XVII. End as of 2/20/96
To Scott Rusch's Presentation of 2/2296
A. Most of the money went into the formation of Greece's first standing PAID professional army. It helped that he was starting with a slate the Illyrians had cleaned for him.
1. Philip called his new troops the "Pezhetairoi," foot- companions, elevating a Lyncestian shepherd to something near in rank to the nobles of the plains.
2. When these guys weren't drilling in the new Theban-style "Macedonian" phalanx with these new 15-25' pikes (sarissai) Philip had adopted, they were building roads and fortifications, and Macedonia took off as an economic unit.
a) The phalanx itself was broken into taxeis, units which allowed some spectacular maneuvers.
b) Two examples: When the Thracians rolled carts full of rocks down hills, and Darius tried scythed chariots at Gaugamela, the taxeis either lay down under their shields or got out of the way.
c) Note that Darius had misapplied a good weapon, and done worse than not using it all.
(1) He had wasted his investment in the technology
(2) He hadacquainted the enemy with the nex technology at too cheap a price--French with the Mitrailleuse.
3. They never went home, and unlike the Spartans, didn't have to worry about the Helots or take a lifetime to produce in sufficient quantity to be ungodly lethal.
4. They were armed in between a Peltast and a Hoplite--helmet, linen corselet, small shield, and that collapsible/extendable pike.
a) Built in SECTIONS--allowed for easy transport and varying length
b) Counter-weighted, which shows that somebody thought it through
c) Probably the end had some species of metal guards to keep someone from severing it with his sword.
5. The cavalry got a shorter Sarissa of their own, and drilling in a formation we call the wedge, which allowed them to punch through an enemy line. (Illustration, Hackett, p.108)
6. Philip also had an elite bodyguard of hoplites, the hypaspists.
a) Move fast and rapidly to keep the enemy from getting in between the phalanx and the cavalry
b) At Alexander's tactical magnum opus at Gaugamela, 331, these men fought, not in the line, but in small units designed to hit and run and obstruct the enemy.
7. The meatgrinder of the phalanx moves at an oblique angle towards the enemy line while the cavalry darts through any weakened area while the hypaspists keep them linked together (look at your Hackett, overleaf pp. 118-119).
a) While it is true that people seldom waited for Alexander's phalanx to reach them, it was hardly an empty threat.
b) Some protection from missiles from helmets, arm-shields, and the raised points of the rearward pikes.
c) IF hoplites, as the Greek mercenaries at the Issus in 333, or the Romans at Pydna, 169, could get into the Phalanx, it got very ugly very quickly.
B. Philip also used his money to buy the best siege engineers and equipment money could buy (Dionysius I and Motya, 394), or to open a city the EASY way...
I. Would it surprise you if I told you that the rest of Eastern Mediterranean history more or less involves the Macedonian army destroying anything or anyone who got in front of it until it meets something it can't destroy?
XVIII. With that unsettling thought, we now take you to something refreshingly modern: the birth of the Military- Industrial complex.
I. II.The idea that governments could support and pay for the invention of new weapons had its beginning in 397 at the hands of an absolute ruler who found constant warfare means of forestalling resentment of his authority.
II. Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, launched history's first concentrated program of technological weapons development.
A. He hired engineers from all over Sicily and Italy, and even from among his intended targets, the Carthaginians.
B. Working in the temples and every other public place under the direct supervision of enthusiastic wealthy citizens, Dionysius's workers handed him the catapult, the quadrireme, and the quinquereme.
C. Quite possibly the Carthaginians had invented the quadrireme on their own shortly before. Anxiety makes the necessity that mothers the invention.
1. Ancient warships, from Homer's basic hulls to the Athenian trireme were designed around the idea of one man pulling one oar--it doesn't work any higher than three levels on top of each other.
2. The great secret of the quadrireme's design was to use a larger oar and have more than one man row it.
a) 2.Its inventors may have been inspired by the large "sweeps," as they called them as late as the 19th century, the paddles used from the high decks of sailing vessels to move them when lacking a wind.
b) 3.Dionysius's engineers were either the first Greeks to think of that or the first to realize that a lower bank of oarsmen could sit two at an oar, hence the five.
c) 4.Syracusan experience in the construction of heavier vessels had to have made them realize that if they could move a heavier hull at speeds comparable to a trireme, they could hit harder with it.
D. D.Dionysius's engineers soon proved their catapult likewise useful against enemy warships.
1. 1.When Dionysius unleashed his new armada and siege train against the hapless Carthaginian base of Motya in 397, a relieving Carthaginian fleet became the unlucky targets of history's first successful artillery bombardment.
2. 2.Modern tests conducted with reproductions of ancient catapult shot have proved that the more powerful catapults could pierce the light hulls of triremes at up to 300 yards.
3. Certainly the Carthaginians withdrew as the new weapon was turned against them.
E. The defenders of Motya soon faced the other products of Dionysius I's hired genius:
1. Defenders on walls have the basic advantage of shooting down at attackers from a height.
2. They can shoot further and harder, and are much harder to hit.
3. The Carthaginians had themselves used the old Assyrian mobile towers against the Sicilian (Sicelot) Greeks.
4. Dionysius's were worse:
a) The catapults they carried picked off the defenders when they tried to come out and do something about the towers' advance, and
b) When the towers got close to the wall, they dropped assault ramps and the Syracusans were on the wall, and within the city.
5. Remember what I said about TANSTAAFL? All this hardware cost more than any assault previously.
a) Dionysius had to sell the inhabitants of Motya into slavery to cover his short term expenses.
b) THAT didn't bother him, but Motya was ruined as an exploitable economic resource. Sheep, sheared vs. skinned.
c) Sieges more often than previously became total war affairs--defenders had much greater risks to face if they surrendered.
(1) Philip at Olynthus
(2) Alexander at Tyre
(3) And the "cornered rat" defenses at Perinthus, Byzantium, and almost at Athens in 338.
d) Dionysius, for example, was notorious for
(1) Breaking his word and
(2) Slaughtering his own mercenaries as a cheaper measure than paying them.
III. It is currently fashionable to say that the products of Dionysius's engineers found no wide use outside of Sicily until at least a half century later; that Philip II's catapults were a great novelty to his Greek targets, and that the lack of quadriremes in the Athenian navy until 330 indicates that the quadrireme hadn't been invented previously.
IV. Do the word "utter nonsense" make my position sufficiently clear?
A. My old advisor, Dr. Graham, spent an entire hour berating me for implying that something could happen in Sicily without the rest of the Greek world knowing about it.
B. Plutarch's Mor. 191E records a Spartan king's sick observation upon seeing a catapult bolt: "So this, then, means the end of valor."
C. Plato, Gorg. 512b notes "You sneer at him, and call him an engine-maker--yet sometimes he saves whole cities." From what and whom, hmm?
D. Philip II found his own army cut to pieces by one Onomarchus, who had joined his fellow Phocians in seizing the treasuries at Delphi and using them to hire mercenaries.
1. Philip had moved south in 353/2 to get past the Phocian "cork" in Macedonia's bottle.
2. Onomarchus lured the phalanx into a box canyon--what's my rule #1, again?
3. Where it was cut to pieces by heavy artillery, the one time Philip or Alexander's phalanx was ever defeated.
4. Philip's response was also significant: "Like a (battering) ram, I withdraw to strike harder the next time!"
E. The Athenian instution of the ephebia, sort of the national service Clinton wants to impose, required that catapult gunnery be one of the skills the young men learned.
F. Case proved.
XIX. All right, now who's this guy Aineias the Tactician
I. SPOT CHECK: Who's Aineas, anyway?
A. In Homer, he's the one Trojan warrior to survive the siege
B. In other words, a famous defender of a beleagured city
C. Could the name be equivalent, then, to Poor Richard? Think of that if you want to read Whitehead pp. 4-8.
II. Some points on which to chew:
A. As the OCD points out, and Whitehead echoes, Aeneas's overriding concern is treason within the walls.
1. He's read his Thucydides. Anyone interested in societal pressures of warfare could write a GREAT paper just by looking up the word "Corcyra" in Thucydides.
2. Yo, Rice--did it ever occur to you that he might have LIVED through same? It's already getting hard to make people understand about the Cold War.
3. But, again, remember Philip II's favorite siege weapon.
B. A literary note: One kind of prose ALWAYS sells-- manuals. Be nice to see THIS one in the "How-To" sections, what?
XX. End as of 2/27/96