War from Myceneans to Rome

7 July 2002

WAR FROM MYCENEANS TO ROME

The modern day soldier did not arrive at the current level of training methods overnight. Throughout history warfare techniques and strategies have evolved from the earliest primitive battles to the latest technologies. The only way to learn about war is to study the past engagements and lessons learned. There are nine principles of war as follows: Objective, Offensive, Mass, Economy of force, Maneuver, Unity of command, Security, Surprise, and Simplicity. These are the areas of study in order to gain a better understanding of what to do and what to avoid during any engagement.

The battles from yesterday differ from those in recent years and today, because the more primitive cultures fought under their leader for food, territory, or the domination of another group. Today's motives are based more on economic, political, or social reasons regarded as appropriate by a group of individuals instead of the thoughts or intentions of one man.

Mainland Greece is the first study of warfare in the selected readings and by 1600 B.C. a civilization emerged from the Hellas culture and the Minoan culture. This group, known as the Myceneans, fought using chariots and armor made of bronze. By the eighth century B.C., the Myceneans art of war consisted of the phalanx. The phalanx was a solid rectangle of infantrymen carrying armor and spears eight deep. When an army approached another army the phalanxes of both sides would come head to head. The soldiers, who were normally citizens not professional soldiers, would find themselves in the midst of blood and sweat pouring out of the bodies surrounding them from the hand to hand combat. The only way of victory was to hold the lines strong and fight until the other side fled. The problems with this type of formation was that there was no overall leadership within the phalanx, no reserve was established to outflank the opposing army, and there was no way to pursue the fleeing enemy, left them capable to heal and fight another day.

The technique of phalanx had not changed for some time and the Greek warfare stayed the same due to no major opposition force that used different techniques against Greek system. The phalanx was also used because it was a proven technique that had been tested and used successfully. Other factors governing the Greek warfare from the eight to fourth century B.C. were terrain consideration, food shortages, and the unwritten warrior code, which would not allow the Greek infantryman to aggressively attack a community itself.

The Persian Imperial soldier used a different weapon, the bow, and preferred to engage the enemy from a distance. Although the average soldier also wielded a spear and a knife for close combat, the standard scheme was to launch a barrage of arrows from a safe distance from the Mycenean phalanx. A Persian foot soldier as well as a cavalry soldier usually wore little armor as opposed to the Mycenean infantry soldier.

The Persians launched an offensive effort against Greece to stop the eventual takeover of their soil. The most noteworthy fact of the Persian Wars is that the Greek armies never launched an offensive attack on the Persians, but instead kept to defensive positions that protected them from wide open areas and the Persian assaults. The Persian Wars did expose a weakness; the Greek states were unprepared to cooperate together as a coalition against an outsider's attack.

The problem of the city-states not cooperating was resolved by forming a new alliance, the Delian League, which was converted into the Athenian Empire. At the heart of the union was a new form of tactic, a navy to control the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Seas. With a navy to control the waters, the trade market grew and guaranteed the Athenian control of all commercial wealth.

The Athenian control of the surrounding areas caused the remainder of the states in Greece to turn to Sparta. The Spartans were a true martial culture that was left to concentrate solely on military training. The Spartans conquered the Messenians in the eight century and the dominated citizens were used to cultivate the land. The Spartan family consisted of warriors, male and female, that began training at the age of seven to the age of sixty. The sole purpose of every Spartan citizen was military service. Infants that were born less than perfect were rejected and marriages of fit male and female were encouraged. The problem with this type of culture is that there is little evidence of development in arts after the Messenian defeat.

The Athenian and Spartan armies were the greatest powers on the peninsula (one on land and the other at sea), and the two met together only fifty years after the defeat of the Persians. When the Athenian navy placed a boycott on Megara, the Spartans were forced to try and stop the eventual total takeover of Greece. The problem of not being able to fight on the opposition's ground, either sea or land, caused the two nations to make changes to the previous Greek art of war. The lighter-armored infantry soldiers were added to the ground order of battle, which was observed from the Persian Wars to be just as effective as heavily armored infantrymen in a phalanx. The Spartan army eventually