Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (16 page)

strate: huge new walled citadels designed to incorporate agricultural

lands inside the city and to offer protection for the consolidation of

scattered towns into new unified democratic states.

Even to this day, in the era of high technology, walls and fortifica-

tions continue to play important if less critical roles in defense and

strategy. While exponential advances in weapons technology and the

advent of air and space power have greatly reduced their effectiveness

as lines of defense, they still perform valuable functions in certain cir-

cumstances, which emphasizes how the challenge-response cycle of

the offensive and defensive is continuous and timeless.

In recent years, the dangerous conditions in Iraq precipitated the con-

struction of security zones and wal s to separate warring communities.77

U.S. forces instal ed barricades in Baghdad to enhance the ability of Iraqi

citizens to conduct their lives with some semblance of normalcy, and

the gradual removal of these huge concrete wal s perhaps indicates an

76 Berkey

easing of tension between these contending groups in that war-torn

city.78 In Israel, an interlinking series of wal s and barriers constructed

to prevent suicide bombers from entering the country has proven an

effective means of limiting terrorist attacks, even as an array of experts

predicted that such an apparently retrograde solution could hardly be

successful. The contemporary Saudi Wal separating Saudi Arabia from

Iraq provides yet another example. To address the threat of foreign fight-

ers flooding across their borders, the Saudis have erected an expensive

network of defenses along this perimeter to alert them to this threat.

The United States is currently constructing a massive, multi-bil ion-

dol ar “fence” of concrete and metal intended to fortify the U.S.- Mexican

border. Its first stage, from San Diego, California, to El Paso, Texas, is

nearly complete, and seems to have drastical y reduced il egal border

crossings —in a manner at least as effective as increased patrols, elec-

tronic sensors, “virtual fences,” and employer sanctions. Apparently con-

current with satel ite communications, aerial drones, and sophisticated

computer-based sensors, metal fences and concrete barriers worldwide

continue to offer protection in a way that other high-tech alternatives

cannot. The more sophisticated the technology to go over, through, and

under wal s, the more sophisticated the counter responses that evolve to

enhance the age-old advantages of fortifications, which continue either

to stop outright entry (and occasional y to stop exit as wel ) or to make

the attackers’ efforts so costly as to be counterproductive.

As with any element of warfare, the functions and purposes of walls

shift with the times, but the notion of material obstacles has not ended.

Unlike moats and drawbridges, however, they remain in ever expanded

and imaginative uses.79 For Athenians in the classical period, walls rep-

resented more than lines of defense; they were also symbols of power

and pride that helped shape the strategic landscape in the interstate

system and, in the case of the Long Walls to Piraeus, enhanced the

autonomy of the lower classes, who were so essential to the vitality of

Athenian democracy and its maritime empire.

These fortifications created strategic opportunity for a rising power;

their destruction signaled unquestionable defeat; and their reconstruc-

tion helped reestablish Athens as a strong potential ally for poleis that

shared a common interest in containing Sparta. Just as British sea power

Why Fortifications Endure 77

served a variety of purposes at different points during the rise and fall

of the British Empire—guarantor of commerce, promoter of colonial

expansion, and enforcer of rough justice on the high seas—so the walls

of Athens had many masters, many builders, and many purposes. All

that is certain in our high-technology future is that the more that walls

and fortifications are dismissed as ossified relics of our military past,

the more they will reappear in new and unique manifestations, and the

more we will need to look to the past for time-honored explanations of

why and how they endure.

Further Reading

For the history of Athens and of its walls, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides

are essential. In addition, the text of the fourth- century BC writer Aeneas the Tactician

has been translated into English and annotated by David Whitehead,
Aineias the Tacti-

cian: How to Survive Under Siege, A Historical Commentary, with Translation and introduc-

tion,
2nd ed. (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001).

Perhaps because of their ubiquity throughout the Greek world, walls and fortifica-

tions have received a great deal of scholarly attention. In addition to numerous articles

and archaeological reports, several major monographs have treated the subject of for-

tifications and civic defense throughout various phases of Greek history. The challenge

of identifying and tracing the chronological development of different masonry tech-

niques and types of construction is discussed in Robert Lorentz Scranton’s
Greek Walls

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941). F. E. Winter‘s
Greek Fortifications

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) and A. W. Lawrence‘s
Greek Aims in Fortifica-

tion
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) each provide a valuable overview of fortifications

in Greece. Y. Garlan’s
Recherches de poliocétique greque,
fasc. 223, (Paris: Bibliothèque

des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1974) is vital to understanding the role

of ramparts in classical Greek municipal defense. J.-P. Adam’s
L’architecture militaire

Greque
(Paris: J. Picard, 1982) provides excellent photographs and detailed drawings

of fortifications throughout the ancient Greek world. The increasing complexity of

these constructions also reflects developments in the offensive tactics used to overcome

them, and on this topic see E. W. Marsden,
Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Develop-

ment
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). For the period of the Peloponnesian War, Victor

Davis Hanson devotes a chapter (chap. 6, “Walls [Sieges (431–415)],” pp. 163–99) to the

subject of fortifications and siegecraft in
A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and

Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
(New York: Random House, 2005).

Turning specifically to Athens, the archaeological remains of the city’s walls are dis-

cussed by R. E. Wycherley,
The Stones of Athens
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1978); see especially chapter 1, “The Walls,” pp. 7–26. More recently, John Camp has

published an excellent survey of the archaeology of the Athenian civic construction in

The Archaeology of Athens
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). It is only recently

78 Berkey

that a full-length study of the Long Walls has been undertaken. David H. Conwell

has done an admirable job of compiling all relevant information—literary, epigraphi-

cal, and archaeological—in
Connecting a City to the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long

Walls
, Mnemosyne Supplements, vol. 293 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Moving beyond the

walls of the urban center to the plains of Attica, three major studies have examined

the history of Athenian rural defenses: J. R. McCredie,
Fortified Military Camps in At-

tica
, Hesperia Supplement 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), Josiah Ober,

Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier, 404–322 bc
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982),

and Mark H. Munn,
The Defense of Attica: The Dema Wall and the Boiotian War of 378–375

bc
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The latter two works have produced

a lively exchange of opinion between the authors over the date, purpose, and efficacy

of the ancient Athenian system of rural fortifications.

Notes

I am grateful to my friend, Matthew B. Kohut, for reading and commenting on several

drafts of this essay.

1 R. E. Wycherley, in
The Stones of Athens
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

1978), writes (7):

The history of the walls of Athens is the history of the expansion and contrac-

tion of the city in its successive phases of growth and decline, in victory, disaster,

and recovery. This was a dominant feature of the city in her greatest days, an

object of immense expenditure of effort and resources by the Athenian Demos,

a symbol of the power of Athens, and a notable example of Greek military ar-

chitecture; and, with repeated repair and reconstruction of course, it remained

more or less in being for sixteen centuries of varying fortunes, rising again and

again after severe dilapidation.

In a non-Athenian context—an event perhaps related to that described by Herodo-

tus (1.168)—Anacreon wrote (frag. 100 [Bruno Gentili,
Anacreon
(Rome: Edizioni

dell’Ateneo, 1958); Bergk 72; Diehl 67, p. 391]): “Now the crown of the city has been

destroyed.” The Scholiast to Pindar,
Olympiin
8.42c, explains the reference by quoting

this line of Anacreon’s poetry, adding that “the walls of cities are like a crown.” Mogens

Herman Hansen in
Polis: An Introduction to the Ancient Greek City-State
(Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2006) describes the general purpose of a Greek polis’s wall (104):

By contrast [i.e., with the Middle Ages], in the ancient Greek
polis
the city wall

served only military purposes, and no tolls were levied at city gates. In time

of war, of course, the walls and gates were guarded, but in peacetime anyone

could pass through the gates in the daytime. The gates were perhaps closed at

night, but they were not guarded, and people could still enter and leave the city.

In the
polis
the walls were not seen as a barrier between city and country, but

rather as a monument for the citizens to take pride in.

2 Prior to the Persian invasion, the Athenian Acropolis was guarded by the Pelasgic

Wall. In addition to this wall, some scholars have postulated that the city was further

Why Fortifications Endure 79

fortified by a surrounding wall. Wycherley,
The Stones of Athens
, 9 (see also n. 4), draws

attention to the dispute concerning the existence of a pre-Persian wall. The ancient

literary testimonia for the wall’s existence are ambiguous and the archaeological evi-

dence for its course is lacking. Nonetheless, E. Vanderpool (“The Date of the Pre-

Persian City-Wall of Athens,” in
Φόρος: Tribute to Benjamin Dean Meritt
, ed. D. W.

Bradeen and M. F. McGregor, 156–60 [Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1974]) concludes

there was a pre-Persian city wall in Athens with a terminus post quem of 566 BC.

3 Fornara 55,
GHI
23. The translation is from Charles W. Fornara,
Archaic Times to the

End of the Peloponnesian War
, vol. 1 of
Translated Documents of Greece and Rome
, 2nd ed.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 53–55. The inscription recording this

decree is of a later date, thereby calling its authenticity into question. Fornara provides

references both in favor of and opposed to its authenticity on p. 54. See also Herodotus

8.41 and Demosthenes 19.303.

4 Herodotus 8.50.

5 Herodotus 8.51. Translations of Herodotus are by Andrea L. Purvis,
The Landmark

Herodotus: The Histories
, ed. Robert B. Strassler (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007).

6 See Herodotus 7.141.3.

7 For a discussion of Themistocles’ preparations for the Persian invasion and the

Athenians’ subsequent evacuation of Attica, see Barry Strauss,
The Battle of Salamis:

The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece—and Western Civilization
(New York: Simon &

Schuster, 2004), 61–72.

8 Herodotus 8.53.

9 Herodotus 9.3. The quotation is from 9.13.2.

10 John M. Camp,
The Archaeology of Athens
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2001), 56–58.

11 Thucydides 1.89.3.

12 In this context, it is interesting to compare the construction of the walls of Athens

with the construction of the Freedom Tower in New York City. See the commentary

of Nicolai Ouroussoff, architectural critic for the
New York Times
, in “A Tower That

Sends a Message of Anxiety, Not Ambition,” February 19, 2007, and “Medieval Modern:

Design Strikes a Defensive Posture,” March 4, 2007:

Four years after the American invasion of Iraq, this state of siege is beginning to

look more and more like a permanent reality, exhibited in an architectural style

we might refer to as 21st-century medievalism. Like their 13th- to 15th-century

counterparts, contemporary architects are being enlisted to create not only major

civic landmarks but lines of civic defense, with aesthetical y pleasing features like