This short piece was written ,Spring 2012 for CAMS 180: Ancient Warfare, as my contribution to a group project defining a model by Victor Davis Hanson called the “Western Way of War” and analyzing how our current knowledge of the Greek Hoplites refutes or supports this hypothesis.
Western Way of War:
What is it?
The “Western Way of War” is a popular model developed by Victor Davis Hanson describing the origins of modern European (or Western) warfare and battle etiquette.
According to Hanson, the Western Way of War is the traditional ideology that wars should be fought in short pre-arranged and decisive military clashes between armies without the use of deceptive war tactics. Guerrilla warfare and retreat are deemed cowardly, while honor and glory can be achieved only through direct confrontation with the enemy. Also, the Western definition of a successful or unsuccessful war rests entirely on its decisiveness, meaning a war can only be decided by having a distinct winner and a clear loser at its conclusion.
A prototypical “Western” army engages in duellistic “man-to-man battles”, usually with similarly armed individuals fighting it out in strict formation. Like the 18’th century British Regiments, whose reputations were built on battlefield gallantry, risking death and holding your ground to defeat your enemy according to the rules of combat is the definition of bravery by Western standards. Deviation from the rules is reserved for the inferior cowards and losers who have to “cheat” to win.
Origins of the Western Way of War:
Hanson states that these duellistic notions and attitudes towards warfare are unique to the west and date all the way back to the Classical Greek Hoplites. According to Hanson’s model, Hoplites engaged in a highly ritualized agonal system of warfare, which manifested itself in the phalanx. Hanson insists that the function, arrangement, and equipment of the Hoplite phalanx evolved to emphasize this ritualistic ideology which abhorred retreat and stressed joint action, cohesion and forward movement.
Arguments For the Western Way of War:
By interpreting phalanxes as extremely tight formations, and by interpreting the Hoplite Othismos “push” literally, Hanson’s Model of phalanx warfare seemingly explains certain unusual aspects of Hoplite equipment including the back-plates, butt spikes, and the concavity of the shields1.
More importantly, Hanson’s Model of ritualized Hoplite warfare may explain what is lacking from the phalanx, namely the overall use of projectiles. “This deliberate dependence on face-to-face killing at close range explains another universal object of disdain in Greek literature: those who fight from afar, the lightly equipped skirmisher or peltast, the javelin thrower, the slinger, and above all, the archer.”2 In the Iliad and to the Greeks, archery in itself is almost considered to be “cheating.” It is a war tactic which violates the honor-codes of man-to-man ordered combat. Any cowardly peasant can kill from a safe distance with a bow, but it requires a real man to fight up-close and personal.
According to Hanson, another duellistic attribute of Hoplite warfare which remained a “the Western Way of War” was its custom to hold pre-arranged battles in pre-determined locations. In his writings, Heroditus tells of a letter written to Xerxes by Mardonios (Xerxes’ cousin) on the procedures of Hoplite warfare, “these Greeks are accustomed to wage their wars among each other in the most senseless way…For as soon as they declare war on each other, they seek out the fairest and most level ground, and then go down there to do battle on it. Consequently, even the winners leave with extreme losses; I need not mention the conquered, since they are annihilated.” 3
Also, hundreds of years later Polybius contrasted the current Roman warfare with that of the ancient Greeks, “The ancients chose not to conquer their enemies by deception, regarding no success as brilliant or secure unless they crushed their adversaries’ spirit in open battle. For this reason they agreed with each other not to use hidden missiles or those discharged from a distance against each other, and they considered only a hand-to-hand, pitched battle to be truly decisive. Therefore they declared wars and battles in advance, announcing when and where they were going to deploy. But now they say only a poor general does anything openly in war (13.3.2-6)” 4
Certainly these passages imply that the Greeks did not bother with diversionary or guerrilla tactics, and preferred a quicker more decisive form of battle not shared by their Eastern neighbors.
Arguments Against “The Western Way of War”
The idea that modern methods for waging war originated with the Classical Hoplites is probably neither completely true, nor completely false. The fact remains that there is still no evidence for “pure” Hoplite Warfare in the Archaic Era, meaning that we can still only infer from the later evidence we do have. Also, the writings of Polybius and Heroditus cannot be counted upon for complete accuracy, as one is for entertainment and the other was written hundreds of years later as a nostalgic longing for “the good old days”.
Also, Hanson’s Model of the Western Way of War, in calling the desire for decisiveness Western, simultaneously implies that Eastern or non-European warfare is the direct opposite. “It is this Western desire for a single, magnificent collision of infantry, for brutal killing with edged weapons on a battlefield between free men, that has baffled and terrified our adversaries from the non-Western world for more than 2,500 years.” 5 However, there is an essential flaw in portraying non-Westerners as engaging only in non-decisive and deceptive guerilla warfare. Near Eastern armies did not avoid pre-arranged decisive battles, as evidenced by accounts of the Battle of Megiddo (ca. 1479 B.C.), the Battle of Qarqar (853 B.C.), and the Battle of Til-Tuba (ca. 653 B.C.). If Hanson believes that this, “desire for an awesome clash of arms was first expressed in Greece at the beginning of the seventh century B.C…for the first time in European history… to find in a few short hours a decisive victory or utter defeat,” than decisive pre-arranged warfare was being practiced by Easterners almost 800 years prior to the Classical Hoplites. 6 The assumption that the Hoplites were original and unique in their desire to wage decisive pre-arranged warfare is totally inaccurate.
Furthermore, the idea that the Greeks did not utilize deception is also inherently false. From military maneuvers, to counter-intelligence and covert operations, the Greeks did not hesitate to use deception against their enemies. It seems the only time deception is considered cowardly, is when it is used against the Greeks. For example, at the Battle of Thermopylae the Greeks feigned retreats at various points, only to turn and slaughter the pursuing Persians, and at the Battle of Salamis Themistocles tricked Xerxes into believing they had surrendered, in order to block his own troops from retreating. In 396 B.C., “On his way to Syracuse, which was under Carthaginian blockade, the Spartan admiral Pharakidas captured nine or ten Carthaginian triremes, put his own men into them, and sailed past the Carthaginians, towing his own ships behind.” 7
In yet another instance, “Learning that the Thracians intended to attack his camp at night, Iphikrates left numerous fires (to give the impression the camp was still occupied) and hid his men, who attacked and defeated the attacking Thracians.” 8 Even in the Iliad, the Trojans are defeated by the Greeks through deception.
So, while pre-arranged decisive battles are neither original, nor unique to Western armies, and while the Hoplites certainly did not abstain from using deception, it is hard to tell what role the ancient Greeks had in shaping our modern Western ideas about how warfare should be waged. The attitudes revolving around what is or is not considered to be standard or honorable warfare has evolved significantly within the last 200 years, let alone the last 2,600 years.
1 Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), chap. 6.
2 Hanson, 15.
3 Hanson, 9.
4Krentz, Peter. “Deception in Archaic and Classical Greek Warfare,” in van Wees, War and Violence, 168.
5 Hanson, 9.
6Hanson, 16.
7 Krentz, 192.
8 Krentz, 193.