Ndergirding (he stunning cultural achievements of the Creeks was an unsurpassed talent for warfare. Armed struggles in the ancient world depended largely on brute strength: At sea, swift galleys propelled by hundreds of oarsmen collided with shattering impact; on land, masses of infantry clashed in ferocious melees. The Creeks did not shy away from such shock tactics, but they brought to them an unprecedented level of discipline. Their galley crews pulled together with uncanny precision, and their infantrymen marched and fought as one in the phalanx, a massive formation that called for absolute steadiness on the part of each member. All this was made possible by the Creek warrior's fierce allegiance to his city and to his comrades, reinforced by a code that impelled men in battle to seek death before dishonor.
Such combative elan helped the outnumbered Creeks to repulse the Persians in a series of epic encounters (pages 40-45). But once that threat was contained, the Creeks fell to fighting among themselves (pages46-49) — employing stratagems perfected in the earlier conflicts.
The superiority of the Creeks at close-in fighting was made painfully clear to the Persians at the battles of Marathon and Plataea. The hoplites, as Creek infantrymen were called, had stronger body armor than their Persian counterparts, sturdier shields, and longer spears. But more to the point, they fought with machinelike effi
Ciency in phalanxes up to twelve ranks deep, the soldiers in each rank pressing so close together that their shields presented an almost unbroken wall. Facing such a prospect, the Persians learned why the phalanx was the most fearsome engine of war known to the ancient world.
Even in defeat, however, the diverse Persian army taught (he Creeks an important lesson. Throughout the conflicts, the hoplites were harried by the enemy's wide-ranging cavalry and pelted by arrows loosed by masses of bowmen. Afterward, the city-states of Creece began to recruit mounted troops, to train bowmen, and to field units of swift, light infantry called peltasts after their wicker shields, or peltae.
When Creeks began slaughtering Creeks in the long fratricidal struggle known as the Peloponnesian Wars, both sides — one led by Athens and the other by Sparta — increasingly employed cavalry and missilelaunching auxiliaries. The great battle at Mantinea was largely a classic struggle between hoplites, but the siege of Syracuse was another matter. There the final Athenian defeat — one of the most terrible disasters in military annals — came largely at the hands of Syracusan archers, soldiers using powerful slingshots, and other troops flinging short dartlike spears. The lowly peltasts, once scorned by the proud hoplites, helped seal the fate of mighty Athens.
World History
