Greece, the Hellenistic World and the Rise of Rome V. 1

battle 447 specialization and reliance on acknowledged experts. The presence of several Rhodian commanders among the fleets which were active in the eastern Mediterranean in the early second century is one indication that there was a pool of elite´ naval specialists. For example, Pausistratus and Polyxenidas, who were on opposing sides at Panhormus in 190, were both Rhodians and seem to have known each other quite well (Livy 37.10–11). Accounts of naval warfare demonstrate the importance of identifying the ‘flagship’, which normally carried the commander of a fleet. If this was captured, then the fleet would make the assumption that their leader had been lost, which often badly affected their morale. Cornelius Nepos says that in a battle between the forces of Prusias of Bithynia and Eumenes II of Pergamum in 184, Hannibal, commander of the Bithynian fleet, used a fake message to Eumenes, which the latter assumed would be an offer of peace, in order to find out which vessel the king was sailing on, so that his ships could direct their attacks against it and force the king to withdraw from the battle, to the detriment of his fleet’s morale (Nep. Hann. 10.5–11.4). Signals are often mentioned in accounts of naval battles. They allowed admirals to communicate with all or part of their fleet. Presumably they were by means of flags or pennants and it would have been necessary for someone on each ship to keep an eye on the flagship for them.

ii. sieges In a speech delivered to the Athenian assembly in the summer of 341, the Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes drew a contrast between the old style of warfare that was typical of the Greek city-states in the early classical period and what he saw as the realities of the present day: So archaic were their practices, or rather so citizen-based (politikos), that no-one ever even bribed anyone, but the conduct of war was all open and above board. Yet nowadays, without doubt, you see that most total defeats are due to treachery, and none of them happen as the result of pitched battles. Demosthenes went on to complain that it was no longer phalanxes of heavy infantry that were the dominant factor in Greek warfare, but the mixed forces of Philip II of Macedon: Whenever, with these forces, he attacks those who are at odds with each other, and who, through distrust, do not put any forces in the ﬁeld, he sets up his engines and besieges them. (Dem. 9.48–50) This was the third of Demosthenes’ celebrated Philippics, a series of political speeches directed against Philip and his supporters. Although treachery is emphasized by Demosthenes as a way of taking cities, the history of the

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 448 the hellenistic world and roman republic next 200 years shows that the 340s were the beginning of an era in which siege warfare was transformed. By the end of the second century sieges had become commonplace and were probably more typical of the combat experience of Greek and Roman soldiers than pitched battles.168

1. Commanding siege operations The role of the commander in a siege, whether on the defensive or the offensive side, was significantly different from that of the commander on the battlefield. In the context of a siege, the ancient commander could exercise a greater degree of coordination and direction of the efforts of his forces. Indeed, it might be argued that siege warfare offered the greatest and most comprehensive challenges to the military skills of Hellenistic and Roman commanders, because they involved large forces and the many different types of equipment needed careful coordination. The combat conditions of ancient sieges seem to have provided some- thing of a dilemma for commanders in this period. While personal presence and involvement in the action could have a significant morale-boosting effect at key moments, it also exposed them to the possibility of being struck by missiles, whether intentional or lucky shots. Perhaps it is no coin- cidence that Philip II and Alexander were both wounded during sieges. Philip famously lost an eye in the siege of Methone in 354 (Diod. Sic. 16.34.5; Just. Epit. 7.6.14). The arrow that gave him this distinctive disfig- urement might very easily have ended his life. During the siege of Tyre in 332 Alexander personally led an expedition into the Anti-Lebanon region to enforce his authority in an area which supplied much-needed timber for his siege towers and other devices. He also led a naval counterattack against the Tyrian forces after they had raided the Cypriot fleet as it lay at anchor to the north of the city, but Alexander’s bravery and inspirational leadership verged on recklessness, and at Gaza in 332 he was wounded by a catapult bolt shot from the walls (Arr. Anab. 2.27.2). Alexander can be seen as a good example of a successful field commander who found it difficult to adapt to the role of siege coordinator. He seems to have lacked the patience and methodical temperament appropriate to long-duration siege warfare. This is not to say that Alexander was unsuccessful, for he captured many cities and strongholds in his brief but action-filled reign as king of Macedon. Nevertheless his impulsive nature resulted in rash and sometimes very costly decisions, not just for Alexander himself, but for the men under his command.169 His insistence on assaulting those Indians who had taken

168 For a survey of sieges in this period see Kern (1999) chs. 8–11. 169 See the evaluation of Kern (1999) 201.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 battle 449 refuge on the so-called rock of Heracles in 327 is but one example (Arr. Anab. 4.28–30). In contrast to Alexander, Roman generals like Marcus Claudius Mar- cellus, who took two years over the siege of Syracuse (214–12), can seem models of patience and restraint. Marcellus proceeded in stages, gradually capturing some of the outlying fortifications and gradually penning the defenders up in the old city. He made several attempts to gain entry by negotiation and treachery, and eventually his troops were admitted through a side gate guarded by Spanish mercenaries whose commander had been tempted to change sides (Livy 25.30). Even the young Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus comes across as cautious in comparison with Alexander. When he ventured near to the front lines at New Carthage in 209 he was accompanied by three personal shield-bearers (Livy 26.44.6). Although he needed to capture that city quickly he did not throw everything into a single assault, but probed the defences at several places and used both ships and an ingenious crossing of the lagoon as the tide was receding to find the weakest points in the defences (Livy 26.44–6). We are also told that, when there was a dispute over whether a marine or a legionary soldier should be rewarded with the prestigious honour of a crown for being the very first over the city wall, Scipio diplomatically awarded it to both of them, avoiding a feud between his fleet and army (Livy 26.48).

2. Personnel The conﬂicting needs of the charismatic battle commander and the methodical siege coordinator may have been partly responsible for the emergence of specialists in siege warfare. We see the appearance of spe- cialized military engineers in the second half of the fourth century. It can reasonably be argued that there was a general trend towards specialization in many walks of life across the Greek world in the fourth century. This trend was particularly marked in warfare and it seems to be a result of the increasing technical complexity of combat. As the requirements of military strategy expanded to include the capture or defence of cities, men like the Thessalians Polyidus, catapult-maker for Philip II, and Diades and Charias, siege engineers of Alexander the Great, rose to prominence. Archimedes is best known today as a scientist, but he spent his last years inventing ways to defend his home city of Syracuse against the Romans. The famous intellectual centre of Ptolemaic Alexandria was home to Ctesibius, a military engineer who wrote a technical treatise on torsion artillery in the third century. It also seems that the rise of these specialists was closely linked to the rise of what might be called the military monarchs in the fourth century bc. The unitary authority and autonomy of the king or tyrant was a prerequisite for the type of command structure in which a specialist could

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 450 the hellenistic world and roman republic operate effectively, building up a corps of well-equipped and technically proﬁcient engineers. The military operations of Philip V of Macedon in Greece in the latter part of the third century show that he could deploy a wide range of siege and assault methods. He took Ambracus and Psophis by storm in 219 and 218 (Polyb. 4.61–3, 70–2), he surrounded Phthiotic Thebes with a double rampart, protected by stone- and bolt-throwing catapults, and then undermined a section of the walls in 217 (Polyb. 5.99–100), undermined both the outer wall and a newly built inner one at Abydus in 201 (Polyb. 16.30–4), and in 198 at Eretria on Euboea he made a surprise attack at night and took the city virtually unopposed (Livy 32.16). This brief survey of the sieges of Philip V includes examples of the three main forms which attacks on cities and fortiﬁcations took in this period – assault, blockade and surprise.

3. Assault The simplest way to overcome city walls was with ladders. In Bactria in 329, Alexander took a succession of small towns by direct assault, using scaling ladders under the cover of a barrage from his catapults, javelins men archers, slingers. No siege works were required, although at the largest town, Cyropolis, he was preparing to use his siege engines to assault the walls and make a breach when it was discovered that the channels of a dried- up water course provided a much easier entry (Arr. Anab. 4.2–3). When the walls could not be easily scaled, the preferred method of assaulting a strong fortiﬁcation was to create a breach or weakness in it and exploit the opening with a strong force. This was the approach favoured by Philip II and Alexander, when circumstances permitted. The capture of Amphipolis in 357, Philip II’s earliest siege victory,resulted from the rapid exploitation of a breach in the city walls created by battering rams (Diod. Sic. 16.8.2–3). At Tyre in 332, Alexander’s breakthrough was achieved through his successful deployment of his ship-borne artillery and rams against one of the weaker sections of the city wall on the southern side. Having created a breach, he waited for calm weather before he moved other engines into place to widen it, then he personally led his elite´ troops, the Hypaspists, into the breach and took control of a substantial section of the city walls. He quickly poured more of his Macedonian troops into the city and forced the defenders to abandon their walls. Tyre fell very quickly once this assault had achieved its primary objective (Arr. Anab. 2.18–24). Defenders often tried to forestall such attacks by building a second wall inside the one being battered or undermined, as was done at Perinthus in 340 (Diod. Sic. 16.74) and Lilybaeum in 250 (Polyb. 1.42–8). The determination of both attackers and defenders would lead to protracted

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 battle 451 contests of battering, mining, re-building and counter-mining. So Polybius describes the siege of Abydus by Philip V of Macedon in 201. The king’s engineers mined underneath the city’s outer wall and caused sections of it to collapse, but the defenders had by this time erected a second wall, which the sappers also undermined. The defenders began a counter-mining oper- ation, but abandoned this in favour of ﬁghting to defend the breach in the second wall (Polyb. 16.30–4). Mining and battering, or boring, were the most commonly used methods of breaching walls throughout this period.

4. Siege artillery The invention of the catapult seems to have occurred around 399 in Syracuse in the reign of Dionysius I, who gathered together experts in armaments to prepare for his campaign against the Carthaginians. Diodorus says (14.42.1): ‘Artillery was discovered at that time in Syracuse, a natural conse- quence of the assembly in one place of the most skilful craftsmen from all over the world.’ According to Diodorus, this was also the context for the developments of the polyremes (see ch. 11b in this volume). The earliest form of artillery was the gastraphetes or ‘belly bow’, an early form of crossbow. It was a large composite bow, of such power that it could not be drawn and fired by hand alone, so it required devices to enable firing, including ratchets, a slider and a trigger mechanism, plus the characteristic stock with its semi-circular belly rest, to enable the operator to lean his full weight against the bow as he drew it back. In the mid-fourth century, the size and power of the machines was increased by mounting them on solid frames and using winches to pull back the arms of the bow. These non-torsion catapults could fire bolts of great length (1.8 m/6 feet or more) over long distances (up to 274m/300 yards). The next development, which occurred in the second half of the fourth century, was the invention of torsion artillery, utilizing tightly wound and stretched hair or sinew ropes to increase the power of the bow element. The invention of torsion catapults seems to have occurred as a result of a concentration upon improving the techniques of siege warfare in Macedo- nia at this time. It was centred on Philip’s leading siege engineer, Polyidus the Thessalian. By 345 an Athenian comic writer could raise a laugh by describing the warlike Macedonians as swallowing swords, eating spears and arrow heads, sitting on shields with slings and bows as their footstools, ‘crowned with catapults’.170 Philip captured Amphipolis in 357 by breaching the walls with the use of siege engines (mechanas) and battering rams (Diod. 16.8.2). This suggests a keen early interest in siege warfare. Polyidus

170 Mnesimachus Philip F7 (Edmonds 1957: 366–8).

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Figure 13.5 Bronze triple-finned triple bolt head inscribed for Philip of Macedon. had developed his torsion catapults by 340, when they were used against Perinthus and Byzantium. The defensive uses of catapults were gradually recognized across the Greek world. In 340 Perinthus was defended against Philip II by catapults, with ammunition supplied by Byzantium (Diod. 16.74.4; 75.2). Philip’s siege of Olynthus certainly involved the use of catapults by both sides, as the numerous bolt heads that have been found there show (fig. 13.5).171 In the period covered by this chapter most cities had to incorporate catapults into their defences and to train men to operate them.172 In 295–294, Agathocles made a successful attack against Croton and Hipponion using a combination of stone-throwers, mining and boring operations (Diod. Sic. 21 4.1; 8.1), which suggests that by about 300, torsion catapults were to be found in Sicily. An inscription from Ceos records an early third-century law about duties of the gymnasiarch in preparation for a festival that appar- ently included javelin-throwing, archery and catapult-firing competitions for the young men, compulsory three times per month (Syll.3 iii.958). The Rhodians had a special interest in artillery and kept up with the latest developments, helped by close ties with Alexandria. Philo says that he inspected a catapult in the Rhodian arsenal that had been constructed by

171 Snodgrass (1967) 116–17. 172 See Marsden (1969) ch. 3.

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Dioynsius of Alexandria (Philo, Belopoeica 73).173 Catapults also became essential for anyone attempting to assault a city. Philip V of Macedon was regularly employing artillerymen towards the end of the third century. His use of catapults included deploying both bolt- and stone-throwing types to prevent the defenders of Palos in Cephallenia from interfering with siege works (Polyb. 5.4.6). The following year at Phthiotic Thebes he positioned 150 bolt-throwers and 25 stone-throwers in towers along his for- tiﬁcations (Polyb. 5.99.9). Just as important as the catapults and the skilled operators was ammunition of the right size for these increasingly well- calibrated machines. In 218 the city of Psophis fell to Philip V’s assault partly because the defenders ran out of bolts and shot for their catapults (Polyb. 4.71). Philip V used catapults against the Aetolians in his siege of Phthiotic Thebes in 217.Hehad150 bolt-throwing and 25 stone-throwing catapults (Polyb. 5.99.7). A similar ratio of bolt- to stone-throwers (6:1) can be observed among those captured by Scipio at New Carthage in 209 (Livy 26.47.5–6). Catapults hurling bolts could be used to clear away defenders on walls to allow easy access for ladders or towers or for the approach of sappers. The larger stone-throwers were used to disable defensive catapults and knock down sections of battlements, depriving the defenders of cover. When Demetrius I attacked Salamis in 306 and Rhodes in 305 he used stone- and bolt-throwers in a huge mobile siege tower (the helepolis or ‘city taker’) to bombard the walls, covering the work of battering rams. Catapults were also deployed on ships in order to bombard a besieged maritime city, as in the case of Alexander at Tyre in 332, who used his horse- transport ships and his triremes to provide ﬁring platforms. Demetrius Poliorcetes’ attacks against Rhodes in 305–4 made effective use of ship- mounted catapults against the city’s harbour areas (Diod. Sic. 20.85–90).174 Ships were used as platforms for assault towers and ladders, which were sometimes called sambucae, as at Syracuse in 214. In response, Archimedes devised a machine to hook onto approaching ships, pull them up and cause them to capsize (Livy 24.34). The development of technically complex machinery like catapults put greater emphasis on the need for the professionals who designed, built and operated them. In addition, large armies, like those of Alexander, or Philip

173 The Rhodians kept themselves well supplied with catapults, hair and sinew cords, bolts and stones. After the earthquake of 227, gifts to the Rhodians from cities and monarchs anxious to see their power and security maintained included catapults, hair and resin, which was probably used to protect springs from water (Polyb. 5.88–9). 174 Further examples of (siege) artillery mounted on ships: 213–11, siege of Syracuse (Livy 24.34.5); 211, Roman ships at Anticyra (Livy 26.26.3); 209, Roman warships and merchantmen at Tarentum (Livy 27.14.5); 209, Laelius has artillery on ships at siege of New Carthage (Livy 26.44.10; Polyb. 10.12.2); 204, Scipio at Utica (Livy 30.4.10; App. Pun. 16).

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V of Macedon, needed knowledgeable and skilled men to make siege towers and battering rams and to supervise mining operations. A corps of such men was certainly in existence by the end of Philip II of Macedon’s reign. They also operated under Alexander in his early campaign in the Balkans in 335, where Arrian mentions them covering his withdrawal at a river crossing (Arr. Anab. 1.6.8). A siege train would consist of a relatively small group of men who carried with them specialist equipment, like the metal ﬁttings for torsion catapults, and who could easily manufacture other items. They certainly did not do all the construction work. Basic work like digging ditches and making scaling ladders would be done by the companies of men that were going to use them. The siege train may also have included skilled carpenters and joiners, who could have doubled up as soldiers. If a general or king knew that he was setting out on a campaign of siege warfare then he would probably take such men with him, but otherwise they could be recruited on the spot. The key specialists were the engineers (mechanopoioi), men like those whom Alexander collected for the siege of Tyre in 332 from Cyprus and Phoenicia, who combined their expertise with that of Alexander’s own engineers to devise and construct the various machines which were used against the city (Arr. Anab. 2.21.1).

5. Defensive fortifications An increasing sophistication and determination was exhibited by besiegers during the fourth and third centuries, partly as a necessary response to improvements in fortification walls that had been introduced in the pre- vious hundred years. A wealthy state like Syracuse or Athens could afford to have numerous well-fortified centres of defence.175 With the increase in attempts to batter walls and storm fortifications, and the adoption of torsion artillery, walls had to be strengthened and defences made more robust (fig. 13.6). Bossed stonework was one solution to the problem of battering. Towers and battlements, strong enough to withstand stone-throwing catapults, were added to allow defenders more scope for firing missiles at would-be attackers, including sappers (fig. 13.7). Sally ports were used in city walls to allow the defenders to counterattack. Ditches and moats were added to make mining more challenging and also to try to push catapults back from the walls, but they could quite easily be overcome by filling and bridging.176 At Syracuse in 213 Archimedes had the existing walls pierced at lower points to enable missiles to be fired at attackers who were very close to the walls (Polyb. 8.5.6; Livy 24.34.9). In general, the advantage lay with the attackers, provided they had sufficient resources of men and materials to see the job through.

175 See Lauter (1992). 176 See McNicoll (1982), (1997);Winter (1982); Lawrence (1979).

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Figure 13.6 The walls of Heraclea under Latmos in Asia Minor.

6. Blockade If a city could not be taken by a direct assault, then it might be forced to surrender through a blockade. Often this would involve a circumvallation, such as those which the Romans erected around Lilybaeum in 250 and Capua in 212. They comprised double rows of ditches and ramparts, usually

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Figure 13.7 Tower at Perge with three large artillery ports. linking larger fortified camps, and were aimed as much at keeping relieving forces out as hemming the besieged population in. At Capua, Hannibal almost managed to break through to the city with the aid of some elephants, but he was driven back (Livy 26.5–6). Sometimes circumvallation was just the prelude to an assault, as in the case of the Syracusan attack on Croton in 295 (Diod. Sic. 21.4.1). Where a city was on the coast and had good harbour facilities, effective blockading was very difficult. During the siege of Perinthus in 340, Philip II was compelled to break off his attempts to storm the city in order to attack Byzantium, which was supplying Perinthus by sea. In the Second Punic War the length of the siege of Syracuse was partly due to the impossibility of stopping Carthaginian fleets from getting in and out of the harbour with supplies, reinforcements and communications. The exploits of Hannibal the Rhodian at Lilybaeum are a good example of ‘blockade running’ and attempts to prevent it (Polyb. 1.46.4–13). Hannibal used a particularly well- built, fast ship with an experienced crew and determined marines, plus local

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008 battle 457 knowledge of shoals, to run the Romans’ attempted blockade several times and encourage others to do so as well, Thus he kept the Carthaginians in communication with their commander Adherbal at Drepana, in spite of efforts of the Romans in their ten fastest ships. He was captured, however, when the Romans took over a particularly well-built Carthaginian ‘four’ that had run aground and been abandoned. They put their own hand- picked crew and marines on board and chased him on one of his night- time sorties out of the harbour. They overhauled his ship and succeeded in boarding and capturing it. The defenders of Lilybaeum eventually took advantage of a fierce gale to set fire to the Romans’ siege towers, engines, battering rams and protective penthouses. Because of the strong winds the Romans found it very difficult to put the fires out and were hampered by missile fire from the city’s defenders. So complete was the destruction that the Romans abandoned their attempt to assault the city and break through the walls, settling instead for a very long siege that became the focus of the entire war. The psychological impact of the various mechanical devices which were deployed in sieges in this period may have been almost as important as their tactical effectiveness. Philip II’s siege train was a new and shocking development in the Greek world. Constructions like the mole built by Alexander’s men at Tyre, the Helepolis towers of Demetrius I Poliorcetes, and Archimedes’ devices used in the siege of Syracuse, had a tremendous impact on the morale of both attackers and defenders.

7. Surprise A sudden, unheralded attack on a city or fortress might succeed if there were not good defences in place. Alexander tried to surprise Myndus in 334 with an attack that was swift because he did not bring any of his siege train, but after collapsing one of its towers he failed to breach the walls and withdrew (Arr. Anab. 1.7.10). In 251 the Achaeans captured the city of Sicyon by scaling its walls on ladders that could be taken to pieces, transported by cart and quickly reassembled (Plut. Arat. 4–8). When the Romans attacked Chalcis on Euboea in 200 just before dawn, they achieved complete surprise because the defenders were still asleep (Livy 31.23.4). Philip V managed a similar attack on Eretria in 198 (Livy 32.16.5). Another often successful way of capturing a city was through treachery. The ﬁnal capitulation of Syracuse in 212 is a good example of this. The Roman commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus used the opportunity provided by the visit of a delegation from the city to inﬁltrate an agent who suborned one of the Spanish mercenary commanders. It was this commander who allowed Marcellus’ soldiers into the city via a gate in the section of the wall that his men were supposed to be guarding (Livy 25.30). In the same year, the Romans lost control of

Tarentum because some of the local aristocracy arranged to let his troops in through a gate that one of their number had regularly been using at night, pretending to be going out hunting (Livy 25.7–8).

8. Food supplies and logistics There were major logistical problems for the commanders of all ancient armies, but siege warfare created particular difficulties. All ancient armies were voracious consumers of basic necessities, such as water, food and fodder, and to keep an army in a single place for a long period of time the commander needed to have a secure and dependable supply of water, food and, if there were significant numbers of horses and other animals, good forage and fodder. The siege operations conducted by Alexander the Great along the Levantine coast in 332 have been studied by Engels in his detailed analysis of Alexander’s logistical requirements and the methods which he employed to meet them.177 Engels has shown how, when a besieging army devoted a substantial amount of its forces to the secondary task of obtaining supplies and materials, its offensive capacity would be reduced accordingly. The obvious solution to this dilemma was to obtain the supplies without deploying too large a proportion of the combat personnel, which is what led Alexander to demand provisions from the Jewish high priests at Jerusalem in 332, while he was engaged in the siege of Tyre (Joseph. AJ 11.317–19). Engels’ study demonstrates, however, that the meagre resources of the Palestinian coastal plain could not possibly have been sufficient to provide Alexander and his forces with adequate supplies of essentials like grain and water. The considerable naval forces which he accumulated at Tyre and also used at Gaza must have been vital for his logistical needs, helping to bring in supplies from further afield. If the besiegers did run short of basic supplies, they ran the risk of having to abandon a siege. The Roman siege of Agrigentum (262/1) was marked by supply problems for both sides. The Romans encircled the city with double ditches, pickets and fortified posts to prevent the secret infiltra- tion of supplies that Polybius says was usual when cities were besieged (Polyb. 1.18.3). Since the city was very crowded, with at least 50,000 peo- ple according to Polybius (1.18.7), it soon began to run short of supplies. However, the Romans also suffered from illness and deprivation, especially after a Carthaginian relief force under Hanno captured their supply depot at Herbesus. Only the provision of supplies by their ally Hiero of Syracuse kept the Romans going (Polyb. 1.18.9–11).178

177 Engels (1978) 54–60. 178 See Lazenby (1993) 56–8.

9. Siege conditions for defenders It is clear from several ancient accounts that the defenders and inhabitants of a city under siege might have to endure extremely harsh conditions. If a city was so closely invested that the blockade on supplies was total, then the population would eventually suffer from malnutrition and starvation, as happened at Numantia in 133 (App. Hisp. 96). Water might also be a problem, although most ancient cities had good supplies. In the summer of 212 a plague swept through both attackers and defenders at Syracuse, causing great loss of life in the city and prompting the Carthaginian admiral Bomilcar to risk attack by the Roman fleet rather than keep his ships in the harbour (Livy 25.26–7).179 In some cases cities that had anticipated unpleasant sieges removed their non-combatants to safety. Some of the women and children of Tyre were sent to Carthage in 332 and so avoided the fate of those captured by Alexander (Diod. Sic. 17.46.4). For Aeneas the Tactician, writing in the first half of the fourth century, the active role of women in a city that was under attack was limited to hurling roof-tiles at the enemy once they were inside the walls, a desperate measure which could occasionally have a significant impact. Pyrrhus of Epirus was killed as the result of being hit by a tile (reputedly thrown by a woman) at Argos in 272 (Plut. Pyrrh. 34).180 Aeneas also mentions an instance of women being used to swell the numbers of the defenders on the walls, although it is noticeable that they were equipped with bronze utensils, rather than real weapons and armour (Aen. Tac. 40). In the desperation of a siege, other social and political distinctions might be abandoned. According to Diodorus, the Thebans recruited metics and freed slaves to man the walls of their city against Alexander’s army in 335 (Diod. Sic. 17.11.2). The Syracusans offered freedom to slaves in 214 to boost the numbers of those prepared to defend the city against the Romans (Livy 24.32.4). The desire to avoid the humiliation of submission to the enemy was sometimes so great that besieged populations committed suicide rather than surrender. In 201 the citizen men of Abydus, realizing that they could no longer resist the assaults of Philip V of Macedon, resolved together to kill themselves and their families; the king granted them three days to carry out their wishes, which they did by a variety of means, including hanging, cutting throats, burning and jumping off roof-tops (Polyb. 16.32–5). The consequences of defeat varied considerably, but they were often disastrous. Defeated populations could expect to be despoiled, dispossessed, enslaved or even executed, depending upon the victorious commander’s attitude to their resistance. In 353 the Athenian general Chares captured

179 See Lazenby (1978) 117. 180 SeeBarry(1996).

Sestos and massacred the citizens, selling their women and children into slavery. In the same year Philip II allowed the inhabitants of Methone to leave their city dressed only in a single garment. Thus the treatment of the famous city of Thebes by Alexander and the Greeks in 336 was considered harsh in antiquity, but it was by no means rare. Many of the inhabitants were slaughtered in the capture of the city, which was then destroyed and the survivors sold into slavery (Diod. Sic. 17.14.3). Alexander’s attitude could be quite different, as in the case of the city of Miletus. He allowed some of its Greek defenders to join his army, but his men killed the Persians. Fierce or stubborn resistance would be answered by brutal slaughter of survivors, as happened to the Tyrians in 332, 2,000 of whom were cruciﬁed after the fall of the city (Diod. Sic. 17.46.4; Curt. 4.4.17). The ancient sources include stories of chivalry and barbarity after the end of sieges in roughly equal measure.181 Livy and Polybius try to present the Romans as more restrained by virtue of their superior discipline, but it is clear from their accounts that the emotions of soldiers who had endured the physical and mental stresses and strains of a siege were regularly released in an orgy of rape, murder, pillage and destruction over which their commanders exercised little direct control.182 The settling of old scores was also a common reason for harsh treatment. At Iliturgi in 207 Scipio Africanus’ men massacred the inhabitants after they stormed the city. Appian claims that this was a spontaneous reaction to the fact that their commander had been wounded in the assault, but it seems more likely that, as Livy suggests, the Romans were exacting a deliberate revenge for the betrayal of Roman refugees to the Carthaginians after the defeat of Scipio’s father and uncle in 211 (App. Hisp. 32; Livy 28.19).183 Plundering by the victorious army was almost inevitable. It is arguable that there were no commonly agreed conventions, and that the particular circumstance of each siege determined what would be done with the inhabitants.184 In 146 the Romans displayed a ruthless indifference, sacking and destroying both Carthage and Corinth, bringing ruin to two of the greatest cities of the ancient world.185

181 For discussions of the treatment of captured cities see Kern (1999) chs. 9, 13. 182 See Harris (1979) 50–3, 263–4; Ziolkowski (1993). 183 See Richardson (2001) 131. 184 This was often the case in medieval warfare, for which see France (forthcoming). 185 The former had held out for three years and was a long-standing enemy of Rome, whereas the latter had surrendered after a pitched battle. Nevertheless in both cases the populations were enslaved and the cities destroyed.