| Fig. 188. | Fig. 189. |
The Greeks did not attach any great importance to the cavalry, which was in part the result of the mountainous nature of their country, where cavalry regiments could seldom be properly deployed. Consequently the Greek cavalry, as a rule, rode badly and with uncertainty; they only fought against each other, and never attacked closed ranks of infantry, but pursued them when they were thrown into confusion; regular cavalry attacks, in which the horse not only carries its rider, but also is a means of attack, were unknown. The horses wore saddle-cloths, not regular saddles, and bit and bridle, and armour—consisting of head-piece, breast-plate, and side-pieces. The rider wore a brazen cuirass, with neck-pieces, protected his abdomen by the usual leathern apron with metal coverings, and also wore a special kind of mail over arms and shoulders; the hips were also protected. The shield was not used for ordinary service, the offensive weapons were a long lance and a sword. There can be no doubt that spurs were used at that time, but it is possible that they wore them on only one foot, as the statues of the Amazons seem to show; Figs. [188] and [188] represent Greek spurs, still in existence. Horse-shoes and stirrups were unknown, the rider sprang on his horse with the help of his lance, or else used some stone, branch, or other object to enable him to mount.
We do not propose to enter into detail concerning the arrangement and discipline, tactics and strategy, of the Greek armies. A few words must be said about Greek sieges. Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenae and Tiryns have proved to us the magnificence of some ancient fortifications. It is, therefore, natural that the siege of a strongly-fortified place was a difficult matter for a Greek army, since effective besieging machines were only very gradually invented. For centuries they contented themselves with simply surrounding a city and trying to force it by hunger; an even more favourite device was trickery or treachery; they were neither able to storm a town nor make breaches in the wall. The first machine for storming made use of by the Greeks was the ram, an invention of the Carthaginians, but this, too, was ineffectual against very strong walls. They, therefore, very often resorted to the device of undermining the walls in order to make them fall; sometimes they raised the ground for attack by constructing a mound, or made movable towers in order to enable them to fight from the same height as the garrison. There were various devices, too, for setting the town, or at any rate its fortifications, on fire; and if the local conditions permitted it, they sometimes tried to reduce the besieged to extremities by cutting off their drinking water, or producing an artificial flood. This primitive kind of siege warfare only gave way to a more rational method during the Macedonian wars; it was in particular the merit of King Philip, instead of enclosing a city, to concentrate the attack on one point in the wall, in which breaches were made. The discovery of heavy artillery, the perfection of breaching implements, movable batteries, protective apparatus, and revolving turrets, did not take place till the Alexandrine age.
Fig. 190.
It was a natural consequence of the geographical position of Greece that seafaring developed far more quickly. Even in the heroic period fairly good ships were built, though they were better suited for coasting than sailing in the open sea. They were moved by twenty to fifty sailors, seated on thwarts on either side of the ship, while their oars were suspended in leathern straps between the rowlocks; if the wind was favourable, they replaced the oars by a sail suspended from the mast by a sail-yard; in the stern, the helmsman directed the course of the ship with the rudder. The ship of Odysseus was thus represented, even in later art, cutting its way through the sea (compare Fig. [191]). Still, this picture, which dates from a much later period, cannot give us a proper conception of the build of the Homeric ships: we should rather turn to the representations from ancient vases on Figs. [192] and [192], in spite of the roughness and smallness of the drawing. Both these have a strong spur at the prow, and were, therefore, apparently used for naval warfare, with which the Homeric age was not yet acquainted. Probably the ships of the heroic age had high projecting ends both forward and aft.
