HOMERIC TACTICS
Homer is not a scientific military historian, but a poet. Consequently,
in his accounts of pitched battles, he naturally dwells on the prowess
of famous individuals in the single combat; the struggle of one hero
against a group of assailants; the pursuit and the flight; more than he
dwells on the long encounter of marshalled lines before "the break in
the battle."
Let us consider the battle in _Iliad_, xi. The princes begin by giving
their chariots to the charioteers, "to hold them in by the fosse, well
and orderly," and "themselves as heavy men-at-arms were hastening
about."[1] They are then marshalled in order, with the chariots behind
them. Meanwhile Hector arrays the Trojans, being now with the front
and now with the rear ranks.[2] The fight begins; "equal heads had the
battle." The two forces meet like two bands of reapers shearing the
corn of a field from either limit, and meeting in the centre.[3] This
steady fight of lines of dismounted men-at-arms endures from dawn to
midday, till, at noon, comes "the break in the battle," "the Danaans
by their valour brake the battalions."[4] Agamemnon, on foot, rushes
into the ruined ranks of Troy, and slays many Trojans in their chariots
(which they would naturally mount for the sake of speedier flight);
there is a pursuit of the broken foe, "footmen kept slaying footmen
as they were driven in flight, and horsemen slaying horsemen with
the sword"; till the flying Trojans rally at the Scaean gate, while
Agamemnon still slays the hindmost fugitives. A flesh-wound irks him,
and he "retires hurt." Hector, by command of Zeus, has waited for this
moment, and now leads a chariot-charge among the scattered Achaeans.
Henceforth there is a series of individual encounters; Odysseus is
alone and is surrounded; he fights hard; he calls for aid, and is
rescued by Menelaus and Aias. Several Achaean princes are wounded,
among others Diomede, Agamemnon, and Odysseus retire to their quarters
for rest and surgical aid.
This is not scientific fighting: no general is apart, receiving news
of the fight, sending supports where they are needed, husbanding the
reserves, and so forth. The leaders actually _lead_, and their men are
discouraged and give ground when the chiefs are put out of action,
precisely as in the Highland armies of clans under Dundee or Montrose
or Prince Charles, where so much depended on the success of the first
onslaught. Homer's men have more faculty for recovering from a severe
stroke. The Achaeans, after a long struggle of heavy dismounted
men-at-arms, drive the Trojans to the city wall. The Trojans rally,
and drive the Achaeans to their own fortifications, where there is a
confused mellay at the fosse and under the wall.[5]
Polydamas very properly now advises the chivalry of Troy to dismount
and fight on foot (_πρυλέες_) in dense columns, while their chariots
are held stationary by their squires. Hector approves, and the
dismounted Trojans form five columns of attack on a fortified
position.[6] The Achaeans, scattered and disheartened, are mainly led
and helped by the two Aiantes, but Poseidon rallies five or six young
heroes of Boeotia, Aetolia, Crete, and Pylos.[7] They are confessedly
both wearied and demoralised by the success of Hector in breaking down
the gate.[8] They are actually weeping!
But now, encouraged by the god, they form a "schiltrom," a close
clump of spears advanced and levelled, underlying and overlying each
other.[9] (The spears of defenders and assailants, at the battle of
Langside (1568), were so closely interlocked, that discharged pistols
and daggers thrown by the combatants lay on them!) Shield touches
shield, the plumes of the helmets meet.[10]
As was natural, Hector's column was arrested by the "dark impenetrable
wood" of Achaean spears,[11] and now the poet makes Poseidon, who
has lost a grandson (xiii. 207) in the fight, stir up Idomeneus, who
is at a distance from Hector's point of attack, and we have the day
of valour, and the success of the Cretan prince, on the left of the
Achaean fortified position. The Boeotians there, with the Athenians and
"Ionian tunic-trailers," are hard pressed, but the Aiantes make a stout
resistance, and the arrows of the Locrians are showered on Hector's
column.[12] Polydamas advises Hector to retreat, but he hurries off and
brings up reinforcements in good order. He then tries again and again
to break through the schiltrom of the Achaean dismounted men-at-arms,
and the two forces clash with cries of onset.[13]
Here we have a renewal of the steady conflict of men duly marshalled.
Hector, however, is put out of action, sore smitten by a boulder from
the hand of Aias; the Trojans give ground, are pursued, and fall back,
till when Hector revives, Aias and the princes who joined him at the
command of Poseidon, form a firm line of resistance.[14]
Again there is a dogged contest of marshalled forces, till Apollo
causes a panic among the Achaeans, and their line is broken. "Then man
fell upon man _when the close fight was scattered_,"[15] and we have
a new set of individual valiances, among the bravest; but the Achaean
host is flying in disorderly rout, "hither and thither in terror,"
through the ditch and within the wall.
It is in his chariot, to which he had been carried when stunned by
the boulder, that Hector now calls for a chariot charge on the fosse
and wall, which Apollo makes possible by levelling the wall into the
dyke.[16] After mixed fighting, the spear of Aias is lopped in twain by
the sword of Hector, and fire is thrown into the ship of Protesilaus.
This is the moment that Achilles has prayed and longed for since the
first book of the poem. Addressing Agamemnon, he then swore a great
oath by the sceptre that "longing for Achilles shall come upon the
Achaeans one and all, when multitudes fall dying before manslaying
Hector."[17] In the same book he bids Thetis pray to Zeus to "hem the
Achaeans among the sterns of their ships, given over to slaughter."[18]
When the Embassy sought Achilles in Book ix., with the offers of
Agamemnon, this dire need had not fallen on the Achaeans, and Achilles
rejected their prayers. But he promised to fight if Hector, as he
burned the ships, came to those of the Myrmidons.[19]
Hector never came so far; for[20] though Achilles kept the letter
of his vow in Book ix., and did not arm, he sent Patroclus forth in
Achilles' armour, at the head of the Myrmidons, and their charge on
rear and flank drove the Trojans far from the ships and the wall.
This is a brief summary of the main movements in the engagement, up to
the moment when Achilles let slip the Myrmidons. We see that, setting
aside the interferences of gods, and the pardonable exaggeration of
the prowess of favourite heroes, we have a set of as natural pictures
of the flux and reflux of battle-tides as if we were reading about
Waterloo. The character of the engagements is conditioned by the use of
dismounted men-at-arms as heavy infantry, whether employed in lines of
resistance, in squares or schiltroms of levelled spears, or in columns
of attack. The fighting men in view are the gentry, stiffening "the
host," the _λαός_ of whose equipment we know little, while the archery
of light-armed bowmen, such as the Locrians, is not without its effect.
But the bows are short, and the arrow is drawn only to the breast,
not, as by Egyptian and Assyrian archers, on the monuments, and by the
archers of mediaeval England, to the ear. Chariots are not employed,
in Homer, as on the Egyptian monuments, in charging squadrons, closely
and neatly arranged, but in the flight and the pursuit, and to bear the
prince rapidly to distant points of the field.[21]
The most obvious and closest analogy to Homeric warfare is that of
the period (1300-1430 A.D.) when the Flemings and Scots had shown the
powerlessness of charges of heavy cavalry against the schiltroms of
spearmen, if these had not been broken up by "artillery preparation,"
by the long bow. Henceforth the English knights, squires, and "lances,"
or men-at-arms dismounted, their horses being held in reserve, and
received the attacks of the heavy French cavalry on foot, with spear,
sword, and axe. In case of defeat (which did not occur) or of pursuit,
the horses were in readiness. Heavy armed infantry, like the hoplites
of historic Greece, were developed later than Homer, and the heavy
cavalry then became a separate arm. The changes occurred in the dim age
between the date of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ and the dawn of historic
Greece. Chariots ceased to be employed in war by the Greek cities of
Asia. The chief arm was the heavy drilled infantry, the hoplites. We
catch our first glimpses of them on the Warrior Vase of the upper and
later stratum at Mycenae, and on an old sculptured Mycenaean stele,
later "plastered over and painted in fresco." In the former is a line
of swordless spearmen on the march; on the latter, a row of swordless
spearmen in the act of brandishing the spear. Their bucklers are worn
on the left arm: they appear to wear hauberks, not corslets of plate,
but one cannot be certain.[22] In these figures we see the germ of the
infantry of historic Hellas. The war chariot becoming obsolete, civic
cavalry were employed; the horsemen of Colophon were celebrated for
dealing a fatal conclusive charge.
Nothing could be much less like Homeric than historical Ionian warfare,
except in so far as Homer's dismounted men-at-arms resemble the heavy
historic infantry, who never mount.
We have now given a brief sketch of Homer's idea of a general
engagement in force. The clash of marshalled lines of heavy dismounted
men-at-arms ends in the breaking of the phalanxes, and in the single
combats, or combats of small knots of heroes, in which the poet and his
audience take special delight.
We now criticise the modern criticisms of Homeric pictures of battles.
Herr Mülder, in 1906, and Mr. Murray, in 1908, discover that Homeric
formations and fighting are a confusion of the methods of historic
Greece--with drilled hoplites and cavalry,--and the "Mycenaean" system
of "a battle of _promachoi_ or champions."[23]
According to the English critic, in the Iliad "the men are, so to
speak, advertised as fighting in one way, and then they proceed
to fight in another."[24] As we have seen, they are "advertised as
fighting in one way," that is, in ordered phalanxes of dismounted
men-at-arms, and they _do_ fight in that way, from dawn till noon; and
then when "the phalanxes are broken," when "the battle is scattered,"
they "fight in another way"; there is flight, pursuit, and examples
of individual valour; there is a rally, and the lines of men on foot
re-form. What else could there possibly be? The charge of the Union
brigade, at Waterloo, begins by "fighting in one way," a resistless
charge of squadrons, and ends by "fighting in another way," in knots,
with individual examples of flight, or of single prowess, when
Piré's Red Lancers swoop down on the scattered and broken ranks.
At Bannockburn you have the slow advance of the clogged English
columns on a narrow front, you have the slow advance in mass of the
Scottish spearmen, till "the phalanxes are broken" of England, and
then comes the isolated struggle of Edward II., and the charge of
d'Argentine,--alone.
It was always thus that men fought, before the invention of modern
projectiles. It was thus they fought at Inkerman, nay, for a moment at
Waggon Hill, as one who was in the thick of it informs me. Ian Hamilton
and de Villiers, Albrecht and Digby Jones were among the _promachoi_.
There is no confusion of a "Mycenaean" and a historic mode of battle in
Homer; and we have absolutely no evidence as to how a "Mycenaean" or
Aegean general engagement was conducted: no Aegean work of art in which
it is represented.[25]
There is no confusion of military styles in Homer; the trouble is
caused when Herr Mülder chooses to say that there is confusion;
that a fight of masses is _promised_ (apparently by an Ionian
interpolator), and that single combats are _given_ (apparently by the
older minstrel).[26] Both sorts of fighting are given in their proper
places: the engagement of masses before, the individual valiances after
"the battle is scattered," while in the clash of the massed forces,
the conduct of prominent assailants and defenders is noted. Mülder's
remarks arise from his eagerness to prove that not only the armature is
a muddle of anachronisms, which is not the case, but that the fighting,
too, is anachronistic and self-contradictory.
The aged Nestor remembers and approves of a mode of fighting which,
at Troy, has become obsolete, owing to the new system of dismounting
the men-at-arms and arraying them in line or in column of attack. He
says to his Pylians (_Iliad_, iv. 303 _seqq_.), "Neither let any man,
trusting to his horsemanship and valour, be eager to fight the Trojans
alone before the rest, nor yet let him draw back.... But whensoever a
warrior from his own chariot can come at the chariot of the foe, let
him thrust forth with his spear, even so is the far better way," the
_old_ way. "The style of fighting is not Epic," says Mr. Leaf. It is
meant not to be "Epic"; it is old-fashioned, like Nestor.
We know "the old way" from pictures on Egyptian monuments, showing
the charge of squadrons using the bow, and routing an irregular
advance of Hittite chariotry, using the spear. But, under Troy, the
combatants usually fight dismounted; always, in the opening of a
general action. But though Nestor recommends the old chariotry tactics,
Herr Mülder says that he is recommending the historic, "the modern
method," and attributing it to the old military school of his youth (οἱ
πρότεροι).[27] The general purpose is to prove that "edifying passages
from the old Ionic hortatory writers seem to have been introduced into
Homer."[28]
The tactics and military formations of Homer are as intelligible as
those of Chandos and Henry v. They can only be misunderstood by critics
under the suggestion of the idea that the _Iliad_ is riddled with
Ionian tamperings. The Ionians never touched the matter of the _Iliad_.
[1] _Iliad_, xi. 49, _ αὐτοὶ δὲ πρυλέες σὐν τέύχεσιθωρηχθέντες_. Cf. v.
744, _πρυλέες_ "may mean either _footmen_ or _champions_." Leaf.
[2] _Iliad_, xi. 59-66.
[3] xi. 67-69.
[4] θαλάγγαι, xi. 90.
[5] _Iliad_, xii. 3, _μάχοντο ὀμιλαδόν_. Cf. xii. 35, 36.
[6] xii. 66-107.
[7] _Iliad, xiii_. 81-124.
[8] xiii. 80-90.
[9] πτύσσοντο, xiii. 134.
[10] xiii. 128-133.
[11] xiii. 144-148.
[12] xiii. 789-906.
[13] xiii. 833-837.
[14] xv. 299-301.
[15] _Iliad_, xv. 328.
[16] xv. 343-366.
[17] i. 241-244.
[18] i. 409-412.
[19] ix. 653-656.
[20] xvi. 1-155.
[21] Rapid retreat, xi. 359-360. Rapid pursuit, viii. 87-90, 340-349.
Leaf on viii. 348. Cf. Caesar, _Bellum Gallicum_, iv. 33. Chariot in
attendance to remove wounded hero, xi. 273, 399. Quick mounting and
dismounting, xvi. 426, 427.
[22] Ridgeway, _E. A. G._, vol. i. pp. 313-315.
[23] _R. G. E._ pp. 141-143. _Homer und die altjonische Elegie_, pp.
32-41.
[24] _R. G. E._ p. 143.
[25] Mr. Murray writes: "It is in this way" (in phalanxes) "that
people are said to be going to fight before each great battle begins.
But strangely enough it is not at all in this way that they really
fight when the battle is fairly joined, in the heart of the poem. In
the heart of the poem, when the real fight comes, it is as a rule
purely Mycenaean." We do not know how Mycenaeans fought in a general
engagement. But people, in Homer, do fight as they "are said to be
going to tight," when a schiltrom of spears is formed and is assailed,
as in _Iliad_, xiii. 125-205. There the Trojan charge is checked by the
hedge of spears. The general assault, the combined resistance, and the
conduct of the most prominent men in defence and attack, is described,
just as, at Waterloo and Culloden, historians describe the general
conflict, and also the individual prowess of Shaw, Gillie Macbean, and
others.
[26] Mülder, _op. cit_. p. 32.
[27] Mülder, op. cit. p. 36.
[28] _R. G. E._ 133, note 1. Thus the hortatory eloquence of Poseidon
(xiii. 108 fi.) is an echo of Callinus's stimulating appeal to the
young to bestir themselves, when the country is at war. Callinus.
fr. 1. Thus Poseidon cannot say "young men, don't be slack," without
quoting an Ionian elegiac poet! (Mülder, pp. 12, 13). It is waste of
time to discuss criticism of this sort, especially as, even if there
were any borrowing, the Ionian elegy-maker must be reminiscent of the
_Iliad_, as Tyrtaeus is in a familiar passage.