THE ART OF WAR
Pavement of Southwest Ramparts of the Walls of Troy
The art of war is among the arts of necessity, which all people, the rudest equally and the most polished, must cultivate, or ruin will follow the neglect. The circumstances of Greece were in some respects peculiarly favourable to the improvement of this art. Divided into little states, the capital of each, with the greater part of the territory, generally within a day’s march of several neighbouring states which might be enemies and seldom were thoroughly to be trusted as friends, while from the establishment of slavery arose everywhere perpetual danger of a domestic foe, it was of peculiar necessity both for every individual to be a soldier, and for the community to pay unremitting attention to military affairs. Accordingly we find that so early as Homer’s time the Greeks had improved considerably upon that tumultuary warfare alone known to many barbarous nations, who yet have prided themselves in the practice of war for successive centuries. Several terms used by the poet, together with his descriptions of marches, indicate that orders of battle were in his time regularly formed in rank and file. Steadiness in the soldier, that foundation of all those powers which distinguish an army from a mob, and which to this day forms the highest praise of the best troops, we find in great perfection in the Iliad. “The Grecian phalanges,” says the poet, “marched in close order, the leaders directing each his own band. The rest were mute: insomuch that you would say in so great a multitude there was no voice. Such was the silence with which they respectfully watched for the word of command from their officers.”
Considering the deficiency of iron, the Grecian troops appear to have been very well armed both for offence and defence. Their defensive armour consisted of a helmet, a breastplate, and greaves, all of brass, and a shield, commonly of bull’s hide, but often strengthened with brass. The breastplate appears to have met the belt, which was a considerable defence to the belly and groin, and with an appendant skirt guarded also the thighs. All together covered the forepart of the soldier from the throat to the ankle; and the shield was a superadded protection for every part. The bulk of the Grecian troops were infantry thus heavily armed, and formed in close order many ranks deep. Any body formed in ranks and files, close and deep, without regard to a specific number of either ranks or files, was generally termed a phalanx. But the Locrians, under Oïlean Ajax, were all light-armed: bows were their principal weapons; and they never engaged in close fight.
Riding on horseback was yet little practised, though it appears to have been not unknown. Some centuries, however, passed before it was generally applied in Greece to military purposes; the mountainous ruggedness of the country preventing any extensive use of cavalry, except among the Thessalians, whose territory was a large plain. But in the Homeric armies no chief was without his chariot, drawn generally by two, sometimes by three horses; and these chariots of war make a principal figure in Homer’s battles. Nestor, forming the army for action, composes the first line of chariots only. In the second he places that part of the infantry in which he has least confidence; and then forms a third line, or reserve, of the most approved troops. It seems extraordinary that chariots should have been so extensively used in war as we find they were in the early ages. In the wide plains of Asia, indeed, we may account for their introduction, as we may give them credit for utility: but how they should become so general among the inhabitants of rocky, mountainous Greece, how the distant Britons should arrive at that surprising perfection in the use of them which they possessed when the Roman legions first invaded this island, especially as the same mode of fighting was little if at all practised among the Gauls and Germans, is less obvious to conjecture.
The combat of the chiefs, so repeatedly described by Homer, advancing to engage singly in front of their line of battle, is apt to strike a modern reader with an appearance of absurdity perhaps much beyond the reality. Before the use of fire-arms, that practice was not uncommon when the art of war was at its greatest perfection. In Cæsar’s Commentaries we have a very particular account of an advanced combat, in which, not generals indeed, but two centurions of his army engaged. The Grecian chiefs of the heroic age, like the knights of the times of chivalry, had armour apparently very superior to that of the common soldiers; which, with the skill acquired by assiduous practice amid unbounded leisure, might enable them to obviate much of the seeming danger of such skirmishes. Nor might the effect be unimportant. Like the sharp-shooters of modern days, a few men of superior strength, activity, and skill, superior also by the excellence of their defensive armour, might prepare a victory by creating disorder in the close array of the enemy’s phalanx. They threw their weighty javelins from a distance, while none dared advance to meet them but chiefs equally well-armed with themselves: and from the soldiers in the ranks they had little to fear; because, in that close order, the dart could not be thrown with any advantage. Occasionally, indeed, we find some person of inferior name advancing to throw his javelin at a chief occupied against some other, but retreating again immediately into the ranks: a resource not disdained by the greatest heroes when danger pressed. Hector himself, having thrown his javelin ineffectually at Ajax, retires toward his phalanx, but is overtaken by a stone of enormous weight, which brings him to the ground. If from the death or wounds of chiefs, or slaughter in the foremost rank of soldiers, any confusion arose in the phalanx, the shock of the enemy’s phalanx, advancing in perfect order, must be irresistible.
Another practice common in Homer’s time is by no means equally defensible, but on the contrary marks great barbarism; that of stopping in the heat of action to strip the slain. Often this paltry passion for possessing the spoil of the enemy superseded all other, even the most important and most deeply interesting objects of battle. The poet himself was not unaware of the danger and inconveniency of the practice, and seems even to have aimed at a reformation of it. We find indeed in Homer’s warfare a remarkable mixture of barbarism with regularity. Though the art of forming an army in phalanx was known and commonly practised, yet the business of a general, in directing its operations, was lost in the passion, or we may call it fashion, of the great men to signalise themselves by acts of personal courage and skill in arms. Achilles and Hector, the first heroes of the Iliad, excel only in the character of fighting soldiers: as generals and directors of the war, they are inferior to many. Excepting indeed in the single circumstance of forming the army in order of battle, so far from the general, we scarcely ever discover even the officer among Homer’s heroes. It is not till most of the principal Grecian leaders are disabled for the duty of soldiers that at length they so far take upon themselves that of officers as to endeavour to restore order among their broken phalanges.
We might, however, yet more wonder at another deficiency in Homer’s art of war, were it not still universal throughout those rich and populous countries where mankind was first civilised. Even among the Turks, who, far as they have spread over the finest part of Europe, retain pertinaciously every defect of their ancient Asiatic customs, the easy and apparently obvious precaution of posting and relieving sentries, so essential to the safety of armies, has never obtained. When, in the ill turn of the Grecian affairs, constant readiness for defence became more especially necessary, it is mentioned as an instance of soldiership in the active Diomedes, that he slept on his arms without his tent: but no kind of watch was kept; all his men were at the same time asleep around him: and the other leaders were yet less prepared against surprise. A guard indeed selected from the army was set, in the manner of a modern grand-guard or out-post; but though commanded by two officers high both in rank and reputation, yet the commander-in-chief expresses his fear that, overcome with fatigue, the whole might fall asleep and totally forget their duty. The Trojans, who at the same time, after their success, slept on the field of battle, had no guard appointed by authority, but depended wholly upon the interest which every one had in preventing a surprise; “They exhorted one another to be watchful,” says the poet. But the allies all slept; and he subjoins the reason, “For they had no children or wives at hand.” However, though Homer does not expressly blame the defect, or propose a remedy, yet he gives, in the surprise of Rhesus, an instance of the disasters to which armies are exposed by intermission of watching, that might admonish his fellow-countrymen to improve their practice.