DOCSLIB.ORG

1 HIST3105 War and Society in Ancient Greece, 750-350 BC This

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 HIST3105 War and Society in Ancient Greece, 750-350 BC This HIST3105 War and Society in Ancient Greece, 750-350 BC This course investigates all aspects of war in its social context in archaic and classical Greece – from the causes of conflict, via the question of how to train, raise, maintain, and control citizen and mercenary armies, to the range of forms of warfare from ritual clashes to campaigns of annihilation. In particular, the course tackles some of the myths current in modern scholarship: the notions that war was the ‘normal’ state of international relations in Greece; that the citizen army was an essentially ‘middle-class’ body; that warfare was restricted to a game-like competition in the archaic period and became a destructive ‘total’ conlict only in the classical period; that the Athenian navy drove the development of radical democracy; and that the ‘mercenary explosion’ of the fourth century was a result of economic and political crisis in the Greek city-states. How the Greeks fought has been much-debated in recent research, and this too will be the subject of detailed study. A crucial aim of the course is to provide an understanding of how Greek warfare was shaped by the social, economic, and cultural constraints of its time, how it developed, and why wars were so common in ancient Greece. Our main sources are long narrative accounts of wars which cannot be divided up into thematic sections corresponding to the main topics set out above: a single paragraph of Thucydides or Xenophon will contain information on several different topics. One of the challenges of studying Greek warfare is to assemble such disparate bits of evidence from a variety of passages and sources while still paying due attention to the context in which this material appears. A second aim of the course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to tackle this challenge, by enabling them to study the sources as coherent narratives while analysing their implications for any and all aspects of Greek war and society. Accordingly, this course adopts an unusual structure. The first term is devoted to a close study of the evidence on a source-by-source basis. The understanding of the evidence acquired in this way then forms the basis for thematically organised discussion of ten key topics in the second term. As a result, this course entails a particularly heavy load of reading in the first term, when a weekly average 100 pages of source material needs to be carefully and critically read, along with some secondary material on the nature of each source. This will only be feasible if students do a good deal of preparatory reading over the summer. Moreover, in order to read the sources most effectively, one needs to have some idea of the main problems and debates in the study of Greek warfare, and it will be necessary to read at least one general study of the field before the start of the course. Correspondingly less reading will be required for the second-term classes, which should enable students to spend more time working towards the Special Subject dissertation. Teaching: the course will be taught by Prof. Hans van Wees, on Mondays, 2-4, in Room G02, Department of History (UCL); e-mail: [email protected]; phone: 020 7679 3633. Prerequisites: students are expected to have passed at least Beginners’ Greek, or an equivalent course, but all sources will be read primarily in English translation. Students are also expected to have completed at least one course in archaic and/or classical Greek history. Assessment: the taught unit will be assessed by a three-hour written exam (100%). Non-assessed work: Students will be required to write two 1,500-word pieces of source analysis during the first term (one on the Monday after Reading Week, the other due on the 1 first day of the second term), and one 3,000-word essay on a topic to be agreed with the tutor during the second term (due on the last Monday of term). Students will also be required to make two oral presentations in class, one in each term. The first will discuss the source material assigned for the class, the second will discuss one of the questions formulated for each theme discussed in class. It is acceptable for these presentations to be the basis for the non-assessed coursework. NB: all this non-assessed work is compulsory, i.e. students who do not complete it will not be allowed to enter the final examination and thus will not be able to pass the course. SET TEXTS (1,005 pp. in total): Aeneas Tacticus, How To Defend A City Under Siege (53 pp.) Aeschylus, The Persians (30 pp.) Herodotus, Histories (171 pp.) I.1-6 [3 pp.], 65-86 [15], 163-70 [3], III.1-4 [2], 39-60 [8], 120-5 [2], V.30-54 [11], 70-91 [8], 94-103 [4], VI.5-46 [15], 76-84 [3], 87-93 [2], 102-20 [7], 132-40 [3], VII.101-4 [2 pp.], 138-152 [8], 157-72 [7], 201-238 [15], VIII.1-18 [6], 26- 33 [3], 40-97 [21], IX.26-30 [3], 33-39 [3], 51-85 [14], 114-22 [3] Homer, Iliad (89 pp.) II.1-483 [11 pp.], III.1-120 [3], 264-461 [4], IV.220-VII.482 [52], XI.670-762 [2] XVII [17] Thucydides, History (180 pp.) I.1-55 [33 pp.], 66-88 [15], 118-25 [5], 139-II.27 [23], II.56-65 [8], 71-8 [6], III.15-26 [6], 36-52 [13], 68 [1], IV.89-101 [9] V.26 [1 p.], 40-81 [26], VI.6-32 [18], 43-52 [5], 67-71 [3], VII.10-20 [5], 27-30 [3] Tyrtaeus and Callinus, fragments (6 pp.) Xenophon, Anabasis (293 pp.) Xenophon, Cavalry Commander (30 pp.) Xenophon, Hellenica (153 pp.) I.1.33-36 [1], I.2 [4], I.5-7 [20], II.1-2 [10] III.2.21-31 [3 pp.], II.4-5 [18], IV.1.17-3.23 [19], IV.4.7-8.39 [34], V.1 [10], VI.1-2 [15], VI.4 [11], VII.5 [8] 2 Students are advised to buy their own copies of Homer’s Iliad, Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ Histories, and Xenophon’s Anabasis and Hellenica (all available in Penguin Classics, and in other translations), but texts and translations are also available in the library, and on-line (Perseus). Aeschylus’ Persians and Xenophon’s Cavalry Commander are also available in library and on-line. Aeneas Tacticus is not available via Perseus; David Whitehead’s translation and commentary is preferable to the Loeb edition. Handouts with fragments of archaic poetry and other material will be xeroxed and distributed. PROGRAMME OF CLASSES TERM 1 : SOURCES 1-3: AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF A MERCENARY EXPEDITION 1. XENOPHON, ANABASIS I AND II (80 pp.) 2. XENOPHON, ANABASIS III-V.5 (103 pp.) 3. XENOPHON, ANABASIS V.6-VII.8 (110 pp.) 4: WAR IN ARCHAIC POETRY: HOMER, CALLINUS, TYRTAEUS (95 pp.) 5: EARLY GREEK WARS IN ORAL TRADITION: HERODOTUS’ HISTORIES (86 pp.) 6: XERXES’ INVASION IN HERODOTUS AND AESCHYLUS (115 pp.) 7-9: CONTEMPORARY HISTORIOGRAPHY: THUCYDIDES AND XENOPHON 7: THUCYDIDES ON THE ARCHIDAMIAN WAR (119 pp.) 8: THUCYDIDES AND XENOPHON ON THE DECELEAN WAR (96 pp.) 9. XENOPHON ON HEGEMONIC WARS, 402-362 BC (118 pp.) 10: TECHNICAL TREATISES: AENEAS AND XENOPHON (83 pp.) TERM 2: THEMES 11: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND CAUSES OF WAR 12: CITIZEN MILITIAS I: EQUIPMENT, STATUS AND IDEALS 13: CITIZEN MILITIAS II: TRAINING AND ORGANISATION 14: MERCENARIES: WHO AND WHY? 15: CAMPAIGNS: GOALS, METHODS AND LOGISTICS 16: COMBAT I: HOMER AND THE SEVENTH CENTURY 17: COMBAT II: THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 18: SIEGE WARFARE: CHANGING METHODS AND RISING COSTS 19: NAVAL WARFARE: CHANGING METHODS AND RISING COSTS 20: THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK WARFARE 3 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Students must read in advance at least one of the following (* = recommended): J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley 1970) P. Ducrey, Warfare in Ancient Greece (New York 1986) Y. Garlan, War in the Ancient World: A Social History (London 1975) V.D. Hanson (ed.), Hoplites : The Classical Greek Battle Experience (London 1991) *L. Rawlings, The Ancient Greeks at War (Manchester 2007) J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World (London 1993) *P. Sabin, H. van Wees and M. Whitby, The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Volume I, chapters 1-9 (Cambridge 2007) *H. van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London 2004) H. van Wees (ed.), War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London 2000) Further general bibliography: F. E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (Berkeley 1957) M-C. Amouretti et al., Le regard des Grecs sur la guerre : mythes et réalités (Paris 2000) T. Bekker-Nielsen and L. Hannestad (eds.), War as a Cultural and Social Force (Copenhagen 2001) E. Bragg et al (eds.), Beyond the Battlefields: new perspectives on warfare and society in the Greco-Roman world (Oxford 2008) P. Connolly, Greece and Rome at War (London 1981) D. Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare (Boulder/Oxford 1996) A. Ferrill, The Origins of War (London 1985) Y. Garlan, Guerre et économie en Grèce ancienne (Paris 1989) V.D. Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (1999) S. Hodkinson and A. Powell (eds.), Sparta & War (Swansea 2006) P. Krentz, ‘Warfare’, in A. Shapiro (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece (2006) J. Lee, ‘Warfare in the classical age’, in K. Kinzl (ed.) A Companion to the Classical Greek World (Oxford 2006), 480-508 J.E.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics
    Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics The eighth-century revolution Version 1.0 December 2005 Ian Morris Stanford University Abstract: Through most of the 20th century classicists saw the 8th century BC as a period of major changes, which they characterized as “revolutionary,” but in the 1990s critics proposed more gradualist interpretations. In this paper I argue that while 30 years of fieldwork and new analyses inevitably require us to modify the framework established by Snodgrass in the 1970s (a profound social and economic depression in the Aegean c. 1100-800 BC; major population growth in the 8th century; social and cultural transformations that established the parameters of classical society), it nevertheless remains the most convincing interpretation of the evidence, and that the idea of an 8th-century revolution remains useful © Ian Morris. [email protected] 1 THE EIGHTH-CENTURY REVOLUTION Ian Morris Introduction In the eighth century BC the communities of central Aegean Greece (see figure 1) and their colonies overseas laid the foundations of the economic, social, and cultural framework that constrained and enabled Greek achievements for the next five hundred years. Rapid population growth promoted warfare, trade, and political centralization all around the Mediterranean. In most regions, the outcome was a concentration of power in the hands of kings, but Aegean Greeks created a new form of identity, the equal male citizen, living freely within a small polis. This vision of the good society was intensely contested throughout the late eighth century, but by the end of the archaic period it had defeated all rival models in the central Aegean, and was spreading through other Greek communities.
    [Show full text]
  • The Aristoteles Decree and the Expansion of the Second Athenian
    HESPERIA 75 (2006) THE ARISTOTELES Pages 379-395 DECREE AND THE EXPANSION OF THE SECOND ATHENIAN LEAGUE ABSTRACT The left lateral face of the Aristoteles Decree stele {IG IP 43), the most impor numerous tant epigraphic source for the Second Athenian League, presents problems of interpretation. The author attempts here to establish the order in were on which members of the League listed that face and to link them with a campaigns described in the literary sources, offering possible restoration for the name inscribed in line 111 and later erased. A contemporary inscription from Athens points to the Parians, who were also listed on the front of the stone. the erasure was intended to correct a mistake of Thus, repetition. our The stele of the Aristoteles Decree (Fig. 1) is principal epigraphic evi dence for the Second Athenian League, and since its discovery and initial more a on publication than 150 years ago it has shed great deal of light the affairs of Athens and Greece during the first half of the 4th century b.c.1 It has also raised many questions, both epigraphic and historical, especially names with regard to the specific of members and their dates of entry into the League. Both the stone and the organization whose existence it records over have received intense scholarly scrutiny the years.2 In this article I on names focus the of member city-states, leagues, and individuals that appear on the left lateral face of the stone (lines 97-134), both to establish the order in which the names were inscribed and to attempt to link the campaigns of Athenian generals recorded in the literature with the ap names on a to pearance of the stele.
    [Show full text]
  • The Roles of Solon in Plato's Dialogues
    The Roles of Solon in Plato’s Dialogues Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Samuel Ortencio Flores, M.A. Graduate Program in Greek and Latin The Ohio State University 2013 Dissertation Committee: Bruce Heiden, Advisor Anthony Kaldellis Richard Fletcher Greg Anderson Copyrighy by Samuel Ortencio Flores 2013 Abstract This dissertation is a study of Plato’s use and adaptation of an earlier model and tradition of wisdom based on the thought and legacy of the sixth-century archon, legislator, and poet Solon. Solon is cited and/or quoted thirty-four times in Plato’s dialogues, and alluded to many more times. My study shows that these references and allusions have deeper meaning when contextualized within the reception of Solon in the classical period. For Plato, Solon is a rhetorically powerful figure in advancing the relatively new practice of philosophy in Athens. While Solon himself did not adequately establish justice in the city, his legacy provided a model upon which Platonic philosophy could improve. Chapter One surveys the passing references to Solon in the dialogues as an introduction to my chapters on the dialogues in which Solon is a very prominent figure, Timaeus- Critias, Republic, and Laws. Chapter Two examines Critias’ use of his ancestor Solon to establish his own philosophic credentials. Chapter Three suggests that Socrates re- appropriates the aims and themes of Solon’s political poetry for Socratic philosophy. Chapter Four suggests that Solon provides a legislative model which Plato reconstructs in the Laws for the philosopher to supplant the role of legislator in Greek thought.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparing and Contrasting the Athletic and Olympic Traditions of Then and Now
    Steven Solomon and Mikkos Minos*: Comparing and contrasting the athletic and Olympic traditions of then and now By: Ashley Westhem Stanford, Calif.—Coming off of a thrilling experience in the 2012 London Olympics, Australian track star and Stanford University student, Steven Solomon sat down with me to talk about his Olympic Journey. Because he is so willing to impart his knowledge regarding the Olympics in Ancient Greece, Mikkos Minos of Athens (circa 350 BC) was asked to weigh in on his time as an Olympic athlete as well. Why do you put your body through so much stress in the name of competitive sport? SS: “The reason an athlete pushes himself through such painful barriers is because of the intrinsic values we get from victory. It’s that unknown factor of not knowing what you can accomplish. And that’s something that is true from the first Olympiad to the last Olympiad. I think success motivates people, once you taste a little bit of success you want to continue to strive for more success. You’re dying while you’re doing it, but whilst you’re dying now, you’re going to convert that into performance on the track, or in the gym.” MM: It is true that success is everything to us as a way to avoid shame and so we push ourselves to extreme limits. I compete for the honor of my family and also to warrant comparison to the gods. Also, competition is the only thing I’ve ever known and athletics has basically been my life since I was a boy.
    [Show full text]
  • The Herodotos Project (OSU-Ugent): Studies in Ancient Ethnography
    Faculty of Literature and Philosophy Julie Boeten The Herodotos Project (OSU-UGent): Studies in Ancient Ethnography Barbarians in Strabo’s ‘Geography’ (Abii-Ionians) With a case-study: the Cappadocians Master thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Linguistics and Literature, Greek and Latin. 2015 Promotor: Prof. Dr. Mark Janse UGent Department of Greek Linguistics Co-Promotores: Prof. Brian Joseph Ohio State University Dr. Christopher Brown Ohio State University ACKNOWLEDGMENT In this acknowledgment I would like to thank everybody who has in some way been a part of this master thesis. First and foremost I want to thank my promotor Prof. Janse for giving me the opportunity to write my thesis in the context of the Herodotos Project, and for giving me suggestions and answering my questions. I am also grateful to Prof. Joseph and Dr. Brown, who have given Anke and me the chance to be a part of the Herodotos Project and who have consented into being our co- promotores. On a whole other level I wish to express my thanks to my parents, without whom I would not have been able to study at all. They have also supported me throughout the writing process and have read parts of the draft. Finally, I would also like to thank Kenneth, for being there for me and for correcting some passages of the thesis. Julie Boeten NEDERLANDSE SAMENVATTING Deze scriptie is geschreven in het kader van het Herodotos Project, een onderneming van de Ohio State University in samenwerking met UGent. De doelstelling van het project is het aanleggen van een databank met alle volkeren die gekend waren in de oudheid.
    [Show full text]
  • Download The
    THE CONCEPT OF SACRED WAR IN ANCIENT GREECE By FRANCES ANNE SKOCZYLAS B.A., McGill University, 1985 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Classics) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1987 ® Frances Anne Skoczylas, 1987 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of CLASSICS The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3 Date AUtt-UST 5r 1Q87 ii ABSTRACT This thesis will trace the origin and development of the term "Sacred War" in the corpus of extant Greek literature. This term has been commonly applied by modern scholars to four wars which took place in ancient Greece between- the sixth and fourth centuries B. C. The modern use of "the attribute "Sacred War" to refer to these four wars in particular raises two questions. First, did the ancient historians give all four of these wars the title "Sacred War?" And second, what justified the use of this title only for certain conflicts? In order to resolve the first of these questions, it is necessary to examine in what terms the ancient historians referred to these wars.
    [Show full text]
  • Marathon 2,500 Years Edited by Christopher Carey & Michael Edwards
    MARATHON 2,500 YEARS EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER CAREY & MICHAEL EDWARDS INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON MARATHON – 2,500 YEARS BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES SUPPLEMENT 124 DIRECTOR & GENERAL EDITOR: JOHN NORTH DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS: RICHARD SIMPSON MARATHON – 2,500 YEARS PROCEEDINGS OF THE MARATHON CONFERENCE 2010 EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER CAREY & MICHAEL EDWARDS INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES SCHOOL OF ADVANCED STUDY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 2013 The cover image shows Persian warriors at Ishtar Gate, from before the fourth century BC. Pergamon Museum/Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Photo Mohammed Shamma (2003). Used under CC‐BY terms. All rights reserved. This PDF edition published in 2019 First published in print in 2013 This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. More information regarding CC licenses is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Available to download free at http://www.humanities-digital-library.org ISBN: 978-1-905670-81-9 (2019 PDF edition) DOI: 10.14296/1019.9781905670819 ISBN: 978-1-905670-52-9 (2013 paperback edition) ©2013 Institute of Classical Studies, University of London The right of contributors to be identified as the authors of the work published here has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Designed and typeset at the Institute of Classical Studies TABLE OF CONTENTS Introductory note 1 P. J. Rhodes The battle of Marathon and modern scholarship 3 Christopher Pelling Herodotus’ Marathon 23 Peter Krentz Marathon and the development of the exclusive hoplite phalanx 35 Andrej Petrovic The battle of Marathon in pre-Herodotean sources: on Marathon verse-inscriptions (IG I3 503/504; Seg Lvi 430) 45 V.
    [Show full text]
  • Archaic Eretria
    ARCHAIC ERETRIA This book presents for the first time a history of Eretria during the Archaic Era, the city’s most notable period of political importance. Keith Walker examines all the major elements of the city’s success. One of the key factors explored is Eretria’s role as a pioneer coloniser in both the Levant and the West— its early Aegean ‘island empire’ anticipates that of Athens by more than a century, and Eretrian shipping and trade was similarly widespread. We are shown how the strength of the navy conferred thalassocratic status on the city between 506 and 490 BC, and that the importance of its rowers (Eretria means ‘the rowing city’) probably explains the appearance of its democratic constitution. Walker dates this to the last decade of the sixth century; given the presence of Athenian political exiles there, this may well have provided a model for the later reforms of Kleisthenes in Athens. Eretria’s major, indeed dominant, role in the events of central Greece in the last half of the sixth century, and in the events of the Ionian Revolt to 490, is clearly demonstrated, and the tyranny of Diagoras (c. 538–509), perhaps the golden age of the city, is fully examined. Full documentation of literary, epigraphic and archaeological sources (most of which have previously been inaccessible to an English-speaking audience) is provided, creating a fascinating history and a valuable resource for the Greek historian. Keith Walker is a Research Associate in the Department of Classics, History and Religion at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia.
    [Show full text]
  • Taking Sides: the Political Economy of Solon's Law for Civil Wars*
    Taking sides: The Political Economy of Solon’s Law for Civil Wars* Soeren C. Schwuchow**, Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany George Tridimas***, Ulster University, Northern Ireland This version: 18 June 2019 Abstract In 594 BCE the Athenian statesman Solon defused a grave social crisis by introducing wide- ranging constitutional, political and economic reforms which granted various rights to a nas- cent ‘middle class’ and reduced the power of the wealthy birth aristocracy. Solon’s reforms included a law which perhaps counter-intuitively banned citizens from staying neutral in cas- es of civil conflict. After reviewing aspects of the law against neutrality debated by historians, the present paper employs the methodology of the economics of conflict to investigate the implications of the law for the stability of the constitutional order initiated by Solon. We ex- amine a stylised model of three social classes, Rich, Middle and Poor, where the former two compete for control of the government, and the Poor may decide to stay neutral or side with either the Middle or the Rich. By solving the model we identify conditions for the Rich to ac- cept the Solonian order or reject it and mount a coup. Key words: Ancient Athens; Solon; social conflict; neutrality; social stability; constitution- al choice. JEL Classification: D7: Analysis of Collective Decision making; D72: Political Processes D74: Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; N4: Economic History– Government; N93 - Europe: Pre-1913 Regional and Urban History * Paper in early stage of progress, preliminary and incomplete. Please do not circulate. ** Soeren C. Schwuchow (corresponding author), Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg, Chair of Microeconomics, P.O.
    [Show full text]
  • Ancient Greeks Victor Davis Hanson John Keegan, Series Editor
    SMITHSONIAN HISTORY OF WARFARE WARS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS VICTOR DAVIS HANSON JOHN KEEGAN, SERIES EDITOR () Smithsonian Books (::::Collins An Imprint ofHarperCollinsPub/ishers For W. K. Pritchett, who revolutionized the study of Ancient Greek warfare Text © 1999 by Victor Davis Hanson Design and layout© 1999 by Cassell & Co. First published in Great Britain 1999 The picture credits on page 240 constitute an extension to this copyright page. Material in the introduction and chapter 5 is based on ideas that appeared in Victor Davis Hanson and john Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise if Classical Education and the Recovery ifGreek Wisdom (The Free Press, New York, 1998) 'and Victor Davis Hanson, "Alexander the Kille1~" Quarterly journal ifMilitary History, spring 1998, I 0.3, 8-20. WARS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS. All rights reserved. No part of this title may be reproduced or transmitted by any means (including photography or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. For infor­ mation, address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Published 2004 in the United States of America by Smithsonian Books Acknowledgments In association with Cassell Wellington House, 125 Strand London WC2R OBB would like to thank John Keegan and Judith Flanders for asking me Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data I to write this volume on the Ancient Greeks at war. My colleague at Hanson, Victor Davis. California State University, Fresno, Professor Bruce Thornton, kindly Wars of the ancient Greeks I Victor Davis Hanson ; John Keegan, general editor.
    [Show full text]
  • Ideals and Pragmatism in Greek Military Thought 490-338 Bc
    Roel Konijnendijk IDEALS AND PRAGMATISM IN GREEK MILITARY THOUGHT 490-338 BC PhD Thesis – Ancient History – UCL I, Roel Konijnendijk, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Thesis Abstract This thesis examines the principles that defined the military thinking of the Classical Greek city-states. Its focus is on tactical thought: Greek conceptions of the means, methods, and purpose of engaging the enemy in battle. Through an analysis of historical accounts of battles and campaigns, accompanied by a parallel study of surviving military treatises from the period, it draws a new picture of the tactical options that were available, and of the ideals that lay behind them. It has long been argued that Greek tactics were deliberately primitive, restricted by conventions that prescribed the correct way to fight a battle and limited the extent to which victory could be exploited. Recent reinterpretations of the nature of Greek warfare cast doubt on this view, prompting a reassessment of tactical thought – a subject that revisionist scholars have not yet treated in detail. This study shows that practically all the assumptions of the traditional model are wrong. Tactical thought was constrained chiefly by the extreme vulnerability of the hoplite phalanx, its total lack of training, and the general’s limited capacity for command and control on the battlefield. Greek commanders, however, did not let any moral rules get in the way of possible solutions to these problems. Battle was meant to create an opportunity for the wholesale destruction of the enemy, and any available means were deployed towards that goal.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Reading Athenaios' Epigraphical Hymn to Apollo: Critical Edition And
    Reading Athenaios’ Epigraphical Hymn to Apollo: Critical Edition and Commentaries DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Corey M. Hackworth Graduate Program in Greek and Latin The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Fritz Graf, Advisor Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Carolina López-Ruiz 1 Copyright by Corey M. Hackworth 2015 2 Abstract This dissertation is a study of the Epigraphical Hymn to Apollo that was found at Delphi in 1893, and since attributed to Athenaios. It is believed to have been performed as part of the Athenian Pythaïdes festival in the year 128/7 BCE. After a brief introduction to the hymn, I provide a survey and history of the most important editions of the text. I offer a new critical edition equipped with a detailed apparatus. This is followed by an extended epigraphical commentary which aims to describe the history of, and arguments for and and against, readings of the text as well as proposed supplements and restorations. The guiding principle of this edition is a conservative one—to indicate where there is uncertainty, and to avoid relying on other, similar, texts as a resource for textual restoration. A commentary follows, which traces word usage and history, in an attempt to explore how an audience might have responded to the various choices of vocabulary employed throughout the text. Emphasis is placed on Athenaios’ predilection to utilize new words, as well as words that are non-traditional for Apolline narrative. The commentary considers what role prior word usage (texts) may have played as intertexts, or sources of poetic resonance in the ears of an audience.
    [Show full text]