New Peloponnesian War Book by Victor Davis Hanson

Excerpts of this new book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, are posted at National Review Online:

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Was Athens — or Greece itself — destroyed by the war? An entire industry of classical scholarship once argued for postwar Hellenic "decline," and the subsequent tide of fourth-century poverty, social unrest, and class struggle as arising after the Peloponnesian War. Victorians, in turn, felt the loss was more a "what might have been," a conflict that had ended not just the idea of Athens but "the glory that was Greece" itself and the Hellenic civilizing influence in the wider Mediterranean.

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Part One continued

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Clearly something had been lost in the twenty-seven years of fighting of what was, in fact, the first great civil war in Western history. But precisely what was this damage that might explain why Athens, which had once spearheaded a Pan-hellenic coalition to trounce a Persian invasion of some 250,000 combatants, could not by the mid-fourth century protect itself from another northern invasion of a mere 40,000 Macedonian combatants? Between the brilliant victories over the Persians at Marathon and Salamis (490 and 480) and the traumatic rout by Philip and Alexander at Chaeronea (338) looms the Peloponnesian War, whose steep costs were as much psychological as material trauma.

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Part Two continued


We think of the Peloponnesian War as bringing about the decline of Athens, and Greece, but was that really the case? Was there a revitalization afterwards?

Excerpt Three

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Over three decades of fighting unleashed the creative talents of thousands of Greeks in the singular effort to kill one another without ethical restraint or much ostensible deference to past protocols. Just as the horror of World War II even today still prefigures all current military strategy and practice — from strategic bombing and atomic weapons to massed tank assaults and carrier war — so too innovations over thirty years of fighting ended old concepts and for the next three centuries, until the coming of Rome, unleashed the Greek creative talent for killing.

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When V.D. Hanson stays strictly with military history, he's a good writer as good can be. When he ventures into less rigid concepts, he is just a fascist prick, with little regard to historical accuracy and a tendancy to create "facts" while on it, and draw unfounded conclusions and silly assertions out of the blue.

For more on my rant, read his "Carnage and Culture"... methinks V.D. should've stayed with the Carnage and forget all about the Culture...

This effort of his seems to weight in the "historian" side again, with the "military" side in a secondary role. So this looks like another anthology of "crap a-la V.D."

Having said that, I am going on Amazon to buy it - I hate the guys guts, but I read his books

Rosacrux redux

You are perhaps a bit to hard Hanson. True of late he has tended to preferred polemics, but some of earlier books (Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece and The Other Greeks) were solid classical history covering more than just warfare.

Malrubius

I think Hanson being rather sophistic in that second quote. 40,000 Macedonians under Philip were a quite a bit more dangerous than Xerxes: The same force cut thought the Persian Empire like butter; therefore it seems unfair to suggest Athens (or Greece) failed at a lesser challenge. The Persian wars were hardly a cake walk, but for Xerxes bad decision at Salamis, the Greeks looked to be loosing. Had the Xerxes simply refused battle, it seems likely the Greek fleet would have broken up and Themistocles would have had to make good on his plan B and move the Athenians to Italy, leaving the rest of Greece to almost certain defeat.

Athens (or the Greeks) made as big an effort in 338 and the Lamian War as It did in the 5th century, all three wars were close, and realistically Athens was just not quite as lucky in the 4th century as in the 5th.

Conon, I think you got me wrong: I am suggesting that ole V.D. is rather good when he stays at the purely military side of the facts and incidents, but fails miserably to present anything coherent and serious when he ventures outside the narrow confinements of military history. Plus, he is an ultra-right-wing loonie :)

Hmm, I don't know I still argue that in his early stuff, he made some good contributions when looking at argiculture and small farmers in Classical Greece.

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Originally Posted by Rosacrux redux

When V.D. Hanson stays strictly with military history, he's a good writer as good can be. When he ventures into less rigid concepts, he is just a fascist prick, with little regard to historical accuracy and a tendancy to create "facts" while on it, and draw unfounded conclusions and silly assertions out of the blue.

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Fascist prick is a good description of VDH--one might substitute "fascist hack" to be more PC in terminology. His writing just wreaks of that. It is cheerleading trying to support his theories about the present. If I want to read modern political hacks, I don't pick up a history book.

I've got one of his books, I don't think I will be buying another.

I don't trust his "facts" either. I still have yet to find corroboration of his statement that Philip II was struck by a slinger's bullet. It made sense to me...until I tried to find the basis. Instead, what I've been able to find all suggests it was an arrow.

I agree with something I read in a review of VDH's work: one gets the feeling that he starts his research already knowing what his conclusions will be, then he selectively uses and assembles the information available to reach his pre-ordained conclusion.

VDH comes across like a modern day Livy.

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I don't trust his "facts" either. I still have yet to find corroboration of his statement that Philip II was struck by a slinger's bullet. It made sense to me...until I tried to find the basis. Instead, what I've been able to find all suggests it was an arrow.

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Where did you find that reference? I'm just curious, what purpose did it serve. I usually find the things that bug me about Hanson's work (wearing his classical historian hat, not right wing commentator one) are examples like the fact he always cites the upper end of weight estimates for a Hoplite armor (and without say comparisons to what legionary amour might have weighed) in the service of buttressing his arguments about the length and nature of hoplite battles.

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Originally Posted by conon394

Where did you find that reference? I'm just curious, what purpose did it serve. I usually find the things that bug me about Hanson's work (wearing his classical historian hat, not right wing commentator one) are examples like the fact he always cites the upper end of weight estimates for a Hoplite armor (and without say comparisons to what legionary amour might have weighed) in the service of buttressing his arguments about the length and nature of hoplite battles.

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I believe you e-mailed it to me in response to a questions I posed about it some months earlier (Thanks again!) LOL. Alice Swift Riginos' 1994 article "The Wounding of Philip II of Macedon: Fact and Fabrication" with a list of period authors' comments on the topic, and variants.

As I said back then when I originally questioned VDH's sling assertion, it bothered me because it was at odds with everything else I had seen at the time. He could be right, but it would be nice if he gave us the basis for this departure...rather than just hanging it out there as if it were fact and common knowledge. I was about to use the sling comments from his book in another thread, but I sought some confirmation first. I'm glad I did so.

I was not very clear, I meant to as where did you see VDH make the sling bullet claim.

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Originally Posted by conon394

I was not very clear, I meant to as where did you see VDH make the sling bullet claim.

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Oh, okay. Page 160 of Wars of the Ancient Greeks, "as Philip himself learned when he fell victim to his own military revolution, losing his eye to a slinger's bullet"

Well, it seem he has fallen into the 'impractical' historian category.
He finds some evidence (good or bad, amkes little point now), and he takes that over other claims. Fair enough that is waht all of us does. But where he fails is to see the practicality of the claim.

A slingbullet to the eye would be fatal. The weakest and thinnest bone in the entire skull (of plates of course) is directly behind the eye. A slingbullet would punch all the way into the brain, it would be nasty to see, and if the person survived he would most certain change character.
It could be argued that it hit the cheekbone or eyebrow, they are strong enough to halt the bullet before it does terminal damage. But they are still fairly weak compared to the jaw or the forehead. The cheekbone would be crushed entirely, and the person would likely die of internal infections from the shattered bone. The eyebrow could be possible as it is the strongest, and doesn't have to have been shattered, but the very fact that it could survive the impact would mean that it either defelected the bullet into the eye (see first case) or away in which case the subject would not lose the eye. The eye brow once again could be shattered like the cheekbone and thus the eye could get mushed, but then we have the same complications that the cheekbone would suffer.

So if Phillip was struck by a slingbullet he would either die or not have noticeable damage ('noticeable' is very subjective here). That at least is my conclusion.

Btw, that some point in my life I will test various theories about how hoplites fought using lots of people. I want to settle it once and for all... at least for me.~:)

Kraxis,

It still would depend on the angle, could even be a ricochet, etc. And a stone/baked clay round won't carry the impact of lead sling bullet. The strike could have been a glancing blow from the side across the cheek, etc. That would still shatter bones in the area and either carry away the eye or result in its loss due to infection, etc. However, it wouldn't transfer the shock back into the brain at such an angle. Ricochet's could be no worse than a severe punch...and believe me, that is enough to crush the cheek and orbital with likely loss of the eye in those days.

Yes, straight on would most likely be fatal. Infection might or might not kill. Certainly has the potential to. Obviously, Alexander and Philip were fairly resistant to infection and resilient after severe injury.

I still find it plausible, but with more contemporary historical comments that it was an arrow, what is the point of VDH saying it was a sling bullet?

Updated the first post with a link to the 3rd and final installment.

This section is about the increase in brutality with the escalation over time into "total war" (4-seasons campaigning, sieges and siege weapons, etc). This also brought about a democratization of military service, according to Hanson.

Oh well, this is funny indeed. How a conversation about what a fascist p... hack VDH is, turns into a in-depth analysis of what kind of a wound a sling bullet would cause, with a hint at a future "to push or not to push" showdown, regarding hoplite warfare:weirdthread:

Yes, Red Harvest, VDH has an axe to grind and does so in every possible situation and that quote about his predisposition is spot on. He's got a great style though and has a very interesting way of writing military stuff. But when he starts grinding that axe... it becomes unbearable.

Carnage and Culture is the most prominent example - an active effort to support the modern american imperialist policies by bringing forth the military supremacy of "the West" ~:confused: over the ages

Red Harvest

I may be why over analyzing the relevant text, but I think I see why Hanson wants Philip to be injured by a sling bullet vs. and arrow. As I read it, Hanson is really striving to create clear distinction between Philip’s professional multi-faceted army and conservative Greeks welded to hoplites. If he can support a clear distinction he can support his Philip’s ‘Revolution’ idea.

A big part of the dichotomy he wants to create is showing the Greeks were opposed to and distained light, infantry, skirmishers and cavalry, etc. To that end I think he deploys several questionable arguments:

First: He quotes Thucydides assertion that Athens had no organized body of light infantry. But of course Athens did, that had a organized force of citizen archers since practically the birth of the democracy. By the Peloponnesian war they had added a corps of horse archers as well. By the 370 BC or so Athens added in peltast tactics, archery, and artillery to the training her hoplites received. And seems to have had a permanent board of elected officials to oversee the hiring and maintenance of mercenaries

Second: Hanson suggests the Greeks had thousands of light infantry at Plataea that were unused. Now what exactly were they supposed to do. If they had tried to skirmish with the Persians, they would certainly have been cut up by the Persian cavalry. But more importantly exactly how real were these light infantry. The 35,000 Helots were in my opinion likely more hostages than anything that could be called light infantry. As for the rest of the light infantry most of them seem to have been the one valet /servant /relative that were there as assistants to the individual hoplites. Hanson does however manage to ignore the aforementioned Athenian archers who did in fact prove to be highly useful and effective.

Third: He knocks off a quick line that Euripides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus all provide evidence of Greek distain for archery. Now at least with Euripides I think he must be referring to Hercules, where the issue of Hercules’ choice of weapon is considered several times: bow or spear. Unfortunately for Hanson, at the conclusion of the play Hercules does not favor the spear but rather chooses both.

Since Hanson introduces slingers as part of the new class deadly professional mercenary trooper, it seems to me it serves his purpose to suggest that Philip has run afoul of his own revolution, rather than be wounded by a Greek archer; a type solder who had been around for perhaps 200 years.

Hanson's dismisal of greek cavalry is also typical: he also pegs Greek cavalry as ineffective partially because of small horses, which he asserts were 10 hands high. Interestingly I.G. Spence in “The Cavalry of Classical Greece” notes that in fact the period remains for horses while spotty, provide a range of 10 – 14 hands high, with most being 13 hands high. Of the 6 known examples of classical era horse remains, from Greece, that are sufficient to allow for a size estimates: 5 are 13 hands high, 1 is 10 hands and 1 is 14.5 hands…. Once again Hanson picked the most extreme outlier that just coincidentally supports his argument best without any notice of a controversy or conflicting opinion.

It is worth noting that in passing he also manages to completely ignore the Boeotian cavalry in this line of reasoning, a solidly Greek state that seems to have been able to maintain and deploy a large and effective cavalry force from before the Persian wars to the end of the 4th century.

Edit: the 'hands' mesure is from the ground to the highest point of the horse back, a 10 hand horse being 40 inches vs the 13 hand horse of 52 inches.

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with a hint at a future "to push or not to push" showdown, regarding hoplite warfare

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Showdown I’m all for that. The sooner as we free ourselves from the dead-hand of interpretations by rugby inspired British classical historians of the last century the better.

conon394,

Your read it a lot more closely than me. I remembered him having some assertions I was not completely comfortable with, but I had forgotten about the 10 hands comment about horses. ~:joker:

What really bothers me is when an author is clearly not giving even a shot at presenting other possibilities. Hanson's writing strikes me as preaching, infomercial-like. Doesn't matter that I agree with him to some degree on the actual military aspects, I'm uncomfortable with the way he is overselling everything.

Ok I must reverse my statement a bit...

Having 'tested' the various avenues for a bullet (meaning that I have laid lines over my right eye) I have come to the conclusion that two possibilities are there where a slingbullet could possibly rip an eye (or do damage around it so it would be lost).
The first is at about 70 degrees near the temple. It would strike the eye itself but end up in the nose, thus not instantly fatal. But it is problematic as the nose would obviously be crushed making the features of Phillip a whole lot worse than what is indicated. Also with the destruction of the nose he would have a changed voice that would, by the rediculing Greeks, have been commented on as either funny or very odd.

The other strike is perhaps the one that could be considered possible.
It is a strike from about 300 degrees across the bridge of the nose and downwards from the brows. That leaves a nice open gap that would rip out the eye cleanly, and possibly take with it a chunk of the eyecavity near the temple. It would fit well with how Phillip is mentioned (I think he is mentioned to be disfigured nearthe right eye, and obviously lacking it), and the relative lack of comments on it (not worse than a lot of other injuries suffered in war) and also with the fact that the injury was supposed to be gotten at a siege (dropping trajectory) and even with the helmet Macedonian kings used at the time (high eyebrows, closely fitting and no nasals).

I doubt it would have been of baked clay as they were often very large (tennisball almost), a rock possibly, but it would lack the range needed to reach Phillip who would certainly not be walking close to the walls in a non-assault situation for no apparent reason.

About Greek cavalry... Not only Boiotians but Thessalians. They were considered Greeks, if somewhat backwards. So the Greeks had cavalry and in well enough meassure that it can't just be thrown out.
About the push. Actually I'm in favoutr of a limited push theory I evolved some time ago (I believe it was right here I presented it), you know it Red, at least I think so.