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Grundy’s views are shared by Gomme and Vidal-Naquet.38 The latter adds that hoplites were onlysuited to phalanx-warfare on a pre-arranged plain,
and that they were incapable ofeffectively pursuing abeaten foe.
While siege warfare will not feature heavily in this dissertation (see chapter four), we willanalyse at least one hoplite army that not only prevailed against native skirmishers in hilly terrain,
but did so while adopting acomplicated formation for the first time in recorded Greek history.
We will also examine the evolution of the hoplite equipment, and how it apparently evolved to emphasize
flexibility and accommodate tactical communications
Konijnendijk offers a more nuanced view on the tactical limitations of Hellenic armies,
and the ireffecton communications: he claims that while the capabilities of Greek hoplites seem, at first,completely
inadequate, certain exceptions can be found.
His reasons for generally dismissing Greek tacticalcommunications are the following: for starters, Greek methods of communications were primitive andunderused,
a view shared by Cartledge.39 Instruments, for example, served only to sound the charge andthe retreat.
All else was done through vocal orders, which were only effective when armies were properly
sub-divided. Greek militias, however, lacked this kind of organization.
The lochos was the smallestmilitary unit of the wider Greek world,and usually contained several hundreds of men. The best theGreeks could do was shout at each other, and pass orders from man to man.
He further argues that armysizes, battlefield length, ambient noise, and natural obstacles would have further impeded oral
communication. In addition, Greek soldiers were generally untrained, and generals, again, often fought inthe front ranks.
He further states that units in coalition armies would sometimes disobey orders, a fact stressed by Kromayer and Veith (1928, 83–84) and reiterated by Pritchett (1974, 190,207)
Hanson and Rawlings Insubordination, enmity, and rivalry seems to have been one of the corereasons why Greek tactical communications could fail, as we will examine briefly in chapter two,
and more indepth in chapter three on ijnendijk, however, nuances his work and mentions several battles where militarycommanders successfully issued mid-battle orders
He then examines the reasons why some commanders could apparently lead their men while others could not and argues that most of the cited
examples involve Spartans, or mercenary armies trained in the Spartan manner.
He also states that theSpartans were the only ones to attempt large scale orders, while other Greeks would simply issue theirmid-battle commands to smaller picked units.
He concludes by claiming that only small groups ofspecialist hoplites could hope to match the Spartans’ level of tactical flexibility, and that a force had tomeet one or more criteria in order to be able to follow mid-battle orders:
1) they needed to be well-trained, 2) well-organized,
3) or under the general’s immediate control. Greek levies, on the other hand, were unreliable and impossible to command.
It is true that the fourth century BC offers more possibilities, particularly thanks to the works of Aeneas Tacticus and the later works of Xenophon,
but this dissertation will examinethe fifth century exclusively, and more specifically its later half.
This foray into Greek military communications is made possible thanks to the efforts of manyhistorians whose work on ancient military intelligence have shed light on an otherwise nebulous subject.
Rankov and Austin’s Exploratio (1995) was written, in part, to address the fact that no one had previously
granted the topic adequate attention,asentimentunfortunately echoed by ancient authors such asPolybius The reasons for this neglect are manifold.
Firstly, our literary and physical sources are too scarce toallow for extensive research and a thriving scholarship.
Ancientauthorshave an unfortunate habit o oversimplifying, or downright neglecting, their descriptions of militaryintelligenceandcommunications.It would seem that Roman authors did so to render the descriptionofcomplexcampaigns understandableto their readers.7
The same, however, may not be true of the Hellenic world in the Classical age. MostofThucydides and Xenophon’s readers would have had some military experience of their own,
and it seemsreasonable to assume that the disparity in knowledge and experience between these two authors andtheir public would not have been as great as, for example, between Caesar and his audience.
Ergo, one cannot be certain whether Greek authors did not expand upon intelligence and communication in aneffort to accommodate their readership, or simply decided to omit material they would have been familiarwith, though the latter seems more likely.
In addition, it must be noted that more work has been done on Roman military intelligence than onGreek. Scholars such as Everett Wheeler, Frank Russell, Rankov and Austin have all stressed that theRoman world has more to offer to a prospective researcher than the Hellenic,
at least as far as intelligence
and communications are concerned.9 Wheeler, Rankov and Austin point especially to a large disparity ofwritten sources from the hands of experienced men.
Roman historians can fall back on the works ofCaesar, Tacitus, Dio Cassius and Ammianus Marcellinus among others.
All these men either had militaryexperience of their own, or were otherwise closely linked to the intelligence services of their day.
To this,the Hellenic historian can only oppose Thucydides and Xenophon, at least for the fifth century BC.
Bothof these men certainly had military experience, but this does not mean they had access or insight into themethods of communication of every Greek city-state: for instance,
an Athenian exile like Thucydides maynot have been privy to the workings of the spy network of Syracuse.10 Furthermore, while Xenophon hada long career and spent much of his days following arenownedkingofSparta,
Thucydides’ own careerwas cut short. Their insight remains invaluable, but the disparity in information between the Greek andRoman world cannot be denied
Therefore, failure cannot be taken to mean absence or neglect; further, it may not evenmean utter incompetence, since counteri ntelligence and deception measures were
prevalent among the Greeks.
He does agree that the Hellenes appear to have taken a keener interest in reconnaissance in the
fourth century compared to the fifth, though he notes that this could be a false impression created by oursurviving sources.
Russell also lists the many other methods through which Greek generals, or poleis, could gatherintelligence for their campaignsWhile many of these practices fall short of what wewould consider a sproper military intelligence gathering
,they nevertheless enabled the Greeks to operate with dependable knowledge on their enemies.
These tools included tactical, strategic, and covert methods that could help a general see ‘beyond the hill’,
‘beyond the border’ and ‘beyond the pale’ respectively, as Russell puts it.In the first category we find: reconnaissance agents,
who could take the form of light infantry or cavalry or a mixture of both; surveillance agents, both at night and day, though some commanders couldneglect the latter; pickets, whether in camp or in a polis;patrols; diviners; captives, ranging from enemysoldiers to local civilians who could actasguidesdeserters, who could sometimes be sent as a ruse to confuse the enemy and mercenaries previouslyemployed by the enemy.
The second category included: envoys, who could report on the general state of affairs of a polis,though the military information they could gather was limited; heralds, who went back and forth between armies and could report on what they had seen; proxenoi, who represented the interests of a foreignpeople in their polis, and could provide their clients with informationregardingtheircountrymen; allies,who often shared information with their friends;
and other miscellaneous sources of information suchas merchants, or other wanderers such as runaway slaves who could report about the lay of the land or thegeneral state of a affairs from where they came.
The third category involves spies in their many forms and isunsurprisingly difficult to surmise uponowing to the sparsity of our sources.Greek kataskopoi could range from false deserters, to prostitutes, to infiltrated citizens in a foreign city.
This topic has been analyzed in detail by LuisLosada, who argues thattreasonous activities by fifth columns were very common during the Peloponnesian War,
and possibly even earlier than that.He further adds that the many different spying and counter–spying techniques that have survived in our sources imply that military intelligence was more important in Greek warfarethan what was accepted in Losada’s dayThis dissertation will not aim to add more to the subject of intelligence gathering.
We will instead largely adopt Russel’s views and examine how strategic intelligence supplied by allied states and rebelli ousslaves could influence the course of a campaign
Furthermore, Russel’s belief that failuredoes not equate to incompetence will also influencehowweratetheeffectiveness, or lack thereof, of Greek communications
Fire-signalsFire-signals were used mostly, perhaps exclusively, during war possibly as far back as the mythicaltimes of Homer.
The Hellenistic historian Polybius claimed that Greek fire-signalling methods prior tothe introduction of his own improved system were primitive and incapable of delivering anything otherthan pre-arranged messages.
This view sometimes re-emerge sin modern scholarship, butseveralhistorians note that Polybius’ harsh views may have been exaggerated
This dissertation willgo against Polybius,anddemonstratethatcomplexmessagescouldbeconveyed viafire-signals as earlyas the fifth century BC.
We will also examine how Brasidas’ famous use of
the hollow square was mimicked by the
Athenians and the Ten Thousand, and what those three instances can tell us about Greek tactical communications Lysander will not be featured in this dissertation, as naval communications fall outside of its purview.
These largely pessimistic views concerning the limits of Greek generalship have been maintained for decades.
They are often mentioned in passing in works not wholly concerned with generalship, and are usually held as self evident.
More recently, Roel Konijnendijk has offered a more nuanced approach thanthe ones outlined above, and proposed that Greek leaders did not choose to fight because they could nototherwise lead,
but rather than they could not otherwise lead because they often chose to fightThiimportant distinction implies that a Greek leader may have been able to command his men,
if he but chose to do so.The most outspoken scholar against the ‘front-line general’, however, is Everett Wheeler who stresses
that our sources do not provide enough information to maintain whathedubstheopinicommunis.
Hebelieves that Greek leaders would often position themselves deeper within the phalanx, or even at therear lines.
Hanson dismisses any examination of the role and position of the general as ‘academicquibbling’, but Wheeler’s work raises important questions that should at the very least temper the idea
that the Hellenes saw no point in battle-managers.
He claims that a significant number of Classical
generals took mid-battle actions that would have been impossible for anyone stationed at the front, citingthe cases of Myronides,
Daphnaeus,Pagondas,Alcibiades, and Agis. He also adds that manystrategoi lost their lives during routs or pursuits, when order had broken down.
This would suggest thatthe death toll among generals in no way confirms their presence at the front, since any semblance oforder would have been lost when they fell.
This dissertation will adopt Wheeler’s view and examine how a general stationed deeper within hisphalanx might communicate with his men via vocal orders and messengers
We willexamine Myronides, Pagondas and Agis, but not Alcibiades or Daphnaeus: the latter tells us nothing that
Myronides cannot teach us on his own, while the former is not as important
as other cases omitted byWheeler, such as Brasidas, Lamachus, Lykophron, Xenophon,NiciasandDemosthene and 3Wheeler’s theory will also be linked with Hans
van Wees’ own hypothesis that Hellenic generals of theearly fifth century were sometimes accompanied by their attendants.
Tactical flexibility of hoplite armiesApart from our examination on the limits of Greek generalship,
this dissertation will also touch uponthe tactical limitations of Greek armies as a whole. The backbone of most city-state armies was the hoplitespearman, a form of heavy infantryman often seen asclumsy,amateurish, and unsuited
to the terrain of
mainland Greece. While this dissertation will not argue in support of a highly trained and efficienthoplite,wewillnevertheless demonstrate how his tactical flexibility,
and thus his ability to follow orders,may have been underestimated.Grundy identifies two alleged paradoxes of Greek warfare.
Firstly, he points to the apparent absurdityof favouring heavily armoured infantry over skirmishers in a land where some four
fifths of the country is
rugged.Hecitesthedestruction of an Athenian army in Aetolia, and a Spartan company in Sphacteria asevidence.
Secondly, he stresses that Greek hoplites, especially Spartans, were poor siege experts,despite the fact that acropoleis were so pevalent.
Both of the sparadoxes havemorerecentlybeensupported by Ober, and re-emerge quite frequently i
n modern former was a better strategist and tactician than comm only accepted,
followig Woodhouse’s arguments concerning the first battle of Mantinea
Intelligence gathering
Since the transmission of orders is part of what we call military intelligence, this dissertation will
inevitably touch upon the wider topic as well.
Our focus,however, willspecificallybethetransmission oforders. We will not be focusing on how a city might gather information on her rival, or how a generalmight scout ahead of his troops,
though both these issues will play some role in chapter 5 ). Inshort, we will not so much look at how the information was gathered,
but how it wasdiffused andhoweffectivethetransmission was.62Unlike what we will argue for in this dissertation, many historians today would agree that theGreeks largely neglected military intelligence in the fifth century BC.63
This view is perhaps bestexemplified by Kendrick Pritchett, who claims that marching Greek armies did not employ scouts before
the fourth century.
His two main arguments in support of this view are the following: firstly, our sourcesare full of intelligence failures that presumably would have been prevented if scouts were present.
Henotably cites the case of Agis I at the battle of Mantinea where Thucydides alleges the Spartans were
surprised to suddenly encounter the Argive army in front of them .Secondly, he notes that there is nothing in our sources that could be qualified as a proper scout.67
Frank Russell disagrees.
Though he concedes that not all Greek generals of the fifth century were
mindful of intelligence,68 he believes that Pritchett’sdefinition of a scout is not in accordance with eitherancient or modern practices.
Cleon’s scouting of Amphipolis for example, is seen by Pritchett asevidence of the absence of scouts, since a large portion of the army was involved in the operation,
but Russell notes that it is simply a reconnaissance in force,71 much like what the Syracusans would do withtheir cavalry at Catana.
Reconnaissance, in one way or another, is attested in the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Furthermore, Russell notes that intelligence failure does not equate to an absence of intelligence, nor even to incompetence.
An intelligence failure does not necessarily indicate a lack of intelligence resources. Should
one operate on this assumption, one must conclude that Lee neglected reconnaissance
[…] prior to and at Gettysburg […] instead, one must ask why Stuart failed to apprise himof Meade’s advance. […].
To return to the Greeks, Alexander was obviously ignorant ofDarius’ movements before Issus yet was not by any means
