For twenty years Alexander’s generals and governors fought
over his sprawling empire. Even after the Battle of Ipsus in 301 when the major
successor states emerged, these kingdoms continued to fight each other in the
internal wars of succession. They fought rebellious Greeks and natives, they
attacked lesser powers who struggled to exist between them, and they repelled
invaders from the outside world. A Hellenistic Greek might define ‘peace’ as
merely the short break between wars. War became an endemic part of life in the
Hellenistic world as the populations of Greece, Asia Minor and Syria had to
endure the campaigns of competing rulers. Kings, such as the Seleucids, owed
their royal status to victory in war. They had to be active military leaders
just to maintain their thrones.
The great irony of the Hellenistic Age, at least for this
study, is that although warfare is endemic, and the use of ambush was at its
peak, our sources suddenly dry up. We have no Herodotus, no Thucydides and no
Xenophon to supply our evidence. If the history of Hieronymus of Cardia had
survived, we would have had an eyewitness account of the wars of Alexander’s
successors. At least we have Diodorus and Plutarch who used his works, and with
Polybius, Polyaenus and Frontinus added we can catch an occasional glimpse of
what was going on militarily. What we can say, generally speaking, is that the
tendency towards specialisation and professionalisation that had begun in the
fourth century was enhanced during the Hellenistic period by the new needs of
kings, and the requirements of cities and leagues.
The actual forms of conflict in the Hellenistic Age were
varied, and corresponded to the different goals of warfare. Disputes might lead
to raiding, seizing cattle and other moveable goods, or the burning of farms
and the kidnapping of farmers, women or agricultural slaves. Polis warfare,
too, could take on a whole spectrum of variations including different modes of
local warfare. In this atmosphere, cities and their citizens needed versatility
in their choice of military options. Hellenistic war was not just made up of
large battles such as Raphia, where 140,000 men fought, but also ambushes and
surprise attacks. Indeed, the majority of the Hellenistic male population
experienced warfare not in great tactical battles, but in the form of temporary
raids, incursions into the territory of the enemy, surprise attacks against
cities and occasional street fights. The professionalisation of military units
did not diminish the importance of citizen militias; it simply added a whole
new array of soldiers with varied skills that could be drawn up.
Training
Because warfare in the Hellenistic Age became more
specialised, it required more training of troops. The contrast between the
training of a citizen and that of a mercenary is brought out by the speech of
Polydamos at Sparta in 374. He was quoting Jason of Pherae when he said: ‘…
there are only a few men in each city who train their bodies rigorously. But in
my forces there is not a single man who cannot match me in the capacity for
hard work.’ In some Hellenistic cities they dispensed with the mercenary peltast
of the late Classical Age and replaced him with trained citizenry, who could
play a similar role, but without any of the social and political problems the
use of hired peltasts posed.
Angelos Chaniotis, in his study of Hellenistic warfare,
gives an overview that suggests that military training had a more or less
uniform structure in most areas, ‘the result of mutual interest rather than
common origins’. Chaniotis points out that a clear indicator of the
specialisation of troops is the use of more technical terminology. A wide range
of specific military terms can be seen in Hellenistic literature; some of these
go back to the fourth century but they culminate in the Hellenistic period. The
specific designations for troops beyond the generic designations for the
cavalry, the phalanx of hoplites, light-armed and the fleet reflect the
existence of specific weapons, special training and specialised skills. This
specialisation was not limited to professional armies, but extended also to
citizen armies. Their special skills were sometimes a matter of local
tradition. The Cretans, for example, were famous as archers, the Achaians were
slingers and the Thessalians were cavalrymen. Improvements could be made on
these traditional weapons: for example, a particular type of sling, the
kestros, was invented during the Third Macedonian war.
For many boys, military training started earlier than their
registration as ephebes; it began in the gymnasium, where exercise and physical
conditioning were thought be good training for warfare. The gymnasium was one
of the best-documented institutions of the Hellenistic city. Their training
gives us a hint about what weapons would be used. In a small place such as
Samos, the programme in the gymnasium included prizes for use of the catapult,
use of the lithobolos (an engine used for hurling stones), use of the javelin,
archery and fighting with shield and lance (hoplite battle or hoplomachia) as
well as with small shields of the Galatian type (thyreomachia). The same
selection of disciplines is found in Sestos in Thrace.
After their military training, young men were assigned to
both military and paramilitary duties. We have evidence from Crete that they
performed policing duties, especially in the countryside and they controlled
the frontier of the city. In other cities, we see young men manning the forts
on the frontiers. Similar troops are known from Athens and Asia Minor. In
Athens, the kryptoi (‘the secret ones’) protected the fertile countryside.
There is evidence from Caria of groups of young men serving as mounted ‘patrol
of the mountains’ (orophylakesantes), and as mounted guards assigned to patrol
the borders of Boeotia. These young troops operated on the periphery of the
city and have been defined by some as ‘liminal groups’, not unlike foreign
mercenaries and, therefore, operating outside of the rules of hoplite battle.
We are particularly well informed regarding the Cretan
soldiers who, from the fourth century on, are to be found in almost all armies
of the Mediterranean, often on opposite sides. Even Rome enrolled Cretans.
Examples of ethnic stereotyping occurred because of this specialised training.
Polybius brands the Cretans with the label ‘brigands and pirates’ because of
their raiding abilities. This kind of moralising demonstrates Polybius’
prejudice, but says nothing meaningful about how effective or useful such
troops were, nor how proud they were of their local traditions. We, know for
example, how proud the Arcadians were of their mercenary tradition. Lycomedes,
the Arcadian statesmen, said that the Arcadians were chosen for service
overseas because they were the best fighters with the sturdiest bodies among
the Greek peoples. With the emergence of the widespread use of mercenaries, a
number of peoples achieved their moment of renown thanks to their
specialisation in the use of particular arms: the bow for the Scythians and
Cretans; the sling for the Rhodians; and the javelin for the Aetolians,
Acarnanians and Thracians.
Mercenaries
As we saw in the last chapter, from the beginning of the
fourth century armies already contained significantly higher numbers of light
infantry and cavalry than classical ones had fielded. Peltasts and light-armed
troops remained important throughout the Hellenistic period, but of all the military
developments of the Hellenistic Age the one that has drawn the most attention
is the use of mercenary troops. Although mercenaries are documented from the
earliest period of Greek warfare, the Hellenistic period saw a huge increase in
the number of regions that supplied mercenary soldiers. Greek males had always
been able to travel and seek their fortunes a long way from home. Mercenaries
were initially drawn from remote, poor or mountainous regions – Crete, Achaea,
Thrace, etc. – which is why they were often looked down upon. They were
expected to depend for their keep on the success of the campaigns for which
they had been enlisted. They took part in various battles in the Peloponnesian
war and continued to fight in the service of outside powers such as Egypt or
Persia.
With the campaigns of Alexander, thousands more Greeks had
the opportunity to serve as mercenaries, and this demand only grew under
Alexander’s successors. In fact, mercenaries came not merely to supplement but,
in many areas, to displace the citizen hoplites. Hellenistic kings mobilised
large numbers of these troops in their wars for the division of Alexander’s
empire. The supply of Greek soldiers needing employment thus coincided with
this new intra-Hellenic demand. These same men could later be settled as
veterans in new cities and military colonies. The job of xenologos, or
recruiter of mercenaries, became a lucrative position. The kingdoms that
emerged from this process needed trained military manpower in order to man
garrisons, avert barbarian invasions, control native populations and fight
against other kingdoms.
The mercenary did not become popular among Greek citizens.
The profession was usually portrayed as a miserable one, especially by writers
of Greek comedy who wrote for a settled, urban population. The average citizen
not only scorned the man who had to earn his keep by fighting, but also feared
him since the mercenary was a potential threat to his own existence. Gangs of
mercenaries threatened the Greek poleis in the fourth century. Aeneas Tacticus
reflects the political instability of the times when he warns city authorities
of the danger of arms being smuggled inside the city, which could then be used
by mercenaries and hostile groups of citizens to overthrow the existing order.
This changeover to mercenary troops was deplored by people
such as the Athenian orator Isocrates, who mourned the replacement of a citizen
militia by mercenaries in much the same terms as Machiavelli would later write
about Florence. Aristotle drew an explicit moral contrast between the citizen
hoplite’s preference for death in battle over the disgrace of flight and the
professional mercenary’s preference, despite superior fighting skills, for
saving his skin. On the other hand, in the defence speeches of the fourth
century from Athenian courtrooms, speakers who had served as mercenaries under
Iphicrates in Thrace emphasised how honourable their period of service had
been.
Moralising aside, as long as Hellenistic states continued to
engage in the pursuit of power by force at each other’s expense, they would
increasingly turn to mercenary soldiers who would not only pay for themselves
but also enrich, even temporarily, their employers. True, such soldiers would
not find themselves commemorated for patriotic self-sacrifice if they died in
battle the way that citizen-soldiers had been by the Classical Greek poleis.
Neither would the panoplies of armour taken from the enemy dead be displayed in
the temples of the victors or at a pan-Hellenic sanctuary site in the same way
or in the same spirit as before. Their reputation was not helped by soldiers
sacrilegiously looting religious shrines such as Delphi, or by plays that held
the miles gloriosus up as a stock comic figure.
In one way, Aristotle’s charge was unfair. These new
mercenaries were no more or less ready to risk their lives in battle than
citizens called away from their peacetime occupations. These men were
professional, not only in being full-time soldiers, but also in being more
innovative in military technique than citizen hoplites. Demosthenes’ complaint
against Philip of Macedon that he campaigned all year-round using mercenaries
and cavalry, archers, light-armed infantry and siege engines simply reflects
his nostalgia for a past model that was simply gone. The short campaign
culminating in the pitched battle becomes increasingly replaced by ambushes,
stratagems and sieges of the kind that had existed in the earlier period, but
now they came to the fore.
The important feature of these new mercenaries was that they
were adept at the new mode of fighting. Griffith believes it was this fighting
for which the mercenary was best adapted, especially as the reformed peltast of
Iphicrates had become probably the model for mercenaries in general. Mercenaries
were not merely auxiliaries now, but the exemplary practitioners of a new mode
of fighting. It was not that heavy-armed infantry had become useless, or that
Greek morals had declined, but rather that there were more options for the
kinds of techniques that could be used in warfare, and a rise in the number of
situations where ambush would be appropriate.
Warfare was still regarded as a normal feature of interstate
relations, and risking death in battle was still seen by the young Greek male
as the supreme manifestation of virtue. A young man could still be brought up
to admire the exploits of warriors from the past, but the norms, values and
beliefs that had motivated a citizen-soldier were increasingly unlikely to be
replicated in an environment where military prowess might require different
skills. Greek culture had always accepted lethal violence against fellow Greeks
as normal behaviour. As long as assassinations, civil strife, proscriptions and
executions were commonplace, and the recurrent themes of murder, revenge,
blood-guilt, retribution and even human sacrifice appear as dramatic themes,
why would an ambush be so shocking?
Yet, the moralising continued. Polybius rails against the
Cretans. He accuses them of specialising in ambushes and treachery:
The Cretans both by
land and sea were irresistible in ambuscades, forays, tricks played on the
enemy, night attacks, and all petty operations which require fraud, but they
are cowardly and down-hearted in the massed face-to face charge of an open
battle. It is just the reverse with the Achaeans and Macedonians. I say this in
order that my readers may not refuse to trust my judgement, because in some
cases I make contrary pronouncements regarding the conduct of the same men even
when engaged in pursuits of a like nature.
All these activities were the regular ones of light-armed
soldiers. Ambush was exactly what these soldiers were solicited for and
everyone was buying their services. The Cretan cities were the objects of
frantic solicitations on the part of the Hellenistic sovereigns and many other
cities, in particular Rhodes. Rhodes sent ambassadors to the island of Crete to
conclude treaties of alliance with individual cities or groups of them. The
treaties were aimed principally at ensuring stable supplies of troops for the
powers of the Hellenistic world.
