Abstract
Studies of Archaic Greek warfare have unerringly focused on the heavily armed ‘hoplite’ warrior who, according to ‘orthodox’ scholarship, fought in close-order phalanx formation. Lloyd builds upon the ‘unorthodox’ scholarship of the last few decades that has risen to dismantle the evidential basis for this orthodoxy in order to construct a better understanding of the regional variety and change in Archaic Greek warfare. He shows how the period’s literature, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as lyric poets such as Archilochus and Tyrtaeus, and archaeology, including Greek vase painting, show that ambush and smaller-scale warfare were more prominent than has traditionally been acknowledged. Lloyd argues that Greek warfare was varied and dynamic, not the origin of a moralistic ‘Western Way of War’.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization, (Oxford, 1996), 75–81. On the historical context of anthropology connecting primitive and guerrilla warfare, see Keith Otterbein, ‘A History of Research on Warfare in Anthropology’, American Anthropology 101 (1999): 799.
- 2.
See especially Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Oxford, 1989).
- 3.
Paros Museum, B 3523.
- 4.
Paros Museum, B 3524.
- 5.
Photini Zaphiropoulou, ‘Geometric Battle Scenes on Vases from Paros’, in Pictorial Pursuits: Figurative Painting on Mycenaean and Geometric Pottery. Papers from two seminars at the Swedish Institute at Athens in 1999 and 2001, eds. Eva Rystedt and Berit Wells (Stockholm, 2006), 271–277, 276–277.
- 6.
Hanson, Western War, esp. 27–39.
- 7.
For example the ‘Amathus Bowl’ (British Museum 123053), a Cypro-Phoenician silver bowl from Cyprus, is described as ‘the earliest depiction of a hoplite phalanx’, by Nino Luraghi, ‘Traders, Pirates, Warriors: The Proto-History of Greek Mercenary Soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean’, Phoenix 60 (2006): 21–47, 37.
- 8.
Casey Dué and Mary Ebbott, Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary. Hellenic Studies 30 (Washington, DC, 2010), especially 4–13 on past Homeric scholarship on Iliad 10.
- 9.
Helen’s story: Odyssey 4.240–258; Menelaus’ story: Odyssey 4 265–289; the ambush of the Suitors: Odyssey 22.1–389.
- 10.
On the ‘fixing’ of Homer see Ian Morris, ‘The Use and Abuse of Homer’, in Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad, ed. D.L. Cairns (Oxford, 2001), 57–91; for a summary of the adoption of the Greek alphabet see Jonathan Hall, A History of the Archaic Greek World ca. 1200–479 BCE (2nd edn, Oxford, 2014), 56–59.
- 11.
Gregory Nagy, ‘An Evolutionary Model for the Making of Homeric Poetry: Comparative Perspectives’, in The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermule, eds J.B. Carter and S.P. Morris (Austin, 1995), 163–179; Anthony Snodgrass, Homer and the Artists. Text and Picture in Early Greece. (Cambridge, 1998).
- 12.
Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 3–30 covers the history of the ‘Homeric question’ in detail, including their own approach.
- 13.
Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 34–35, 80.
- 14.
See, for example: Hilda L. Lorimer, ‘The Hoplite Phalanx with special reference to the poems of Archilochus and Tyrtaeus’, Annual of the British School at Athens 42 (1947): 76–138; Hanson, Western War; Victor Davis Hanson, The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization (2nd edn, London, 1999); Victor Davis Hanson, ‘The Hoplite Narrative’, in Men of Bronze. Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece, eds Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano (Princeton, NJ, 2013), 256–275.
- 15.
Anthony Snodgrass, ‘The Hoplite Reform and History’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 85 (1965): 110–122; reiterated in Anthony Snodgrass, ‘Setting the Frame Chronologically’, in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 85–94.
- 16.
Unorthodox viewpoints: Peter Krentz, ‘The Nature of Hoplite Battle’, Classical Antiquity 4 (1985): 50–61; Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, (London, 2004).
- 17.
Herodotus 7.9b.2; translated by Robin Waterfield (Oxford, 1998).
- 18.
For example: Hanson, Western War, 9–10; Hall, Archaic Greek World, 165.
- 19.
On Mardonius speech, see Roel Konijnendijk, ‘Mardonius’ Senseless Greeks’, Classical Quarterly 67 (forthcoming 2017); against the notion of Greek ‘rules of war’ see Peter Krentz, ‘Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn’, Hesperia 71: 23–39.
- 20.
Aristotle, Politics, 1297b, 16–18.
- 21.
Gregory F. Viggiano, ‘The Hoplite Revolution and the Rise of the Polis’, in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 112–133, 113.
- 22.
Hans van Wees, ‘Farmers and Hoplites: Models of Historical Development’ in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 222–255, 242.
- 23.
J.J. Brouwers, ‘From Horsemen to Hoplites. Some Remarks on Archaic Greek Warfare’, Babesch – Bulletin Antieke Beschaving 82 (2007): 305–319.
- 24.
Fernando Echeverría, ‘Hoplite and Phalanx in Archaic and Classical Greece: A Reassessment’, Classical Philology 107 (2012), 291–318, 292–303.
- 25.
Diodorus 15.44.3; J.F. Lazenby and David Whitehead, ‘The myth of the hoplite’s hoplon’, Classical Quarterly 46 (1996), 27–33.
- 26.
Tyrtaeus Fr. 19 West.
- 27.
Echeverría, ‘Hoplite and Phalanx’, 303–313.
- 28.
Lin Foxhall, ‘Can We See the “Hoplite Revolution” on the Ground? Archaeological Landscapes, Material Culture, and Social Status in Early Greece’, in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 194–221.
- 29.
The orthodox understanding of Mycenaean agriculture: Hanson, Other Greeks, 27–35; against which: Lin Foxhall, ‘Bronze to Iron: Agricultural systems and political structures in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece’, Annual of the British School at Athens 90 (1995): 239–250.
- 30.
Stephen O’Brien, ‘Achilles and the anthropologists: States, non-states, and military organisation in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Aegean’, paper given at The Phalanx and Beyond: Ways Forward in the Study of Greek Warfare, London, UK, 25th April 2014.
- 31.
Viggiano, ‘The Hoplite Revolution’, 126.
- 32.
For ‘gentleman farmers’ see van Wees, ‘Farmers and Hoplites’, especially 236–240 on the Archaic Period generally, and 240–45 on the development of the ‘hoplite phalanx’ and the light-armed as ‘retainers’; for the light-armed using the shields of the heavy-armed, see Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 173–74.
- 33.
While these themes permeate all of Hanson’s writing, of particular importance are Hanson, Other Greeks on agriculture throughout, on the Mycenaean Palaces 27–35, and on ‘Western’ ideals 403–04; Hanson, Western War, on pitched battles. Hanson is also the only ancient historian of whom I know to have an article entirely devoted to exposing the ideological underpinnings of his work: Francisco Javier Gonzáles Garcia and Pedro Lópes Barja de Quiroga, ‘Neocon Greece: V.D. Hanson’s War on History’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 19: 129–151.
- 34.
John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London, 1994), 332–33 shows the contrast between ‘primitive’ warfare and the ‘hoplite phalanx’, with Hanson’s influence openly cited.
- 35.
Ian Morris, War: What is it Good For? The Role of Conflict in Civilisation, from Primates to Robots (London, 2014), 64–111 challenges the idea that ‘the Western way of war’ is particularly ‘Western’.
- 36.
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, ‘The Mediterranean and “the New Thalassology”’, in The American Historical Review 111 (2006): 722–740.
- 37.
Kurt A. Raaflaub, ‘Early Greek Infantry Fighting in a Mediterranean Context’, in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 95–111; Hans van Wees, ‘The Other Hoplites, or: what’s so special about Greek heavy infantry?’, paper given at The Phalanx and Beyond: Ways Forward in the Study of Greek Warfare, London, UK, 25th April 2014.
- 38.
Colin Renfrew, ‘Introduction: peer polity interaction and socio-political change’, in Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change, eds Colin Renfrew and J.F. Cherry, (Cambridge, 1986), 1–18.
- 39.
Hall, Archaic Greek World, 6.
- 40.
Plutarch, Theseus 5.1–4; Archilochus Fr. 3 West; translated by M.L. West (Oxford, 1993). West translates douriklutoi, ‘spear-famed’, as ‘doughty’, to convey that the epithet is not necessarily to be taken literally.
- 41.
The date of Archilochus is derived from the description of a solar eclipse in Archilochus Fr. 122 West, which has been dated to 6 April 648 bce. On Archilochus as evidence for the decline of the bow, see Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 114–121; On Archilochus as evidence for Euboean hand-to-hand fighting see Walter Donlan, ‘Archilochus, Strabo and the Lelantine War’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 101 (1970): 131–142; meanwhile Hall, Archaic Greek World, 1–7 is essential on the ‘Lelantine War’. Zaphiropoulou, ‘Geometric Battle Scenes’, 276 suggests that this fragment describes the same scene as Paros Museum B 3524.
- 42.
On Tyrtaeus and the selective preservation of lyric poetry, see Hans van Wees, ‘The development of the hoplite phalanx: Iconography and reality in the seventh century’, in War and Violence in Ancient Greece, ed. Hans van Wees, (London, 2000), 125–166, 149; Hall, Archaic Greek World, 176–178.
- 43.
Van Wees, ‘Iconography and reality’, 152–54.
- 44.
Hall, Archaic Greek World, 170.
- 45.
Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 80–83.
- 46.
For example: Van Wees, ‘Iconography and reality’, 134–39.
- 47.
Fragments of a wall painting from the seventh-century Temple of Apollo at Kalapodi have been reconstructed as a similar scene to that on the Chigi Olpe, but this reconstruction is based on the Chigi Olpe itself: W.D. Niemeier, B. Niemeier, and A. Brysbaert, ‘The Olpe Chigi and new evidence for early archaic Greek wall-painting from the oracle sanctuary of Apollo at Abai (Kalapodi)’, in E. Muglione and A. Benincasa (eds) L’Olpe Chigi: storia di un agalma: atti del Convegno internazionale, Salerno, 3–4 giugno 2010 (Salerno, 2012), 79–86.
- 48.
Rout and pursuit: the Macmillan aryballos (British Museum 1889.4-18.1) in Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 104–05 or Van Wees, ‘Iconography and reality’, 142. Dense formation: the Berlin Aryballos (Berlin 3773) in Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 84–85 or Van Wees, ‘Iconography and reality’, 140–42.
- 49.
For example an aryballos from Leichaion (Corinth Museum CP-2096).
- 50.
Gudrun Ahlberg, Fighting on Land and Sea in Greek Geometric Art (Stockholm, 1971); Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 166–68.
- 51.
Beazley No. 1001756.
- 52.
Beazley No. 1001740.
- 53.
Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 89.
- 54.
Beazley No. 300496.
- 55.
Chaotic: Louvre E 622; Archers and cavalry: British Museum 1814,0704.491.
- 56.
Mythological scenes: Beazley Nos 300496, 42143, and 201724. Non-mythological scenes of ambush: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 26.60.76.
- 57.
Hanson, ‘The hoplite narrative’, 267; also, Lorimer, ‘Hoplite phalanx’, 128: the shield ‘implies hoplite tactics’.
- 58.
Amphibious conflicts: John R. Hale, ‘Not Patriots, Not Farmers, Not Amateurs: Greek Soldiers of Fortune and the Origins of Hoplite Warfare’, in Kagan and Viggiano, Men of Bronze, 176–193, 189; horseback: Brouwers, ‘Horsemen to hoplites’.
- 59.
Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 34–43.
- 60.
Madeleine M. Henry, ‘The Traffic in Women: From Homer to Hipponax, from War to Commerce’, in Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 bce –200 ce, eds A. Glazebrook and M.M. Henry (Madison, WI, 2011), 14–33, 24.
- 61.
The tradition that book 10 was not originally part of the Iliad, including the ancient precedents, is discussed by Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 3–30, with references; for ambush as ‘un-heroic’ and ‘un-Homeric’ see Malcolm Davies The Greek Epic Cycle (2nd edn, London, 2001), 47, 66–67; Achilles accuses Agamemnon: Iliad 1.225–228; Achilles is successful at ambush: Iliad 9.323–327, 21.34–39, as well as the myth of Troilos.
- 62.
Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 43–49; Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 132–33.
- 63.
For example Beazley Nos 457, 300000 (the François Vase), and 301715.
- 64.
Dué and Ebbott, Iliad 10, 44–45.
- 65.
Lin Foxhall, ‘Gender’, in A Companion to the Archaic Greek World, eds Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees (Hoboken, 2011), 483–507, 484.
- 66.
Henry, ‘Traffic in Women’, 2118–22; rape of Trojan women revenge for Helen: Iliad 2.354–56.
- 67.
For example Iliad 6.289–92, 8.287–91, 22.60–65; Odyssey 4.682–83, 22.421–23, 24.208–12; Henry, ‘Traffic in Women’, especially 25.
- 68.
Beazley Nos. 310170, 201724, and 203900.
- 69.
Beazley Nos. 310314 and 201724.
- 70.
British Museum 1897,0727.2; Beazley No. 310027.
- 71.
Rare: Henk Singor, ‘War and International Relations’ in Raaflaub and van Wees, Archaic Greek World, 585–603, 586–87; the tip of the iceberg: Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 124–26.
- 72.
Iliad 18.509–40; Archilochus Fr. 98 West; The Shield of Herakles, 239–40
- 73.
Anthony Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline (Berkeley, 1987), 36–66.
- 74.
Hall, Archaic Greek World, 160–61; Strabo 8.6.11; Pausanias 2.36.4–5, 3.7.4, 4.8.3. 4.34.9.
- 75.
Rune Frederiksen, Greek City Walls of the Archaic Period 900–480 BC (Oxford, 2011).
- 76.
Raids by sea in the epics: Il. 9.328–29; iconography: Ahlberg, Greek Geometric Art, 25–38; ‘Ionians’ in the Levant: Hale, ‘Not Patriots’, 180–184; Luraghi, ‘Traders, Pirates, Warriors’.
- 77.
Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 1999), 17–21.
- 78.
Van Wees, Greek Warfare, 203–06.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors, Brian Hughes and Fergus Robson, for inviting me to contribute to this volume and for answering the many questions I posed to them. I would also like to thank Roel Konijnendijk for providing me with an advance copy of his forthcoming article in Classical Quarterly. Illustrations of many of the vases referenced in this chapter are available online, either by searching the museum inventory number or vase number in the Beazley Archive (www.beazley.com/pottery). The numeration of lyric fragments is based on the scholarly editions regarded as standard. For Archilochus and Tyrtaeus, the standard is M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci, (2nd edn, Oxford, 1989–92).
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Lloyd, M. (2017). Unorthodox Warfare? Variety and Change in Archaic Greek Warfare (ca. 700–ca. 480 BCE). In: Hughes, B., Robson, F. (eds) Unconventional Warfare from Antiquity to the Present Day. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49526-2_12
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