War As Training, War As Spectacle: The Hippika Gymnasia From Xenophon To Arrian, by Dr. Anna Busetto, investigates the loci paralleli in the descriptions of hippika gymnasia in Xenophon’s Hipparchicus and Arrian’s Tactica. The Xenophonian echoes appearing in the Tactica show not only a generic literary influence by an admired model, but also the vitality – across centuries and cultures – of specific aspects of military training. In Arrian’s treatise, their re-enactment is mediated by the Adlocutio Hadriani, an epigraphic record of a speech by the Emperor Hadrian at Lambaesis, where he witnessed a spectacular performance by the auxiliary troops stationed there. Certain precise lexical correspondences suggest that the Tactica might be – in its “Roman part” (chap. 32, 3-44, 3) at least – a sort of literary re-working of the earlier Adlocutio.

The tumultuous transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean was marked by a change in the iconography of warriors and warfare, particularly in Egypt and in the Aegean world. It is also at this time that the Helladic oared galley makes its first appearance, where it is used as an instrument of naval warfare in the first true sea battles in recorded history. This paper investigates these earliest representations of naval combat, with a special emphasis on the appearance and employment of new maritime technology and its effect on maritime operations and naval warfare. Also considered are what modes of fighting were utilized in, and what changes had to be made to adapt to, this earliest form of ship-based combat.

The commemoration of the war dead in ancient Greece is usually investigated on the basis of a rigid classification of both ancient documentary evidence and modern categories. Through two historical examples, different in space and time, this paper argues instead that it must be thought in the light of the fluidity and malleability which are intrinsic to the social practices of memory. Giorgia Proietti focuses on the commemoration of the war dead in Classical Athens. On the one hand, she disputes the common assumption according to which they were honored with a strictu sensu heroic cult and argues instead that they were the recipient of a canonical dead cult, though extended in a civic dimension. On the other hand, she recognizes that they were at the core of a complex web of discursive strategies, which, through time, actually represented them as ‘founding heroes’. The heroic paradigm of the war dead can therefore be grasped only in the light of the fluidity and malleability of the different means of commemoration, notably the level of cultual rituality and that of narration, images and memory. Elena Franchi advances a new interpretation of the base of a Phocian monument dedicated at Delphi in the IV or III century B.C., commemorating an archaic battle fought against the Thessalians recorded by Herodotus (8.27 ff). This base, which preserves the marks of the statues’ feet and a fragmentary dedication (Syll.3 202B), is likely to be identified with the monument mentioned by Pausanias in 10.1.10, representing the leaders and heroes of that battle. However, most of these leaders and heroes were invented by local post-Herodotean narrative traditions dating to the IV or III century B.C. Hence this monument shows both the Classical and Hellenistic-Roman attitude to reshape the collective memory of an archaic event and the permeability between different means of commemoration.

in: 'Res Militares, The Official Newsletter of the Society of Ancient Military Historians', Volume 16, Issue 1, July 2016.

From the very beginning of our species history we have waged war. Some archaeologists claim the first act of homo sapiens on the world stage was that of genocide with the systematic destruction of the Neanderthals although there is no suggestion of an organized war effort, evidence points to small scale conflict slowly driving the physically stronger Neanderthals into less favorable areas for survival as they were defeated by the homo sapiens who although weaker and less well adapted to the northern European climate could communicate and unite to gain dominance of better settlement areas. So what does explain the advent of war? Archeological evidence offers several explanations including large regional populations that increased competition; more anchored living that prevented people from moving away from conflict; social structures such as clans that provided flexible frameworks for splitting into “us” and “them”; the emergence of a distinct political elite with its own interests; trade in goods that provided something to fight over; and ecological reverses such as droughts or large-game extinction. Clearly as Stone Age societies began warfare, the next stage of warfare became collective and systemized, where large kingdoms developed and waged war for prestige and to gain land and resources including slaves. A good example of this period is that of ancient Egypt and the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East such as the Hittites. During this period armies started to develop and the king of the battle was the chariot. The chariot represented the shock element in the armies of the day. The next stage in the evolution of warfare (400BC-900AD) saw the rise of infantry as the dominant force on the battle field, well trained and disciplined infantry could deal with chariots by remaining steady in the face of a charge or opening their ranks to let the chariots through and then attacking them. This period could be termed the legionnaire age because it saw the heavy infantry of Rome come to dominate the battlefield. Infantry became better organized and drilled with heavier armor, the Greeks saw the development of the long spear and pike-like Sarissa and the devastating phalanx formations. As these factors became more common around the world, so did war. War was frequent across Anatolia by around 5,500 B.C., central Europe by 4,300 B.C., and northern China by 2,500 B.C. Ancient states encouraged more militarism along their “barbarian” boundaries and trade routes. European colonial expansion from 1500 A.D. forward generated much more war—not just resistance to colonial powers, but between peoples as they were pushed onto others’ lands, enlisted in colonial rivalries, sent out as slave raiders, or given new goods to fight over or weapons with which to fight. This explains why the indigenous peoples of later prehistory, and those indigenous peoples observed from the time of Columbus to today, have lived through much more war than their distant ancestors. No doubt the idea that it is possible to banish war from the human experience will be seen by some as a dangerously naive idea. The idea that soldiers in their roles as advisors to political leaders can play an important role in eliminating war might strike some as even more naive. Yet, who better than the soldier is in a position to assess the destructive consequences of a political policy gone awry? Who, if not the soldier, can offer an assessment of the destructive power of modern weapons seen from the perspective of actual experience? Moreover, who, if not the soldier, can more accurately assess and express the cost of war in human suffering and pain? If the soldier can be enticed to place his own experience of war within a larger historical context, then he or she, more than any other member of our society, is in a position to restrain the hand of the politician in making war.