Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (31 page)

when taking Oeum from the Spartans in 370–369.58 Rooftop positions

were not invulnerable. Boeotian troops defending Corinth in 393, for

example, climbed to the roofs of ship sheds and warehouses, only to be

trapped and killed there.59

Urban Warfare 147

With their narrow doorways and solid construction, private homes

could become fortresses of last resort for a defending population. A

city might be declared secure once the agora and public buildings were

taken, but inhabitants determined to resist could still force an attacker

to root them out house by house. If neighbors cut through shared

walls to link up with each other, they could convert an entire block

into a final redoubt. House-to-house combat was dangerous and dif-

ficult. Beyond every darkened doorway and around every blind corner

might lurk a desperate enemy ready to fight to the last. At Olynthos,

the distribution of excavated sling bullets and arrowheads suggests that

Macedonian attackers had to force their way into house courtyards,

only to be shot at from the surrounding rooms. The Macedonians ap-

parently responded with volleys of their own missiles before moving in

to clear each room.60 Thirteen years later, the Macedonians probably

faced a similar situation at Thebes. After Alexander’s forces seized the

city’s key points, some Theban infantry fled to their houses, where they

and their families fought and died.61

In addition to posing tactical difficulties, combat in houses threat-

ened an invading army’s discipline and cohesion. Soldiers who turned

aside from the fight to loot, rape, and pillage were useless for further

combat. Worse, they might be surprised by a counterattack. At Syra-

cuse in 355 BC, for instance, Dion and the Syracusans caught enemy

mercenaries in the act of plundering and utterly routed them.62

Houses had such defensive potential that they were sometimes in-

corporated into fortification architecture. Motya in Sicily, for example,

featured multiple-story houses near its northern gate. During the

Greek capture of the city in 397 BC, Carthaginian defenders employed

these houses as a second line of defense.63 When Philip of Macedon

tried to force his way into Perinthos in 341–340, the defenders turned

their homes into impromptu fortresses, blocking streets and alleys to

stymie the Macedonian advance.64 Plato advocated that houses “be ar-

ranged in such a way that the whole city will form a single wall; all the

houses must have good walls . . . facing the roads so that the whole city

will have the form of a single house, which will render its appearance

not unpleasing, besides being far and away the best plan for ensuring

safety and ease of defense.”65 Plato’s suggestion is reflected at Olynthos,

148 Lee

where the backs of the first row of houses along the west edge of the

North Hill are built into the northwestern fortifications of the city.66

Sparta’s unusual topography turned the two Theban attacks on it

into hybrids of open battle and city fight. Classical Sparta was unwalled

and spread out along the banks of the Eurotas River. At its outer neigh-

borhoods, houses were interspersed with groves and fields. The central

area of town, where the Spartiates or full Spartan citizens lived, seems

to have been densely built up, without a regular plan. Even so, the cen-

ter of town contained walls, fences, and open spaces. Around the town

center were a number of religious sanctuaries and public buildings.67

In 370–369, the Thebans under Epaminondas initially confined them-

selves to plundering the suburbs. There they felled trees to build field

fortifications wherever they camped, just as they did in rural terrain.

Eventually the Thebans took a stab at the heart of the city, advancing

toward the open racecourse in the sanctuary of Poseidon. In response,

the Spartans used the urban topography to their advantage, by setting

an ambush in the Temple of the Tyndaridae.68 The ambush, combined

with a conventional cavalry charge across the racecourse, halted the

Thebans. In 362 BC, fearing a direct assault, the Spartans prepared by

demolishing houses in the central part of town and using the rubble to

block up entrances, alleys, and open spaces. Some even alleged that the

Spartans used large bronze tripods taken from religious sanctuaries to

build barricades.69 Epaminondas, however, did not attempt a head-on

attack, fearing that his troops would be exposed to missile attack from

rooftops.70 Instead, he took an indirect approach, as if maneuvering on

an open battlefield, which allowed his forces to advance on the inhab-

ited area without coming under missile fire. Only a desperate counter-

attack of fewer than a hundred Spartans under King Archidamus threw

the Thebans back.

The Combatants

The equipment, formations, and command structures of classical Greek

armies were ill-suited for built-up terrain. Hoplites, the mainstay of all

polis armies, were armored militia infantry who carried large round

shields and long thrusting spears. Although the hoplite shield has been

Urban Warfare 149

judged heavy and unwieldy, there are some indications it could be han-

dled effectively in individual combat, even in cities; fourth- century tomb

reliefs from Asia Minor even show shield-carrying hoplites climbing as-

sault ladders. Although there is no certain evidence, possibly hoplites

fighting house to house discarded their shields for greater maneuver-

ability. The more serious problem for hoplites in cities was weaponry.

While they carried swords as secondary weapons, hoplites were primar-

ily spearmen; their 2.5-meter-long spears would have been awkward at

close quarters or inside houses. Matters would have been even worse

for Macedonian troopers equipped with the 12- to 16-foot-long
sarissa
,

or pike. Some Greeks did study swordsmanship, but systematic weap-

ons training remained the province of a wealthy few. Indeed, outside of

Sparta, most hoplites underwent no formal training until the end of the

classical period.

A greater challenge for hoplites in cities was battle formation. Hop-

lites typically employed a deep infantry array called the phalanx. The

ideal phalanx, an unbroken mass eight ranks deep, could extend a mile

or more across an open battlefield. Needless to say, a phalanx could

not be maintained on city streets or in houses. Only in an agora could

hoplites employ their customary formation. Splitting a phalanx into

smaller detachments to cope with urban topography was complicated

by the general lack of subordinate units and officers. With the excep-

tion of the Spartans, who had a complex tactical hierarchy and an al-

most religious devotion to good order, most Greek armies had a very

low proportion of officers and no tactical units below the company

level. What officers there were could be rendered impotent by the lax-

ness of classical military discipline.71

The amateur ethos of most polis armies had other important conse-

quences for urban war. For one thing, the Greeks never developed units

of specialists such as pioneers, sappers, or combat engineers. Hoplites

could and did build improvised field works, but their engineering skills

and equipment never came close to matching those of the Roman le-

gions. At the same time, because hoplite militias equipped themselves,

a wide proportion of citizens owned arms. Fighting in a city, whether

as a result of invasion or civil war, typically involved the whole popu-

lace, not just regular armed forces.

150 Lee

Light infantry, including archers, slingers, and javelineers, was much

more effective in urban fighting. Light troops could hurl missiles from

rooftops or sweep the streets with volleys of projectiles.72 The archaeo-

logical evidence from Olynthos indicates that slingers and archers could

wield their weapons even inside the confines of houses.73 Light troops

proved their value during the fighting at Piraeus in 404–403. The oligar-

chic forces, with hoplites enough to mass fifty shields deep, advanced

up the Mounichia hill toward the democrats, who were able to muster

only ten ranks of hoplites. Behind these ten ranks, though, were the

democratic light infantry. The hilly topography of Mounichia gave the

defenders a height advantage, allowing the light infantry to shoot over

the heads of their own hoplites. With their opponents packed fifty deep

into the street below them, the light troops could hardly miss.74

The role of cavalry in urban battle is difficult to determine. The

Athenian Thirty Tyrants apparently brought a sizable cavalry force

to Piraeus in 404–403, but the horsemen played no role in the battle.75

They may have deployed in Piraeus’s agora to guard the rear of the

oligarchic hoplite force. Theban cavalry participated in the fighting at

Thebes in 335, although they were hampered by the narrow streets, and

quickly fled once the Macedonians captured the agora.76 The Roman

writer Pausanias saw a trophy near the Painted Stoa at Athens, just out-

side the agora, that commemorated an Athenian cavalry victory there

against Macedonian cavalry, probably in 304 BC.77 At least the classical

Greeks did not deploy elephants in urban fighting. Pyrrhus of Epiros

would later try to do so at Argos in 272, only to discover that his troops

had to remove the fighting platforms from the elephants in order to

pass through the city gates.78

Urban Warfare and Classical

Military Thought

Assessing the place of urban warfare in classical military thought re-

quires understanding the centrality of walls in the polis mind-set.

Building a circuit wall was the largest and most expensive communal

task that the citizens of most poleis would ever undertake.79 Once built,

walls marked polis
identity and autonomy. Plato might advocate “walls

Urban Warfare 151

of bronze and iron” rather than earth, but when it came to defending

their cities, Greeks never ignored the practical value of fortifications.80

Indeed, while classical warfare has been portrayed as an agonal affair

that valorized open battle over sieges and stratagems, by the mid-fifth

century BC the idea of a defensive strategy based on impregnable city

walls was well established at Athens.81 Athens was exceptionally well

prepared for such a strategy because it could draw supplies from its

overseas empire. Nonetheless, the citizens of smaller poleis considered

staying behind the walls a perfectly normal defensive move, especially

when faced with a numerically superior invader. They would choose

open battle only if the numbers were even. In fact, close analysis of the

Peloponnesian War reveals that sieges and city assaults were twice as

common as pitched battles.82

The stock that classical Greeks placed in their walls is reflected in the

absolute panic that sometimes overcame defenders when they realized

enemy forces had penetrated the bounds of their city. Not even the

Spartans, who prided themselves on their lack of city walls, were im-

mune to this reaction: in 370–369, both men and women panicked at the

appearance of Thebans in the suburbs.83 Given the expense involved

in building a city wall, and the psychological value attached to main-

taining its integrity, it is no surprise that fighting inside city walls was

almost always undertaken out of necessity rather than as a strategic

choice. Tellingly, our ancient sources preserve only a single reference

to troops deliberately abandoning their walls in order to fight inside

their city. This was at Pharcedon in Thessaly during the mid-fourth cen-

tury BC, where the defenders unsuccessfully attempted to draw Philip’s

Macedonians into an urban ambush.84

Greek military thinkers were probably also disinclined to adopt ur-

ban battle as a preferred mode of warfare, because it upset accepted

gender and status hierarchies. The classical citizen ideal emphasized

warfare as the exclusive realm of free males. Women and slaves were

supposed to stay indoors, secure within the walls of the household.

Combat inside cities, however, upset the masculine dominance over

war, not to mention the notion of the household as an inviolable pri-

vate space. It is notable that accounts of urban battle prominently men-

tion the active participation of women and slaves.85 As well, city fights

152 Lee

favored the poor and unarmored over middle-class hoplites, challeng-

ing hoplite dominance of the battlefield.

Furthermore, Greek commanders understood that urban warfare

was particularly vicious and uncertain, even by ancient standards.

Women and children, along with combatants, were fair game. Treach-

ery, massacres, and fights to the death were commonplace. Urban to-

pography made battle more desperate, as troops confined in streets and

houses could not easily flee. Even soldiers inclined to grant quarter to