The Historians' History of the World 03

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.