Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

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Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome Page 24

by Victor Davis Hanson


  regions flat roofs were preferred.

  Unlike pitched field battle, urban warfare took place in three dimen-

  sions. In city fights, house roofs provided a vital height advantage. Roof

  tiles, which could weigh from 10 to 30 kg, provided ready-made projec-

  tiles for defenders to hurl down upon invaders. Even women and slaves

  ascended the roofs of their homes to assail advancing enemies with

  such missiles.56 Sometimes other structures gave a height advantage. A

  Theban attempt on Corinth in 369 BC was repelled by light troops who

  mounted burial monuments and grave markers to hurl stones and jav-

  elins.57 Attackers too used roofs as firing platforms, as the Thebans did

  when taking Oeum from the Spartans in 370–369.58 Rooftop positions

  were not invulnerable. Boeotian troops defending Corinth in 393, for

  example, climbed to the roofs of ship sheds and warehouses, only to be

  trapped and killed there.59

  Urban Warfare 147

  With their narrow doorways and solid construction, private homes

  could become fortresses of last resort for a defending population. A

  city might be declared secure once the agora and public buildings were

  taken, but inhabitants determined to resist could still force an attacker

  to root them out house by house. If neighbors cut through shared

  walls to link up with each other, they could convert an entire block

  into a final redoubt. House-to-house combat was dangerous and dif-

  ficult. Beyond every darkened doorway and around every blind corner

  might lurk a desperate enemy ready to fight to the last. At Olynthos,

  the distribution of excavated sling bullets and arrowheads suggests that

  Macedonian attackers had to force their way into house courtyards,

  only to be shot at from the surrounding rooms. The Macedonians ap-

  parently responded with volleys of their own missiles before moving in

  to clear each room.60 Thirteen years later, the Macedonians probably

  faced a similar situation at Thebes. After Alexander’s forces seized the

  city’s key points, some Theban infantry fled to their houses, where they

  and their families fought and died.61

  In addition to posing tactical difficulties, combat in houses threat-

  ened an invading army’s discipline and cohesion. Soldiers who turned

  aside from the fight to loot, rape, and pillage were useless for further

  combat. Worse, they might be surprised by a counterattack. At Syra-

  cuse in 355 BC, for instance, Dion and the Syracusans caught enemy

  mercenaries in the act of plundering and utterly routed them.62

  Houses had such defensive potential that they were sometimes in-

  corporated into fortification architecture. Motya in Sicily, for example,

  featured multiple-story houses near its northern gate. During the

  Greek capture of the city in 397 BC, Carthaginian defenders employed

  these houses as a second line of defense.63 When Philip of Macedon

  tried to force his way into Perinthos in 341–340, the defenders turned

  their homes into impromptu fortresses, blocking streets and alleys to

  stymie the Macedonian advance.64 Plato advocated that houses “be ar-

  ranged in such a way that the whole city will form a single wall; all the

  houses must have good walls . . . facing the roads so that the whole city

  will have the form of a single house, which will render its appearance

  not unpleasing, besides being far and away the best plan for ensuring

  safety and ease of defense.”65 Plato’s suggestion is reflected at Olynthos,

  148 Lee

  where the backs of the first row of houses along the west edge of the

  North Hill are built into the northwestern fortifications of the city.66

  Sparta’s unusual topography turned the two Theban attacks on it

  into hybrids of open battle and city fight. Classical Sparta was unwalled

  and spread out along the banks of the Eurotas River. At its outer neigh-

  borhoods, houses were interspersed with groves and fields. The central

  area of town, where the Spartiates or full Spartan citizens lived, seems

  to have been densely built up, without a regular plan. Even so, the cen-

  ter of town contained walls, fences, and open spaces. Around the town

  center were a number of religious sanctuaries and public buildings.67

  In 370–369, the Thebans under Epaminondas initially confined them-

  selves to plundering the suburbs. There they felled trees to build field

  fortifications wherever they camped, just as they did in rural terrain.

  Eventually the Thebans took a stab at the heart of the city, advancing

  toward the open racecourse in the sanctuary of Poseidon. In response,

  the Spartans used the urban topography to their advantage, by setting

  an ambush in the Temple of the Tyndaridae.68 The ambush, combined

  with a conventional cavalry charge across the racecourse, halted the

  Thebans. In 362 BC, fearing a direct assault, the Spartans prepared by

  demolishing houses in the central part of town and using the rubble to

  block up entrances, alleys, and open spaces. Some even alleged that the

  Spartans used large bronze tripods taken from religious sanctuaries to

  build barricades.69 Epaminondas, however, did not attempt a head-on

  attack, fearing that his troops would be exposed to missile attack from

  rooftops.70 Instead, he took an indirect approach, as if maneuvering on

  an open battlefield, which allowed his forces to advance on the inhab-

  ited area without coming under missile fire. Only a desperate counter-

  attack of fewer than a hundred Spartans under King Archidamus threw

  the Thebans back.

  The Combatants

  The equipment, formations, and command structures of classical Greek

  armies were ill-suited for built-up terrain. Hoplites, the mainstay of all

  polis armies, were armored militia infantry who carried large round

  shields and long thrusting spears. Although the hoplite shield has been

  Urban Warfare 149

  judged heavy and unwieldy, there are some indications it could be han-

  dled effectively in individual combat, even in cities; fourth- century tomb

  reliefs from Asia Minor even show shield-carrying hoplites climbing as-

  sault ladders. Although there is no certain evidence, possibly hoplites

  fighting house to house discarded their shields for greater maneuver-

  ability. The more serious problem for hoplites in cities was weaponry.

  While they carried swords as secondary weapons, hoplites were primar-

  ily spearmen; their 2.5-meter-long spears would have been awkward at

  close quarters or inside houses. Matters would have been even worse

  for Macedonian troopers equipped with the 12- to 16-foot-long sarissa,

  or pike. Some Greeks did study swordsmanship, but systematic weap-

  ons training remained the province of a wealthy few. Indeed, outside of

  Sparta, most hoplites underwent no formal training until the end of the

  classical period.

  A greater challenge for hoplites in cities was battle formation. Hop-

  lites typically employed a deep infantry array called the phalanx. The

  ideal phalanx, an unbroken mass eight ranks deep, could extend a mile

  or more across an open battlefield. Needless to say, a phalanx could

  not be maintained on city str
eets or in houses. Only in an agora could

  hoplites employ their customary formation. Splitting a phalanx into

  smaller detachments to cope with urban topography was complicated

  by the general lack of subordinate units and officers. With the excep-

  tion of the Spartans, who had a complex tactical hierarchy and an al-

  most religious devotion to good order, most Greek armies had a very

  low proportion of officers and no tactical units below the company

  level. What officers there were could be rendered impotent by the lax-

  ness of classical military discipline.71

  The amateur ethos of most polis armies had other important conse-

  quences for urban war. For one thing, the Greeks never developed units

  of specialists such as pioneers, sappers, or combat engineers. Hoplites

  could and did build improvised field works, but their engineering skills

  and equipment never came close to matching those of the Roman le-

  gions. At the same time, because hoplite militias equipped themselves,

  a wide proportion of citizens owned arms. Fighting in a city, whether

  as a result of invasion or civil war, typically involved the whole popu-

  lace, not just regular armed forces.

  150 Lee

  Light infantry, including archers, slingers, and javelineers, was much

  more effective in urban fighting. Light troops could hurl missiles from

  rooftops or sweep the streets with volleys of projectiles.72 The archaeo-

  logical evidence from Olynthos indicates that slingers and archers could

  wield their weapons even inside the confines of houses.73 Light troops

  proved their value during the fighting at Piraeus in 404–403. The oligar-

  chic forces, with hoplites enough to mass fifty shields deep, advanced

  up the Mounichia hill toward the democrats, who were able to muster

  only ten ranks of hoplites. Behind these ten ranks, though, were the

  democratic light infantry. The hilly topography of Mounichia gave the

  defenders a height advantage, allowing the light infantry to shoot over

  the heads of their own hoplites. With their opponents packed fifty deep

  into the street below them, the light troops could hardly miss.74

  The role of cavalry in urban battle is difficult to determine. The

  Athenian Thirty Tyrants apparently brought a sizable cavalry force

  to Piraeus in 404–403, but the horsemen played no role in the battle.75

  They may have deployed in Piraeus’s agora to guard the rear of the

  oligarchic hoplite force. Theban cavalry participated in the fighting at

  Thebes in 335, although they were hampered by the narrow streets, and

  quickly fled once the Macedonians captured the agora.76 The Roman

  writer Pausanias saw a trophy near the Painted Stoa at Athens, just out-

  side the agora, that commemorated an Athenian cavalry victory there

  against Macedonian cavalry, probably in 304 BC.77 At least the classical

  Greeks did not deploy elephants in urban fighting. Pyrrhus of Epiros

  would later try to do so at Argos in 272, only to discover that his troops

  had to remove the fighting platforms from the elephants in order to

  pass through the city gates.78

  Urban Warfare and Classical

  Military Thought

  Assessing the place of urban warfare in classical military thought re-

  quires understanding the centrality of walls in the polis mind-set.

  Building a circuit wall was the largest and most expensive communal

  task that the citizens of most poleis would ever undertake.79 Once built,

  walls marked polis identity and autonomy. Plato might advocate “walls

  Urban Warfare 151

  of bronze and iron” rather than earth, but when it came to defending

  their cities, Greeks never ignored the practical value of fortifications.80

  Indeed, while classical warfare has been portrayed as an agonal affair

  that valorized open battle over sieges and stratagems, by the mid-fifth

  century BC the idea of a defensive strategy based on impregnable city

  walls was well established at Athens.81 Athens was exceptionally well

  prepared for such a strategy because it could draw supplies from its

  overseas empire. Nonetheless, the citizens of smaller poleis considered

  staying behind the walls a perfectly normal defensive move, especially

  when faced with a numerically superior invader. They would choose

  open battle only if the numbers were even. In fact, close analysis of the

  Peloponnesian War reveals that sieges and city assaults were twice as

  common as pitched battles.82

  The stock that classical Greeks placed in their walls is reflected in the

  absolute panic that sometimes overcame defenders when they realized

  enemy forces had penetrated the bounds of their city. Not even the

  Spartans, who prided themselves on their lack of city walls, were im-

  mune to this reaction: in 370–369, both men and women panicked at the

  appearance of Thebans in the suburbs.83 Given the expense involved

  in building a city wall, and the psychological value attached to main-

  taining its integrity, it is no surprise that fighting inside city walls was

  almost always undertaken out of necessity rather than as a strategic

  choice. Tellingly, our ancient sources preserve only a single reference

  to troops deliberately abandoning their walls in order to fight inside

  their city. This was at Pharcedon in Thessaly during the mid-fourth cen-

  tury BC, where the defenders unsuccessfully attempted to draw Philip’s

  Macedonians into an urban ambush.84

  Greek military thinkers were probably also disinclined to adopt ur-

  ban battle as a preferred mode of warfare, because it upset accepted

  gender and status hierarchies. The classical citizen ideal emphasized

  warfare as the exclusive realm of free males. Women and slaves were

  supposed to stay indoors, secure within the walls of the household.

  Combat inside cities, however, upset the masculine dominance over

  war, not to mention the notion of the household as an inviolable pri-

  vate space. It is notable that accounts of urban battle prominently men-

  tion the active participation of women and slaves.85 As well, city fights

  152 Lee

  favored the poor and unarmored over middle-class hoplites, challeng-

  ing hoplite dominance of the battlefield.

  Furthermore, Greek commanders understood that urban warfare

  was particularly vicious and uncertain, even by ancient standards.

  Women and children, along with combatants, were fair game. Treach-

  ery, massacres, and fights to the death were commonplace. Urban to-

  pography made battle more desperate, as troops confined in streets and

  houses could not easily flee. Even soldiers inclined to grant quarter to

  surrendering foes might hesitate to do so if they feared surprise attack

  from another direction. The lack of communications and control in ur-

  ban fighting meant that commanders had less opportunity to appeal to

  the limiting rituals, such as truces, that moderated field battles. Fight-

  ing at night or in bad weather exacerbated the effects of topography

  and poor control. The nature of the combatants as much as the nature

  of the terrain contributed to the brutality of city fighting. Opposing

  factions in civil strife were implacably ho
stile; at Corcyra, infamously,

  citizens set fire to their own city in an attempt to drive out rivals.86

  Troops defending a city against external invasion, too, knew they were

  fighting not just for their own lives but also for their families and for the

  very existence of their home. For their part, attackers who gained ac-

  cess to a city after a long siege or a bloody assault were primed to inflict

  as much revenge or “payback” as possible on any inhabitant, armed or

  not.87 All these factors made Greeks wary of fighting in cities.

  There are nonetheless a few indications that Greek commanders

  understood how to conduct urban warfare when they had to. The

  Plataeans certainly were quick to take advantage of their city’s topogra-

  phy to entrap the Theban invaders. In Piraeus during 404–403, since the

  democrats did not have enough men to hold the entire circuit wal sur-

  rounding the harbor, they deliberately concentrated on the Mounichia

  hil , a strong point that could be approached only through the town’s

  street grid. By deploying on Mounichia’s slopes, the democratic leader

  Thrasyboulos maximized the defensive potential of the urban landscape

  and exploited his preponderance in light troops to offset the oligarchs’

  strength in hoplites.88 Epaminondas, one of the masterminds of the

  Theban uprising of 379, was likewise wel aware of the complexities of

  street fighting. Recognizing that the urban terrain of central Sparta was

  Urban Warfare 153

  not good for pitched battle between phalanxes, he avoided direct assaults

  on the city center in both 370–369 and 362.89 At Syracuse in the 350s, the

  general Dion made attempts to overcome the fragmentation of urban

  fighting. He divided his troops into separate commands and grouped

  them in columns, so that he could attack at several places at once.90

  In the later classical era, urban warfare did receive some attention in

  the writings of Aeneas Tacticus. Aeneas, who perhaps hailed from the

  town of Stymphalos in the Peloponnesus and possibly served as a gen-

  eral of the Arcadian League, was active in the first half of the fourth

  century BC. Although today his work is largely unknown outside the

  specialist circles of Greek history, Aeneas might be called the world’s

  first strategist of urban war.91

  Aeneas penned several treatises, of which only one has survived,

 

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