The World of Homer
foe. After the break in the battle, the individual exploits of the
mounted knights, the chariotry, fill the picture, till the beaten
forces reach the wall of the Greek camp, or of Troy, when a rally
occurs, followed by another battle in ordered ranks.[10]
As to the armour and weapons, Homer represents every man-at-arms as
wearing a helmet, usually of bronze; and a huge shield, very long, like
the three sorts of shield represented in Aegean art on the Mycenaean
dagger blade showing lion hunters. Some shields in this art are in
form like the figure 8, they belly out, and protect a man from neck to
ankles. Others are merely doors, flat and oblong, of the same size;
others are equally large, cylindrical, and partly protect the sides.
All are hung from the shoulder by baldrics, not held in the hand,
like the parrying bucklers of the eighth century and later. Homer thus
describes such huge shields as these of Aegean art, with baldrics; but
his language not infrequently conveys the impression that some shields
are circular; indeed, it is only by wrenching the sense of the Greek
that any other meaning can be obtained. The details are considered
later; meanwhile Homer's shields are neither those of the Dipylon
period nor of archaic Greek art, and in their size and their baldrics
correspond to those of Aegean representations. The substance of the
shields is layers of ox's hide, covered with a plating of bronze.
Warriors also wear corslet, metal girdle, and metal-plated kirtle: the
corslet was thin, and could be pierced by arrows. The greaves to cover
the shins were probably of bronze, laced up with wire, as in a pair
from Enkomi in Cyprus, of the Age of Bronze, now in the British Museum.
No thigh pieces are mentioned, though they are commonly shown in the
art of the seventh to sixth centuries.[11]
For offensive weapons the men-at-arms use two spears with heavy heads
of bronze, these are usually thrown; and a sword of bronze, commonly
a heavy cut and thrust blade (never the long Elizabethan rapier of an
earlier Minoan time), with a handle of ivory, inlaid or studded with
gold or silver, in some cases. The sheath is similarly decorated. Only
once do we hear of a battle-axe of bronze; and the dirk, sometimes of
iron, is never said to be used in battle. These weapons have analogues
in certain swords and daggers found in Aegean graves.
Archery is not so highly considered as when "the man Heracles" and
the great Eurytus were bowmen. Odysseus, the heir of the mighty bow
of Eurytus, left it at home, and fought as a heavy-armed footman.
Pandarus, on the other hand, left his horses and chariots at home, and
came to Troy trusting in his bow.[12] Teucer, Pandarus, Paris, and
occasionally Meriones, are the bowmen, among the princes, and Paris
and Pandarus are taunted for their weak and cowardly missiles; honour
was to be won with sword and spear. The Scots archers, in the same
way, were always anxious to come to hand-strokes with their sperths,
or battle-axes; the Highlanders threw down their muskets, after one
discharge, and went in with the claymore; the French never reconciled
themselves to the long bow; the Spartans despised it. This was the
Homeric sentiment: the bow was scarcely the weapon for a hero. The
arrow-heads were of bronze.[13] In Mycenaean graves at Kakovotos (Old
Pylos) in Elis, the stone arrow points are of very fine neolithic
work.[14] When archery declined yet lower, in historic times, the
round or oval parrying buckler, carried on the left arm, came in, as a
protection against spears and sword-strokes. This parrying buckler does
not appear in Homer: efforts made to discover it are unsuccessful.
Thus Homer describes a given stage in the art of war: his pictures are
not patchworks of "Mycenaean" fighting (about which we know nothing),
and of civic Greek fighting in the age of civic heavy-armed foot.
[1] Iliad, iii. iv.
[2] vii. 332-420.
[3] xviii. 175-177.
[4] Ferdiad, in the Old Irish _Tain Bo Cualgne_, also drags a dead man
by his chariot wheels.
[5] _R.G.E._ p. 118. _Ajax_, 1031. Euripides, _Andromache_, 399.
[6] _Iliad_, vi. 37-65, xi. 122-147.
[7] _Iliad_, xi. 100, ii. 416.
[8] _Ibid._ xiii. 439, 440. That the bronze tunic is a softening of
the sense by a late interpolator is not very likely, for Homer, we
have seen, represents a warrior as cutting off a dead man's hands and
head; and if he does not shirk this, if no later hand corrects him, why
should he strain at tearing a chiton? Miss Stawell ingeniously remarks
that the chiton-tearing is a proof of the prevalent use of corslet? If
men fought without corslets, the chiton "must always have been getting
torn in the mêlée, whatever the warrior's fate. But the sign would have
been unmistakable if the tunic was usually covered by the corslet and
could not be torn until that was taken off...." (_Homer and the Iliad_,
p. 211). But, I fear, Homeric warriors did not come to such close
quarters as at Rugby football.
[9] _Iliad_, xvi. 702, 703.
[10] See "Homeric Tactics."
[11] For details and discussion, see "Homeric Armour and Costume."
[12] Iliad, v. 193-205.
[13] On stone and bronze arrow-heads, see Tsountas and Manatt, p. 209.
[14] Kurt Müller, _Alt Pyhs_, p. 292. _Attische Mitteilungen_, 1909.
Cf. plate xv.
CHAPTER VII
HOMERIC TACTICS
Homer is not a scientific military historian, but a poet. Consequently,
in his accounts of pitched battles, he naturally dwells on the prowess
of famous individuals in the single combat; the struggle of one hero
against a group of assailants; the pursuit and the flight; more than he
dwells on the long encounter of marshalled lines before "the break in
the battle."
Let us consider the battle in _Iliad_, xi. The princes begin by giving
their chariots to the charioteers, "to hold them in by the fosse, well
and orderly," and "themselves as heavy men-at-arms were hastening
about."[1] They are then marshalled in order, with the chariots behind
them. Meanwhile Hector arrays the Trojans, being now with the front
and now with the rear ranks.[2] The fight begins; "equal heads had the
battle." The two forces meet like two bands of reapers shearing the
corn of a field from either limit, and meeting in the centre.[3] This
steady fight of lines of dismounted men-at-arms endures from dawn to
midday, till, at noon, comes "the break in the battle," "the Danaans
by their valour brake the battalions."[4] Agamemnon, on foot, rushes
into the ruined ranks of Troy, and slays many Trojans in their chariots
(which they would naturally mount for the sake of speedier flight);
there is a pursuit of the broken foe, "footmen kept slaying footmen
as they were driven in flight, and horsemen slaying horsemen with
the sword"; till the flying Trojans rally at the Scaean gate, while
Agamemnon still slays the hindmost fugitives. A flesh-wound irks him,
and he "retires hurt." Hector, by command of Zeus, has waited for this
moment, and now leads a chariot-charge among the scattered Achaeans.
Henceforth there is a series of individual encounters; Odysseus is
alone and is surrounded; he fights hard; he calls for aid, and is
rescued by Menelaus and Aias. Several Achaean princes are wounded,
among others Diomede, Agamemnon, and Odysseus retire to their quarters
for rest and surgical aid.
This is not scientific fighting: no general is apart, receiving news
of the fight, sending supports where they are needed, husbanding the
reserves, and so forth. The leaders actually _lead_, and their men are
discouraged and give ground when the chiefs are put out of action,
precisely as in the Highland armies of clans under Dundee or Montrose
or Prince Charles, where so much depended on the success of the first
onslaught. Homer's men have more faculty for recovering from a severe
stroke. The Achaeans, after a long struggle of heavy dismounted
men-at-arms, drive the Trojans to the city wall. The Trojans rally,
and drive the Achaeans to their own fortifications, where there is a
confused mellay at the fosse and under the wall.[5]
Polydamas very properly now advises the chivalry of Troy to dismount
and fight on foot (_πρυλέες_) in dense columns, while their chariots
are held stationary by their squires. Hector approves, and the
dismounted Trojans form five columns of attack on a fortified
position.[6] The Achaeans, scattered and disheartened, are mainly led
and helped by the two Aiantes, but Poseidon rallies five or six young
heroes of Boeotia, Aetolia, Crete, and Pylos.[7] They are confessedly
both wearied and demoralised by the success of Hector in breaking down
the gate.[8] They are actually weeping!
But now, encouraged by the god, they form a "schiltrom," a close
clump of spears advanced and levelled, underlying and overlying each
other.[9] (The spears of defenders and assailants, at the battle of
Langside (1568), were so closely interlocked, that discharged pistols
and daggers thrown by the combatants lay on them!) Shield touches
shield, the plumes of the helmets meet.[10]
As was natural, Hector's column was arrested by the "dark impenetrable
wood" of Achaean spears,[11] and now the poet makes Poseidon, who
has lost a grandson (xiii. 207) in the fight, stir up Idomeneus, who
is at a distance from Hector's point of attack, and we have the day
of valour, and the success of the Cretan prince, on the left of the
Achaean fortified position. The Boeotians there, with the Athenians and
"Ionian tunic-trailers," are hard pressed, but the Aiantes make a stout
resistance, and the arrows of the Locrians are showered on Hector's
column.[12] Polydamas advises Hector to retreat, but he hurries off and
brings up reinforcements in good order. He then tries again and again
to break through the schiltrom of the Achaean dismounted men-at-arms,
and the two forces clash with cries of onset.[13]
Here we have a renewal of the steady conflict of men duly marshalled.
Hector, however, is put out of action, sore smitten by a boulder from
the hand of Aias; the Trojans give ground, are pursued, and fall back,
till when Hector revives, Aias and the princes who joined him at the
command of Poseidon, form a firm line of resistance.[14]
Again there is a dogged contest of marshalled forces, till Apollo
causes a panic among the Achaeans, and their line is broken. "Then man
fell upon man _when the close fight was scattered_,"[15] and we have
a new set of individual valiances, among the bravest; but the Achaean
host is flying in disorderly rout, "hither and thither in terror,"
through the ditch and within the wall.
It is in his chariot, to which he had been carried when stunned by
the boulder, that Hector now calls for a chariot charge on the fosse
and wall, which Apollo makes possible by levelling the wall into the
dyke.[16] After mixed fighting, the spear of Aias is lopped in twain by
the sword of Hector, and fire is thrown into the ship of Protesilaus.
This is the moment that Achilles has prayed and longed for since the
first book of the poem. Addressing Agamemnon, he then swore a great
oath by the sceptre that "longing for Achilles shall come upon the
Achaeans one and all, when multitudes fall dying before manslaying
Hector."[17] In the same book he bids Thetis pray to Zeus to "hem the
Achaeans among the sterns of their ships, given over to slaughter."[18]
When the Embassy sought Achilles in Book ix., with the offers of
Agamemnon, this dire need had not fallen on the Achaeans, and Achilles
rejected their prayers. But he promised to fight if Hector, as he
burned the ships, came to those of the Myrmidons.[19]
Hector never came so far; for[20] though Achilles kept the letter
of his vow in Book ix., and did not arm, he sent Patroclus forth in
Achilles' armour, at the head of the Myrmidons, and their charge on