Hellenistic Naval and Military Developments

Sir W. W. Tarn

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787208445
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

First published in 1930, this is a collection of essays by the noted classical scholar W. W. Tarn, originally delivered as Lees Knowles Lectures in Military History at Trinity College, Cambridge. Tarn draws on a range of sources to trace the history and development of warfare in the Hellenistic period, with particular emphasis on military strategy under Alexander the Great. The first lecture outlines the role of infantry, analysing the weaponry used in various battles. In the second lecture, Tarn examines the development of cavalry, its history in Macedonia, Thessaly and Iran, and its use of elephants and camels. The final lecture explores improvements in siege and naval methods, with particular attention to advancements in artillery. Providing valuable insight into a period of extensive military innovation, this book gives an overview of the military and naval arts and sciences of the Hellenistic era.

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{1} The latest text-book is J. Kromayer and G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer, 1928, which gives the literature of the subject. Accounts of most of the battles referred to can be found in the Cambridge Ancient History.

{2} The άδύνατοι at Athens who got the dole had to be τό σωμα πεπηρωμένοι though not necessarily through war, and unable to work at a trade, Arist. Ath. Pol. 49, I. 25. The άδύνατος in Lysias walks with two sticks; he of Aeschines, Or. 1, 40, ll. 30–40 is blind. This is hardly what we mean by “unfit.”

{3} Asclepiodotus, 6.

{4} Theophrastus, Hist Plant, III, 12, 2.

{5} In Kromayer and Veith, op. cit. pp. 235–7.

{6} The passage in Theophrastus is from the chapter on the cornel tree, and he gives as one of his two sources “some” who wrote of this tree as it existed in Macedonia. This must be the well-informed Macedonian source he uses elsewhere, e.g. at great length for the manufacture of pitch; the comparison with the sarissa was therefore made, as one would expect, not by Theophrastus himself but by someone in Macedonia who might naturally be expected to use Macedonian measures.

{7} Their shield may have resembled the pelta, since Livy calls them cetrati, XLIII, 41.

{8} Livy, ib., where leucaspidem phalangem is the hypaspists or cetrati; see Ed. Meyer, “Die Schlacht von Pydna,” Berlin. S.B. 1909, pp. 794–8, who however retranslates cetrati by Peltasten, though he means hypaspists, see p. 793, “die Peltasten oder Hypaspisten, lat. Cetrati.”

{9} Plutarch, Sulla, 18. Cf, the charge in Xenophon, Cyrop. VII, I, 29.

{10} G. Fougéres, Glans in Daremberg-Saglio.

{11} D. M. Robinson, Amer. Journ. Arch, XXXIII, 1929 p. 76.

{12} Plutarch, Pelop. 32.

{13} F. X. Kugler, Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, II, pp...