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.