As our foremost and actually most reliable source for the Persian War, Herodotus clearly recognized the significance of the conflict. His great work begins:
Herodotus of Halicarnassus presents this Historia to ensure that the events of mankind should not fade in memory over time and that the great and marvellous deeds performed by Hellenes and Barbarians alike should not go unsung, and, additionally, to explain the cause of the war that they fought against each other. (1.1)
Historia is most accurately translated as ‘enquiry’, ‘research’ or ‘investigation’, not as ‘history’, the word’s later evolution. It was a word used for the activities and writings of the thinkers known as the Presocratics who flourished in the 6th and 5th centuries in the Greek cities on the west coast of Asia. In the words of one of them, Heraclitus of Ephesus, they were ‘enquirers into many things’, which included the nature of the world and its origins, and the causes of natural phenomena. They created the intellectual climate in which Herodotus grew up and his declared mission to explain the cause of the Persian War is characteristic of it. In this and in his chronicling of ‘events ... and great and marvellous deeds’, Herodotus’ main purpose is clearly historical, as the term is understood today, setting him apart from the philosophoi, ‘lovers of wisdom’, of his time and earlier generations, but, in common with them, he also recognizably explored fields such as geography, geology, ethnography and anthropology. Herodotus stood between the archaic oral tradition as faithfully preserved by Homer, and the classical, more recognizably ‘modern’ history-writing of Thucydides (c.460–400) and later Greek and Roman writers.
The phrase ‘great and marvellous deeds’ also evokes the spirit and content of epic narrative, the way previous generations did history, and Herodotus was an expert collector and teller of tales. He was as interested in the mythical and legendary past as in more recent times and living memory, and always looking for causal relationships between the former and the latter. He sees himself, like Homer, singing of heroic deeds and of the men who performed them, but in prose. The same intellectual movement that gave birth to the Presocratics had brought Greek prose writing into being. A succession of logopoioi, ‘makers of accounts’, some of them contemporaries of Herodotus, specialized in creating genealogies and chronologies of important events reaching back from recent times to the ancient pasts of gods and heroes as if they were seamlessly linked. The fragmentary evidence suggests that most of their creations were little more than lists of names and dates or locations, chronologies or itineraries with no literary pretensions. Herodotus most probably made use of some of them but there is no hint of acknowledgement in his text of any such source apart from one reference to the works of Hecataeus (6.137), thought to be the most significant of his prose-writing predecessors. There were almost certainly no written historical narratives in any way comparable to his own to refer to.
In Herodotus’ precise words the great war was between ‘Hellenes and Barbarians’. The names ‘Greece’ and the ‘Greeks’ (Latin Graecia and Graeci) as we understand them, were coined by the conquering Romans, imposing on Hellas and the Hellenes the name of an obscure ethnic group they encountered in the north-west corner of mainland Greece. In this book, ‘Greece’ is used only to mean the mainland landmass and ‘Greek’ to mean the language. Hellenes occupied not only mainland Greece, but also many settlements spread out to the north, south, east and west of it. These 1,000 or so independent city-states that called themselves Hellene had a distinct view of themselves that differentiated them from the rest of their world. Herodotus expresses this concisely in his version of a speech in which the Athenians declare their unshakeable commitment to the Hellene Alliance and the idea of Hellas:
Then, there are the things that make us Hellenes, our shared origins and our language, the shrines of our gods and the sacrificial rites that we have in common, and our very way of life. It would be a terrible thing for Athens to betray all of that. (8.144)
It is worth noting that no claim is made here to a common political system: democracy was not a necessary qualification; at that time most Hellene city-states were not democracies. The four great religious centres of Delphi, Olympia, the Isthmus and Nemea with their regular panhellenic (all-Hellene) athletic festivals provided the only consistent focus for universal Hellene unity. But wars between Hellenes, suspended for the celebration of these festivals, were often resumed afterwards, and historic or mythological differences between communities or regions were frequently manipulated to justify Hellene-on-Hellene aggression. Armed conflict between ‘blood relations’ was a significant facet of the Hellene way of life, together with their special way of war, which was profoundly different from that of the Barbarians.
In the era of Classical Greece, ‘Barbarian’ (barbaros) did not generally carry the sense of ‘barbaric’, ‘uncivilized’ or ‘wild’. The term was simply applied to any non-Hellene, including the Persians and the other races that belonged to their empire and did not speak Greek. The war was between an alliance of Hellenes and the Barbarian Achaemenid Empire, named after the dynasty of Persian kings that established it and ruled over it. Much of the first half of the Historia is devoted to the history of Persia and the only other known contemporary source on the subject was the Persica, written by Ctesias of Cnidus, a Hellene physician in the Persian court, and, judged on surviving fragments, he was an ill-informed lightweight. There are no comparable Persian historical sources so the narrative that has come down through the centuries is inevitably written from a Hellene perspective. However, the image Herodotus builds of Hellas’ greatest enemy is far from negative. He tells us that the Persians valued a man most highly for his courage in battle and, next, for the number of sons he fathered, and that ‘from the age of five to the age of 20 they teach their sons just three things: to ride, to shoot with the bow and to tell the truth’ (1.136). They loved and were known to venerate trees, gardens and rivers. The immense luxury which the Hellenes saw as softness and excess was enjoyed by only a very small, privileged elite. By the standards of the time, the Persians were generally just and tolerant as imperial rulers, even liberal, so long as the absolute power of the Great King, exercised directly or through his representatives, was unequivocally accepted.
Their religion was more highly developed than the Hellenes’ and Herodotus hints at the contrast:
These are the Persian customs I know of: it is not their custom to create and dedicate statues, temples or altars and they actually take the view that it is folly to do so. It seems to me that they do not think, as the Hellenes do, of their gods as taking human form. Their way is to climb to the peaks of mountains and perform sacrifices to Zeus and they call the whole circle of heaven Zeus.1 But they also sacrifice to sun, moon, earth, fire, water and wind. (1.131)
The influence of the faith named after its prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) has been traced in the development of other religions of the Near and Middle East, such as Judaism, and in the philosophical movements that were important precursors of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The basis of Zoroastrianism was belief in one supreme god, Ahura Mazda, standing for goodness and truth and opposed to a supreme evil being, Ahriman. A good person was one who had freely made the choice to follow the former rather than the latter and lived a life of goodness and truth.
Herodotus’ course through the first four of his work’s nine books is quite sinuous as he charts the rise of Persia and the Great Kings, and makes fascinating excursions into lands on the fringes of their fast-growing empire, notably Egypt and Scythia. All this is informative and entertaining, and clearly important to Herodotus as a backdrop to the main narrative of the war, but not part of it. Nonetheless, the first mention of contact between Hellenes and Barbarians comes early in Book 1, and a sequence of episodes spread across the next three books records the Barbarian subjection of the Hellenes of Asia and leads up to their revolt against Persian rule in 499. Along the way Herodotus offers many valuable insights into the most significant differences between Barbarians and Hellenes, their ways of life and worldviews and their ways of fighting wars. The six years of the ‘Ionian Revolt’ take up much of Book 5 and the opening chapters of Book 6, which climaxes with the Marathon campaign. Book 7 covers the ten years between Marathon and Xerxes’ invasion of Greece and concludes with the battle of Thermopylae, Hellas’ Maginot Line moment. Book 8 opens with the sea-battle of Artemisium, actually the other half of the Hellene strategy for the defence of central Greece and fought at the same time as Thermopylae, but it is mostly devoted to Salamis. Book 9 covers the final Hellene victories at Plataea and, on Asian soil, at Mycale.
Hans Delbrück, the 19th-century pioneer of military history, wrote, somewhat patronisingly, that ‘certain portions of Herodotus’ account correspond so closely, it is true, to the nature of the matter (Salamis), that we can well accept them.’ Arnold Gomme (1886–1959), Professor of Ancient Greek at Glasgow University, protested that ‘everyone knows that Herodotus’ narrative of Marathon will not do’. John Lazenby, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, responds to Delbrück, Gomme and all-comers:
This implies that the truth is somehow recoverable without reference to Herodotus, and that we can then compare his account with it. But even though this is impossible, it is of some comfort that Herodotus is as good a source as he is. He was evidently so nearly contemporary with the Persian invasion of Greece that he was able to talk to people who had taken part; he evidently checked their stories against what little other evidence existed, his own observations and each other; and he was evidently a man of wide knowledge, broad sympathies, sound common sense and considerable humour. (The Defence of Greece p.13)
A large part of ‘the nature of the matter’ is authoritatively laid out for us by Herodotus. He was probably born between 490 and 480 in the decade that separated the battles of Marathon and Salamis. The Carian city of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) was on the west coast of Asia and the western fringe of the Persian Empire. Little is known about Herodotus’ life but there is reasonable consensus about the bare bones of it. He was involved in his city’s politics, ending up on the wrong side and being driven into exile on two occasions. His first period of exile was spent on the nearby island of Samos. In the second period from the mid 450s and for the rest of his life, he travelled widely, ranging across the Hellene world and also visiting parts of the Persian Empire. He spent time in Athens and seems to have been well connected there. In the late 440s he became a founder-citizen of Thurii, a Hellene settlement on the southern shore of Italy, and he died there early in the 420s.
Herodotus’ investigative method was to travel widely and seek first-hand recollections by talking to veterans who had been involved in the war as young adults and also to the children or grandchildren or other family connections of older participants. This brought him closer to the events he was setting out to record than any other surviving source except for the tragic playwright Aeschylus. But there were limitations to the scope of the information he could gather. First, there is the inevitable unreliability of eyewitness accounts of battle. Thucydides, who, unlike Herodotus, had experienced combat at first hand, was certainly aware of this, as is clear from his description of a battle fought at night by the doomed Athenians in Sicily in 413:
The Athenians became so disordered and confused that it was difficult to find out exactly what happened. By day, those involved can certainly see things more clearly, but this is far from the full picture and they scarcely know what is going on right alongside them. At night, how could anyone know anything for sure? (History of the Peloponnesian War 7.44)
Secondly, none of the senior Hellene commanders who survived the war would have been alive by the time Herodotus began his research. Pausanias, in his early 20s when commander-in-chief of Hellene land forces in 479, could have been the exception, but he came to his sad, bad end as an enemy of the Spartan people in 470 or a little later. So most of Herodotus’ informants would inevitably have presented much narrower views of events experienced at a less senior level, seen from a local or family perspective, and often coloured by contemporary inter-state rivalry, especially the growing inevitability of collision between Athens and Sparta. Herodotus was clearly aware of the limitations he had to accommodate and is open about the way he handles them in these two general statements:
My principle throughout this work (logos) is that I write down what everyone tells me just as I hear it ... As for me, I have an obligation to pass on what I am told, but I am under absolutely no obligation to believe it all, and this statement applies to my whole work. (2.123, 7.152)
When he has collected differing accounts of events and feels unable to decide which of them is true, he presents the conflicting versions alongside each other, sometimes offering an opinion, sometimes indicating doubt more subtly, and sometimes leaving it to his audience to make up their own mind or accept that the issue cannot be resolved. There is often a sense that Herodotus attached as much value to what people believed and said as to what actually happened, even if the reality was known or strongly suspected to differ from their report. This blurring of what perhaps was not yet seen as a cut and dried distinction can be understood in the context of a society in which spoken word was still the predominant mode of communication. Literature of all kinds was written down and published in a limited fashion, but probably only a minority of the male population was sufficiently literate to read it (illiteracy is thought to have been even more widespread amongst females) and manuscripts could be produced only laboriously and in small quantities. Plays and poetry reached a significantly wider audience in performance and recitation, often before a paying public and in competitions. Works like Herodotus’ Historia and the philosophical and scientific writings of the Presocratics were disseminated in the same way and the authors could make a living from it. Two 3rd-century sources mention that Herodotus was rewarded by the Athenian Council ‘for reading his books to them’ and the second states that the gift was worth ten talents. One talent of silver would pay one day’s wage for approximately 6,000 skilled craftsmen, so the amount is somewhat implausible, but the anecdote gives a sense of Herodotus’ standing in Athens.
Herodotus’ narrative was written primarily for oral delivery, and for entertainment as much as for education. His analyses of political, strategic and tactical issues are usually to be found in the form of speeches put into the mouths of major characters at key moments in his narrative. The exposition of abstract concepts in non-narrative text was then in its infancy (when Plato was not yet born) but Herodotus’ contemporary audiences were accustomed to the communication of complex issues and arguments through the medium of speeches and dialogues in epic poems, in comic and tragic drama, in political and legal rhetoric, and in the presentation of scientific and philosophical theories. The speeches in the Historia may be complete inventions or based on only the finest wisp of handed-down memory, but the issues and arguments are often relevant and credible and show deep insight.
The 6th- or 7th-century ad Greek writer Marcellinus tells a nice story of an encounter between the two greatest historians of ancient Greece:
Thucydides was in the audience when Herodotus was giving a public reading of his Historia and burst into tears as he listened to it. We are told that Herodotus noticed this and remarked to Thucydides’ father, ‘Olorus, your son has a natural disposition for learning’. (Life of Thucydides 54)
Marcellinus is not regarded as a serious historical source but the anecdote may be a true echo of his subject’s admiration for and undoubted indebtedness to Herodotus, and it may reflect his ambition to surpass him. Thucydides was, indeed, superior both in his historical judgement and in his narrative and analytical writing technique; he was more focused and, for him, information took precedence over entertainment. Approximately 25 years younger, he bracketed his predecessors with ‘poets who embellish the past in their chanting’ and ‘those prose chroniclers (logographoi, ‘writers of accounts’) who compose with more concern for attracting an audience than for truth’. He could not have thought of Herodotus as in the former category, but he may have been unjustly dismissing him as a mercenary ‘chronicler’. He does anyway pay him the compliment of beginning his own history at precisely the point Herodotus brings his to an end.
Later generations, even up to the present, have been dismissive of Herodotus for, in their perception, his naivety, his lack of political, strategic and tactical understanding, his bias, his gossipy discursiveness and his uncritical delight in tall tales. These flaws are eminently forgivable in the intellectual and literary context of the middle decades of the 5th century bc, and when fair consideration is given to the quality of so much of the evidence he collected. Inevitably the different identifiable strands of this colossal work, created in a period when genres and academic disciplines were not formally distinguished, are often blurred and entangled. But as source material they are substantial and rich, meriting the writer’s admiration as ‘the father of history’ by Cicero, and certainly much more reliable than implied in his dismissal by Plutarch as ‘the father of lies’. As a historian, Thucydides stood on Herodotus’ shoulders. Herodotus had no comparable support.
Unfortunately, in his accounts of ‘the great and marvellous deeds performed by Hellenes and Barbarians’, Herodotus does not supply a great deal of the ‘granular’ detail needed for a reconstruction of the campaigns and battles that would satisfy a modern military historian. This is largely due to the limitations of the information available to him. A further consideration is that his purpose was as much to celebrate and commemorate as to reconstruct. Moreover, he was addressing audiences in which the great majority had served in an army or fleet, and often done both; they knew far better than he did what it was like to fight as a hoplite on land, or to experience action at sea in a trireme, the oar-driven capital ship that projected Hellene and Barbarian sea-power in the Aegean and Mediterranean. There is no evidence that Herodotus had done either, but he could comfortably rely on his listeners or readers to supply their own detail, probably fully aware of the combat tunnel-vision identified by Thucydides. As for precise questions of topography, manoeuvre and chronology, there were no maps, no instruments for measuring direction or distance, and no clocks. That order of information would not have been available because it never existed. In a paper, first presented in 1920 but still essential reading, On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon and Other Ancient Battles, Noah Whatley writes:
I am afraid that the more I study the subject the more sceptical I become about the possibility of reconstructing the details of these battles and campaigns with any certainty and of discovering what was in the minds of the admirals and generals who conducted them. (Journal of Hellenic Studies 84)
However, he goes on to acknowledge the value of the exercise, which clearly fascinated him, and sets out five sound principles that all engaged in it should apply. These ‘Aids’ include advice on the use of geographical and topographical evidence, a warning against dependence on a priori argument and an endorsement of the process of Sachkritik, of which ‘reality check’ seems a fair translation in this context. Whatley then introduces ‘what I think I may call the Sherlock Holmes method ... a combined use of the three Aids I have previously mentioned together with an ingenious selection of statements from ancient authors of different periods and a subtle interpretation of them’. I prefer to think in terms of a Distressed Jigsaw Puzzle method. It is one of those 1,000-piece monsters, perhaps a detailed old-master landscape, but the cat has been comprehensively sick on the lid of the box and, inside, there are only about 100 random pieces, some of them just bits of sea or sky. One or two of them may possibly fit together, but there is an awful lot of space unfilled in between. Whatley gives excellent advice on the core activity of filling this space, for example, to guard against letting a particular theory govern the selection or rejection of pieces of evidence, and to avoid ‘excessive ingenuity’.
Whatley’s final principle ‘consists in making the most thorough study from all sources of the armies engaged, their strategy and tactics, their weapons and method of using them, their system of recruiting and organization, their officers and staff’. Maybe a statement of the obvious with a hint of anachronism at the end, but if it is accepted that hoplite warfare followed an evolutionary path out of the Archaic period (defined as ending in 480/79), through the 5th century and into the 4th, it is necessary if undertaking ‘this most thorough study’ to approach Herodotus and the other sources with some sense of the stage it had reached in that process at the time of the Persian invasions.
The notes that follow are intended to supply some of the knowledge that Herodotus’ audiences and readers would have brought to the Historia and also to explain some of the assumptions that underlie my interpretation of what the ancient voices are telling us. They may be read now as preparation for the narrative that begins in the next chapter or be dipped into as questions arise, and some readers may not feel the need for them and the granular detail they provide.
Hoplite Warfare
The heavy-armed infantryman had been the main element of the armies of Hellas for generations. The archetypal hoplite wore a bronze helmet, body armour (thorax) and greaves, and carried a large round shield (aspis), a long thrusting spear (doru) and a short sword as a secondary weapon. He is conventionally represented as fighting in a tight, closely ordered phalanx formation that was several ranks deep, eight being most usual, with each man occupying about 1m of space. However, the precise mechanics and techniques of hoplite combat have been and will continue to be energetically debated (see, for example: van Wees, 2004; Schwartz, 2010; Krentz, 2010; Matthew, 2012; and Kagan & Viggiano, 2013). Moreover, a large proportion of the more detailed written evidence that can be cited on the subject of the phalanx, and hoplite tactics and combat techniques dates from the closing decades of the 5th century or later, after decades of evolution in fighting methods brought on by the Peloponnesian War, which took place between Athens and Sparta in the second half of the 5th century, and by Theban and Macedonian innovation in the 4th century. The word phalanx occurs quite often in Homer’s Iliad, in the poet’s descriptions of more ancient methods of war, either of his time, the 7th century, or with some faint reflection of the 13th or 12th century, when the war which was his inspiration probably took place. But the word is used in the general sense of ‘throng’, ‘ranks’ or ‘battle line’ without any connotation of the later more structured hoplite formation. In the context of the first two decades of the 5th century, Herodotus uses the word phalanx only once and then not in its military sense but meaning ‘log’ (of ebony), and he never quantifies the depth of a Hellene battle line. Thucydides does not use the word at all, although he notes various file depths in descriptions of Peloponnesian War battles fought from 427 onwards.
In the literature, mostly Thucydides and Xenophon, covering warfare 50 years and onwards from that time, eight is the depth most frequently recorded, occurring in eight out of the 19 references to file depth, so it is not unreasonable to regard this as fairly common practice in the later decades of the Classical period. But the reappearance of the word phalanx in its precise tactical usage in 4th-century writing should be seen as marking the culmination of a long evolutionary process that was in an earlier stage at the time of the Persian War, a process at times influenced as much by social and political as by strategic and tactical developments. The more detailed image of hoplite warfare presented by sources later than Herodotus cannot be safely back-projected over half a century and more to fill out his sketchier accounts of the battles of the Persian War. Aspects of these accounts are actually at odds with what has been termed the ‘orthodox’ view, although this may be reasonably accurate when applied to combat between two very similar, disciplined, tight formations in the hoplite-against-hoplite battles of parochial Hellene border war. In some of these, a conclusion might be reached and honour satisfied with little bloodshed in a contest that might have seemed to modern eyes to bear more resemblance to a sporting event than warfare. But if this was all the Hellenes were used to and capable of, the Persian army, with its superior mobility and logistical capability, the vast numbers it could muster, and its alien integration of archers and cavalry with all types of close-combat infantry, presented a rather different set of challenges.
The rich contemporary artistic record in vase paintings and sculptural depictions of warriors and battle provides extensive visual information about both sides’ arms and armour, but this too is open to widely differing interpretations. Representations of men in battle give clues about how individual warriors fought, but very rarely any sense of the tactical formations that might have been employed or, indeed, of engagement in mass combat on any scale. Both the nature of the media and convention and limitations of technique restricted the breadth and depth of the artists’ fields of vision. Surviving fragments or whole items of arms and armour complement this evidence. However, in statistical terms, these remains represent a very small sample of what was worn and carried by the tens of thousands of hoplites who fought to turn back the Barbarian invasion, and are almost exclusively restricted to bronze and iron items. Of the wood, fabric and leather, the non-metallic material that was also widely used, there is hardly a trace.
The shield and the spear (aspis and doru) were the defining defensive and offensive weapons of the hoplite for the several centuries of his existence. It seems that part-time citizen soldiers did not require a high level of drill or training to use these weapons effectively in massed ranks at close quarters. In general, physical fitness from manual labour or exercise in the gymnasium, and readiness to stand by one’s kinsmen and neighbours as a matter of honour and civic duty counted for rather more than skill at arms, and the skills of fighting at close quarters with shield, spear and sword were generally regarded as learned by natural instinct and experience. Formation and manoeuvre do not appear to have been drilled or practised in peacetime by any armies, with the probable exception of the Spartans. However, Herodotus does identify individuals who were formally or informally voted to have shown most bravery and been most effective (the verb is aristeuein, ‘to be the bravest and best’) and this suggests that there were phases of combat in which there were opportunities for especially skilled and brave fighters to stand out from the throng, literally as well as metaphorically, like the heroes of the Iliad. So, at the time of the Persian War, massed hoplite combat was a common-sense way of making war. Depth of file would have been mainly determined by length of front, to keep it at least equal to the enemy’s. There seem to have been traditional formulae to settle allied contingents’ stations from right to left, and, generally, the best soldiers, the fittest and best armed, also probably the foremost socially and including the army’s commanders, occupied the front ranks. Within units, individuals probably then found their positions according to family, local and tribal hierarchy and relationships. Once in action, men simply had to follow a few basic rules to keep ranks and files in alignment and to support their comrades to their front and to right and left. There was usually little else in the way of tactical activity, beyond choosing the place to fight, and battlefield communication was minimal, limited almost entirely to simple trumpet calls signalling advance or retreat.
In a conventional hoplite battle, when the sacrificial omens confirmed that the time had come to fight, the two opposing lines generally advanced at a walk to maintain cohesion and alignment. The two lines came together, first at spear’s length and then shield against shield, and fought until one or the other broke under the pressure of the other side’s ‘shoving’ (othismos). What this meant precisely in practical terms is much debated. One interpretation has the front ranks pressed against each other with each man occupying a square metre or so of space with those behind pushing their shields into the backs of the men in front. Another takes a less literal view, interpreting the word more along the lines of ‘thrust’ or ‘big push’ in our contemporary military language. This would allow a more open formation and greater scope for individual spear- and sword-play, but without excluding a lot of pressing together of front-rank shields at the climax of the battle. With everyone very closely jammed together, the spear (pointed at both ends) could only be used with any freedom in overarm thrusts, and striking power with spear or sword would have been greatly reduced by the near-impossibility of moving the feet or pivoting the upper body. And, unless the pressure and resistance between the opposing lines were completely uniform across their length and depth, the formation would seem likely to have quickly become fatally unstable, like a collapsing rugby scrum. However, in some local Hellene border clashes, combat might even have been limited to a ‘push-of-war’, shields against shields, to minimize casualties. In either model, if the broken enemy did not immediately turn and run or call for a truce, the ensuing melee would generally quickly become a bloody rout. In broken formation and in flight, hoplites became much more vulnerable and this was the point where the losers’ casualties tended to be most severe, as in all ancient and medieval warfare. Later in the Historia Herodotus represents Mardonius as ridiculing the limitations and simplicity of the hoplite method of war and as questioning the Hellenes’ ability to adapt to meet the Persian challenge. But, while it was from this simplicity that Hellas drew the strength to resist and finally defeat the world-conquering Barbarian invader on land, there was plenty of evidence from past wars that Hellene armies were not actually so shackled by narrow tactical doctrine. And, as will be seen, they displayed a good deal of flexibility in the face of the challenges presented by the Great King’s armies.
Arms and Armour
Alongside physical fitness, tactical code, such as it was, and the straightforward norms of group behaviour, the heavy shield and spear were the only other constants throughout the hoplite era. Up to about half-way through the 5th century a hoplite’s weapons were generally his personal possessions, not state-issued; they were his qualification for the role, as was the level of personal wealth they represented. Shields, body armour, helmets and swords, if inherited, were part of a man’s wealth. Otherwise he needed to be able to pay the equivalent of many weeks of a craftsman’s wage to acquire his kit. Off-the-peg equipment was at the low end of the price range. Made-to-measure helmet, shield and body armour distinguished the richest and most influential from the rest whilst the lowliest might muster with no more than shield and spear, perhaps an agricultural knife or cleaver, and a felt or leather cap to provide some head protection. Service was a civic duty and unpaid and, according to references in Thucydides and Aristophanes, each hoplite was required to set off on campaign with rations for three days and thereafter was responsible for procuring further supplies for himself, normally paid for in friendly territory. Servants or slaves would generally have done the purchasing or foraging and looting, when required.
The classic shield (aspis) was constructed by gluing a number of wooden planks together to form a disk and shaping this into its shallow bowl-shape by turning it on a rudimentary lathe. Willow or poplar (salicaceous varieties) seem to have been favoured for their capacity to absorb impact without splitting, and sheet bronze was used to add resilience around the rim or over the whole surface, and for decorative effect. Unfortunately, very few examples of the woodwork have survived, but the best shields were probably laminated with the grain running at different angles in successive layers for greater strength. Earlier shields had a central handgrip. The larger kind was supported by a baldric; smaller, lighter shields were held out at arm’s length. The hoplite shield is thought to have weighed in the region of 7kg. It was carried on the left arm by means of a central armband and a leather or cord grip on the inside rim, and was also supported by resting the upper rim on the left shoulder in a side-on fighting stance similar to the present-day boxer’s ‘orthodox’ position. Hoplites therefore did not fight ‘shoulder to shoulder’ in a literal sense, and for the hand-to-hand tactics of the early 5th century it may have been generally less important for shields to touch, let alone interlock, than for the arcs covered by each man’s spear to overlap with those covered by his two immediate neighbours.
The hoplite spear (doru) was 1.8–2.4m long and weighed 1.0–1.5kg. Ash and cornel (a type of dogwood) were preferred for the shaft, which was approximately 2.5cm in diameter but tapered a little from the butt. Some spares were probably taken on campaign and later sources mention that spokeshaves were carried to shape replacements made from foraged timber. The leaf-shaped head was made of iron, sometimes bronze, and 20–30cm in length. The butt was tipped with a metal spike, generally square in section, known as the ‘lizard killer’ (sauroter). Its name and the square punctures found in some cuirass remains may support speculation that it was used as a secondary weapon when the head broke off or the shaft fractured, or for conveniently stabbing down on fallen enemies as the battle line rolled forward. Less dramatically, this spike reinforced the shaft against splitting down its length, counterbalanced the head and added to the weapon’s mass; and it was useful for sticking the spear upright in the ground. The point of balance, where the spear was held in the right hand for action, was nearer the butt than the tip and bindings of twine or leather to improve grip are depicted in vase paintings. Practical experiments have demonstrated that both overarm and underarm thrusts could pierce a shield or body armour but this is undoubtedly easier to achieve in laboratory conditions than in battle and perhaps the extensive literature on this topic places too much emphasis on the possible nature of the ‘kill shot’. Wounding, even if it was not immediately disabling, throwing one’s opponent off-balance or simply forcing him back could all disrupt the enemy formation and, cumulatively, bring on a rout. The ability to drive the spear-point into any area of flesh unprotected by shield or armour may have been more highly valued than the strength and technique required to penetrate a shield or armour with a thrust.
The iconic closed ‘Corinthian’ helmet is the type most associated with the Persian War. This was impressively crafted from a single beaten and burnished sheet of bronze. The metal, ranging from about 1mm in thickness to 3mm over the brow and nose, and its elegant curvature gave good protection to the face and skull at the expense of restricted all-round vision, muffled hearing and minimal ventilation. It is often depicted as pushed back on top of the head to improve vision and hearing, and to provide ventilation when not in close combat. The artistic record strongly suggests that a new generation of lighter, more open helmets had been widely adopted in place of the Corinthian helmet by the early 5th century. The ‘Chalcidian’ type, frequently depicted in vase paintings and sculptures of the period, generally retained the nose-guard of the Corinthian type but exposed more of the face and had openings for the ears with cheek-pieces that were often hinged. A loose parallel can be seen in the way the medieval European ‘great helm’ was superseded by the lighter bascinet.
It is natural to visualise ancient Greece in the smooth tones and textures of marble and bronze, or the limited red-white-black palette of the vase painters. But analysis of traces of pigments and advanced imaging have revealed that marble sculptures were brightly painted to represent a much more colourful world. Helmets, for example, were highly decorated. The decoration may have been applied to a cover of fabric or leather, surfaces more receptive to paint than bronze, or leather or wood could have been used in the helmet’s construction to create a composite alternative. This may explain why very few examples of the Chalcidian type have been found in Greece in contrast to its frequent depiction and the relative profusion of surviving solid-bronze Corinthian helmets.
If wearing body armour, the hoplite’s chest and back were protected by the traditional bronze ‘muscle’ thorax or the more recently developed composite corslet, sometimes referred to as the linothorax (linen corslet). The former was more expensive in terms both of materials and of the craftsmanship involved in working the metal and tailoring it exactly to its owner’s measurement. It is clear from the evidence of vase paintings and sculpture that the composite corslet was widely used in the Persian War and that it had begun to supersede the bronze cuirass a few decades earlier in the 6th century. The base material is thought to have been hardened leather or layers of fabric glued together or a combination of both. Linen was one of the fabrics used but Herodotus’ four references to armour made of it suggest that, as far as the Hellenes were concerned, it was costly and exotic and therefore not for the rank and file. In addition to its relative cheapness, if linen was not used, and ease of manufacture, the composite corslet had other important advantages: at 4–7kg it probably weighed significantly less than the most solid bronze examples; it was cooler to fight in and more comfortable than all but the best-fitting bronze armour; and its flexibility and design probably allowed one size to be adjusted to fit a reasonable range of body measurements. Some illustrations appear to show reinforcement in the form of small metal scales or plates, riveted or sewn on, or sandwiched between layers of leather or fabric as in the medieval brigandine coat. Practical experiments using pre-industrial materials have shown that linen alone, glued in layers, is as resistant to pointed and edged weapons as 2mm bronze plate, and that hardened leather also stands up well. However, although the composite corslet could be as resilient as the best bronze cuirass and could have been significantly lighter and less costly to manufacture, body armour was largely phased out in Hellene armies as the 5th century progressed, along with the closed or semi-closed types of helmet, in an evolution comparable to that in 20th-century tank design with its trade-offs between mobility, protection and striking power.
In his account of the battle of Plataea, Herodotus states more than once that each hoplite was accompanied by one light-armed soldier (psilos machimos; literally ‘bare fighter’), the Spartans by seven. But he hardly mentions the psiloi in his narrative and uses words for the same personnel which can be translated as ‘attendant’, ‘servant’ or ‘baggage-carrier’, reflecting their other support functions, which would have included carrying rations and procuring them. Nevertheless they undoubtedly had a combat role. Helots, the serf underclass of Lacedaemon, who died at Plataea were buried in a tomb that was separately identified and the Helot dead at Thermopylae were said to be mistaken for Spartans by the Persians. In his Guide to Greece, Pausanias, the 2nd-century ad travel-writer, mentions a tomb for the Athenian ‘slaves’ who fought at Marathon, presumably amongst the psiloi, just as some slaves rowed alongside citizens and resident aliens in the Athenian navy. Earlier sources (Homer, Tyrtaeus, Archilochus) picture light-armed mingled with heavy-armed and sheltering under their shields in the battle line. They were most likely used as skirmishers, screening flanks and out in front of the hoplites before the opposing lines engaged. They then fell back to the rear or took shelter in the line to support the hoplites by throwing missiles, perhaps bringing forward replacements for broken spears, carrying back the dead and wounded and even plugging gaps with spear and shield. Their mobility was an asset in the pursuit of a broken enemy and Herodotus mentions that Helots were given the task of gathering up the spoils and stripping the bodies when the battle of Plataea was over. Some of the psiloi may have had light shields of wickerwork or hide, others wrapped cloaks or hides around their left arms. Some had swords or knives, but many probably wielded farm implements or crude cudgels, and there were always stones lying around. Missile ‘specialists’ probably used hunting weapons for the most part. However, by the time of the Peloponnesian War, it appears that light-armed tactics had become more organized and effective with hoplite equipment becoming lighter and less elaborate for greater mobility as a consequence. Thucydides records several instances in which light-armed units, in support of hoplites or on their own, carried out ambushes, flank attacks or assaults on positions, and defeated hoplite units. Herodotus says very little about their contribution, which was probably lesser at this time, just as he underplays the very significant contribution of the same social classes and, at least in 480, the same men as oarsmen. These slaves and serfs were probably almost as well motivated as the poor free citizens they fought or rowed alongside to defend the way of life which they shared.
Persian Arms and Armour
Herodotus describes the Persians in his comprehensive survey of the troops available to Xerxes:
They were equipped in this way: on their heads they wore floppy caps called tiaras and, on their bodies, colourful sleeved tunics plated with small pieces of iron that looked like fish-scales. They had trousers on their legs. Instead of aspides they had wickerwork shields from which their quivers hung; they carried short spears and great bows2 with cane3 arrows, and on their right thighs daggers hung from their belts ... The Persian cavalry were equipped like their infantry, except that some of them wore bronze or iron headgear. (7.61, 84)
The tiara (or kurbasa) was a sort of flapped hood or turban which could be worn open or tied across the face to cover the nose and mouth. Herodotus also uses the word pilos and, again, tiara for another type of Persian headgear, looking rather like that worn by Greek or Russian Orthodox priests. Pilos is also the word for the conical felt, leather or bronze cap worn by hoplites later in the 5th century, and some elite barbarian troops wore plain bronze helmets, less conical in shape. The fish-scale tunics may have been worn by officers or elite troops only, and the scales may have been more decorative than functional. Some vase paintings depict a kind of quilting which may have incorporated metal plates and others show something similar to the hoplite composite corslet, but the artists may never have seen a Persian warrior and have used their imagination and first-hand knowledge of Hellene equipment to interpret eyewitness descriptions. Elsewhere Herodotus emphasizes the Persians’ lack of armour and, very probably, the majority wore no body armour of any kind. But there were two types of shield, the large rectangular spara, similar to the medieval pavise, which could be planted in the ground or held up by shield-bearers as protection for the ranks of archers, and the smaller, more portable variety, crescent, oval or scalloped in shape. Both were generally made of wicker interwoven with hide strips. Light shields amply met the Persians’ defensive needs in most of the wars they fought in Asia.
The bow was the Persians’ primary weapon (like trousers, considered effeminate and dishonourable by traditionally minded Hellenes) and all three types were probably used. The ‘great bow’ identified by Herodotus was probably of the ‘simple’ variety, made from a single piece of wood, and basic issue for the infantry. Mounted archers required a shorter bow which would have been of either the ‘compound’ or the ‘composite’ variety. The former was constructed from two pieces of wood, glued and bound together in a double-convex ‘cupid’s bow’ shape. The latter, shorter still but similar in shape, was constructed by shaping and laminating wood, horn and ox-tendons and its cost probably restricted it to the aristocratic elite. It was more powerful and accurate than the other two types but more skill and strength were needed to handle it. The simple bow was effective against massed troop concentrations at ranges of up to about 150m, especially if they were lightly armed, which was generally the case in Asian wars. A skilled archer with a composite bow could pick off individuals at up to 60m and hit formations at up to about 250m. Bows with their arrows were carried in a distinctive case called the gorytos and for composite bows this seems to have been essential to protect them from weather and other damage. In his Persae, the tragedy celebrating Athens’ glorious victory at Salamis, Aeschylus repeatedly contrasts the bow and the spear. The bow’s symbolic importance in Persian culture is reflected in the depiction of Darius as an archer on the imperial gold coin and in Herodotus’ description of his ritualistic shooting of an arrow in the air as he prayed to the gods for vengeance on the Athenians for their part in the attack on Sardis.
Herodotus states that Persian and Median cavalry were equipped in the same way as the infantry, but that they would not have carried shields when fighting as horse-archers. They were generally sent in to attack first, repeatedly charging up into bowshot and javelin range, harassing, wheeling and retiring. They then made way for the infantry, who continued to shower the enemy with arrows and then attacked or defended themselves with spears, and swords or light axes as secondary weapons; their iron- or bronze-tipped spears were shorter than the hoplite doru. The cavalry came in again when enemy formations were broken and in flight, riding them down with spears and swords. They were accomplished horsemen, riding without stirrups or saddles of any kind, but they could operate effectively only in level, open country on ground that was reasonably kind to unshod hooves.
The Persian army was highly organized and, on the Hellene side, only the Spartan army seems to have been as formally structured. The largest operational unit appears to have had a ‘paper strength’ of 10,000 and this was subdivided into ten units of 1,000, which, in turn, were broken down into 100s and tens (balvarabam, hazarabam, satabam and dathabam) with a hierarchy of officers for each level. This organizational principle is documented in later 4th-century sources, but it is likely it was well established by the beginning of the 5th century, though, in practice, probably only the 10,000 royal guards known as ‘the Immortals’ maintained the arithmetic exactly. Persians and Medes were highly skilled soldiers, having learned archery and horsemanship from childhood, and they operated within what was, for their times, a sophisticated command structure. They could more appropriately be described as ‘professionals’ than any of the Hellenes except for the Spartans and the small elite units maintained by some other cities.
The Persian invasion forces included contingents from Hellene subject states, some of them substantial and surprisingly loyal to the Great King, with exactly the same arms and equipment as the defenders of Hellas and sharing their basic tactical doctrine.
Trireme Warfare
At sea, both sides went into battle in capital ships, triremes, that were very similar, if not identical, and therefore presented the same tactical options. The trireme had evolved over the centuries from the 30- or 50-oared longship which had been the norm. Shipbuilders had first increased the longship’s power and manoeuvrability by introducing a two-tier oar arrangement and had then pushed this development to its technological limit by lengthening the hull and adding a third tier, more than trebling the oar power available but without increasing the size or weight of the vessel proportionately. The longship’s primary function was to carry troops with a large proportion of them doubling as rowers, and to deliver them in expeditions to fight on land. A sea-battle was a matter of boarding or repelling boarders. Thucydides describes this as ‘the old fashioned way ... victory depended more on the hoplites on board, standing and fighting on their stationary ships’. Herodotus first mentions the trireme in a reference to the shipbuilding programme of the Egyptian pharaoh Nechos at the end of the 7th century but Thucydides dates its appearance in Hellene navies somewhat earlier:
As the Hellenes grew stronger and became more active in acquiring wealth ... they began to equip themselves with navies and took to the ocean. The Corinthians are said to have been the first to start building ships the way we do now, so the first Hellene trireme was constructed in Corinth ... This was about 300 years before the end of this war.4 The earliest sea-battle we know of was between the Corinthians and the Corcyreans and took place about 260 years before the end of the war. (History of the Peloponnesian War 1.13)
Corinth, a significant power with its isthmus location giving access to the sea to the east and west, was very likely to have been a pioneer. The western island of Corcyra (Corfu), originally a Corinthian settlement, was an important staging post for commerce between Greece and Italy and clearly another early adopter. The context may imply that the battle between Corinth and Corcyra was a ‘modern’ engagement and Thucydides fully understood what he was writing about, having himself commanded triremes. However, he does go on to say that Corcyra did not have many of the new capital ships until early in the 5th century and this is therefore unlikely to have been an all-trireme battle. A number of the leading Hellene cities of the west coast of Asia became major naval powers during the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses, though, according to Thucydides, even these fleets had only a few triremes ‘and were instead equipped with penteconters5 [50 oars] and longships, just like earlier fleets’ (1.13). A little earlier Thucydides states that the longships of the heroic past, in which warriors doubled as oarsmen, ‘had no decking, but were fitted out more in the old style of pirate ships’ (1.10). The penteconter was the predecessor of the trireme in evolutionary terms. However, around the turn of the century it seems that some of these cities greatly enlarged the trireme element of their fleets with the support of Persian funding, adding to the Great King’s naval power. On the western side of the Aegean, the conflict between Athens and Aegina is put into perspective in the same passage by Thucydides’ observation that Athens and Aegina then had small fleets which mainly consisted of penteconters, albeit probably of relatively modern design with two-tier oar systems. Only the wealthiest states could build a significant number of triremes over a short period of time, and man and maintain them, and an enterprise of such scale also called for a high level of leadership, political commitment and control. But by the end of the 6th century the strategic value of a trireme fleet must have been widely recognized across the Mediterranean world, because the smaller warships that the trireme was in the process of superseding were no match for it in battle. Thucydides credits the Corinthians with building the first trireme in Hellas, but this does not rule out the possibility that two- and three-tier oar systems may have been a Barbarian development originally. There is evidence that vessels with a second tier of oars had made their appearance at the eastern end of the Mediterranean earlier than the 7th century. A relief from the palace of Sennacherib dated to 701 could depict a Phoenician warship with a three-tier oar system. But, whoever initiated the evolutionary process, what followed probably took the form of a closely contested arms race between East and West, and competing European sea powers. The trireme with its ram was the weapon that dominated the Aegean, the waters off western Greece, southern Italy and Sicily, and the eastern Mediterranean until the end of the 4th century. It was then superseded by larger, heavier vessels carrying ship-to-ship artillery and serving as platforms for greater numbers of troops. Tactics had reverted to the ‘old fashioned way’ of boarding and deck-fighting with artillery missiles as an added ingredient. There was no longer much call for the highly skilled oarsmen who powered the trireme and made its agile manoeuvres possible. They had, in any case, become more difficult to recruit.
Up to the 1980s the range of fragmentary evidence for the nature and workings of the trireme, references in ancient texts, depictions in sculpture and vase paintings and on coins, and from other archaeological finds, provoked a wide variety of interpretations and seemingly endless argument. But, in 1987, the Hellenic Navy’s Olympias, a full-scale, fully working reconstruction was launched and the sea trials carried out over the following seven years conclusively demonstrated that the team of classical scholars, oarsmen and sailors, boatbuilders, archaeologists and naval architects that had collaborated in this extraordinary experimental archaeology project had comprehensively resolved the ‘Trireme Controversy’. Olympias probably most closely resembles an Athenian trireme of the second half of the 5th century and the time of the Peloponnesian War. It is likely that there had been some evolution in design and construction techniques, but earlier and sparser pieces of evidence suggest that the trireme of the Persian War did not differ from this in any major way.
A fully fitted-out and manned trireme weighed 40–50 tonnes. It was approximately 6m wide, including the outriggers for the top tier of its three tiers of oars, and approximately 40m long. It measured about 4m from deck to keel, which was a little less than 1m below the waterline. The deck superstructure accounted for about one third of the height above the waterline. The trireme was as light and durable, and as streamlined as materials, craftsmanship and techniques could permit. These qualities gave it the speed and manoeuvrability required for combat, and a working life that could exceed 20 years. Its shallow draft made it easy to beach and launch, and suited it to the enclosed or inshore waters on which it generally fought. But it was a fair-weather ship. In waves larger than 1m from crest to trough it risked taking in water through the bottom-tier oar-ports and planks could be sprung as a result of sagging in the middle as bow and stern were lifted by the swell.
The trireme’s hull was built as a shell from the keel up, with the planks flush, and mortised and tenoned together at the edges. Thucydides comments that the triremes built by the Athenians in the 480s ‘were not yet fully decked’. In a fully decked trireme, planking ran from bow to stern, forming a protective canopy over the oarsmen and providing a fighting platform; part-decking presumably covered areas at bow and stern. It is clear from other references in Thucydides that the navies of the Peloponnesian War included both part-decked and fully decked triremes, and this may have been generally true of Hellene navies in the Persian War. The former were lighter, speedier and more nimble, better suited to the demands of ramming tactics, but they could carry fewer deck-fighting troops. The latter were more suited to fighting battles in what Thucydides describes as ‘the old-fashioned way’, deciding the issue in hand-to-hand combat on their own decks or the enemy’s. In both types, a companionway ran up the centre line of the ship below deck level. This gave access to the rowing positions and allowed movement and communication between the crew stations at each end. Also, importantly, commands and encouragement were relayed along it from the helmsman to the oarsmen.
A 5th-century Athenian trireme snugly accommodated 170 oarsmen in three tiers and it is possible this was accepted as an optimum arrangement at the end of the centuries of its evolution from the ancient longship. Athenian rowers were recruited mainly from citizens in the lowest property class, below hoplite status. Manual labour would have given most of them the stamina and upper-body strength necessary to pull an oar effectively for hours at a time, and the Olympias experiment revealed that a complete beginner could master the necessary basic rowing skill surprisingly quickly. It is known that Athenian oarsmen were paid a daily wage and required to supply nothing except perhaps for the sheepskin pad they sat on. Their personal kit probably consisted of a cloak and tunic and, for at least some, a personal weapon. There was not space to accommodate much more, and water in skins and jars would have taken up most of what storage there was. On Olympias the rowers consumed water at the rate of more than a litre per hour, so each trireme would have started the day with hundreds of litres on board and, on campaign, it was vital to have access to beaches with a good supply of fresh water. In addition to the rowers, the part-decked trireme could carry 16 officers and crewmen, and a basic fighting strength of ten hoplites and four archers. A fully decked trireme could accommodate an additional 20–30 deck crew, but the extra loading affected speed and manoeuvrability. On both types, stability was affected if the men were not spread out evenly over the available space.
On campaign, waiting for action or pausing on voyages for food and drink or rest, triremes were beached with their sterns ashore and their rams facing out to sea, and with ladders on each side of the stern for boarding and disembarking. It was found to be possible with good organization to embark or disembark the entire complement of Olympias in a matter of minutes. Some manpower was needed on the beach to push off, but with most of the oars immediately in action and the bows and the weight of the ram out to sea, the process would generally have been straightforward and quick. Anchoring offshore was a less desirable alternative; boarding and disembarkation were laborious processes and, on board, there was not enough space for whole crews to sleep, and no scope for catering. Normally, therefore, crews camped on the shore close by their ships, and shared feeding arrangements. Barley porridge, perhaps spiced up with a little salted fish or meat, was regularly, if not permanently, on the menu. This would have been supplemented by whatever could be foraged, purchased, stolen or looted on shore.
Ancient evidence for the time taken over various voyages indicates that a Greek trireme could sustain a cruising speed of 6–7 knots (11.1–13.0km/h) over a period of several hours and the Olympias project confirmed 10 knots (18.5km/h) to be a reasonable estimate of its top speed, produced in short bursts. The current Olympic record for an eight, the fastest type of oared boat ever built, was set at an average speed of 12.5 knots (23.1km/h). With one side rowing and the other with oars out of the water, Olympias could make a 360° turn in a circle less than two ship-lengths in diameter. With both sides rowing, she could turn in a circle 3.4 ship-lengths in diameter. A 90° change of direction could be made in seconds in half a length, and in less than a length under full oar power. Olympias could also zig-zag with precision and showed potential for sharp acceleration and deceleration. On this evidence the historic trireme with a good helmsman, rowing master and oarsmen could feint and weave and dart with even greater agility, essential capabilities for ramming combat. The trireme was also an efficient sailing ship, and the Olympias sea trials demonstrated that, in good sailing conditions, as fast a cruising speed could be achieved under sail as under oar. She performed best with the wind at around 15 knots (27.8km/h) and 30–40o abaft her beam and, for a boat of such shallow draft, could sail surprisingly close to the wind. The sails were easily handled by a small number of deck hands and steering was straightforward. However, under sail, the trireme could never achieve the manoeuvrability necessary for battle.
On the Persian side, the Hellene ships from Ionia and the northern Aegean would have been very similar to the Athenian trireme described above. However, the ships from further east, for example Phoenicia, were different in a number of ways: cedar, rather than fir or pine, was used for planking; their rams were pointed and longer; and their decks were surrounded by gunwales or by rails with shields hung over them. These ships were designed to ride the larger waves generally encountered in the more open waters of the eastern Mediterranean and it is likely they were built with a slightly broader beam without outriggers for the top tier, the rowers sitting fully inboard rather than perched over the gunwales. The resulting larger deck area with its enclosing gunwales and, possibly, a fully or partly covered central companionway gave greater troop-carrying capacity. Their poop decks may have been higher to give the commander and helmsman a better view over the gunwales and more crowded deck. Finally, Barbarian ships would probably have been more extensively and colourfully decorated. At several points Herodotus describes the ships in the Persian fleet as ‘better sailing’ when compared to the Hellene fleet that faced them in 480. This may be attributable to a combination of factors including lightness of materials and structure, performance in heavier seas, superior build quality and maintenance, and, collectively, a higher level of training, better seamanship and more extensive naval experience.
Herodotus’ few detailed references to the philosophy and practicalities of trireme warfare assume first-hand knowledge on the part of the reader and Thucydides, with his substantial personal experience, is not much more explicit. However, basic principles emerge clearly enough from these authors’ and other accounts of battles and naval campaigns, and Herodotus’ short description of the training given to the Ionian fleet before the battle of Lade by Dionysius the Phocaean offers some useful insight (6.11–12). First there is his call for hard work and discipline, which, as it turned out, was asking too much of his multi-national and amateurish command. Secondly, he introduces the diekplous tactic, ‘sailing through and out’, a manoeuvre involving breaking through the enemy line and turning quickly to ram one of the ships in the stern quarter or side-on, the objective being to disable it, either by puncturing its hull, or by shattering its oars without losing one’s own. As a fleet or squadron manoeuvre this might be executed with a well-timed switch from line-abreast to line-ahead. For an individual ship, it would probably always have been an opportunistic move with the commander seeing an opening between enemy ships and driving his own through it. In the case of larger units, it was probably signalled by trumpet calls or perhaps flags, or simply by following the command ship’s lead. Having punched through the opposing line, the column could then fan out in sharp turns to attack from the rear or sides, exploiting loss of cohesion in the manoeuvring that preceded contact. Whether or not such manoeuvring was planned or spontaneous, the actual fighting was mainly characterized by dogfight-like duels between individual ships with formations quickly breaking up after first contact. Periplous, ‘sailing round’ to enable attacks on the flanks or rear, was the other major tactic.
Hellenes and Barbarians were set on a collision course from a little over half-way through the 6th century. The Persian Empire was to grow rapidly to dwarf its European neighbours and its resources and manpower gave it ample capacity to engulf them. However, when the collision took place, the Hellenes opposed the Barbarians with a resilience that was ultimately decisive. One critical factor was the Hellene allies’ robust self-belief as individuals and as independent peoples, and their iron determination to counter the doubly existential threat of brutal conquest by a distant foreign power and the imposition of autocratic rule. Their resilience was also founded on tactical and strategic superiority at sea and the effective deployment of massed hoplite formations on land, and without the triremes of Athens and the hoplites of Sparta, Hellas would not have survived.
Notes
1 Herodotus equates their principal deity Ahura Mazda with Zeus, the god who headed the Hellene pantheon.
2 Toxa megala, which could also be translated as ‘long’.
3 Often translated as ‘reed’.
4 The Peloponnesian War; Thucydides’ account ends in 411, when the war had seven more years to run and he is thought to have died in 404. He may therefore be counting back from 421, the year of the fairly short-lived Peace of Nicias.
5 In terms of evolution, mid-way between the longship and the trireme.