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. read the book in manuscript and offered his usual perceptive p. em.- (Smithsonian history of warfare) Includes bibliographical references and index. suggestions. Penny Gardiner superbly supervised the difficult task of ISBN-13: 978-0-06-114208-6. turning a rough manuscript into an illustrated book. 1. Greece-History, Military-To 146 BC.I. Keegan,John, 1934-11. Title. III. All dates are BC unless otherwise noted; I have retained those Series. Latinized forms of Greek nouns that are more familiar to a general DF89.H36 2004 audience. 355'.00938-dc22 2004049101 I owe an enormous debt of gratitude, as do all students of Ancient Manufactured in China, not at government expense Greek history, toW K. Pritchett, whose five volumes on the Greek state 09 08 2 3 4 5 at war, and eight companion books on Greek topography, have Title page: Gold Quiver from Royal Tomb of King Philip II of Macedonia from Verghina 350-340 BC. Detail of warriors fighting. Archaeological Museum, Salonika. prompted a renaissance in the study of Classical warfare. Overleoj Until the early fifth century when this black-figure vase was painted, in theory hoplites wore the full panoply of bronze breastplate, greaves, and Corinthian helmet and on occasion Victor Davis Hanson carried two thrusting spears. Hoplite spearmen dominate black-figure vase-painting, whereas bowmen, skirmishers, and foreigners are less prominent and without heroic idealization. Selma, California October 1997 Front cover: Vase painting. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library. Back cover: Roman floor mosaic portrays Alexander (left) in the battle oflssus (333). Photo: Peter Newark Pictures. Map: Arcadia Editions. Contents Map list 9 A millennium of Greek wars 10 INTRODUCTION: THE GREEK MILITARY LEGACY 12 1 EARLY GREEK FIGHTING (1400-750) 24 2 THE RISE OF THE CITY STATE AND THE INVENTION OF WESTERN WARFARE (7 50-490) 42 3 THE GREAT WARS (490-362) 84 4 THE SECOND MILITARY REVOLUTION (362-336) 142 5 ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE CREATION OF HELLENISTIC WARFARE (335-146) 172 C ONCLUSION: THE HELLENIC LEGACY 208 Glossary 214 Notable Greeks at war 218 Further reading 222 Statistics 226 Index 229 Picture credits 240 KEY TO MAPS Map list 1. General symbols THE COLONIZATION OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BY THE GREEKS 9TH- 6TH CENTURY B 30 X site of battle 2. GREEK BATTLES, 700-168 BC fort or fortified 71 ... settlement 3. THE GREEK STATES AND THE PERSIAN EMPIRE, C. 486 B movement 88 4. MARATHON, PHASE I AND II 92 5. XERXES' INVASION, 480 BC 98 Geographical symbols 6. PLATAEA, PHASE I AND II 104 urban area 7 . THE RJSE OF MACEDONIA 146 - urban area (30 maps) 8. THE ORTIF!ED CJTY OF MESSENE 156 river 9. ALEXANDER's EMPIRE seasonal river 17 6 canal 10. GAUGAMELA, PHASE I 182 • town/city 11. GAUGAMELA, PHASE II 184 internal border ?' 12. GAUGAMELA, PHASE Ill 186 international border A M ILLENI UM OF GR EEK WA RS A Millennium of Greek Wars 1250 Traditional date of the Trojan war 405 Athenian naval defeat at Aegospotami 1200 End of Mycenaean civilization 404 End of Peloponnesian war and defeat of Athens llOQ-800 'Dark Ages' in Greece 401-400 March of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand 725-675 Composition of the Homeric poems 399 Artillery first used on Sicily 730-660 Spartan defeat of Messenia; enslavement of helots 396-395 Spartan king Agesilaus in Asia Minor 750-650 Rise of the Greek city state; appearance of hoplites 395 Death of Lysander at Haliartus 700 Lelantine war between Chalcis and Eretria 394 Spartan victories at Nemea and Coronea 669 Spartan defeat by Argos at Hysiae 390 Destruction of Spartan regiment near Corinth 560 Battle of the Fetters; Tegea defeats Sparta 375 Theban defeat of Sparta at Tegyra 550 Battle of the Champions; Sparta defeats Argos 371 Spartan defeat by Epaminondas at Leuctra 507 Creation of democracy at Athens 370 Epaminondas' first invasion of Sparta, founding of 499-494 Revolts of Ionians against Persia Messene 494 Sparta obliterates the Argives at Sepeia 362 Theban-Spartan standoff at second battle of Mantinea 490 First Persian war, battle of Marathon 339 Victory of Timoleon over the Carthaginians in Sicily 480 Invasion of Xerxes, battles of Thermopylae and Salamis 338 Defeat of allied Greeks at Chaeronea by Philip II 479 Conclusion of Persian wars, battles of Plataea and 336 Death of Philip; ascension of Alexander Mycale 335 Thebes destroyed by Alexander 479-431 Great fifty years of Athenian maritime supremacy 334-323 Campaigns of Alexander the Great in Asia 471 Sparta defeats Arcadians at Dipaea 334 Battle at the Granicus 457 Athenian defeat at Tanagra, but subsequep t victory the 333 Battle of Issus same year over the Boeotians at Oenophyta 331 Battle of Gaugamela 447 Boeotians defeat Athenians at first battle of Coronea 326 Battle at the Hydaspes 440 Successful Athenian siege of island of Samos 323 · Death of Alexander the Great 431 Outbreak of Peloponnesian war 323-281 Wars of the Diadochi (Alexander's Successors) 431-425 Peloponnes!an invasions of Attica 301 Defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus 429 Death of Pericles 280-279 Pyrrhus' invasion of Italy 425 Spartan debacle at Pylos and Sphacteria 217 Ptolemy defeats Antiochus III at Raphia 424 Battle between Thebans and Athenians at Delium 197 Roman victory over Macedonians at Cynoscephalae 418 Spartan victory at first Mantinea 189 Roman final defeat over Antiochus III at Magnesia 415-413 Athenian expedition to Sicily 168 Defeat of Macedonians by Romans at Pydna 415-404 Spartan garrison at Decelea 146 Sack of Corinth, final Roman conquest of Greece IO I I INTRODUCTION The Greek Military Legacy To the Greeks war and peace, spear and staff, and soldier and sage were complementary, never antithetical. Here, a hop lite with fe arsome designs on his shield and shield apron receives advice from an aged learned man in robes. Aeschylus, Demosthenes and Socrates at various times were dressed similarly to both figures on this Attic red-figure pot. THE G R E EK M ILITARY LEGACY I The Greek military legacy the poets Archilochus, Callinus, Alcaeus, even Sappho would be lost without 'ALWAYS EXISTING BY NATURE between every Greek city state', so hoplite shields, bronze armour, an armada fi Plato said of war. Most Greeks agreed: war was about the most of ships, and Lydian chariots. Most important thing we humans do. It was fighting- not philosophy, not Greek gods - Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, literature, not architecture, not vase-painting- that best revealed virtue, Artemis, Ares- were portrayed in either cowardice, skill or ineptitude, civilization or barbarism. For his own song or art as warriors, who as outsized epitaph the dramatist Aeschylus wrote of his one-day experience at hoplites killed or shielded mortals on Marathon -with not a mention of his authorship of the monumental the battlefield. Few, if any, cultures have trilogy, the Oresteia. been so steeped in war as the Classical War and the use of land are the building blocks of Aristotle's Politics city states without becoming as little and Plato's Republic. Both utopias assume that before man can speculate, militarized. contemplate, educate and argue, he must first figure out how to eat and Plato's stepfather, Pericles' son and how to fight. The soldier and the farmer may be forgotten or even Aeschylus' brother were wounded or despised in our own culture, but in the Greek mind agriculture and killed as a result of battle. Melissus, the warfare were central to a workable society, in which both professions were Samian philosopher and student of to be controlled by a rational and egalitarian Parmenides, led his fleet into battle citizenry. There is not a major Greek figure of against Pericles himself, both intellectuals the fifth century - intellectual, literary, knowing something of oarsmanship and political - who did not either own a farm or ramming. Sophocles was somewhere at fight. Very often he did both. sea nearby, as part of the elected high War -'the father of all, ~he king of all', command of Athenians who came to the philosopher Heraclitus' says- for good enslave the island of Samos.