29 Thucydides 3.81.1, 427, escape of the fleet. According to Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol 1, p. 476 at some periods in antiquity the channel between Leucas and the mainland was navigable. Today there is a canal between Leucas and the mainland.
30 Thucydides 4.26.6.
31 Thucydides 4.31–32.
32 Thucydides 4.42.4.
33 See Simon Hornblower, The Greek World 479–323 (New York: Routledge, 1983), p. 121; Stroud, p. 287 seeing the episode from the Corinthian point of view, notes how much Thucydides seems to know about Corinthian plans and movements. On military security generally see Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. 3, p. 91 citing Hermocrates at 6.72.5 for awareness of the problem. J. P. Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone Books, 1988), p. 37 denies the existence of a concept of military security in ancient Greek strategy.
34 Thucydides 4.66.3. J. E. Lendon, Song of Wrath, 1–5 begins his book with this incident.
35 Gomme, HCT 3, 532; Kagan, The Archidamian War, p. 273; A.J. Holladay, ‘Athenian strategy in the Archidamian war’, Historia 27 (1978), p. 417; Roisman, The General Demosthenes, p. 42.
36 On the location of Minoa see T. Spratt, ‘The supposed situation of Minoa and Nisaea’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 8 (1838), pp. 205–9; A. G. Laird, ‘Nisaea and Minoa’, CP 29, 2 (April 1934), 89–100; and Beattie, 21–43.
37 Every night for some time they had been carefully preparing for opening of the gates by regularly assuming the guise of pirates and taking a sculling boat, drawn on a cart, through the ditch and down to the sea, where they would put out. Now the cart was already at the gates, which had been opened in the usual way for the boat. When the Athenians, by whom this had been arranged, saw it, they ran at top speed from the ambush in order to reach the gates before they were shut again, and while the cart was still there to prevent the gates being closed.
38 For the literature on this episode, see N. Geske, Nicias und das Volk von Athen im Archidamischen Krieg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), n. 526.
39 Thucydides 6.65.2.
40 Thucydides 7.22.
41 Thucydides 7.22–23.
42 Thucydides 8.41.1.
43 Thucydides 8.42.3.
44 Thucydides 8.41–42.
45 Thucydides 8.101.
46 Thucydides 8.102.
47 Polyaenus 1.48.1. Krentz and Wheeler trans. This incident is not reported by any other extant historian. Conon was admiral in each of the three years 407–405. In 406 he was defeated by the Spartans and blockaded in Mytilene. He was rescued following the Athenian victory at Arginusae (August 406). But, upon the defeat of Athens’ fleet at Aegospotami (405), he fled to Cyprus. On the outbreak of the war between Sparta and the Persians (400), Conon obtained joint command, with Pharnabazus, of a Persian fleet. It was in this capacity that he triumphed six years later at Cnidus. Imprisoned by the Persians when he was on an embassy from Athens to the Persian court to counteract the intrigues of Sparta, Conon probably died in Cyprus.
48 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.27.
49 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.8. This passage suggests they angled their oars into the water rather than striking the water at right angles so as to make less noise. Xenophon does not say so but perhaps he was also aware that splashes and foam at sea can give off a visible phosphorescent light. This chapter uniquely mentions some important details about ancient naval military practices: van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
50 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.9.
51 Polyaenus 3.11.9.
52 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.10.
53 Polyaenus 5.38.
54 Entries in Polyaenus are notoriously hard to date. Perhaps this Diotimus is the fifth-century admiral mentioned by Thucydides 1. 45.
55 Polyaenus 5.22.2.
56 The crew of a trireme were arranged in three rows. The lowest tier consisted of twenty-seven oars per side and was called thalamites; the middle tier also had twenty-seven oars per side and was called zeugites; and the oars on the top were called thranites.
57 Polyaenus 5.22.4.
58 Polyaenus 1.40.2. See also Frontinus 3.11.3; Diodorus Siculus 13.66–67; Plutarch, Alcibiades 31.
59 Polyaenus 5.39.
60 Thucydides 7.29.3; 7.30.4.
61 Aeneas Tacticus 23.6–11; Losada, p. 102.
62 Diodorus Siculus 13.67.1–3; Plutarch, Alcibiades 31.1–3.
63 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
64 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
65 The nearest market was several miles away and 95 per cent of the captured ships were severely undermanned or unmanned; Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.22–8. Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
66 Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 93.
67 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
68 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 224.
Chapter 8: The Age of Light-Armed
1 On Aegospotami, see Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.22–30; Diodorus Siculus 13.105–106; Plutarch, Lysander 10–11; Alcibiades 36–37; Frontinus 2.1.18; Polyaenus 1.45.2; Pausanias 9.32.9; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals. On Historians, trans. by J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), p. 8. For modern commentaries, see B. S. Strauss, ‘Aegospotami re-examined’, AJPh 104 (1983), pp. 124–35; Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire, pp. 386–94.
2 Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 119.
3 P. Baker, ‘Les mercenaires’, in F. Prost (ed.), Armées et Societies de la Grèce Classique (Paris: Ed. Errance, 1999), pp. 240–55. Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 120.
4 Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 119. This is not to imply that Greeks only served as mercenaries in large numbers beginning in the fourth century. See N. Luraghi, ‘Traders, pirates, warriors: The proto-history of Greek mercenary soldiers in the eastern Mediterranean’, Phoenix 60 (2006), 21–47 who shows that Greek mercenary soldiers served for a number of powers in the southeastern Mediterranean during most of the Archaic Age.
5 Best, p. 115.
6 Thucydides 4.94.1 states that no organised unit of light-armed (psiloi) existed in Athens at the time of the Battle of Delium (424 BCE). In 411, however, a Spartan attack on Athens was repulsed by horsemen, hoplites, light-armed men (psiloi) and archers (Thucydides 8.71.2). That the Athenians had developed light-armed soldiers in the interim is confirmed by Xenophon, who reports that a Spartan attack on the walls of Athens was repulsed and light-armed troops killed a number of the Spartans rearguard: Xenophon, Hellenica 1.1.33–34; Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 108; Best, p. 38.
7 These have been treated in a superb study by Losada. For an example from 395 in Asia of an ambush laid along the line of march, see Xenophon, Hellenica 3.4.20–24; Plutarch, Agesilaus 1.28–32. For a different version, see Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 6.4–6. Cf. Diodorus Siculus 14.80. On the historicity of the event, see Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, p. 302, n. 27.
8 The standard work on peltasts is still Best. For illustrations of peltasts on Greek ceramics and in the archaeological record, see Best (ibid.) after p. 6. They were named after the shield, the pelte, generally designed in the shape of a crescent moon. It was lightweight, with a wooden frame and no form of reinforcement either in the middle or around the edge. It was covered with a goat or sheep skin and sometimes decorated with an apotropaic device or identifying sign (a nose, a mouth, an eye, etc.). There is a tendency to confuse the light-armed with peltasts. Not every peltast is a light-armed skirmisher. The peltasts who served in the Peloponnesian war were always described as skirmishers, fighting at a distance with their javelins, but this applies only to Greek peltasts. Thracian peltasts are recorded as being able to fight to a limited degree in close combat. The Thracian peltasts Xenophon encountered in Asia could fall upon men crossing a river in addition to their usual skirmishing mode of fighting: Xenophon, Anabasis 6.3. Thucydides records Thracians fending off Theban cavalry by charging them (Thucydides 7.30). In the early second century BCE élite Macedonian pikemen were called peltasts (or t
o Latin authors like Livy, caetrati) on account of their relatively small shields. But these troops had no skirmishing capability whatsoever when massed in a pike phalanx.
9 Arrian’s Tactica divides soldiers into three categories: (1) the heavily-armed hoplites; (2) the light-armed soldiers equipped with a bow, a javelin or a sling, but without cuirass, shield or greaves, used as skirmishers; (3) the peltasts who fell midway between the two with their shields and offensive weaponry who could fight to a limited degree in close combat: Arrian, ‘Ars tactica’, in L’arte Tattica: Trattato di Tecnica Militare: Testo Greco a Fronte, Lucio Flavio Arriano; a Cura di Antonio Sestili (Roma: Aracne, 2011), p. 3; Best, 3–4; Ducrey, pp. 109–10.
10 The Thracians had always used this style of fighting. There is evidence that as early as the sixth century in Athens Peisistratos used Thracian mercenaries: Best, p. 5. Best (ibid. p. 40) argues that the excessively high cost of recruiting Thracian mercenaries led Athens to set up a force of its own peltasts for overseas expeditions.
11 Best, p. 3; Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 110; Herodotus 7.75 describes the Thracian peltasts: ‘The Thracians who marched with the army wore fox-skin caps, and tunics with colorful zeiras thrown over them; on their feet and shins they wore fawn-skin boots. They carried javelins, small light shields, and small daggers’: Herodotus, The Landmark Herodotus, trans. by Andrea Purvis; Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, p. 113 quotes Xenophon’s Anabasis 5.2.29 which shows peltasts, hidden on a scrub-covered hill, flashing their shields in the sunlight to make it appear that they were a much larger force in ambush.
12 At least up to the time of Delium. See Thucydides 4.94; Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol 1, p. 275. The importance of light-armed troops would become apparent in the Corinthian war. By that time Athens had its own light-armed force, not just mercenaries. Citizens in Athens served as light-armed soldiers as early as the end of the fifth century, and although there is debate over which troops were mercenaries and which native, it is not in dispute that they served well and that their style of fighting was becoming more important: Best, 93–7. Some Attic orators complained that Athens relied almost exclusively on mercenaries in the fourth century, but this is not true. Athenian citizens served in many campaigns in the second and third quarters of the fourth century, and they adapted by training a new type of soldier.
13 S. Yalichev, Mercenaries in the Ancient World (London: Constable, 1997), p. 118.
14 Cornelius Nepos, Iphicrates 1; Diodorus Siculus 15.44. There is a debate over whether Iphicrates’ reformed troops were hoplites or indeed real peltasts. Scholars have sometimes even rejected both Nepos and Diodorus. When we see a soldier carrying a pelta, does it mean he is a light-armed skirmisher (i.e. fighting at a distance with their javelins) or lighter-armed hoplites fighting at close range? Some prefer to call these new troops Iphicratean hoplites rather than peltasts. See Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 79–81.
15 On the debate over the reforms of Iphicrates and Chabrias, see Best, pp. 102–10. All theories concerning the reform are based on the information provided by Diodorus Siculus 15.44.2–4 and Cornelius Nepos, Iphicrates 11.1.3–4. According to Diodorus Siculus, he lengthened the spear by 50 per cent; according to Nepos he doubled it. Best, p. 13 argues that the Greeks discovered the usefulness of this type of warfare when setting up colonies in Thrace, long before peltasts started to appear on Greek vases (c. 550 BCE). The majority of the peltasts were probably recruited from the Greek states in the Hellespontine region. Cf. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 80; Lippelt, p. 66.
16 Best, p. 85 argues that Iphicrates did not change hoplites into peltasts (as suggested by Diodorus Siculus and Cornelius Nepos) but instead armed a new type of peltast based on his experiences in Thrace (ibid. p. 102). The fact that both Diodorus Siculus and Nepos had never heard of peltasts before Iphicrates’ reforms is no reason to doubt the reforms themselves (ibid. p. 104).
17 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol 1, p. 276. N. Bagnall, The Peloponnesian War. Athens, Sparta and the Struggle for Greece (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004), p. 141; H.D. Westlake, Individuals in Thucydides (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 138–9.
18 J. Roth, ‘War’, in CHGRW, vol. 1, p. 391; on cavalry see R. E. Gaebel, Cavalry Operations in the Ancient Greek World (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), p. 123 who says the fact that the Greeks of this period made more use of peltasts than cavalry to increase the versatility of their armies could be justified on economic grounds as well as by the fact that they were effective.
19 Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 94 points out that Athens did not have light-armed troops trained for combat before 424, citing Thucydides 4.94. On archers see A. Plassart, pp. 151–213. During the Sicilian expedition the slingers were Rhodian, the archers were Cretan and the light-armed soldiers were Megarians; see Thucydides 6.43. Specialists in military affairs made their appearance: see, for example, the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus who turn up in the dialogues of Plato and Aristotle: Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 103, n. 64.
20 As Chaniotis points out, regional studies of the context of mercenary service have led to different conclusions: A. Chaniotis, War in the Hellenistic World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 80; M. Launey, Recherches sur les Armées Hellénistiques (Paris: de Boccard, 1987), pp. 104–615. The phenomenon is complex and local peculiarities abound.
21 See Luraghi, 21–47. On mercenaries at Sparta, see W. Lengauer, Greek Commanders in the 5th and 4th Centuries BC (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1979), p. 80.
22 Chaniotis, War in the Hellenistic World, 81–2.
23 Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 103.
24 Kinzl, p. 483.
25 In warfare, the pilos cap was a felt hat often worn by the peltast light infantry. The pilos cap was sometimes worn under the helmet by hoplites, but usually they preferred not to use a helmet along with the cap before the fifth century for reasons of mobility. The pilos helmet was made in the same shape as the original cap. It probably originated from Laconia and was made from bronze. The pilos helmet was extensively adopted by the Spartan army in the fifth century BCE and worn by them until the end of the Classical era. This helmet presumably provided better vision and hearing for the phalanx. An example of the conical pilos helmet can be seen in the helmet in the Carapanos Collection in the National Museum of Athens, which is presumably from Dodona. It is mentioned in Arrian, ‘Ars tactica’ 3.5.
26 N. Sekunda, The Ancient Greeks, Armies of Classical Greece 5th and 4th Centuries bc (London: Osprey, 1986), p. 60.
27 Xenophon, The Art of Horsemanship, trans. by M. H. Morgan (London: Allen, 2004), 9.7; Sekunda, The Ancient Greeks, p. 53. It seems that his recommendation was implemented very soon afterwards. At the Battle of Mantinea, Diodorus Siculus 15.85.4 tells us that the Athenian cavalry on the left flank were defeated by their Theban opponents, not because of inferior mounts or horsemanship but because the greater numbers, better equipment and better tactical skill of the psiloi fighting for the Thebans. This implies that the psiloi (or hamippoi) were already present fighting alongside the Athenian cavalry. On psiloi see Thucydides 5.57.2. Cf. Sekunda, The Ancient Greeks, p. 53; L. J. Worley, Hippeis: The Cavalry of Ancient Greece (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1994), p. 62; Gaebel, p. 140.
28 Thucydides 5.57.2.
29 Sekunda, The Ancient Greeks, p. 53.
30 Sekunda, The Ancient Greeks, p. 53.
31 Pritchett, vol. 2, 59–116 on condottieri and mercenaries. The eight generals studied by Pritchett are Iphicrates of Athens, Chabrias of Athens, Chares of Athens, Charidemos of Oreos, Agesilaus of Sparta, Pammenes of Thebes, Diopeithes of Athens and Timoleon of Corinth.
32 One of the alleged changes was a divorce between political and military leadership that caused writers to complain about ‘freebooters’ and ‘banditti chieftains’ determining the foreign policy of Athens. Attic orators and many a modern commentator have believed that a general’
s loyalty to his troops now transcended his fidelity to the state. See, for example, Isocrates 8, On the Peace 54–55; Plutarch, Phocion 7.3. The Italian word condottieri was used for leaders of such mercenary groups, as H. R. Hall, in CAH, vol. 6 (1933), p. 151. See Pritchett, vol. 2, 60–1; Pritchett considers Demosthenes worthless as a source on the subject of mercenaries: ibid. pp. 105–7; cf. Griffith, p. 11; A. H. M. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 128 is among the modern scholars who doubted the loyalty of fourth-century generals.
33 This is a trait that Thucydides seems to admire. See Lengauer, pp. 47, 93–4, 118.
34 Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 97. Pritchett’s survey of eight such generals shows, however, that there is little evidence to support the generalisation that the loyalty of fourth-century generals to their city-states was questionable.
35 The Athenians, for one, actively supported the activities of men such as Chares and Charidemos and they were not convicted of anything on their return. We learn from various passages in Demosthenes, especially from the oration On the Chersonese, how the Athenian generals of this period, sent out with inadequate supplies, were driven to commit acts of plunder and violence to maintain their armaments. Demosthenes himself sums up the situation: ‘For how else do you suppose that a man who has received nothing from you and has nothing of his own to pay withal can maintain his troops?’: Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 101.
36 Polyaenus 3.9.30 on Iphicrates; 31, 35, 36, 27, 51, 59; Polyaenus 3.10.1 on Timotheos, 5,9, 10, 11, 14. Polyaenus 3.11.5, 8, 9. 10 on Chabrias; Polyaenus 3.14 on Charidemos. See Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 78 on putting too much faith in the ‘stratagems’ attributed to Iphicrates.
37 Polyaenus 6.1.1–7. Stratagems by which generals secured money for their troops are also touched upon in pseudo-Aristotle: Aristotle, Oeconomicus 2.2.5, 8,10,14,15, 16, 20, 24, 25. On Jason of Pherae and his army see J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts, 98–102.
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