Hippeis

The Cavalry Of Ancient Greece

Leslie J Worley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780429720024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The achievements of the Greek cavalry on the battlefield were monumental, and yet until now the heavy infantry - the hoplite - has received by far the most attention from military historians. This book traces the history of the Greek cavalry, offering a reassessment of the place of mounted troops in the warfare of Ancient Greece. Its historical sweep is broad, with coverage which extends from 1400 BC, through the Archaic period to the Classical period.

1

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429032721-1

In modern works on the military history of ancient Greece, the hoplite has received far more attention and praise than any other warrior. To a degree, this focus is justly deserved because the heavily armed infantryman dominated the battlefields of the Greek world from the Archaic period until the rise of Philip II of Macedon and the Macedonian phalangite. At Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, and Cunaxa, the hoplite defeated both Persian infantry and cavalry; at Delium, Coronea, Leuctra, and Mantinea, hoplites were the principal soldiers in the opposing armies. When commanded by such leaders as Leonidas, Pausanias, Agesilaus, Epaminondas, and Pelopidas, the hoplite clearly demonstrated his prowess. And yet, other types of soldiers took part and contributed to victories as well: Light-armed skirmishers known as peltasts played the dominant role at Sphacteria and Corinth, and cavalry was important at Delium, Leuctra, and Mantinea. The modern preoccupation with the hoplite has led to a disregard for or misunderstanding of the roles played by other types of soldiers on the battlefields of the Greek world. Greek cavalry has been especially subject to this neglect.

Although there is evidence that the Greeks used cavalry throughout the Archaic and Classical periods, many scholars and writers have ignored or discounted the Greek hippeis in their works. Capt. L. E. Nolan, writing in the nineteenth century, stated that “[while] the Athenians, and most of the Greeks imbibed a passion for beautiful horses and horse-racing … it does not appear that the Greeks at this period made any extensive use of cavalry on the actual field of battle.”¹ More than one hundred years later, J. M. Brereton took much the same view: “Greek cavalry did not shine until after Xenophon’s day; it was Philip of Macedon who organized the Greek cavalry into a formidable fighting arm.”² This view has also been expressed by various well-known ancient historians. George Cawkwell believed that “true cavalry” developed very slowly until the time of Philip, because the Greeks did not have the stirrup and their horses were small.³ W. Kendrick Pritchett, the leading authority on Greek warfare, virtually ignored cavalry in his multivolume work. He stated, “The issues of battle were settled on level ground between two armies of hoplites, and cavalry and light-armed forces played only minor, defensive roles.”⁴

Although several works have appeared in recent years dealing with Greek cavalry exclusively, even these efforts have focused on aspects other than either the general military role or the specific combat role of Greek horsemen. P.A.L. Greenhalgh’s excellent book detailed the evidence for the existence of cavalry in the Archaic period of Greek history (800–500 B.C.). But he seemed to be concerned principally with establishing that cavalry existed in the Archaic period along with mounted hoplites.⁵ Glenn Bugh analyzed in some detail the Athenian cavalry in both the Archaic period and the Classical period (500–323 B.C.) but concentrated on the political and social aspects of this force.⁶ Thus, the military role of Greek cavalry needs careful examination.

In this work, I trace the evolution of cavalry on the battlefields of ancient Greece. Like many of the eastern Mediterranean peoples, the Greeks began to experiment with the mounted warrior toward the end of the Bronze Age, known in Greece as the Mycenaean period (1500–1100 B.C.). The evidence shows that this experimentation took place in Crete, Cyprus, and the Peloponnesus. Although the fall of the Mycenaean civilization no doubt slowed the development of cavalry, several factors indicate the process continued throughout the Dark Age (1100–800 B.C.).

In the early Archaic period, aristocratic cavalrymen were prominent in Greek poleis and on Greek battlefields. Magnesia, Colophon, Eretria, Chalcis, and Thebes all produced notable cavalry forces. The Thessalian cavalry was the decisive factor in the Lelantine War, beginning its long tenure as the finest mounted force in Greece. As a rule, the cavalrymen were aristocrats because commoners could not afford expensive war-horses. Even though the cost involved limited the size of armies and cavalry forces, it did not hinder diversity. Three types of cavalry became common: light cavalry, whose riders, armed with javelins, could harass and skirmish; heavy cavalry, whose troopers, using lances, had the ability to close with their opponents; and dragoons, whose equipment allowed them to fight either on horseback or on foot.

As the Archaic period progressed, the age of the hoplite arrived and the role of this warrior matured. Most hoplites were commoners who could afford the panoply of the heavy infantryman, and larger armies—larger than several hundred aristocratic horsemen on each side—took the field, with phalanx fighting phalanx. Although the hippeis typically could not break the well-disciplined phalanx, cavalry did not disappear from the battlefields of the Greek world. If anything, the employment of cavalry became more complicated and demanding, and mounted warriors, who once had the single role of attack, assumed the multiple roles of scouting, screening, skirmishing, attacking, harassing, and pursuing. These tactical activities had to be performed against heavy infantry and the phalanx, as well as against rival cavalry forces. The Battle of Plataea clearly demonstrated the merits, and limitations of Archaic cavalry.

By the end of the Archaic period, cavalry was so effective that the postwar era saw both Boeotia and Athens, two of the rising powers in the Greek world, strengthen their mounted forces. The former organized the Boeotian Confederacy, with a federal military that included a strong and proficient cavalry. Athens created its cavalry virtually from nothing by subsidizing the purchase and maintenance of cavalry horses. Later, during the Peloponnesian War, the wisdom of these moves and the importance of effective mounted forces were demonstrated as cavalry was employed in a variety of tactical roles: to serve as the first and principal line of defense against invasions or incursions; to gain victory by surprise; to prevent the envelopment of a phalanx; and to defeat a withdrawing foe.

As the fourth century B.C. dawned and unfolded, Greek cavalry assumed an increasingly important role on the battlefield. To be victorious, Greek commanders campaigning in Asia had to have a strong and effective cavalry force to counter the Persian horsemen. In Asia and Greece, the coordinated infantry-cavalry attack made its debut and proved decisive when properly employed. The hippeis could open the battle with a charge to disrupt the opposing cavalry and infantry, as in the Theban victories at Leuctra and Mantinea, or wait for an opportunity or weakness to appear and then exploit it, as in the Macedonian victories at Chaeronea and Issus. In either situation, the cavalry charge became an important tactical option.

In fact, throughout its history, Greek cavalry followed the same stages of development as did almost all cavalry in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. At first, the horse was used simply as a means of rapid conveyance to the battlefield; then, it was used as a fighting platform; finally, the cavalry charge appeared, adding the weight and speed of the horse as elements of force and victory.⁷

Strangely, the definition of the word cavalry has not always been consistent. According to J. H. Crouwell,“The term may only be properly applied to mounted troops when these are trained to the degree where they can function with precision ‘as a unit’—not only advancing on command but changing gaits, turning, deploying, and reassembling in their proper positions in the ranks.”⁸ Col. D. H. Gordon gave a simpler definition: “Cavalry consists of a large number of mounted men capable of concerted action.”⁹ While both of these definitions have some validity, neither is acceptable for the purposes of this work, in part because each reflects ideas which have caused historians to ignore Greek cavalry in the past. Crouwell implied that cavalry could only fight mounted, a view that is also expressed in the argument that “mounted hoplites” were not cavalry. This definition ignores the dragoon, a cavalryman equipped and trained to fight both mounted and dismounted. Colonel Gordon qualified his definition with the phrase “large number of mounted men.” However, large is a relative term, and Greek cavalry, whose numbers ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand, paled to insignificance in comparison to the massive cavalry units in the other areas of the eastern Mediterranean. Yet the Greeks did deploy cavalry, and at times—most notably under Philip II and Alexander III—it was the finest cavalry in the world. Thus, for this work, cavalry will be used in its broadest sense and defined as any group of men, including dragoons, who use the horse for combat mobility and are trained and equipped to fight mounted.

I hope that this work will have an impact on the study of warfare in ancient Greece, but more important is the need to open debate and call attention to a military element that has too long been ignored or bypassed. Clearly, the hoplite was important. But hoplites did not fight alone. Nor was infantry the only force to make a contribution on the battlefields of the Greek world. Warfare in ancient Greece was not monolithic, not the exclusive realm of a single type of soldier, at any point. The hippeis were present in all periods and played their part in the tactical operations of their day.

2

The Mycenaean Mounted Warrior

DOI: 10.4324/9780429032721-2

In the eastern Mediterranean during the late Bronze Age, the chariot was the principal means of achieving mobility on the battlefield. The Egyptians used a lightweight chariot drawn by a pair of horses as a mobile firing platform for an archer armed with a composite bow. The Hittites preferred a slightly heavier vehicle whose pair of horses pulled a crew composed of a charioteer, a shield-bearer, and a spearman. Because the spear was not of the throwing variety, the Hittite crew was apparently meant to close with and assault the enemy. The Greeks, if one believes Homer and considers the topography of Greece, used the chariot as a battle-taxi—a vehicle to transport the warrior to and from the battlefield.¹ Yet in the midst of this widespread and diverse use of the chariot, the Greeks began to experiment with the first phase of cavalry, in which the horse was used as a conveyance for the armed, mounted warrior.²

Although the evidence is sparse, it appears that mounted warriors were used in various areas of the Aegean from as early as 1400 B.C. Among the tablets found in the palace at Knossos, two record the issue of a corslet and a horse to separate individuals. This contrasts markedly with the majority of the so-called chariot tablets, which record the issue of equipment obviously meant for charioteers or chariot warriors—namely, a corslet, a chariot, and a pair of horses. Sir Arthur Evans believed that the scribes of the two tablets that lacked the chariot sign had simply been in a hurry and abbreviated their notations by omitting the chariot character or sign.³ Al though plausible, this explanation is not convincing. In fact, if one considers how little time would have been saved by deleting one or two Linear B characters, this explanation seems highly improbable. If ancient scribes wrote such characters as easily and rapidly as modern authors or secretaries write words, then each character took no more than a second or two, at the most, to form or scribe on the clay tablet. Thus, the omissions on the two tablets in question amounted to a savings of about four seconds. Only if the enemy were at the very gates of the palace would a few seconds seem to matter—and in that case, the warriors’ equipment probably would have been issued without accounting for it at all.

Some scholars have argued that the Linear B tablets recording less than a complete equipment issue simply indicate the equipment the warriors lacked; thus, the soldiers in question each had a chariot and a single horse but needed a second horse and body armor.⁴

Again, this is a plausible explanation, but it is not very persuasive. If some of the tablets do record replacement issue, then one would expect to find more variety in the combinations of needed equipment. Considering that the most vulnerable parts of a chariot were the wheels and axle, for example, these items should have been disbursed regularly. Similarly, because unshod horses went lame easily, a horse or two should appear consistently on replacement equipment lists. We might expect to see a combination of a wheel and a horse or perhaps the corslet, an expendable piece of armor often damaged in combat.

Because the chariot tablets as a group seem to show the disbursement of complete issues, the most plausible explanation here is that the complete issue for the two individuals in question was a corslet and a single horse. Thus, the two recipients wore armor and were mounted on horseback.⁵

Representations of various kinds and from diverse locales enhance th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents Page
• List of Figures Page
• Acknowledgments Page
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Mycenaean Mounted Warrior
• 3. Greek Cavalry in the Archaic Period
• 4. Greek Cavalry in the Periclean Age
• 5. Greek Cavalry in the Peloponnesian War
• 6. Greek Cavalry in the Fourth Century B.C.
• 7. The Cavalry of Philip II and Alexander III
• 8. Conclusion
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index