The ancient Greeks at war

The ancient Greeks at war

The ancient Greeks at war

Louis Rawlings

Copyright © Louis Rawlings 2007

The right of Louis Rawlings to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN 978 0 7190 5657 4

First published 2007

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 War and peace in ancient Greece

2 Early Greek warfare

3 The makers of war

4 The patterns of war

5 Battlefield engagements in the age of the hoplite

6 Naval warfare

7 Siege warfare

8 War and economy

9 War and religion

10 War, the individual and the community

Conclusion: the ancient Greeks at war

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

This book grew out of a course on army and society that Hans van Wees had proposed to teach at Cardiff University. I was fortunate enough to be able to take over his idea (and his office) when I moved to Cardiff from London, while he moved in the other direction. I have found teaching the students at Cardiff inspirational, and I extend my thanks to the many enthusiastic and engaging people who have followed my courses and made a great difference to my thinking about ancient warfare and Greek society. My colleagues at Cardiff have been extremely supportive and I owe a great debt of gratitude to them for their good-natured conversations and contributions throughout this work’s evolution. In particular, I would like to thank Kate Gilliver and Nick Fisher for reading drafts of the chapters and providing many thoughtful and thought-provoking observations throughout, but mostly for encouraging me to persevere. Of colleagues who have moved on to new horizons, I would also thank Adrian Goldsworthy for the many lively and formative discussions of my ideas, and Sian Lewis for asking me to dredge up things I had forgotten I had ever possessed. Beyond Cardiff, a whole host of colleagues have provided encouragement, feedback and inspiration, and I would not wish to embarrass my memory or tire the reader with an attempt to recount them all. I hope they will accept my thanks nonetheless. Two individuals, however, have supported my endeavours and have made the most important contributions to the development of this book. Tim Cornell has been an inspiration, and I can never thank him enough for the time he has taken to read and listen to my outpourings. Most important of all, however, are the qualities he possesses as teacher and thinker; all of the time I have spent in his presence has been to my profit. Hans van Wees constantly finds new ways of looking at the world; I am fortunate that his attention is drawn so very often to Greek society and warfare. I would like to thank him for his extensive comments on my text, which have made a considerable difference to the final version and, over the years, to his generous insights and observations in all matters. Without reservation, therefore, I offer my deepest gratitude to both of them.

In the production of this text, I would like to thank Janet Goodall for helping to bring the bibliography into a semblance of order, Ann Williams for proofreading both drafts in such a professional and timely manner, the anonymous reader whose supportive suggestions have much improved this work, and all the staff at Manchester University Press for bringing this project to fruition.

I must also thank my parents and brothers as always, Megan and Archie for all the good times and, most especially, Ann: who has shared all the good times and the bad, but who never once wavered in her belief.

Abbreviations

Most Greek names have been given in their most commonly accepted Anglicised forms. Abbreviations have generally followed those of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn) or are listed below.

Introduction

This book examines the developments in warfare in Greece from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1600 BC) to the end of the classical period (c. 323 BC). It is by no means exhaustive in coverage, since the quality and quantity of ancient material varies considerably, but it has tried where possible to adopt a wide-ranging and thematic approach. One central observation is that organised violence between Greek communities manifested itself in a variety of ways. The ancient Greeks, by land and by sea, conducted raids, ambushes and police actions; they embarked on campaigns of intimidation, conquest and annihilation. Some wars were very intense and bloody and others less so. It must be remembered that there were many Greek communities, some big, many small, and these were spread not just across what is now modern Greece and the Aegean, but also the coasts of the north Aegean, Asia Minor and Cyprus. From the eighth century BC onwards, Greek communities established themselves along the edges of the Black Sea, Sicily, Southern Italy, North Africa, Spain and Southern France. In the fourth century, the Greeks and Macedonians took military forces into the Persian Empire and, with Alexander the Great, ultimately as far as India. The nature of warfare across these wide areas of time and space varied considerably.

Nevertheless, it is possible to talk in broad terms about some issues and there is considerable continuity in the Greeks’ practice and approach to war. The Greeks, on the whole, shared the same language, although with regional dialects and idioms. They were polytheistic and shared a common understanding of their gods and mythology. In this they were aided by the seeming universality of the poetry of Homer, which stood at the head of the literary output of Greeks. The Iliad and the Odyssey described a fantasy world of gods, monsters and heroes, but also contained sufficient realism to be regarded by the Greeks as a representation of their historical past. The poems were often taught to children as part of their education; in Athens, they were performed in public at religious and social events. Their universal appeal led them to become a cornerstone of Greek identity. The Greeks shared more than a poetic heritage, however. From the eighth century many communities (but by no means all) coalesced around urban centres, and began to develop conceptions of citizenship, law and government. They developed political and religious institutions that tended to be civic in character and focus. Such communities were known by the Greeks as poleis, often translated as city-states, for the territorial extent of these communities was generally much smaller than modern nation states and the term embodies a conception of the polis as both its urban centre (asty) and its hinterland (chōra). For the most part, the citizens lived and worked as farmers in the chōra and usually dwelt there, but they travelled to the asty to exercise their political, legal and other rights. When these city-states went to war, it was usually the citizens who both assembled to take the decision to march (or sail) out, and armed themselves for the undertaking.

The values and structures of these communities inevitably influenced the types of warfare that were conducted, and in this, two city states, Athens and Sparta, tend to dominate the record. This is not just because in the sixth and fifth centuries these became dominant partners in their respective alliances (the ‘Peloponnesian’ and ‘Delian’ Leagues), and in political and social organisation, economic sophistication, physical layout and military structures these states were extremes of the polis system. It is also because the earliest Greek historians whose work still survives, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, described their military activities. Herodotus, writing in the 440s and 430s BC, described how many communities, under the leadership of Sparta (but with a decisive military contribution by Athens), banded together to resist a massive Persian invasion of Greece in 480–479 BC. In his sprawling and ‘universal’ account of this invasion, he describes many other earlier events and wars from the preceding centuries, for which he often remains the only, or the earliest source. Thucydides, by contrast, generally confined himself to contemporary events. His theme was the conflict that grew up between the Spartan alliance and the Athenian-led Delian League after the Persians were repelled (and, in passing, the way in which the Delian League came to be converted by the Athenians into an Aegean-wide empire). The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which eventually ended in the defeat of Athens, was a conflict which he regarded as ‘greater and more worthy to be written about than any of the wars of the past’ (Thuc. 1.1). Thucydides saw other conflicts that fell in the period as subsidiary to the main war, brought on by conditions of political instability and the interference of one or both of the main parties. Indeed, he even thought of a period of peace negotiated between the Athenians and Spartans (421–415/14 BC), as a continuation of the conflict by other means. Thucydides’ account broke off in 411 BC and was continued by Xenophon, who went beyond the end of the war in 404 to detail events down to 362 BC. Xenophon’s picture lacks the unifying thesis of Thucydides, but is useful in conveying to us how the majority of Greeks probably saw wars not in broad terms, but as separate, local and immediate episodes in their lives. Both Xenophon and Thucydides were participants in some of the events they described, both were Athenians and both were, to some extent, military men: their view of war was shaped by the events themselves, their personal experiences and also the wider political, social and cultural climate in which they lived.

It is important to consider these wider elements when considering the way in which the Greeks waged war. There is a wealth of other material: literary, epigraphic and archaeological, that contributes to our understanding of the nature of Greek society and warfare. By drawing on these to illuminate, supplement, even correct, our historical narratives, we can go some way to understanding the factors that determined the nature of warfare and its impact on society. This book therefore looks beyond the purely military aspects of Greek warfare. While it does discuss the nature and role of battle, logistics, strategy, equipment and so forth, it also examines other elements, such as the role of religion, the nature of the economy and the relationship between the individual and his or her community, before, during and after wars.

Since the 1960s there has been a vast outpouring of modern scholarship in a variety of military subjects. This book has tried to take account of the main developments and to engage, where necessary, with some of the theories and interpretations that have been advanced. It is hoped therefore to contribute to the development of some debates, while also being accessible to a more general readership (to this end, all Greek is in translation, and necessary Greek terms have been transliterated).

Chapter 1

War and peace in ancient Greece

War and peace: definitions and representations

What is war? How does one go about attempting to define something as varied, as brutal and as wasteful as war? In broad terms, the condition of war can be characterised as organised violence produced by rival groups, communities or states. It is a bloody and terrible human activity that is imbued with suffering and accompanied by a riot of emotional responses and traumas. War is also culturally defined. The conduct, objectives and outcomes of wars are subject to the expectations and value-systems of their participants and organisers. Both sides in a conflict may have similar outlooks on what wars mean and what constitutes victory and defeat, or they may not.

The Greek word for war, polemos, often retained the physical resonance of fighting, combat or battle (Shipley 1993, 2–3; Liddell and Scott s.v. polemos). But the Greeks recognised that war was much more than just the act of violence; it was the organisation of men and resources for combat and the provision of equipment, training and logistical support. It was the decision-making and planning to achieve political, economic or other aims. It was the designation of another group, community or region as enemy and the persuasion of people, usually men, to enter into a condition of murderous antipathy with those so defined. It manifested in many varied ways, from brief raiding expeditions to long-term campaigns of conquest and assimilation. It varied in intensity from border scuffles with only a handful of casualties, to the annihilation of whole communities and extensive looting, bloodletting and enslavement. The Greeks were familiar with all these aspects of war and, for many Greeks, war, or the threat of war, was a harsh fact of life (Shipley 1993, 18).

The Greeks thought of war as an activity that the gods themselves engaged in and approved of. Hesiod’s Theogony (630–721, 820–67) includes myths of wars and violent struggles fought between the gods and against other divine beings such as Titans. The gods were ‘Deathless’, however, and although some were defeated and cast into Tartarus, for the most part violence was not a serious threat to their continued existence. Similarly in the Iliad, the gods fought one another and even mortal heroes, but without ever being seriously threatened. At one point in the poem, as Achilles was rampaging among the fleeing Trojans, Apollo led him away from the rout by posing as Hector; eventually he turned, saying, ‘Son of Peleus, why are you chasing me with all your swiftness, when you are mortal and I an immortal god … You will never kill me for I am no creature of fate’ (Il. 22.8–9, 13). When the gods engaged in war in the Iliad, a strong contrast was made between the trivial wounds they received and the suffering and death of men and their families. When Aphrodite was wounded by the hero Diomedes, the other goddesses mocked her: ‘Cypris must have been coaxing some Achaean girl to run away to the Trojans, who are now such favourites of hers, and when caressing one of these Achaean women in their lovely dresses she must have scratched her pretty hand on a golddress pin’ (Il. 5.422–5). But her mother, Dione, comforted her by reminding her of Diomedes’ mortality:

The son of Tydeus doesn’t understand that life is not long for a man who fights against immortals; for him no homecoming from war’s grim struggle to have his children climb into his lap with cries of ‘Daddy!’ So now the son of Tydeus should take care that nobody greater than you will meet him in battle or else good Aegialea, Adrestus’ daughter, strong wife of horse-taming Diomedes, may rouse her fond household from their sleep with her long lamentation, crying for the loss of her husband. (Iliad 5.406–15)

The all too fatal conflict of men, of course, served to emphasise their humanity and bravery in risking their precious lives in battle. At one point Sarpedon tells Glaucus that ‘if away from this battle we were forever to be ageless and immortal, neither would I myself fight amid the foremost-fighters, nor would I send you into battle where men win glory; but since the fates of death surround us, innumerable fates, which no mortal may escape or avoid – then let us go forward, until we give glory to another, or he to us’ (Il. 12.322–8). The compensation for being mortal, in Sarpedon’s view, was that men had the opportunity to win glory (Vernant 1991a, 57). The search for a glorious reputation was for some men so important that Achilles, for example, chose a short life of violence and fame to one that would have been long, peaceful and obscure (Il. 9.410–16). War was a means to a good reputation, a way of living in glory, since all men were to die.

War could also give some men gratification. Odysseus, posing as the son of Castor, explained how ‘labour in the field was never to my liking, nor the care of a household, which rears goodly children, but oar-swept ships and wars, and pitching spears with treated hafts and arrows, dismal things that are shuddering and bitter to other men, to me were sweet; a god put them in my heart; for different men take joy in different works’ (Od. 14.223–8). One Spartan remarked that during war ‘nothing is more enjoyable or honourable than to be dependent on no one, but to live on booty taken from enemies that provides sustenance and renown’ (Xen. Hell. 5.1.16). Similarly, for a free-living citizen of a polis at war, ‘nothing equals the sheer delight of routing, pursuing and killing an enemy’ (Xen. Hiero 2.15).

For many Greeks, war was god-given. Isocrates (4.84) claimed that some god had caused the Persian Wars so that the quality of those who fought in it should not remain unknown. It is unsurprising, therefore, that war was seen to be part of the natural order of things. Heraclitus (frg. 53) claimed that ‘War is the father of all and king of all’, while ‘one should understand that war is common and justice is strife …’ (frg. 80). It was also recognised, however, that war was an evil. For Thucydides (3.82.2, see p. 214) ‘War is a violent teacher’, while in Homer, war was predominantly characterised as ‘wretched’, ‘tearful’, ‘bad’ and ‘painful’. Even the son of Castor, who delighted in violent acts, recognised that these were ‘dismal things that are shuddering and bitter to other men’ (Od. 14.226–7). Despite men’s lust for battle (charmē), it was the agony, exhaustion and grief produced by war that was given prominence by Homer (e.g. Il. 22.405–515).

Xenophon, who in his life experienced his share of warfare, suggested that although ‘it is fated by the gods that wars should exist, man should be cautious about beginning them and anxious to end them as soon as possible’ (Xen. Hell. 6.3.6). Such a sentiment was echoed by other Greeks: Euripides’ Suppliant Women (949–54) exhorted ‘mortals to live quietly and to cease from the toils of battle, since life is so short’.

The difference between war and peace, Herodotus (1.87) observed, was that ‘In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.’ In Aristophanes’ comic play Acharnians, the contrast was brought out in a pair of characterisations drawn by the chorus. War (Polemos) was represented as an evil table companion, drunk and always brawling:

When we were prosperous he burst upon the scene,

Committed crimes, upended and wasted everything.

He’d fight and when we said, ‘sit down and have a sip;

Let’s drink a friendly toast to our good fellowship,’

Instead he’d turn more violent, set fire to our vines,

And tramp them till he’d squeezed out every drop of wine.

(Aristophanes, Acharnians 980–6)

By contrast, Reconciliation (Diallagē) was a desirable bride (Newiger 1980, 225), described in agricultural metaphors of sex and procreation:

If we embraced, I could still pull you down three times,

I’d first shove in a long hard row of tender vines,

And then alongside fresh fig-shoots I’d bed

And finally some grapes – I, old bald-head.

And all around the plot a stand of olive-trees,

So we could oil ourselves for every New Moon Feast.

(Aristophanes, Acharnians 995–9)

War destroys vines with his tramping feet, while Reconciliation provides the opportunities to get back to planting them.¹ The plot of the play concerns an Athenian farmer, Dicaeopolis, who became so exasperated with the Athenian assembly, which failed to debate the issue of peace sensibly, that he came to private terms with the enemy. The contrast between the ongoing war and his personal peace was made in scenes that were richly comic and allegorical (Newiger 1980, 223). Lamachus, a general who denounced Dicaeopolis’ private truce, was made to march off and winter in the passes of Attica to guard against a Boeotian incursion, while Dicaeopolis set off to attend a banquet (Ach. 1143–9). Lamachus returned injured in the arms of two soldiers; Dicaeopolis staggered home drunk, carried by a couple of girls (1214–17). Peace enabled Dicaeopolis to open a private market and acquire sexual gratification (763 ff.) and a variety of foodstuffs (870–94) from the enemy. But there is little social concern in Dicaeopolis’ ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude or actions; he selfishly denies the benefits of his peace to his fellow citizens (1018–39).²

Despite a general recognition that peace was preferable to war, there was very little in the way of pacifism in the Acharnians. The deal that the gods brokered for Dicaeopolis with the Peloponnesians came in the form of a choice of treaties of differing duration. Each was represented as a type of wine:

AMPHITHEUS   This here’s a five-year treaty. Have a sip.

DICAEOPOLIS   Yuk.

AMPHITHEUS   What’s the matter?

DICAEOPOLIS   I can’t stomach this.

It smells of pitch and warship construction.

AMPHITHEUS   OK then, here’s a ten-year treaty. Try it.

DICAEOPOLIS   But this one smells like embassies to the allies,

A sour smell, like someone being bullied.

AMPHITHEUS   Well, this one’s a treaty lasting thirty years

By land and sea.

DICAEOPOLIS   Sweet feast of Dionysus!

This treaty smells of nectar and ambrosia,

And never hearing ‘get your three days’ rations’.

It says to my palate ‘go wherever you like’,

I accept it; I pour it in libation; I drink it down.

I tell the Acharnians³ to go to hell!

For me it’s no more hardships, no more war:

It’s home to the farm and a feast for Dionysus!

(Aristophanes, Acharnians 188–202)

The image drew its strength from the word for truce, spondai, which referred to the libations (spondai) of wine poured during its agreement. Dicaeopolis chose a thirty-year truce, which appears to have alluded to the agreement made between Athens and Sparta in 446/5 BC (Thuc. 1.115). It was a feature of Greek international relations that some peace agreements and truces were set to expire after a certain time. In the negotiations conducted by Nicias (421 BC), which brought an end to the first phase of the Peloponnesian War (often termed the ‘Archidamian War’, 431–421 BC), the Spartans and Athenians made a fifty-year peace, to be renewed annually (Thuc. 5.24.3), while at the same time the Boeotians and Athenians had a truce that was renewed merely every ten days. Indeed, Thucydides regarded the peace as just an interlude in his account of twenty-seven years of war between the Athenians and Spartans:

Only a mistaken judgment can object to including the interval of this treaty in the war. Looked at by the light of facts it will be found that it cannot be rationally considered a state of peace, for neither party either gave or got back all that they had agreed, not to mention the violations of it which occurred on both sides in the Mantinean and Epidaurian wars and other instances, and the fact that the allies in the direction of Thrace were in as open hostility as ever. (Thucydides 5.26)

Athens and Sparta continued their provocations; by 416 BC both sides were raiding one another openly, and, in 414/13 BC, Sparta was prepared to declare war again (Thuc. 7.18).

Thucydides’ view has been lauded by many scholars as a candid appraisal of Greek international relations, apparently revealing an underlying reality of almost constant hostility among rival poleis.⁴ From such a perspective, it seems as if the Greeks were always in a state of undeclared war with their neighbours, which they often converted into open hostility and military action, and only briefly suspended with limited periods of truce (e.g. Keil 1916; de Romilly 1968). Indeed, support for this view has been found in a statement, put into the mouth of a certain Cleinias by Plato in the Laws (625e–626a), that ‘[a Cretan Lawgiver] condemned the stupidity of the mass of men in failing to perceive that all are involved ceaselessly in a lifelong war against all States … For (as he would say) peace, as the term is commonly employed, is nothing more than a name, the truth being that every State is, by a law of nature, engaged perpetually in an informal war with every other State.’ It is, however, worth observing that Cleinias admitted that ‘the mass of men’ was not aware of this reality of ‘lifelong’ and ‘informal’ war between states (van Wees 2004, 4 and 253 n. 6). He represents a philosophical position rather than a widely held perception. Moreover, the argument is, in fact, criticised by another of the speakers in the Laws, the Athenian, who argues that states ought to be given laws and institutions that promote peaceful relations rather than war (626b–628e), for ‘the highest good is neither war nor civil strife, things that we should pray rather to be saved from, but peace with one another and friendly feeling’.

Thucydides’ appraisal of the Peace of Nicias was drawn from hindsight and may have been be an overly cynical view that was not shared by the majority of his contemporaries. There is some reason to regard the peace negotiated in 421 as a genuine attempt, at least by the Spartan and Athenian ambassadors and their supporters at home at the time, despite considerable difficulties and complexities on the ground, to establish a lasting agreement.⁵ Aristophanes’ Peace, produced in 421 and perhaps reflecting the contemporary mood in Athens, appears to have been a celebration of the negotiations that would become the Peace of Nicias, probably concluded a few days after the play was performed.⁶ The hero of the play, Trygaeus, by organising the labour of Greeks of all cities (represented as a Chorus of Pan-Hellenes, Peace 302), rescues the goddess Peace (Eirēnē) and her attendants, Festival (Theōria) and Harvest (Opōria), and is able to ensure not a private truce, but a Pan-Hellenic peace.⁷ Even Thucydides at one point refers to the agreement as a peace (eirēnē, Thuc. 5.17.2; van Wees 2004, 258 n. 57), and in the view of other ancient writers, the Peace of Nicias, although short-lived, was nevertheless more than a mere truce.⁸

Furthermore, against the common modern perception that Greek cities experienced only limited periods of formally contracted non-aggression, many states, Athenians and Spartans included, concluded treaties and peace agreements that had no time limit, or indeed were intended to endure ‘for ever’.⁹ Thus did the people of Sybaris commit themselves to friendship with the Serdaioi (c. 550 BC, Fornara 29 = ML 10; van Wees 2004, 10), while the alliance of Athens and the Aegean states, forged in the aftermath of the Persian invasion of 480–79 BC, sank lumps of iron into the sea to symbolise the permanence of the relationship ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 23.5; Plut. Arist. 25.1). When, just a few years later, Naxos attempted to leave (c. 469 BC, Thuc. 1.98.4, 137.2), it was compelled by an Athenian-led military expedition to remain in the ‘Delian League’ (as modern scholars often refer to it). This alliance was an aggressive association committed to continue the war against Persia and to punish the Great King ‘by ravaging his territory’ (Thuc. 1.96.1, cf. 6.76.3); its members all undertook to have the same friends and enemies, and sent military or financial contributions to the war effort of the League.¹⁰ Although, on the surface, it appears a rather egalitarian alliance, it is clear that the Athenians were the leading state within it and exercised overall command over the league’s military and financial resources (see p. 109, 160–6). Some other offensive alliances (symmachiai) also seem to have been rather lopsided. Members of the Peloponnesian League appear to have agreed to have the same friends and enemies as the Spartans, but the allies on campaign were obliged to ‘go by land and by sea wherever the Spartans might lead’.¹¹ The Spartans, at least in some cases, appear only to have committed themselves to defend allies against acts of aggression – a subtle difference, perhaps, but one that betrayed the imbalance in status and power.

Other military alliances could be purely defensive, either side committing only to send aid if the other was attacked. Such an agreement was made ‘for a hundred years’ by the Acarnanians and Amphilochians with the Ambraciots, whom they had recently heavily defeated at Olpae (426 BC).¹² Of course such arrangements did not restrict aggressiveness towards nonsignatories, but nevertheless they were intended to keep the peace and create mutual protection for those parties who had signed up.

There were also other ties that promoted good relations between Greek states, less formal than legally constituted treaties ‘sworn with binding oaths’, but just as effective. These included ancestral and mythological claims to kinship (syngeneia) and friendship (philia), and favours (charites) owed for past benefactions (euergesiai).¹³ These relationships could be invoked in negotiations conducted between states and, while not always successful in bringing support or defusing volatile situations, appeals on these grounds nevertheless reveal a common expectation that states ought to be swayed in their actions by them.¹⁴

Starting wars

In 446 BC, Athens and Sparta, after a series of conflicts (which some modern scholars have termed the ‘First’ Peloponnesian War), had come to terms and agreed a thirty-year peace (Thuc. 1.115). It lasted until 432/1, some fourteen years, when due to a number of provocations, ‘The Lacedaemonians voted that the treaty had been broken, and that war must be declared’ (Thuc. 1.88). Before we move on to discuss what the reasons and causes of the war might have been, it is worth establishing the procedure by which a state of war might be called into existence. Wars were clearly started by the decision of one group to attack another for whatever reason (Shipley 1993, 9). In the Greek world, this generally meant that troops marched out after consultation within the community and, usually, with its consent (Garlan 1976, 43). In the case of Sparta, the all-male citizen assembly voted on such matters, usually by acclamation (Thuc. 1.87.1–3; Lendon 2001) or, possibly, by the casting of votes using pebbles (Hdt. 9.55); although, on one occasion (for the important vote in 431 BC on war with Athens), a certain Sthenelaidas proposed that the Spartans form into two groups for a headcount (Thuc. 1.87.1–3). Sparta also consulted its allies and attempted to get their assent by a majority vote (Thuc. 1.87, 1.120–4). At times it responded to allied desires or requests for action. Sparta was not bound by the decisions of the Peloponnesian League (Xen. Hell. 2.2.19–20) and so could not be legally compelled to go to war by its allies, but it recognised that the grievances of allies generally had to be addressed, and so it might feel obliged, for the sake of unity and the satisfaction of the more important members, to co-operate with the League’s wishes.¹⁵ Nevertheless, the responsibility for deciding that a condition of war existed lay with the citizen body of Spartiates, and a decision for war was generally followed by a muster of the army (Xen. Lac. Pol. 11.2).

In Athens, the citizen assembly also debated and voted on issues of defence and war, generally by a show of hands ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 43.4; Thuc. 3.49). Its views were considered binding on the state as a whole, regardless of how many citizens were able to attend for any particular vote (Ober 1989, 134). The need to ensure consensus in such a dangerous matter as war would have been obvious to any participant. It was understandable that those engaged in fighting would want, wherever possible, communal support. Men on campaign would want to know that, should they survive, they would not experience the indignation (nemesis) of the people or prosecution at their hands. Or so it would seem. As part of his legal framework for the ideal state, Plato suggested that:

Everyone shall regard the friend or enemy of the State as his own personal friend or enemy; and if anyone makes peace or war with any parties privately and without public consent, in his case also the penalty shall be death; and if any section of the State makes peace or war on its own account with any parties, the generals shall summon the authors of this action before the court, and the penalty for him who is convicted shall be death. (Plato, Laws 12.955b–c)

The need for communal unity in times of war is emphasised, but Plato’s proposal recognised an underlying reality: that in most cities and most wars, communities were not unified. In Plato’s ideal state, Dicaeopolis would have soon found himself facing the death sentence, but in Athens and elsewhere dissent and ongoing debate appears to have been normal. The Athenians sometimes had repeated debates about military decisions, and changed their minds on resolutions they had made (e.g. Thuc. 3.49). Plato’s legislation also recognised the possibility that individuals or groups within the community might make war ‘privately and without public consent’. Evidently some undertakings were less than official. In fact, small operations by privately organised groups appear to have been a recurrent feature of the archaic and classical periods, not just in the less civilised and urbanised regions where raiding was seen as a common, legitimate and honourable activity (Thuc. 1.5–6), but across the borders of city-states. One survey of predatory activities in the archaic and classical periods concluded that raids, reprisals and the violent seizure of persons and property were endemic even in the most developed of poleis.¹⁶ In 491 BC, when the Persian governor Artaphernes was assigned to pacify the reconquered Ionian cities, he also ‘compelled the Ionians to make agreements among themselves: that they would abide by the law and not rob and plunder each other’ (Hdt. 6.42). The reality of this policy appears confirmed by an early fifth-century inscription from Teos, which displayed a concern over private acts of raiding or piracy. Indeed, it prescribed the death penalty for any who participated in such activities and for those who harboured them.¹⁷ It is likely that, by the time the inscription was erected, Teos had joined the Delian League against Persia; even so, it indicated