WARFARE IN ANCIENT GREECE Warfare in Ancient Greece assembles a wide range of source material and introduces the latest scholarship on the Greek experience of war. The author has carefully selected key texts, many of them not previously available in English, and provided them with comprehensive commentaries. For the Greek polis, warfare was a more usual state of affairs than peace. The documents assembled here recreate the social and historical framework in which ancient Greek warfare took place—over a period of more than a thousand years from the Homeric Age to the first century BC. Special attention is paid to the attitudes and feelings of the Greeks towards defeated peoples and captured cities. Complete with notes, index and bibliography, Warfare in Ancient Greece will provide students of ancient and military history with an unprecedented survey of relevant materials. Michael M.Sage is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Cincinnati. He has published widely on Tacitus and aspects of ancient military history. WARFARE IN ANCIENT GREECE A Sourcebook Michael M.Sage London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Michael M.Sage All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sage, Michael M. Warfare in ancient Greece: a sourcebook/Michael M.Sage. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Military art and science—Greece—History. 2. Military history, Ancient. 3. Greece—History, Military. I. Title. U33.S24 1996 355’.00938—dc20 95–39155 CIP ISBN 0-203-43944-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74768-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-14354-3 (Print Edition) 0-415-14355-1 (pbk) For Jessica and Laura CONTENTS List of abbreviations ix Introduction x 1 EARLY GREEK WARFARE: HOMER AND THE DARK AGES 1 The hero and the heroic code 3 Weapons and preparation for battle 7 The practice of Homeric warfare 11 The results of war 17 The Dark Ages 18 2 THE AGE OF HOPLITE WARFARE 25 Introduction 25 Army organization 38 Light-armed troops 40 Cavalry 46 Provisioning and supply armies 55 Military and naval pay 58 Military command 60 Treaties of alliance 66 Hoplite battles 72 Greeks and non-Greeks in battle: the Persian Wars 81 The aftermath of battle 94 Siege warfare 107 Greeks and non-Greeks 120 The spoils of war 121 Truces and peace treaties 127 3 THE FOURTH CENTURY 135 Tactical developments 137 The use of light-armed troops 141 Mercenaries 147 Siege warfare 157 vii CONTENTS 4 THE RISE OF MACEDONIA: PHILIP AND ALEXANDER 162 The early Macedonian army 163 Philip II and the development of the Macedonian army 165 Alexander the Great 181 5 HELLENISTIC WARFARE 197 Some common causes of war 200 Hellenistic armies 203 The armies of the great powers 220 Suggested readings 228 Index of passages cited 240 Index 245 viii ABBREVIATIONS ABSA Annual of the British School at Athens AC L’Antiquité Classique ACD Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis AHB Ancient History Bulletin AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJAH American journal of Ancient History AncSoc Ancient Society AncW Ancient World BCH Bulletin de Correspondance Héllenistique CE Chronique d’ Egypte ClasAnt Classical Antiquity CPh Classical Philology CQ Classical Quarterly CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity CW Classical World G&R Greece and Rome GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies P&P Past and Present PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PP La Parola del Passato RhM Rheinisches Museum SO Symbolae Osloenses ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik ix INTRODUCTION The last quarter century has seen a renewed interest in the study of Greek and Roman warfare. This has developed as part of a more general revival of the place of war throughout the history of European society. An increasing number of books and journal articles bear witness to this trend. An important part of the revival has been a change of focus. Traditional military history has concentrated on strategy, tactics and the encounter of battle. A new perspective has emerged, however, that has led to a more comprehensive view of war as a social phenomenon whose outlines and substance are conditioned by the social and cultural system of those involved in making war. Studies have concentrated on the relationship between warfare and social solidarity and its links to sacral-religious views as well as on the ideology connected to fighting. THE GREEK UNDERSTANDING OF WAR This broadening of interest has led to the realization of the centrality of warmaking to Greek civilization and the profound formative effect it had on it. Satisfactory definitions of war and war-making are difficult to provide. At its center is the potential or actual use of violence by organized and politically independent groups. No definite line can be drawn to separate it from raiding and other organized violent activities. The Greeks themselves conceived of it as marked off from other pursuits by formal declarations and various symbolic and religious acts. The elaborate codes and procedures such as the erection of trophies or the asking for the bodies of the dead back to signify the acceptance of defeat are manifestations of this mentality (146, 153). In part such limitations reflected a desire to keep the human losses and the economic costs of warfare within limits that did not destroy the groups or states that waged them. The so-called “heraldless war” in which states opened hostilities without observing the traditional preliminaries was evidence of an intention to wage a total war that would lead to the extinction or total submission of the losing side. This institution throws into relief the importance of the normal mechanisms in containing the destructive effects of conflicts (128, 129, 153), though they were not always successful (168). x INTRODUCTION Though such limitations and boundaries may have checked the most destructive effects of conflict, it did little to restrain the frequency of war among Greeks states in the fifth and fourth centuries BC and into the Hellenistic period. Athens, the state we know best, was at war two out of every three years down to 338. Though we have no comparable figures for other Greek states, and Athens’ status as an imperial state for much of this period may have increased its involvement in war, the sources reveal that most states of any size were engaged in recurring conflicts with traditional or newly acquired enemies. The Greek view of relations between states reflected and justified this situation. Hostility was considered as the typical condition in Greek interstate relations and war and other forms of violence a normal expedient in political life (181). Further evidence for the normality of armed conflict is provided by the attempts of Greek intellectuals to analyze warfare. Though prone to generalization in other areas of political analysis, they offered no analysis of the causes of war. Rather they remained preoccupied with particular reasons for individual conflicts. It has been suggested, I think rightly, that the reason for such neglect was the view that war was simply a fact of human life and its ubiquity did not require explanation; only the specific reasons for a specific conflict warranted examination. Later periods of European history have also been marked by frequent war and violence but there were factors specific to Greek civilization that contributed to increase the frequency of armed conflict. The aristocratic ideology in the Homeric poems, which are among the earliest extant Greek literature, had as its center the idea of competition and struggle as the means to preeminence. Individual military success was the key area in which to achieve standing among a noble’s peers and the most important measure of a man’s worth (1–4). Developments in military tactics and equipment were to transmute and change the way this value system expressed itself but it remained intact and vital. In the Hellenistic period success in warfare was still the crucial element in legitimizing political power and remained the most important royal activity (271–275). The agonal conception that underlay Greek attitudes to war is perhaps most clearly expressed in the continuation of archaic, ritualized struggle between the Argives and the Spartans for the border territory of Cynouria extending from the sixth century on (129). Though specifying the exact effect of such ideology is difficult, the emphasis it placed on struggle and military success created a predisposition to resort to warfare to resolve conflicts. Warfare served other important functions, such as the acquisition of wealth in the form of land, money and slaves. From the Homeric period on, military activity was accepted as a source of profits and was practised for that reason. In the Iliad Achilles boasts to Agamemnon of the success of his plundering expedition in the Troad, and Athenian soldiers and sailors setting out in the summer of 415 on the conquest of Syracuse and the rest of Sicily had dreams of the wealth that would result from the conquest (5, 180). Treaties and other diplomatic agreements carefully detailed the division of spoils in the event of victory (187–189).