Classical Greek Tactics Mnemosyne Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity
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Classical Greek Tactics Mnemosyne Supplements history and archaeology of classical antiquity Series Editor Hans van Wees (University College London) Associate Editors Jan Paul Crielaard (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Benet Salway (University College London) volume 409 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mns-haca Classical Greek Tactics A Cultural History By Roel Konijnendijk leiden | boston Cover illustration: Grave relief of Dexileos, son of Lysanias, of Thorikos (Ca. 390 bc), Archaeological Museum of Kerameikos (Athens). Photo by Tilemahos Efthimiadis. cc Attribution 2.0 Generic (cc by 2.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017035551 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2352-8656 isbn 978-90-04-35536-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-35557-6 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Style viii Introduction 1 1 The Prussian Model of Hoplite Battle 6 The Traditional View of Tactics 6 The Prussians 7 The English 12 The Americans 17 The Case of Leuktra 24 The Theories 25 The Basics 29 The Problem 34 2 ‘Improvisers in Soldiering’: Training for War 39 The Question 39 Good Order 42 Skill at Arms 58 3 ‘The Finest, Flattest Piece of Land’: Where to Fight 72 Traditions 72 Practice 79 Theory 91 4 ‘Deployed to Fit the Need’: Forming Up for Battle 95 Worthless Hoplites 95 Ways to Deploy 107 Positions of Honour 116 The Depth of the Line 126 5 ‘Utterly Outmatched in Skill’: Battle Tactics 139 Controlling Battle 139 The Tools of the Tactician 153 How to Win 162 Theory 173 vi contents 6 ‘No Shortage of People to Kill’: The Rout and Its Aftermath 178 Fight or Flight 178 A Divine Gift 188 Last Rites 206 Conclusion 216 The Context of Tactical Thought 216 A New Model of Hoplite Battle 218 The Greek Way of War 224 Works Cited 229 Index of Passages Cited 243 General Index 253 Acknowledgements At the age of about seventeen, as an undergraduate student at Leiden Univer- sity, I began to wonder what it was the Greeks actually did in war. After that, things may have gotten slightly out of hand. This book has grown out of a PhD thesis; it could not have done so without the sage advice, invaluable comments, and personal and professional encour- agement of my supervisor, Hans van Wees, and my examiners, Simon Horn- blower and Peter Krentz. It also could not have done so without the award and generous extension of an ihr Past & Present Junior Research Fellowship, which has given me the time and resources to complete it. Too many people have had a share in shaping my thoughts and my work for me to name them all. This book is in part my reply to Henk Singor, who once said simply, ‘show me what it was like’. It is the product of countless discussions with scholars far better than me. Special thanks are due to those who have given me opportunities to present, discuss, develop, publish, and teach parts of this work: Manuela Dal Borgo, Geoff Lee, Ted Lendon, Robin Osborne, Giorgia Proi- etti, Nick Sekunda, and especially Christy Constantakopoulou, whose support is a wonderful thing to have. To my friends and my fellow Fellows at Senate House—thank you. With everything I write on ancient warfare, I am indebted to the hive mind, for its knowledge, critical comments and encouragement: Josho Brouwers, Joshua R. Hall, Cezary Kucewicz, Matthew Lloyd, and Owen Rees. For sticking with me through the process, I am grateful to those closest: Jennifer Hicks, Tim Lunardoni, and as always, Miriam Groen-Vallinga, whose image of me I hope some day to live up to. Finally, my thanks are due to Eri, for whom no words of praise will do. Notes on Style This book is about seeing Greek tactics in context. It is difficult to write on this topic in English—or any other modern language for that matter—without courting anachronism and obfuscating the point. An account that speaks of ‘soldiers’ and ‘battalions’ conjures an image of standing institutions and uni- formed professionals that has no bearing on the practices of the Greeks. I have tried as much as possible to avoid such misleading terms. However, in the con- text of a modern argument, any attempt to write about the Greeks in something resembling their own words is of course fated to fall short. On the one hand, it is easy enough to steer clear of modern equivalent names for ancient ranks and units, but on the other hand, an effort to avoid essential terms like ‘officer’ or ‘infantry’ would lead to strange contortions that distract from the argument. Besides, exactly which terms elicit anachronistic associations depends on the reader. Compromises are inevitable; no term is without its problems. In some places I have resorted to simply transliterating the Greek, in the hope that this will not appear facile or pedantic. In what follows, all dates cited are bc unless they refer to modern scholar- ship. All translations of Greek are by the author, usually adapted from those of the Loeb Classical Library. All passages from modern scholarship in languages other than English have been translated by the author. In the transliteration of Greek names, I have been, to borrow a phrase from G.B. Grundy, ‘consistently inconsistent’. I have tried to stick to Hellenised spelling as much as possible (hence ‘Lakedaimonians’, ‘Sokrates’, ‘Delion’), but yielded to Latinised forms in cases where the Greek now sounds very strange (such as ‘Thucydides’ and ‘Plutarch’). Stubbornly, I have followed this convention in my references to ancient literary sources as well, giving the names of authors and their works in a transliteration of the original Greek wherever possible. My notes will refer, for instance, to ‘Ain. Takt.’ for Aineias Taktikos, rather than Aeneas Tacticus; they will cite ‘Xen. Lak. Pol.’ for the Lakedaimonion Politeia, rather than the Respub- lica Lacedaemoniorum. The purpose of this has been to strip away unnecessary Latin and Latinisation, and get that tiny bit closer to the Greeks themselves. Introduction After the disastrous battle of Leuktra, little remained of the Spartans’ supreme power. The former hegemonic overlords of Greece were confined to their cor- ner of the Peloponnese, hemmed in by bitter rivals, plagued by a critical short- age of men and money. Still they kept on fighting. Around 366, the Athenian orator Isokrates wrote down how he imagined their prince Archidamos might advise them to wage their war against the world: καὶ τί ἂν εὐξαίμεθα μᾶλλον ἢ λαβεῖν πλησιάζοντας καὶ παρατεταγμένους καὶ περὶ τὰς αὐτὰς δυσχωρίας ἡμῖν ἀντιστρατοπεδεύοντας ἀνθρώπους ἀτάκτους καὶ μιγάδας καὶ πολλοῖς ἄρχουσι χρωμένους; οὐδὲν γὰρ ἂν πολλῆς πραγματείας δεήσειεν, ἀλλὰ ταχέως ἂν αὐτοὺς ἐξαναγκάσαιμεν ἐν τοῖς ἡμετέροις καιροῖς ἀλλὰ μὴ τοῖς αὑτῶν ποιήσασθαι τοὺς κινδύνους. And what better thing could we wish for than to catch them near us, drawn up for battle together and encamped face to face with us on the same difficult ground—a disorderly and mixed-up crowd, following many leaders? For it would not require great effort, but we would quickly force them to risk battle at a moment that suits us and not them. isok. 6.80 These words go against all conventional wisdom on the nature of Greek bat- tle. Until recently, it was universally held that the Greek ideal was for battle to be an ‘agonal’, game-like, ritualised affair. Wars were decided by well-ordered masses of heavily armoured men marching down to a level plain at a prear- ranged time to determine who was the stronger. Isokrates defies this notion in detail. He draws his imagined Spartan audience a picture of a confused and ill-disciplined mob of enemies, drawn into rugged, unfavourable ground, sur- prised and overwhelmed, easily thrown into panic and routed. That, he says, is how they should defeat the rest of Greece: not by engaging their rivals in a fair and open battle, but by seizing every advantage, preying on enemies who are weak and disorganised, and giving them no chance to prepare for the fight. Passages like these have typically been reconciled with the image of limited battle by positing a radical change in military thought and practice somewhere in the course of the Classical period, either provoked by the protracted Pelo- ponnesian War or emerging gradually in the course of the fourth century. In this view, Isokrates’ claims exemplify the brutal, cynical way of war that sup- planted traditional Greek ideals and customs. Yet, all through the historical © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004355576_002 2 introduction accounts and military treatises of the period, we consistently find the same focus on securing advantage, the same hope to catch the enemy by surprise, the same negative assessment of the abilities of cumbersome coalition armies composed of amateur warriors.