Ancient warfare

Violent conflict must have existed before civilization—John Keegan wrote that “Warfare is almost as old as man himself.” However, only with the rise of great cities did organized warfare become possible. Between about 10,000 and 5,000 b.c.e., there was a shift from wandering and gathering to agricultural and village life in many places throughout the ancient world, beginning with the area that historians call the Ancient Near East. This change caused conflict between settled peoples and those who remained at least seminomadic. The surpluses of grain and other food made possible by agriculture looked inviting to wandering peoples. The biblical story of the Israelite conquest of Palestine, including the capture of the heavily walled city of Jericho, is an echo of this type of warfare.

When Indo-Aryan tribes invaded the Indus River valley beginning about 1500 b.c.e., their use of bronze weapons and horse-drawn chariots gave them a great advantage over the Dravidian people whom they eventually conquered. However, the nature and scope of warfare became more complex and much more destructive as agricultural villages developed into the first great cities and empires, which probably happened first in the area known as Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamian Warfare

By 3000 b.c.e., large cities with a more complex specialization of labor began to appear in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Such cities as Uruk and Ur competed over land and metal resources but also faced danger from nomadic peoples moving into the area. Warfare became an integral part of Mesopotamian society, and images of war appear in many of the stories and myths of these people. A depiction of such early armies is found in the “Standard of Ur” from about 2500 b.c.e., where warriors appear with spears, helmets, cloaks, and primitive war wagons. Warfare was the way by which such rulers conquered neighboring city-states and built territorial empires—the first such conqueror was a Semitic chieftain named Sargon, who controlled the area of Sumer by 2330 b.c.e.

Between this time and the rise of the Assyrians in the eighth century b.c.e., the technology of warfare developed rapidly, with weapons such as the two-wheeled chariot, the composite bow, the catapult, and the battering ram, which were highly effective against even the strongest city walls. By 650 b.c.e., the Assyrian Empire stretched from Thebes on the Nile northward through Palestine and Syria and down into Mesopotamia.

The Assyrian kings used terror and intimidation to subdue subject peoples and keep them docile, which ensured that tribute money kept flowing in. For example, between about 723 and 700 b.c.e., Assyrian armies invaded both the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, destroying many cities while killing, enslaving, and deporting most of the population. Assyrians often left grim reminders of the consequences of rebellion behind them, such as stacks of severed heads outside the gates of the cities they captured. The fearsome reputation of the Assyrians is attested in the Hebrew Bible in passages such as 2 Kings: 18-19.

However, the Assyrians themselves fell as part of a pattern that was repeated often in the ancient world—having expanded their empire enormously through military conquest and tribute collection, they could no longer effectively defend its long borders. The Babylonians and Medes captured the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 b.c.e. as part of the growth of yet another ancient empire built on warfare.

Greek Warfare, 500 b.c.e. to 323 b.c.e.

By 500 b.c.e., the Persian Empire had replaced that of Assyria as the great power of the Ancient Near East, and it was moving rapidly toward the Greek mainland and city-states such as Athens and Sparta. The ability of the Greeks to hold off two Persian invasions between 499 and 448 b.c.e. signaled the rise of a new era in warfare, one in which citizen soldiers rather than mercenaries fought for political and cultural ideologies rather than for payment or in service of the dominant empire of the time. Greek warfare also placed new emphasis on the need for strict discipline as essential to success on the battlefield. Moreover, the Greeks began the tradition of technological and strategic innovation that has marked Western warfare ever since. The Greek Xenophon (c. 431-c. 354 b.c.e.) was a student of Plato and a pioneer in military science, writing several works on the subject.

The Greek hoplite or armored infantryman—typically a farmer who voted in his city-state and armed himself with bronze shield, long pike, and body armor—emerged by the eighth century b.c.e. Hoplites formed up in close ranks called a phalanx, which were usually eight or sixteen men deep. Several such rectangular bodies would make up the army of a Greek city-state, along with cavalry and, eventually, navies featuring the trireme.

At the Battle of Marathon in 490 b.c.e., the Athenian hoplites defeated a much larger army of Persians through a daring assault and the use of limited space to offset superior Persian numbers. Soon after, in 479 b.c.e., the Athenian fleet of triremes defeated a larger Persian fleet off the cape of Salamis, demonstrating a sophisticated level of naval strategy and technology. Eventually, the phalanx was refined and made more lethal by Alexander the Great’s Macedonians, whose armies conquered the Persian Empire.

Roman and Chinese Warfare, 500 to 150 b.c.e.

While the Greek city-states were battling Persia, Rome was beginning its rise from a village along the Tiber River in Italy to a world power. Almost every step of this expansion was marked by warfare. Although the Romans never developed a plan for world conquest, they were aggressive and seized opportunities to extend their power. During the Roman Republic’s spread through the Italian peninsula and then through the Mediterranean, its soldiers were mainly small farmers whose commanders developed a new fighting style called the legion, more flexible than the Greek phalanx. Armed with a short slashing sword called a gladius rather than a long pike, Roman soldiers fought in subdivided units that could respond more effectively to changing conditions on the battlefield. By 150 b.c.e., these legions had defeated the Carthaginians, the Macedonians, and the armies of the Seleucid Empire, and its soldiers spread Roman culture wherever they went.

While Rome’s legions were creating its empire in the Mediterranean, China was being unified for the first time, primarily through warfare. During the Era of Warring States (475-221 b.c.e.), eight major Chinese kingdoms fought one another almost constantly. By 221 b.c.e., however, the ruler of the Qin kingdom, King Zheng (later Qin Shihuangdi), had managed to subdue the others. King Zheng used a well-organized, disciplined army of infantry and cavalry to achieve unity. Lifesize terra cotta models of this army were buried with Qin Shihuangdi to serve him in the next world—discovery of many of these figures was one of the major archaeological finds of the twentieth century.

The Roman Empire, 150 b.c.e. to 500 c.e.

Between 150 and 30 b.c.e., the Roman Senate lost control of the empire and government, as military dictators such as Julius Caesar created armies loyal to themselves rather than to the republic. Augustus Caesar set the foundations for the Roman Empire, in which every emperor’s base of political support was his control of the legions. Rome’s military machine became the most formidable in the world during the long period of the Pax Romana (Roman Peace). Its organization, training, and tactics were unmatched, and the legions spread the Roman Empire from Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland to the Persian Gulf. Romans were especially masterful at siege warfare—few towns could withstand them.

However, the steady pressure of the barbarians on the long Roman frontier eventually proved too strong, at least in Western Europe. By the time the last official Roman emperor in the west was deposed in 476 c.e., the legions had become filled with Germanic warriors, and warfare in Europe was developing toward the feudal structures of the early Middle Ages.

Ten Military Innovations During Ancient Times

Bibliography

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