night operations should not be blamed entirely for the defeat. One feels the Athenians made mistakes that could have been avoided. There seems to have been some attempt to assign different objectives to different units, some directly attacking the Syracusan counter wall, while others dealt with the main body of enemy troops on the plateau.39 But the latter seem to have had no clear objective and should have been made to halt and stand on the defensive once a certain point had been reached. This would have avoided much of the confusion, and it was not beyond the wit of even ancient commanders to devise some way of distinguishing their men from the enemy. Demosthenes, in particular, who had used his own Doric speakers to confuse the sentries at Idomene,40 should have realised that the Doric speakers in the Athenian army in Sicily might cause confusion and should have told them to keep their mouths shut. Finally, although no one in the Athenian army could have been expected to know the terrain really well, it might have been a good idea at least to mix some of the older hands with the newcomers. Instead, it just ended in disaster.41
After this debacle, Thucydides reiterates his view of night attacks and says of the confusion that arose: ‘Terrors and panics are apt to arise, especially at night and when they are marching through a hostile country.’42 Thucydides may have been correct when describing the movements of large armies. We should not be convinced, however, that this is a general rule or the G
reek view of night operations. We can see a clear pattern of using night attacks and many times, unlike this one, they worked. Surprise and night fighting are not a panacea; they are just one more tool in the toolbox of military possibilities.
In the winter of 432/1, Brasidas, a much more conservative commander than Demosthenes, attempted a surprise at Potidaea (see map 4):
He reached the place by night and had planted a ladder against the wall before he was discovered. The ladder was planted just in those few moments when the guard on duty was passing on the bell and before he had time to return to his post. However, the alarm was given immediately afterwards, before his men were in position, and Brasidas quickly led his army back again, without waiting till it was day.43
Gomme writes of this being one of the ‘rare attempts’ at surprise attack by night on a defended town, and sneers that it was ‘easily foiled’.44 The incident itself even had an effect on military procedure. Because the ladder was placed at a point which the guard who was passing on the bell had just left, and before he had returned to his post. Sommerstein suggests that some time before 414 (the date of the play) the usual system was changed, as a result of this sort of incident.45 After the change, the duty of the sentry and bellman was separated.46
At least ten other successful examples suggest that escaping at night was a common way to elude an enemy. In chapter 5 we related the story of Demosthenes’ march from Olpae to Idomene with light-armed Amphilochians and Messenians in 426/5 (see map 6). The incident illustrates how verbal recognition could be used against a foe. After making a night march, Demosthenes reached the camp of the Ambraciots a little before daylight and took them by complete surprise. The Ambraciots were still in their beds. Demosthenes purposely put his Messenian soldiers in front to fool the sentinels. On hearing the Doric dialect, they supposed the troops to be their own men since they could not see them in the dark. Again, the factor that Thucydides stresses is that the enemy was indistinguishable to the sight.47 This was an efficient, well-executed and deadly operation.
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