38 US Army Field Manual (hereafter FM) 7–70, Light Infantry Platoon/Squad (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1986), p. iv.
39 Polyaenus 3.9.32.
40 FM 7–70 p. iv.
41 See especially J. E. Lendon, ‘Xenophon and the alternative to realist foreign policy: “Cyropaedia” 3.1.14–31’, JHS 126 (2006), 82–98 who points out that even the characters in the work, Persians, Assyrians, etc., think and act like Greeks (ibid. 82–3). Cf. S.W. Hirsch, The Friendship of the Barbarians (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1985), 61–97.
42 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 5.4.1–5.
43 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 6.3.30.
44 Polyaenus 2.37 who may be describing the Tissamenus from Herodotus 9.33–35 and his five great victories. Birds hovering over ridge disclosed ambush. The same story appears in Frontinus 1.2.7 who confuses Aemilius Papus, consul of 282 and 278 BC, with Aemilius Paulus – as does Pliny the Elder, Natural History 3.138.
45 Polyaenus 2.2.8, Krentz and Wheeler trans. This event only appears in Polyaenus.
46 Polyaenus 2.2.6, 8 and 10. See Best, 52–3 and Walbank, p. 95.
47 Xenophon, Anabasis 7.2.22 says that the Thynoi, another Thracian tribe, were the most warlike of all men – by night. Nocturnal surprise attacks were, in fact, a favourite tactic of other Thracian tribes. We heard of these tactics in Herodotus when he described how Mardonius’ army suffered heavy losses during such an attack by the Thracian Brygians in 492: Herodotus 6.45.1; Best, p. 53; Xenophon, Anabasis 7.2.22. Cf. 4.14–19; Best, p. 53.
48 Polyaenus 2.2.6.
49 Polyaenus 2.2.8; Best, 53–4.
50 Xenophon admired him as man aner kai polemikos kai filopolemos esxatos. Xenophon, Anabasis 2.6.1–15; Best, p. 54; Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 97–9.
51 Isocrates 4, Panegyrikos 115.
52 Plutarch, Lycurgus 22.5; Moralia 228F.
53 Xenophon, Hellenica 3.5.17–21.
54 Lechaeum was the northwest port of Corinth on the Corinthian Gulf. Long Walls were built from Corinth c.450 BCE. During the Corinthian war, Spartans were admitted to the long walls by treachery. Lechaeum was captured and Corinthian exiles used as a base for raids on the rest of Corinthian territory. See J. B. Salmon, p. 178; Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 53–4.
55 The men of Amyclae always returned home for the festival of the Hyacinthia, whether on active service or not. So Agesilaus left behind all the Amyclaeans serving in any part of his army at Lechaeum. The general in command of the garrison there had posted the garrison troops of the allies to guard the walls during his absence, and put himself at the head of his division of heavy infantry with that of the cavalry, and led the Amyclaeans past the walls of Corinth. When he arrived at a point within three miles (five kilometres) or so of Sicyon, the polemarch turned back himself in the direction of Lechaeum with his heavy infantry regiment, 600 strong, giving orders to the cavalry commandant to escort the Amyclaeans with his division as far as they required, and then to turn and overtake him. The Lacedaemonians were not ignorant of the large number of light troops and heavy infantry inside Corinth, but because of their former successes they arrogantly presumed that no one would attack them.
56 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.14. John Marincola trans.
57 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.11ff. Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 124; Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, pp. 124–5; J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts, 93–4.
58 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.11–17. John Marincola trans. Lazenby, The Spartan Army, pp. 148–9.
59 Polyaenus 3.9.24.
60 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.5.19.
61 J. B. Bury and Russell Meiggs, A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1975, 4th edn), p. 342; Best, p. 88.
62 Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 54; Best, p. 89.
63 Frontinus 2.1.6. For attacks against encamped forces at mealtime, see ibid. 2.1.5.
64 On Dercylidas as a mastery of trickery, see Xenophon, Hellenica 3.1.8. Maricola trans. p. 81 note on 3.1.8.
65 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.35–39. Frontinus 2.5.42 relates the same incident. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 55.
66 The soldiers in the middle of the column were probably Anaxibius’ mercenaries. Sparta had given him enough money to pay for 1,000 mercenaries but Xenophon is sketchy on the numbers Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.32–33; 8.35; See Best, 90–1. Cf. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 55.
67 As Xenophon had also done. See Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 55–6; Best, p. 92.
68 Diodorus 14.92.2. On Chabrias, see Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 56–7.
69 Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 56, n. 4; Best, p. 92.
70 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol 1, p. 273.
71 Best, p. 101. For the traditional arrangement of peltasts and their tactics, see Xenophon, Hellenica 7.4.22 and Plutarch, Phocion 12.13; Demosthenes 9.57.
72 From the scant evidence Xenophon gives, these troops were organised in taxeis (sing. taxis), roughly translatable as battalions. See Lee, pp. 87, 95. For ease of marching a manoeuvre, the large peltast taxeis must have been broken down into smaller units and bands, perhaps along ethnic lines. Xenophon, Hellenica 6.4.5 writes of peltasts and archers organised in lochoi, suggesting the existence of smaller tactical units for light infantry. C. Tuplin (ed.), Xenophon and his World (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 22–3 remarks that Xenophon’s use of taxis to describe ad hoc tactical groupings makes matters fuzzier. His varied use of the term taxis renders it impossible to retrieve the details of non-hoplite organisation.
73 Lee, esp. table 2.
74 Lee, pp. 153–5. See the night rendezvous to avoid an ambush in Xenophon, Anabasis 3–4.336–37.
75 Those who have concluded that peltasts could be used only against barbarians, however, are incorrect, as argued by Lippelt, p. 64, n. 2: ‘Die Aufstellung von Leichtbewaffneten vor der Phalanx (Xenophon, Anabasis 4.8.15) und zwischen den Lochen (ibid. 5.4.12) sind sicher keine weitreichende Neuerungen des Xenophon, da sie nur Barbaren gegenüber anwendbar waren, niemals aber Griechen gegenüber zur Anwendung gekommen sind.’ Best, p. 73 disputes this as does B. Mueller, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Grieschischen Söldnerwesens bis auf die Schlacht von Chaeronea (Frankfurt: Gottlieb and Müller, 1908) who believes Xenophon invented these tactics. Best, p. 74 does not go this far.
76 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.1.22; cf. 6.17.
77 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.15–18.
78 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.14.
79 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.15.
80 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.16.
81 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.16. Brownson trans.
82 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.17.
83 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.18.
84 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.19.
85 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.20.
86 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.21.
87 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.20.
88 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.6.17.
89 Best, 56–67; Yalichev, p. 138.
90 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.6.14.
91 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.6.13. Xenophon, the Athenian and the Spartan Cheirisophos then engage in some good-natured bantering in 4.6.14–16 about how such a ‘theft’ – skilful, successful and publicly admired stealing (kleptein) is a product of the educational system in which the other was reared. See the comments of Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 292. On the night attack and the mountain pass, see Yalichev, pp. 138–9.
92 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.4.18ff. Yalichev, p. 140.
93 Yalichev, p. 140.
94 Xenophon, Anabasis 5.2.1–3.
95 Xenophon, Anabasis 6.2.13–19; Yalichev, pp. 142–3.
96 Here we have not a Greek commander engaging Thracian peltasts but a Thracian king enlisting Greek hoplites: Xenophon, Anabasis 7.2.18–22.
97 Xenophon, Anabasis 7.7.23, and Best, p. 70, n. 154 who describes the relative size of Seuthes’ force.
98 Xenophon, Anabasis 7.3.34ff.
99 See the desc
ription by Best, 70–2 and Xenophon, Anabasis 7.5.
100 Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.2; Cornelius Nepos, Thrasybulus, 8.2.1; Xenophon’s use of the term peltast here is confusing. See Best, 41–3 on Thrasybulus and ibid. 43–7 on Xenophon’s confusion of peltasts with light-armed.
101 Xenophon, Hellenica 7.1.25. This incident is not narrated or exploited further by Xenophon.
102 Phlius occupied a site of great strategic importance to Sparta because it was on the road from Arcadia to Nemea, Cleonae and Corinth. It also commanded the route from Stymphalos to the Argive Plain. See P. Cartledge, Agesilaus and the Crisis of Sparta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), figure 2.2.
103 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.15. They were previously unwilling to admit Spartans within their walls because they feared that the Spartans would bring back with them the Phliasian exiles who had been driven out because of their pro-Spartan sympathies. But the Spartans, for as long as they had control of the city, never mentioned restoring the exiles even though they were sympathetic to them. Instead they left the city once it was secured and handed back the city and its laws to the Phliasians in the same condition as they found it.
104 There is a debate over whether this raid was the impetus for Athens forming the Second Athenian League, or if the establishment of the League led to the raid. The dates cannot be determined with sufficient certainty to be sure which one of these events came first. Scholars have not reached a consensus: Strassler, p. 208.
105 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.4.20. Cf. Plutarch, Pelopidas 14; Xenophon, Agesilaus 24.3–6 gives a more detailed account but is in accord with Xenophon.
106 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.4.14; Best, 97–8.
107 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.4.59.
108 Cf. Thucydides 2.96.4; 4.101.5; Aeneas Tacticus, Aineias the Tactician, pp. 139–40 places the incident in 376/5, citing Diodorus Siculus 15.36.1–4. There are considerable divergences in the accounts including a sudden defection of the Thracians, leaving the Abderites left to fight alone. See Aeneas Tacticus, On the Defense of Fortified Positions, trans. by the Illinois Greek Club. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), p. 78, n. 1. The credibility of Diodorus’ version cannot extend to the part allegedly played in it by the Athenian general Chabrias. On the death of Chabrias, see Diodorus who places incorrectly here as well as correctly in 16.7.4 eighteen years later in 358/7. Cf. Cornelius Nepos, Chabrias 4; Plutarch, Phocion 6.1; Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 72–7.
109 Aeneas Tacticus, Aineias the Tactician, 15.9.
110 Xenophon, Hellenica 6.4.26. Xenophon suggests that the polemarchs first told the men to be ready for a midnight march through Plataea to Cithaeron but then, suspecting Theban treachery, had the men leave right after dinner and take a different route.
111 Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.11–17.
112 According to Diodorus Siculus 15.62.1 some 1,000 Spartan hoplites and 500 Argive and Boeotian exiles had also gone with Polytropus to defend Orchomenus. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, p. 87.
113 Diodorus Siculus 15.62.2.
114 Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.17. In ibid. 6.5.18–19 he realises his peril in the morning and skilfully manoeuvred his army from the valley. For a discussion of where the peltasts on the Spartan side came from, see Best, pp. 101–2
115 I.e., Castor and Polydeuces, sons of Tyndareus, also mentioned at 6.36. Pausanias 3.16.2 mentions the Temple at Amyclae and the supposed House of the Dioscuroi. How 300 men could fit in a temple this small is not explained.
116 Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.30–32.
117 Strassler, p. 288 accepts the emendation of Schneider, reading ‘Proxenos’ as the name of a person. Several other translations render the phrase as ‘captured their proxenoi in Pellene’. The problem is that it is difficult to see what would be generous or brave about the Pheiasians forgoing a ransom for setting free their own proxenos, whereas doing so for a captured Pellenian named ‘Proxenos’ would make sense.
118 Xenophon, Hellenica 7.2.17.
119 Diodorus Siculus 15.82.6; Polybius 9.8.3; Plutarch, Agesilaus 31, 32.
120 Diodorus Siculus’ account diverges from the others here in that he names the king as Agis rather than Agesilaus. No Spartan king named Agis is known for this date. See Diodorus Siculus, p. 183, n. 1.
121 Diodorus 15.82.6.
122 Polybius 9.8.3; cf. Agesilaus 34.
123 Polyaenus 2.3.7.
124 See Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 295 who points out that this characterisation of Epaminondas is probably not authentic, but rather a later opinion made once again for purposes of making a moral point. The bias of Xenophon for Agesilaus is well known. See Diodorus Siculus, p. 183, n. 1.
125 See Losada, pp. 125–45. Losada lists twenty-seven attempts at betrayal of places during the course of the Peloponnesian war. However, the affirmation of Gomme, HCT and Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War concerning the relative infrequency of surprise attacks, criticised by Losada, pp. 100–15 are, in truth, correct if one understands them to refer to hoplite armies. Moreover, it is not necessary to attribute all sources of information about the enemy and the terrain to ‘fifth column’ activity, as common as such treachery was in Greek siege warfare.
126 Fortification becomes more important than hoplite morale. Y. Garlan writes that the ville-foyer from which the citizen-soldier sallied forth to defend his fields and vineyards and ravage those of his enemies becomes the ville-bastion offering protection against would-be besiegers: Garlan, Recherches de Poliorcetique Grecque, p. 277. Cf. E. Will, ‘Le territoire, la ville et la poliorcétique grecque’, Revue Historique 253 (1975), pp. 298–318.
127 Diodorus Siculus 13.72.2–4.
128 Diodorus Siculus 13.113.1.
129 Diodorus Siculus 14.9.9.
130 Diodorus Siculus 14.82.6.
131 Plutarch, Pelopidas 8–13.
132 Cf. Cornelius Nepos, Pelopidas 3. For other examples of intelligence received and ignored, see Plutarch, Div. Jul. 65 who reports that Artemidorus handed him a scroll revealing the plot. Caesar, however, because of the great crowds that always approached him as he travelled the streets of Rome, was unable to read it. Aeneas Tacticus 31.33 reports that Astyanax, tyrant of Lampsacus, received a letter informing him about an assassination plot against him but he failed to read it and laid it aside. By the time he finally opened it, the conspirators were upon him.
133 Xenophon’s account of this same incident in Xenophon, Hellenica 5.4.1–12 does not mention Epaminondas or Pelopidas.
134 Griffith, p. 195; Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 21–2, 61–72; Polyaenus 5.6 is the only ancient evidence for this practice. Dionysius I recruited from a wide range of areas including Sicily, mainland Greece and Campania. See Diodorus Siculus 14.8.9, 61–62; Aristotle, Oeconomicus 2.1349ff. From Messenia, Diodorus Siculus 44.2, 58.1, 62.1, 34.3. Celt-Iberians Diodorus 15.70.1ff; from Locri and Medymna 14.78.5.
135 Diodorus Siculus 14.88.2.
136 Diodorus Siculus 14.52.6.
137 Diodorus Siculus 14.52; Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers, 70–1.
138 Diodorus Siculus 14.90.5.
139 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.8. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, pp. 155–8.
140 Diodorus Siculus 15.93.3. Night escape from besieged city.
141 Diodorus Siculus 16.19.
142 Plutarch, Dion 30.
143 The date of the first payments for military service in Athens remains a matter of controversy and cannot be established with certainty. See Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece, p. 231. It has been suggested that the practice of paying soldiers was probably connected with that of paying a fee to court judges and members of the Council of 500 in Athens. Just as these civic responsibilities were accompanied by some remuneration, probably from the mid-fifth century, so were the military obligations of the citizens.
144 Griffith, p. 1; Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 85.
145 Thucydides 1.70.6.
146 The first explicit mention of a wage (misthos) paid t
o Athenian soldiers is made by Thucydides who records that, during the siege of Potidaea, the hoplites received two drachmas a day – one for themselves and one for their valet. Sailors received an identical amount. M. Trundle, Greek Mercenaries from the Late Archaic to Alexander (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 165–6; Ducrey, p. 232.
147 Ducrey, p. 232.
148 Chaniotis, p. 19; Trundle, Greek Mercenaries, p. 164
149 Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 94.
150 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 3.3.47; Cf. Thucydides 6.11.6. J. E. Lendon, ‘Xenophon and the alternative to realist foreign policy’, p. 88.
151 On the ‘fair and open’ attitude see Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.16; Cf. Andocides 3.18 (On the Peace with Sparta); Isocrates 15.118 (On Winning Just Wars). On defeat not being considered real unless done fairly on a battlefield, see Herodotus 1.212; Demosthenes 60.21; Plutarch, Pelopidas 15.4–5; Polybius 13.3.3; Arrian 3.10.3.
152 Griffith, p. 239; Best, p. 110.
153 Best, p. 110; Griffith, p. 239.
154 Aeneas Tacticus 1.2, 15.5–10, 16.4, 24.10.
155 Aeneas Tacticus 16.7.
156 Aeneas Tacticus 23.7–11.
157 Aeneas Tacticus 16.5–6.
158 Aeneas Tacticus 23.2–3.
159 Aeneas Tacticus 28.5, 6–7; 29.3–10, 11–12 and 12.
160 Aeneas Tacticus 15.
161 Xenophon, Spartan Constitution, Introduction, text, commentary by Michael Lipka (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2002), 12.2.
162 Xenophon, Hellenica 3.4.13.
163 Xenophon, Anabasis 6,3.17–18 cf. 6.3.19
164 David Whitehead, Aineias the Tactician (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 36.
165 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.6.39.
166 Frontinus 1.4.2, 3; 1.8.12; 1.10.3; 1.11.5; 1.9.17; 2.6.6; 3.11.2.
167 Polyaenus 2.1–33.
168 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol. 1, p. 275.
169 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, vol. 1, p. 276.
170 J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts, p. 114.
171 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of his Age, vol. 1, p. 4.
172 Cartledge, Agesilaus and the Crisis of Sparta, p. 207; Cf. Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, pp. 140–1.
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