Experience in warlike affairs, which some authorities call Tactics, his poetry being varied by infantry, siege, and naval engagements, and also by individual contests, covers many types of strategy. Some of these are worth mentioning. In drawing up armies it is necessary always to put the cavalry in front, and after it the infantry. This he indicates in the following verses (I. ii. 297):—
In the front rank, with chariot and with horse,
He plac'd the car-borne warriors; in the rear,
Num'rous and brave, a cloud of infantry!
And as to placing leaders among the soldiers as they are arranged in files (I. ix. 86):—
Seven were the leaders; and with each went forth,
A hundred gallant youths, with lances armed.
Some of the leaders fight in the front rank; some in the rear exhort the rest to fight (I. iv. 252):—
And come where round their chief
Idomeneus, the warlike bards of Crete
Were coming for the fight; Idomeneus
Of courage stubborn as the forest boar
The foremost ranks array'd; Meriones
The rearmost squadrons had in charge.
It is necessary for those who are valiant to camp in the extreme limits, making as it were a wall for the rest; but for the king is pitched his tent in the safest place, that is, in the midst. He shows this by making the most valorous men, Achilles and Ajax, encamp in the most exposed spaces of the fleet, but Agamemnon and the rest in the middle.
The custom of surrounding the camp with earth-works, and digging around it a deep and wide ditch and planting it in a circle with stakes so that no one can jump over it by reason of its breadth, nor go down into it because of its depth, is found in the warlike operations of Homer (I. xii. 52):—
In vain we seek to drive
Our horses o'er the ditch: it is hard to cross,
'Tis crowned with pointed stakes, and then behind
Is built the Grecian wall; these to descend,
And from our cars in narrow space to fight,
Were certain ruin.
And in battle those who follow the example of Homer's heroes die bravely (I. xxii. 304):—