The fighting manner of javelin-men and other light troops and their effectiveness in Greek warfare from the beginning of the Peloponnesian War to the Second Battle of Mantinea

Abstract

"And when one of the Athenian allies afterwards once sneeringly asked one of the prisoners from the island [of Sphacteria] if those dead were fair and brave, he answered him that the spindle, meaning the arrow, would be worth much if it picked out the brave." Many of the hoplites who fought and died in the Peloponnesian War and in the various protracted struggles of the fourth century would have sympathised with the Lacedaemonian's bleak joke. Warfare in this period changed profoundly for hoplites in comparison to the previous two hundred years. Unlike their ancestors hoplites now rarely struggled against one another in pitched battles. Instead they more often had to contend with lightly armed infantrymen in skirmishes fought in a variety of terrain, from the steep and woody mountains of Acamania and Aetolia to the plains of Boeotia and Corinth. In such terrain hoplites could also stumble into ambushes laid by light troops, or could be roused from their beds when the latter attacked at night. This thesis is an attempt to reconstruct this battlefield environment, to show what it was like for light troops and hoplites to fight in such encounters. I hope to illustrate in detail the fighting manner of light troops and to show the strengths and weaknesses which both they and hoplites faced in such circumstances. Finally, I will try to indicate how effective light troops were in such attacks against hoplites. Though "light troops" encompasses slingers, archers, stone-throwers, and javelin-men, attention will be focussed in particular on javelin-men (especially peltasts) since they were the most common type of lightly armed infantryman employed in Greek warfare during this period.