6 FM 7–70, 5–28, 5–29. See Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.35–39 on Iphicrates ambushing in mountain terrain.
7 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, pp. 242–4; Holladay, ‘Hoplites and heresies’, p. 97.
8 On surprise and speed as security for your own unit: FM 7–70, 4–25.
9 Polyaenus 1.43.2.
10 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.1.22; cf. 4.6.17.
11 On ambush as deception, see FM 7–70, 5–2.
12 See Thucydides 2.81.5, 3.90.2 and n. 43.
13 The template figure is 10 per cent for casualties that will cause a unit to be rendered ineffective. See T. N. Dupuy, Understanding War (New York: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 225–30.
14 See the comment in FM 7–70 about light infantry leaders needing to take chances and trying new tactics. Best, p. 25 believes the abilities that Mao Tse Tung demanded of guerrilla fighters and those Demosthenes required of his light infantry were almost identical. On Demosthenes as an audacious general, see Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, pp. 132–3.
15 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.35–38.
16 Y. Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands. In the Light of Archaeological Study (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), vol. 1, p. 110; van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 132.
17 FM 7–70, 4–25.
18 Tyrtaeus, F. 12.10–11 West. Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 290, pt 5, n. 2.
19 FM 7–70, p. vii: ‘The duty of the men assigned to light infantry squads and platoons is to kill the enemy in battle … ’.
20 FM 7–70, 5–28.
21 Thucydides 3.112.
22 The Greeks had no problem with slaughtering their enemies. In 392 at the battle between the Corinthian long walls, the Spartans killed so many Corinthians that Xenophon commented on the ‘piles of corpses’ visible (Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.12). In 368 the Spartans killed more than 10,000 Arcadians without losing a single man in what was called ‘the Tearless Battle’ – at least from the Spartan point of view: Xenophon, Hellenica 7.2.31; Diodorus Siculus 15.72.3.
23 Herodotus 5.121.
24 Thucydides 3.112.
25 Thucydides 7.32.2.
26 Polyaenus 1.39.1.
27 Polybius 16.37.7.
28 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.15.
29 Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.35–39.
30 Polyaenus 3.9.24.
31 Thucydides 1.65.2.
32 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.10.
33 Polyaenus 2.8.
34 Aeneas Tacticus 15.9
35 The Triballi are from mid-Danubian Thrace. On the Triballi, see Thucydides 2.96.4, 4.101.5. Whitehead, Aeneas the Tactician, p. 140.
36 Polyaenus 4.11.4.
37 Polybius 5.95.8.
38 As in Thucydides 2.81.5 where Stratians ambushed the Chaonians, and ibid. 3.90.2 where Laches fought off the Messanians.
39 Thucydides 3.107.
40 Xenophon, Hellenica 6.5.31.
41 Xenophon, Anabasis 4.7.22.
42 Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.10. Cf. Polyaenus 3.11.9.
43 Polybius 5.95.8.
44 Polyaenus 4.2.18. See the parallel from the Peloponnesian war when the women and slaves of besieged Plataea got up on the roof tops, screamed and threw stones and heavy terracotta roof tiles down on the heads of the Thebans, who became panic stricken and turned to flee: Thucydides 2.4; Barry, 55–74.
45 Polyaenus 2.382.
46 Thucydides 7.32.2 on the Sicels and Aeneas Tacticus 15.9 on the Triballi.
47 See Trittle, p. 212.
48 Ardant du Picq, p. 46.
49 FM 7–70, p. iv.
50 Polyaenus 3.9.32.
51 FM 7–70, p. iv.
52 Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age, pp. 246–9. See Anderson, ‘Hoplite weapons and offensive arms’, p. 5.
53 Gomme, HCT 1, 10.
54 Aristotle, Politics 1297b.16–28 holds the theory that hoplite reform was connected with the trend to more democratic constitutions because it removed military supremacy from the horse-owning aristocracy. See Greenhalgh, p. 150. Cartledge, ‘Hoplites and heroes’, p. 27 believes the Spartan state supplied armour and weapons to citizens as well as to helots and ex-helots. K. Chrimes, Ancient Sparta (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1949), p. 14 argues for the individual supply system.
55 FM 7–70, p. v.
56 FM 7–70, 2–27.
57 FM 7–70, 4–32.
58 Herodotus 5.121; 6.87 (naval); Thucydides 3.110–112.6; 7.32.2; Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 6.4–6; Xenophon, Anabasis 4.7.22; Xenophon, Hellenica 4.4.15; 4.8.35–39; 5.1.27 (naval); Polybius 4.63.9; 5.13.4; Polyaenus 1.48.1; 2.8; 2.37; 3.9.24.
59 Thucydides 1.65.2; 3.94.1; 4.67.4; Xenophon, Hellenica 5.1.10; 6.5.31; Aeneas Tacticus 15.9; Polybius 5.70.7; 8.14.7–8; 9.17.4; Polyaenus 1.15, 3.11.9, 4.3.12, 4.11.4, 5.10.4, 5.38, 8.3.2, 8.53.4.
60 Herodotus 6.37; Thucydides 2.81.5; 3.90.2; 5.115.1; Polyaenus 4.2.18.
61 Thucydides 3.107 (Olpae); Polybius 4.59.3 (Achaea); 16:37.7 (Scotitas); Polyaenus 2.38.2 (same as first example).
62 Polybius 5.95.8; Polyaenus 4.2.22; 5:39.
63 Four examples Herodotus 6.138.1; Polyaenus 1.39.1; 1.40.2; 5.22.4.
64 Polybius 5.17.3.
65 Frontinus 2.5; 15, 42, 44–47. Passage 2.5.42 refers to the same ambush as that described in Xenophon, Hellenica 4.8.32ff.
66 Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 184.
67 Aeneas Tacticus 15.7–10.
68 Aeneas Tacticus 23.10–11.
69 F. S. Russell, Information Gathering in Classical Greece, 10–22 on the Greek use of scouts and reconnaissance in Greek warfare.
70 The skiritai were Laconian periokoi. As noted in Pritchett’s chapter on scouts there are passages that testify to the use of skiritai to prevent ambush: Pritchett, vol. 1, pp. 128–9. The use of the skiritai is discussed by Gomme, HCT, 4, 104. Kromayer and Veith, p. 39; Xenophon, Lac Pol 13.6 states that, when a basileus leads, no one precedes him except the skiritai and cavalry scouts. Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 188. The skiritai and cavalry deployed together at Tanagra in 377: Xenophon, Hellenica 5.4.52.
71 Herodotus 7.206.2. In Herodotus 9.14 some 1,000 Lacedaemonian prodromoi are sent to Megara. See also ibid. 1.60.4, 4.121, 122.1, 7.203.1. 7.206.2.
72 The prodromoi have been studied by A. F. Pauli, in R-E (1957), Band 23,1 ‘Prodromos’ cols. 102–104; Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 189, quoting Photios who characterises these units as adoxoi (‘held in no esteem’). They are thought to have been thetes who replaced the early hippotoxitai. See A. Breuckner, ‘Zu Athenischen Grabreliefs’, Archaologische Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Berlin 10 (1895), p. 209.
73 Kromayer and Veith, 52–3.
74 Hipparchos 4.4–6.
75 Xenophon, The Cavalry General, trans. by H. G. Dakyns, The Project Gutenberg text; available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1172; accessed February 2012.
76 Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia 49.1.
77 On the early horse archers, see Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.3.1; Gaebel, p. 178; Bugh, pp. 221–4; Spence, p. 58.
78 Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 49.1–2. M. Sage, Warfare in Ancient Greece. A Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 52.
79 Aeneas Tacticus 6.7.
80 Arrian 2.32.3. In the army of Alexander, there were light-armed equestrian prodromoi made up in part of Paionians, who seem to have been used as cavalry patrols: Arrian 1.12.7, 1.13.1, 1.14.1, 6; 2.9.2; 3.7.7; 3.8.1; 3.12.3. Cf. D. G. Hogarth, ‘The army of Alexander’, Journal of Philology 17 (1888), p. 17.
81 Mao Tse Tung, Mao Tse Tung on Guerrilla Warfare, trans. by Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Praeger, 1961), p. 46.
82 It was described as such by Lippelt, p. 54 nn. 3 and 4.
83 Woodcock, pp. 105–6.
84 Losada, p. 104.
85 Thucydides 4.67.2.
86 Thucydides 4.110.1, 123.2.
87 Xenophon, Hellenica 1.3.18.
88 Thucydides 4.68.4.
89 Thucydides 4.68.6.
90 Thucydides 4.76.203.
92 Losada, p. 105; Westlake, Individuals in Thucydides, pp. 111–21.
93 Losada, p. 105; Westlake, Individuals in Thucydides, pp. 111–21.
94 Losada, p. 107 who points out that the betrayal of Selymbria was the only example in which the betrayal became known ahead of time, but still succeeded.
95 This was done at Mytilene to thwart a surprise attack by the Athenians: Thucydides 3.3.5.
96 Thucydides 4.68.6.
97 Thucydides 2.79.2. In other examples, the Athenians sailed to Camarina to forestall its betrayal to Syracuse (Thucydides 4.25.7). The Boeotians marched to Siphae and Chaeronea when the impending betrayals became known (ibid. 4.89.2). The pro-Spartan government of Tegea called in the Spartans to thwart the betrayal to the allied forces of Argos, Athens and Mantinea (ibid. 5.64.1–2). Conon and 600 Messenians from Naupactus were sent to Corcyra to prevent its betrayal to the Spartans (Diodorus Siculus 13.48.5–6).
98 Some 600 Messenians and the Corcyraean democrats attacked the pro-Spartans, arrested some, killed others and drove more than 1,000 into exile (Thucydides 13.48.7). At Messina, the pro-Syracusan party executed the fifth columnists when Alcibiades informed them of the planned betrayal (ibid. 6.74.1). Chian leaders executed Tydeus and his followers for pro-Atticism (ibid. 8.38.3). Alcibiades had 300 people arrested on Argos for pro-Spartan sympathies (ibid. 5.84.1). The following winter, the Argives themselves arrested more suspected pro-Spartans (ibid. 5.116.1). See Losada, pp. 108–9.
99 At Siphae, Chaeronea, Nichomachus, a Phocian from Phanotis informed the Spartans about the impending betrayals (Thucydides 4.89.1). At Messina, the plot was betrayed by Alcibiades when he fled from recall (ibid. 6.74.1); Plutarch, Alcibiades 22.1. At Athens, Theramenes revealed the plans for his former associates (Thucydides 8.90.3; 91.1–2). At Megara, an unnamed fifth columnist betrayed the planned ambush (Thucydides 4.68.6). Losada, pp. 109–10. In other instances such as Spartolus, Camarina, Tegea, Chios and Corcyra, we do not know how the plots were discovered.
100 Aeneas Tacticus 10.5.
101 Losada, p. 110;
102 Gomme, HCT 1, 17–18.
103 Adcock, 40–1; Losada, p. 114.
104 Cf. Losada, p. 114.
105 On intelligence gathering in ancient Greece, see F. S. Russell, Information Gathering in Classical Greece.
106 Losada, pp. 134–5.
Conclusion: The Complexity of Greek Warfare
1 Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 82; Pritchett, vol. 2, p. 156. Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 292.
2 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, p. 116.
3 See Euripides, Rhesus 510–11, 709.
4 Hornblower, ‘Warfare in ancient literature: The paradox of war’, in CHGRW, vol. 1, p. 50. On women in warfare, see E. Kearns, ‘Saving the city’, in O. Murray and S. Price, The Greek City from Homer to Alexander (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 323–44 and J. B. Connelly, ‘Parthenon and parthenoi: Mythological interpretation of the Parthenon frieze’, AJA 100 (1996), 53–80.
5 Adcock, 40ff; Gomme, HCT 1, 17ff; Pritchett, vol. 2, 156, 174ff; Losada, p. 114 who asserts that surprise was extensively used in cases other than betrayals. Roisman, The General Demosthenes, p. 71 disagrees.
6 Pritchett, vol. 2: ‘The rarity of ambuscades in hoplite battle on Greek terrain is striking. Only one battle during the Peloponnesian war was decided by ambuscade’ (ibid. p. 185). On attitude of mind, see ibid. p. 187.
7 Whitehead, ‘Klope polemou’, p. 50.
8 See the discussion in Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, pp. 172–4.
9 In the Classical as well as the Hellenistic period, for example, Boeotian raiders crossed into Attica in times of hostilities. See Ma, ‘Fighting poleis of the Hellenistic world’, p. 356. R. Osborne, Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City and its Countryside (London: Phillip, 1987), 137ff. Local imperialism in the Classical and Hellenistic ages created violence when one side tried to annex another’s territory.
10 Ma, ‘Fighting polis of the Hellenistic world’, pp. 357–8.
11 Ober, ‘The rules of war in Classical Greece’, 63–9. See also Heza, pp. 235–44.
12 V. D. Hanson, The Other Greeks. The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 271–89.
13 V. Gabrielson, ‘The impact of armed forces on government and politics in Archaic and Classical Greek poleis: A response to Hans van Wees’, in A. Chianotis and P. Ducrey, Army and Power in the Ancient World (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), p. 83.
14 Griffith, p. 6 argues that the effect of mercenary service upon the warfare of the Greeks was to make it less stereotyped, but also less decisive.
15 Clausewitz, p. 203.
16 Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, p. 177.
17 For a list of these mythological and historical figures see Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, pp. 175–7. Even a revered figure such as Solon was portrayed as beating the Megarians by a cunning trick: Plutarch, Solon 8.
18 Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander 5.9–11, trans. by E. C. Marchant, Loeb edn.
19 Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, p. 169.
20 Stefan T. Possony in introduction to Waldemar Erfurth, Surprise, trans. by Stefan T. Possony and Daniel Vilfroy (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service Publishing, 1943), p. 1.
21 Thucydides 4.126.
22 Thucydides 4.86.6.
23 Thucydides 5.9.5. See Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, pp. 167–200, including the Brasidas example on p. 174. In the Peloponnesian war Krentz identifies thirty-seven instances of attacks based on deception or surprise, outnumbering the two set-piece infantry battles at Delium and Mantinea. The Achilles/Odysseus ethos is discussed in Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. xiv. Deception and surprise are discussed further in J. D. Montagu, Greek and Roman Warfare: Battle, Tactics and Trickery (London: Greenhill, 2006), 67–81.
24 Pausanias 1.13.5.
25 Plutarch, Moralia 238.25 [On the Spartans] notes that, when the Spartans defeated their enemy’s by a stratagem, they sacrificed a bull to Ares, but when they won in open battle they sacrificed a cock, making their leaders not only great fighters but tacticians as well. See A. S. Bradford, ‘The duplicitous Spartan’, in A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds), The Shadow of Sparta (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 59–85.
26 Polybius 3.18.9.
27 Herodotus 7.9.1.
28 Polybius 13.3.2–6.
29 Demosthenes, Philippic 3.47–50. Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, p. 94 points out that the short treatise by Aeneas Tacticus is, in itself, a comment on the violent world of the fourth century.
30 Polybius quotes the ban against missiles and that fact that declarations of war were made first and place of battle of announced ahead of time (Polybius 13.3.2–6). See Anderson, Military Theory and Practice, p. 1, who accepts the historicity of the ban.
31 Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 25.
32 Detienne and Vernant, p. 26. Van Wees, Greek Warfare, pp. 116–17.
33 Porter, p. 77.
34 Xenophon, Lac. Pol. 2.6–9. See also Xenophon, Anabasis 4.14–15; Plutarch, Lycurgus 17; Moralia 237ff.
35 N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of Virtue (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 122–3 argues for the ritual activity of the ephebes. Answered by Krentz, ‘Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek warfare’, p. 180. A. Powell, ‘Mendacity and Sparta’s use of the visual’, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta: Techniques Behind Her Success (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), p. 186 is correct that ‘ambush and living off the land by stealth do not sound like elements of warfare for the hoplite phalanx’ but this would support my argument that there was more than one kind of fighting going on.
36 Xen
ophon, The Cavalry Commander 5.9, 11; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.6.27; Dio Cassius 71.3.1.
37 Xenophon, Anabasis 3.1.1–2.
38 J. E. Lendon, ‘Xenophon and the alternative to realist foreign policy’, p. 84.
39 Porter, p. 77.
40 Porter, p. 77.
41 Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, p. 158.
42 Hornblower, ‘Warfare in ancient literature’, p. 42.
43 J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds), War and Society in the Greek World (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 23.
44 P. Hunt, ‘Military forces’, in CHGRW, vol. 1, p. 126.
45 On hoplite snobbery see Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, p. 158.
46 Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 71–6.
47 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.4.15.
48 See Xenophon, Hellenica 3.4.2.
49 Pritchett, vol. 5, pp. 37, 46–7.
50 See the comments of Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 296 who thinks that the basic meaning of klope is theft and that the moral implications of the use of this word never changes, since theft is a crime. On the battlefield, therefore, it could never be anything but a shameful backdoor route to success. It was ‘cheating, breaking the hallowed rules of the great game that was war’. I would respond that if there are any such rules they are always negotiable when the circumstances require.
51 This posture is attacked also by Whitehead in ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 297.
52 Dolos: Homer, Iliad 7.142ff, 197–98; Lochos: Homer, Iliad 1.225–28; Homer, Odyssey 14.217ff.
53 Homer, Iliad 13.276.
54 Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 298.
55 Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 24.
56 The most thorough study of the vocabulary is still Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 81; and ibid. 82–3 on Latin terms for surprise attack.
57 Valerius Maximus 7.3; Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 16.
58 Wheeler, Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery, p. 93.
59 Yalichev, p. 119.
60 Krentz, ‘Fighting by the rules’, p. 122; this is in reaction to J. Ober’s delineation of these rules in Ober, ‘The rules of war in Classical Greece’, 53–71.
61 Whitehead, ‘Klope Polemou’, p. 294.
62 The classic discussion is, of course, Edward Said’s Orientalism. He has not been without his critics. See the discussion in Porter, 14–15.
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