front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page i Information Gathering in Classical Greece front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page ii front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page iii Information Gathering in Classical Greece Frank Santi Russell Ann Arbor front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page iv Copyright © by the University of Michigan 1999 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2002 2001 2000 1999 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Russell, Frank Santi, 1965– Information gathering in classical Greece / Frank Santi Russell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11064-0 (cl. : alk. paper) 1. Military intelligence—Greece. 2. Greece—History—To 146 B.C. 3. Greece—History, Military. I. Title. UB251.G8R87 1999 327.1238—dc21 99-047317 front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page v Without fail, a man harms his foes thus: those things that they most dread he discovers, carefully investigates, then in›icts on them. —Thucydides 6.91.6 It hasn’t changed —Milt Beardon, Director, U.S. covert action in Afghanistan from 1986 to 1989 front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page vi front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page vii Acknowledgments It is ‹tting and just that my ‹rst thanks should go to Prof. Steven Latti- more, Dept. of Classics, UCLA, and Mr. Paul Naiditch, Publications Edi- tor, Dept. of Special Collections, and Classics Bibliographer, University Research Library, UCLA, who have been invaluable and instrumental to the development of this work from idea to dissertation and ‹nally to book. For practical instruction, suggestions and material that I have included in the book, thanks to Mr. Milton Beardon, CIA (retired); Prof. Mor- timer Chambers, UCLA; Dr. Christopher S. Connor, Dartmouth Hitch- cock Hospital; M.Sgt. Terry Damm, U.S. Army; Prof. Bernard Frischer, UCLA; Prof. Janice Gabbert, Wright State University; Prof. Michael Haslam, UCLA; Prof. Richard Janko, University College, London; Capt. Paul Lehto, U.S. Army; Prof. Emeritus Philip Levine, UCLA; Prof. Emer- itus Bengt Löfstedt, UCLA; Lt.Col. Michael Richardson, U.S. Army; and Capt. John Tellier, U.S. Army. For responding to queries and proffering advice, thanks to Dr. Ellen Bauerle, University of Michigan Press; Prof. Matthew Dillon, Loyola Marymount University; Prof. P.M. Fraser, All Souls College, Oxford; Prof. Kevin Hula, Loyola University of Chicago; Prof. Peter Krentz, Davidson College; Prof. Ronald Mellor, UCLA; Prof. Robert Moysey, University of Mississippi; Prof. Hayden Peake, Defense Intelligence Col- lege; Dr. Rob Rice; Dr. Scott Rusch; Dr. Michael Seaman; Prof. Rose Mary Sheldon, Virginia Military Institute; Prof. Larry Trittle, Loyola Marymount University; Prof. Everett Wheeler, Duke University; and Ms. Jill Wilson, University of Michigan Press. A son’s debt to his parents de‹es reckoning. Although their efforts in reading and reviewing manuscripts are minuscule in comparison to the labor and love they invested in the task of raising me, I wish to thank my parents, Profs. Dale and Janice Russell, for once again encouraging and aiding me to meet new challenges. front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page viii viii Acknowledgments Last and most of all, I am indebted to my son, Alexander, for putting things into perspective and to my wife, Lisa, for buying me time, for giv- ing her own time to read and critique my work, and for her steadfast love and faith that something good might come of all this. front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page ix Contents Notes on Conventions . xi Introduction . 1 Chapter 1. Beyond the Hill: Tactical Assets . 10 Chapter 2. Beyond the Border: Strategic Assets . 63 Chapter 3. Beyond the Pale: Spies (Kataskopoi, Otakoustai) . 103 Chapter 4. Conveying the Message . 140 Chapter 5. Counterintelligence . 190 Conclusion . 226 Appendixes Appendix A. Objects of Verbs of Learning . 237 Appendix B. Types of Kataskopoi . 239 Glossary . 241 Selected Bibliography . 245 Index . 259 front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page x front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page xi Notes on Conventions All dates are B.C. unless otherwise stated. The familiar anglicized Latinate forms of Greek names are given, rather than transliterations of the Greek (e.g., Thucydides, rather than Thoukudides, for YoukudÛdh!). Titles, of‹ces, and specialized vocabulary are transliterated and italicized (e.g., kataskopos, rather than katascopus, for kat‹!kopo!). When the attribution of authorship to a work is suspect or spurious, the author’s name appears between brackets (e.g., [Lysias] Against Alci- biades I). Translations of Greek and Latin are my own unless otherwise stated. front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:09 PM Page xii intro.qxd 10/18/1999 2:10 PM Page 1 Introduction About this I was quite at a loss what to do. For to write in detail and with precision about matters which the kings managed between themselves and secretly, seemed to me to be open to criti- cism and exceedingly hazardous; but to pass over in complete silence matters which seem to have had more practical effect than any others in the war, matters which enable us to detect the causes of much that was afterwards dif‹cult to explain, appeared to me to be decidedly indicative of indolence and entire lack of enterprise. (Polybius 29.5.1)1 Polybius is by no means alone in his dilemma. His near contemporaries might have occasionally slipped into sensationalism and the allures of the secret world, but for the most part they avoided that treacherous path and trod by the familiar markers of virtue, vice, and chance en route to explaining the causes of history. His modern heirs have added new mark- ers along the way and looked out on wider vistas, but their analyses must inevitably become conjecture when they attempt to explain the decisions that led to the actions of the ancients. For while competent contemporary historians do look to explain why something happened in a particular case, few have looked beyond the particular to the general: to a context into which one can set and thereby interpret individual decisions, a con- text that must include a consideration of how the ancients obtained the information on the basis of which they acted. It would be the height of folly to allege that a study of information gathering would in itself illuminate the motives behind decisions obscured by two and a half millennia, but it can at least establish param- eters for the knowledge people would have or would not have possessed when they made the decisions. That is the ambition of this book: to 1. Loeb translation. intro.qxd 10/18/1999 2:10 PM Page 2 2 Information Gathering in Classical Greece de‹ne terms, to describe mechanisms, and, in effect, to produce an intel- ligence resource of use for speci‹c studies. The contributions of this book are more or less limited to the Hellenic world in the ‹fth and fourth centuries B.C. Information before that time is sparse and shrouded in myth but is nevertheless included to illustrate development and continuity, not so much by actual events as by percep- tions of how events might have occurred. In other words, while Odysseus never really donned rags and snuck into the citadel of Troy, the story of his adventure was told and retold from the time the Odyssey was ‹rst sung, so that we know such espionage was conceivable in the eighth cen- tury; thus we can contrast the portrayal of Odysseus’ adventures with those of his heirs in the fourth. With the advent of Herodotus and Thucy- dides in the ‹fth century, we begin to enjoy real historical examples of collection, especially at the tactical level (e.g., battle‹elds), but also at the strategic (e.g., foreign relations). Covert collection remains somewhat dif‹cult, however, since spy stories tend to be just that, and since demo- cratic Athens—from which most of our information about the ancient world is derived—had the same ambivalence between fascination and fear of the secret world that democratic states do today. While inscrip- tions, which begin to be more numerous in this period, grant us informa- tion concerning strategic, and occasionally tactical, intelligence, they are mute on covert aspects. The real gold mines for collection of every sort are the theoretical treatises of Xenophon (especially the Education of Cyrus and the Cavalry Commander) and Aeneas Tacticus (How to Sur- vive under Siege) in the early and middle part of the fourth century. Valu- able, if highly biased, information on political intelligence can be culled from orators (Andocides, Lysias, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Dinarchus, Isocrates, and the like) and some from philosophers (especially Aristotle) and playwrights (especially the author of the Rhesus). Much evidence comes from later writers—chie›y Diodorus, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Arrian—who lived centuries after the events they described yet had sources (such as Ephorus, Theopompus, and Ptolemy) since lost. Isolated gems hide in odd places—from Linear B records to Athenaeus, Eustathius, Harpocration, Lucian, and Strabo. Later collections of strat- agems, especially those of Polyaenus, provide tenuous but exciting evi- dence. Herein the task of the historian of intelligence bears some resem- blance to the tasks of the intelligence analyst—to extract from a mass of data, most of it irrelevant, pertinent and useful items.