Ancient Greek Warfare Research Papers (original) (raw)

The article written on the battle of Lechaeum by Andreas Konecny in Chiron 31 (2001) is an exemplary piece of work. He not only reconstructs the location and phases of the battle, in the best traditions of traditional military history, but does his best, in the canon newly established by modern war studies, to get into the mind of the soldiers involved. Hence its impressive length, which could have put off the common reader. But Brian Bertosa is no common reader, he is an extrenely dedicated reader. So much so that, rather than read it in its original German, he decided to translate it into English in order to understand it better. Having translated it, he sent it to me, with the article of his authorship in the present volume, and asked me if I wanted to publish them. This presented me with a problem, because even the two articles together were insufficient to justify a book. There the matter rested for some years, until my colleague at Gdańsk, Bogdan Burliga, hit upon the idea that if the area covered by the book were extended to cover, not merely the Battle of Lecheum itself, but the whole question of the use of peltasts in the world of late classical Greek warfare, then we could make a book out of it. Hence the extended title 'Iphicrates, Peltasts and Lechaion', and the appearance of Bogdan Burliga as joint editor of the volume. Andreas Konecny was the first person in print to locate the 'last stand' of the Lacedaimonian mora on the small hill of Aghios Gerasimos. In fact I visited the battlefield and identified the site in 1988, while on a visit from Australia to gather material for a book on Greek battles, a book, however, which has never appeared. In the photograph printed here, the steep sides of the hill are evident, as is the proximity to the coast, barely a few hundred metres away. It is just as well that my book never appeared, for I could hardly have done better job than the article that appears in this volume. It gives me great pleasure to present to the English reading public the masterful article of Andreas Konecny, thereby ensuring it of a wider readership than was the case with the original article, and enormous thanks are due to Brian Bertosa for his fastidious translation, without which this volume would not have appeared at all. The two following chapters in the present volume deal with the Lacedaemonian forces, the first, by myself, deals with the components of the mora that was defeated at Lechaeum, and the other, by Bogdan Burliga, deals with their conduct. There follows a chapter by Roel Konijnendijk on the historiography of the battle in later times, and the building of the reputation of Iphicrates as an innovator. I identified the need for a chapter of this type in the process of preparing the book for publication, and I am particularly grateful to Roel for entering the project at such a late stage, and providing such an authoritative account. The following three chapters of the book deal with peltasts and their evolution. Sławomir Sprawski studies the evidence for peltasts incorporated in Thessalian armed forces from the first half of the fifth century onwards. Cavalry was the dominant arm, and it seems that the Thessalians chose to use peltasts in cooperation with their cavalry. Jason of Pherae played an all-important role in Thessalian military affairs at the time, and Sprawski speculates that Jason supplied his light foot soldiers with more weapons, 'starting from a different point than Iphicrates, but going in the same direction'. In the following chapter Brian Bertosa considers, among other matters, the evidence for peltasts carrying close-quarter weaponry prior to the fabled 'Iphicratean reform' and muses that, the very success of Iphicrates' peltasts against hoplites at Lechaeum may have been, paradoxically, a catalyst for reforms aimed at making peltasts better able to take on hoplites. Finally, in the last chapter, I argue that the Iphicratean Peltast Reform is real enough, and happened during the Persian campaign against Egypt. This work appears simultaneously in the commemorative volume in honour of my friend Valery Nikonorov, which was submitted prior to the conceptual emergence of the book in his present form, which would have been incomplete without a chapter of this type. The majority of the contributors to this volume have chosen to write Greek names in their Latinate form in English, and I have unified the spellings in the volume accordingly. My apologies to anyone who feels offended by this.