101 Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 156.
102 Thucydides 3.101.2. There were differences in how each community gave up hostages. Some joined the expedition and the hostages were a guarantee that they would not change sides and would remain faithful to the Spartans. Some communities were willing to allow safe passage of foreign troops without taking an active part in the war. This latter option was a regular feature of Greek warfare. For other examples: Herodotus 6.73, 85ff., 6.99; Thucydides 3.102.1; Diodorus Siculus 11.36.5ff. where the Ionians attacked the Persians without regard to the hostages. See M. Amit, ‘Hostages in ancient Greece’, in Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 98 (1970), p. 135.
103 Adcock, 40ff; Gomme, HCT 1, 17ff; Pritchett, vol. 2, 156, 174ff.; Losada, p. 114; Roisman, The General Demosthenes, p. 71; and Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, pp. 201–32 have been the exceptions.
104 Aeneas Tacticus 22.16–18.
105 Thucydides 3.56.2, 65.1.
106 Aeneas Tacticus 17.2.
107 Thucydides 3.3.3.
108 Thucydides 4.104.1.
109 Thucydides 4.111.2, 112.1 and 113.1.
110 Clausewitz, p. 202 claims that craft, cleverness and cunning ‘do not figure prominently in the history of war. Rarely do they stand out amid the welter of events and circumstances’.
111 Thucydides 5.11.1.
112 Plutarch, Lysander 18.
113 Thucydides 3.113.6.
Chapter 6: Night Attack
1 Pritchett, vol. 2, pp. 164–9 lists seventy-seven examples of night attacks, retreats or movements in the dark. He does not include night attacks recorded by Polybius because they are so numerous. Starting with the First Punic War, armies, particularly the Carthaginians, frequently marched and attacked by night. Why does Pritchett think this statistic is ‘meaningless’? He considers the year 362 as a logical terminus because the Sacred Wars of the 350s transformed the whole aspect of the Greek world, including the military. See A. W. Pikard-Cambridge, in CAH, vol. 6 (1933), chap. 8, pp. 213–15. Bodies were no longer given up for burial; prisoners were killed; acts of ferocity were committed by all parties. As to night attacks, one section alone of Diodorus Siculus (16.38 from 352/1) tells of a successful attack by the Boeotians on the Phocians camp at Abai in which great numbers were slain (16.38.4) and a second night fray at Narya in which 200 were killed with their general, Mnaseas (16.38.7).
2 Of the seventy-seven examples listed by Pritchett in his three tables, twenty-two have to do with night attacks on a walled city or escape from a city through the ranks of the encircling besiegers: Pritchett, vol. 2, table 3 Surprise attacks, p. 161; vol. 2, table 4 Night attacks, Herodotus, p. 161; vol. 2, table 5 Night attacks in Thucydides, pp. 165–7. Of the twenty-two, only six were unsuccessful proving the effectiveness of the strategy. Pritchett includes every important military movement by night and he considers his tables complete. His table 6 (vol. 2, pp. 168–9) includes examples from the period 408–362 BC.
3 See Herodotus 1.76.4 where a fierce battle takes place with many on both sides fallen. They separated at nightfall without either side having won a victory.
4 H. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1966), p. 240 who also believes Herodotus was uninterested in battle descriptions. This would explain why they were also short or lacking entirely. He argues that Herodotus was uninterested in military action per se, but used tactical situations to characterise people and events (ibid. chap. 6).
5 The one example I have left out is the early battle (585 BCE) between Alyattes of Lydia and Cyaxares of Media related in Herodotus 1.74.2. This battle was famous because of an eclipse which Thales had predicted. Herodotus says that day had been turned into night, and thus he calls it a kind of night battle. We, however, are discussing only those encounters where ‘night’ came at the usual time and was used as a cover for a manoeuvre. On the disagreements over this battle see Immerwahr, p. 242, n. 14; A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks (London: Arnold, 1962) p. 31, n. 16.
6 Herodotus 4.128.3. For a Roman example, see BG 4.32.
7 Herodotus 4.135–136 says that Scythians still beat them to the river because they were more familiar with the terrain.
8 See the case at Artemesium in Herodotus 8.11.3. Cf. Thucydides 4.134.2 (Laodoceum) and 4.129.5 (the Athenians against the Mendaeans of Pallene).
9 Herodotus 5.121. The Persian generals Daurises, Amorges and Sisimaces died along with Myrsus, son of Gyges. Heraclides of Mylassus is identified as son of Ibanollis of Lylasa.
10 Herodotus 6.45.1. The tribe supposedly lived between the Strymon and Mount Athos. Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 170, n. 32.
11 Polyaenus 2.2.10. 402–401 BCE.
12 Herodotus 6.16.2. Note a similar attack in the fourth century when the Spartans attack the Theban Cadmeia during the festival of the thesmophoria, but not at night. The unexpected and unprovoked nature of the attack, and the violation of the widely revered religious festival, plus the continued Spartan occupation of the Cadmeia, roused the Greeks against the Spartans.
13 Herodotus 7.217–19. See Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, new trans. by Andrea L. Purvis, ed. by Robert B. Strassler, introduction by Rosalind Thomas (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007), p. 590 on the geography.
14 Herodotus 8.13.
15 Herodotus 8.71.1.
16 Herodotus 9.10.
17 Herodotus 9.47. For a discussion of this manoeuvre as a ‘brilliant improvisational response to a mess …’ see Ray, 95–6.
18 Herodotus 9. 58.2–4. Aubrey de Selincourt trans.
19 Herodotus 9.118.
20 Herodotus 8.27–28; Cf. Pausanias 10.1.11 who supplies a moon which is necessary for the due effect.
21 Thucydides 7.43–44.
22 Thucydides 7.44.1: ‘the only one that took place in this war between large armies’. See the comments of Dué and Ebbott, 65–6.
23 Thucydides 7.43.1.
24 Thucydides 7.43.1–2. Epipolae was enclosed with walls some twelve miles (nineteen kilometres) long by the tyrant Dionysius I (c.430–367 BCE). The southern wall, of which considerable remains exist, was probably often restored. Epipolae narrows to a ridge about 180 feet (55 m) wide at one point. Here are the ruins of the most imposing fortress to survive from the Greek period. On the attack, see Roisman, The General Demosthenes, 52–70. On the building of the counterwalls, see Ray, pp. 219–21.
25 Thucydides 7.43.2. Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War, p. 157.
26 Thucydides 7.43.2–3. The three camps were made up of the Syracusans, the other Sicilians and their allie.
27 Thucydides 7.43.5.
28 Thucydides 7.43.4–7; Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War, p. 158.
29 Thucydides 7.43.4–5; Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, p. 307.
30 Thucydides 7.43.6.
31 Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, p. 307
32 Thucydides 7.44.2.
33 Thucydides 7.44.4.
34 Thucydides 7.44.7.
35 Thucydides 7.44.1.
36 Thucydides 7.44.2–8; Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War, p. 158.
37 Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, p. 308
38 Thucydides 7.44.1.
39 Thucydides 7.43.5. There is huge problem in locating the defences during these events. There is a big divide between scholars over the placement of the Athenian wall. Peter Green writes: ‘No topographical problem has puzzled students of the Syracuse campaign more than determining the location of Trogilus’: Peter Green, Armada from Athens (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 196–7. Traditionally it has been put in the north, as does A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes and J. K. Dover, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956–81, 5 vols); John Lazenby agrees with them, locating Trogilos at the Santa Panagia cove. Cf. H. W. Parke, ‘A note on the topography of Syracuse’, JHS 64 (1944), pp. 100–2. R. B. Strassler (ed.), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, introduction by Victor Davis Hanson
(New York, NY: Free Press, 1996), p. 8, on the other hand, follows Green, Armada from Athens, pp. 194–5 and locates Trogilus by the Lysimeleia marsh in the east. This is based on Thucydides, who writes that Trogilus is ‘on the shortest line for their blockading wall, which was to extend from the Great Harbour to the sea at the other side’. Therefore the shortest route round the city walls between the Great Harbour and the outer sea will follow a route, not north but eastsoutheast, along the lines of the southern cliffs of Epipolae, reaching the coast a half mile (1 km) or so north of St Lucia in the little bay known as I Cappuccini. On the identification and the erosion there see Green, Armada from Athens, pp. 196–7.
40 Thucydides 3.112.4.
41 Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War, p. 159.
42 Thucydides 7.80.3; cf. 4. 125.1.
43 Thucydides 4.135. Rex Warner trans. For such scaling ladders, see Aeneas Tacticus 36.1 and Whitehead’s note. On Brasidas as a general, see Wylie, ‘Brasidas – great commander or whiz kid?’, pp. 423–43.
44 Thucydides 4.135. Gomme, HCT 3, 626. Cf. Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 163; Lazenby, The Peloponnesian War, p. 100.
45 Aristophanes, Birds 842.
46 N. Dunbar in her Birds commentary (Aristophanes’ Birds, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1998) merely notes that Thucydides 4.135 seems to ‘reflect a different system’ from that in the Birds.
47 Thucydides 3.112.4. Cf. 1.51.5 (Kerkyra). On night fighting, see 2.4. On the role of light-armed troops in rough terrain, see 3.97–98.
48 Thucydides 1.116.
49 Thucydides 2.82. See Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 1, p. 364.
50 Thucydides 3.22. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 1, p. 406. There seems to be a religious aspect to the one-sandal motif; see Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 64 and W. Deonna, ‘Les cornes gauches’, Revue des Etudes Anciennes (1940), pp. 111–26.
51 Thucydides 3.22.
52 Thucydides 3.106.3. The sites of the towns of this area are uncertain. On the possible location of Amphilochian Argos, see Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides, p. 214. See also Hammond, ‘The campaign of Amphilochia during the Archidamian war’, pp. 129–40.
53 Thucydides 3.107.3; Losada, p. 42.
54 Thucydides 4.103.
55 The bridge seems to have been only lightly guarded. We are told nothing about the troops available to Eucles.
56 Thucydides 4.104.2.
57 On the topography around Amphipolis, see Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol. 2, pp. 136–8; Thucydides 4.104.4.
58 Diodorus 12.68.3. The time frame for this event is telescoped. Henderson thinks it all happened in one winter’s day. See Wylie, ‘Brasidas – great commander or whiz kid?’, p. 430 who finds this improbable.
59 Thucydides 4.103. One must take into consideration that the weather was stormy and even snowing at one point.
60 The Landmark Thucydides, trans. by Crawley.
61 Thucydides 4.125.1. Steup and Hornblower agree with W. Schmid that this passage by Schmid – ‘Das Alter der Vorstellung vom panischen Schrecken’, RhM 50 (1895), pp. 310–11 – conceals a Thucydidean polemic against popular superstition: Julius Steup, Thukydides, erklärt von J. Classen (Berlin: Weidemann, 1914); Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 2, Books IV–V.24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Cf. Pritchett, vol. 3, pp. 45, 148, 163. P. Borgeaud, The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), chap. 5 on panic. Cf. E. R. Dodds (ed.), Euripides’ Bacchae (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 109–10; C. P. Segal, ‘Gorgias and the psychology of the logos’, HSCPh 66 (1962), p. 108, n. 50. On Perdiccas, see Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol. 1, p. 371.
62 Cf. Thucydides 4.124–128. V. D. Hanson, ‘Hoplite battle as ancient Greek warfare. When, where and why?’, in H. van Wees, War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth, 2000), 213 does not seem to take the barbarians as seriously as Brasidas did. He also leaves out the night attack.
63 Thucydides 4.120.2.
64 Thucydides 4.131.3. The generals offer generous terms to the people of Mende, perhaps recognising that most of them had not supported the revolt (ibid. 4.123). They were also anxious to keep Mende loyal so that they could concentrate on Scione.
65 Thucydides 5.58–59. Nemea is some four miles (six kilometres) southeast of Phlius, where the Spartan allies were assembling, and about thirteen miles (twenty kilometres) (as the crow flies) north of Argos. The plain is the Argive plain, north of the city of Argos. See Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides, p. 338, n. 5.58.5a. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, p. 67 believes Agis was trying to trap the Argives between three columns marching separately at night.
66 Thucydides 6.7.2. Orneae is some twelve miles (nineteen kilometres) north of Argos. It was an ally of Argos in 418 (see Thucydides 5.67) and Sparta had clearly retained control of it since Mantinea.
67 Thucydides 7.73.2.
68 Thucydides 7.74.1.
69 Thucydides 7.74.2.
70 Thucydides 3.91.3. Oropus is on the northern coast of Attica, opposite Euboea.
71 Thucydides 3.30.3, Rex Warner trans.
72 Thucydides 5.115.4, Rex Warner trans.
73 Thucydides 4.110.1, Rex Warner trans. On the location see Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 1, 1534–35. B. D. Merritt, ‘Scione, Mende and Torone’, AJA 27 (1923), pp. 447–60. The site of Torone has been excavated by a joint Greek and Australian team led by A. Cambitoglu, J. K. Papadopoulos and O. Tudor (eds), Torone I: The Excavations of 1975, 1976 and 1978 (Athens: He en Athenais Archaiologik e Hetaireia, 2001), 3 vols. See also A. S. Henry, Torone, The Literary, Documentary and Epigraphical Testimonia (Athens: Archaeological Society at Athens, 2004); W. R. Connor, Thucydides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 127, n. 43 sees a general parallel here with Pylos which was also a dawn operation. Losada, p. 44.
74 See Wylie, ‘Brasidas – great commander or whiz kid?’, p. 85; Best, p. 31.
75 Thucydides 4.110–116.
76 Thucydides 2.2.1. On the motives of the group letting in the Thebans, see Losada, vol. 1, p. 107 4n.
77 Thucydides 7.28.2.
78 Thucydides 7.6.2–4.
79 Thucydides 8.35.4.
80 Thucydides 5.56.4.
81 Immerwahr, chap. 4 on the apaté motif.
82 Aeneas Tacticus 10.25–26; 22.1–8. He is more concerned with the danger from within, but such operations depended on the use of small units and light-armed troops for the attack.
83 Thucydides 2.2.1; Aeneas Tacticus 2.3.
84 Thucydides 4.67.2–4.
85 Thucydides 4.103.
86 Thucydides 4.110–113.2.
87 Plutarch, Alcibiades 30.2.
88 Xenophon, Hellenica 1.3.20; Diodorus Siculus 13.67.1; Plutarch, Alcibiades 31.3.
89 Thucydides 4.103.1–2.
90 Thucydides 4.103.5.
91 Thucydides 2.5.2–3.
92 On the lack of guards, see Thucydides 2.2.3. The weather was also a factor in the ultimate failure of the betrayal. It delayed the rest of the Thebans who were supposed to arrive while it was still night, Thucydides 2.5.1–3.
Chapter 7: Surprise Landings, and Assault by Sea
1 Ducrey claims ancient navies reluctantly sailed in the dark, but they dared not fight in the dark. A large-scale nuktomachia, however, occurred at Epipolai.
2 B. Strauss, The Battle of Salamis. The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece – and Western Civilization (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), p. 15.
3 Strauss, The Battle of Salamis, p. 21.
4 Herodotus 6.29; Ray, 44–5.
5 Strauss, The Battle of Salamis, pp. 193–4.
6 P. Green, The Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 180.
7 The figure of 400 Persians on Psattaleia comes from Pausanias 1.36.2. See Burn, Persia and the Greeks, p. 453.
8 Herodotus 8.76. J. F. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, 490–479 (Warminster, Wilts: Aris and Phill
ips, 1993), pp. 181–3 doubts the Persians could have entered the channel at night without the Greeks knowing about it. If they had gotten that close, they should have attacked at night before the Greeks could deploy or man their fleet, i.e. they should have done the same thing the Spartans did to the Athenians at Aegospotami (see chap. 8). Certainly the slightest leak for intelligence could turn this operation into a death trap.
9 On Psatteleia, see G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War and its Preliminaries (London: John Murray, 1901), pp. 392–3; W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968, reprinted edn), vol 2, pp. 382–4; Burn, Persia and the Greeks, pp. 455–7; Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, pp. 181–2.
10 Herodotus 8.107.1.
11 Thucydides 2.33, who describes the Cranians as ‘deceitful’. Ray, p. 154.
12 Thucydides 3.90; Diodorus Siculus 12.54.4–5 claims that Messana lost 1,000 hoplites in the fight at Mylae and that another 600 gave up. This figure is probably inflated since they had nearby refuge and were not pursued by mounted troops: Ray, pp. 163–4.
13 Thucydides 3.103.
14 Thucydides 3.91.
15 Thucydides 2.83.1. The two colleagues were Isocrates and Agatharcidas.
16 Thucydides 2.83.2.
17 Thucydides 2.83.3.
18 Thucydides 2.83.3.
19 Thucydides 2.83.5.
20 Thucydides 2.84.2.
21 Thucydides 2.84.2.
22 Thucydides 2.84.3.
23 Thucydides 2.84.4.
24 The pivot on the gunwale that supports and guides an oar, and provides a fulcrum for rowing; an oarlock (US): Thucydides 2.93.2.
25 See Leebaert, p. 55.
26 Thucydides 2.94.3 on the condition of the ships. On the one hand it is important to regularly dry out trireme hulls to maintain their speed and performance, but excessive dryness would be leaky until the hulls absorbed enough water for the planks to swell and close the joints between them. See Strassler, Landmark Thucydides, appendix G on trireme warfare.
27 Thucydides 2.93.1–4, Landmark edn ed. by Strassler, trans. by Crawley; A. J. Beattie, ‘Nisaea and Megara’, RhM 163 (1960), 21–43.
28 For pelting with the rooftiles, see Thucydides 3.74.3. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 1, p. 472. On women in warfare, see P. Loman, ‘No woman, no war: Women’s participation in ancient Greek warfare’, G&R 51, 1 (2004), 34–54; on fighting with roof tiles, see Barry, 55–74.
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