In the previous episode of this series, we talked about the evolution of the ancient
Greek warfare during the Peloponnesian wars.
This video will be cover the siege warfare of that by the period.
Although most of the Greek city-states, excluding Sparta, had fortifications from the earliest
period, the siege warfare was a strangely absent affair in Ancient Greece for a prolonged
period, as there is no reliable evidence of sieges occurring from 1100 – 490 BC.
Considering that the practice was extensively employed in neighboring regions, most notably
by the Egyptians and the Persians, its absence in the Greek world is somewhat surprising.
In reality, siege warfare was just incompatible with the Hellenic military traditions of the
time, as well as with the socio-cultural mentality of the Hellenic city-states.
Historians argue that the strong correlation between democratic values and hoplite warfare,
as developed in the archaic period, made the violent siege of another Greek city a very
complicated and even shameful in the eyes of a Greek citizen-soldier.
However, with the coming of the Peloponnesian Wars and the general abandonment of the previous
rules of warfare, siege warfare becomes a very efficient and popular method, reflecting
the general lack of empathy that characterizes this conflict.
Cities sought to protect their suburbs, re-supplying routes, and harbors.
Most notably, Athens constructed the Long Walls during the first stages of the conflict.
Construction lasted from 462-450 BC, while the walls spanned 7km and stretched all the
way from Athens to the city’s port, Piraeus.
Despite an Athenian defeat in 457 BC, their completion ensured that Athens would never
be left without supplies in the future, while it mostly became an island on the mainland,
and no land force could conquer it.
This construction informed the Athenian strategy of the V century, which focused on the naval
dominance instead of land warfare, but also the general defensive mentality of the Classical
period.
The existence of the Long Walls and the absence of regular naval or land battles between Athens
and Sparta prolonged the war and gave rise to alternative methods such as guerilla tactics,
raids, and scorched earth strategies.
During the Peloponnesian War, a standard pattern was set in regards to the Long Walls; Spartans
would send armies to raid the province of Attica to force the Athenian forces out of
their city, while the Athenians stayed within their walls and dispatched their navy to raid
towns around the Peloponnese.
Both tactics were criticized by the contemporary and later writers.
This typical pattern was ultimately destructive for both city-states, especially for Athens.
Although they succeeded in avoiding the land battles against the Spartan army, the Spartan
raids hit the Athenian economy hard, while the fact that the population was almost entirely
within the city’s walls in numerous cases of Spartan offensive, resulted in disease
outbreaks which decimated the population, particularly in 430 BC.
Towards the end of the war and particularly after the Sicilian expedition Athenian Walls
were the sole defense of the city-state that protected it from a total defeat.
At the end of the war, Spartans had to invest in their navy as it was the only way to subdue
any further Athenian resistance.
At the naval battle of Aegospotami Sparta succeeded, forcing the Athenians to disassemble
their navy and destroy their walls.
At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War siege methods were mostly copied from the
neighboring regions in the Near East; however, by the end of the war, the Greeks had developed
their siege machines and techniques.
An example of this would be the invention of an early version of the flamethrower by
the Thebans in 424 BC, which pumped air to blow flames on the enemy fortifications.
The new equipment used in sieges, during the Peloponnesian War and particularly right after,
included siege towers, battering rams and bolt-throwing crossbows called gastraphetes
invented around 399 BC by Dionysius I of Syracuse.
Nevertheless, city walls could only be broken down with the arrival of stone-throwing torsion
catapults called the lithoboloi in 340 BC, developed by Phillip’s II engineers during
the next revolution in Ancient Greek siege warfare.
This fact sustained the battering ram as the most effective siege weapon of the era.
In general, it was somewhat hard for Greek armies to attack city walls during the 5th
century BC successfully and most sieges incorporated siege mounts and starving out the besieged
city, sometimes by building fortifications around it.
A typical example of how the process took place in the 5th century is the Spartan attack
against the town of Plataea in 431 – 427 BC which incorporated all the previous methods.
Tunneling was also used in the particular siege, but it was quite simplified at the
time, Sparta was a notable exception because helots continuously provided the city’s
food production.
Successful siege warfare was highly linked with the adequacy of the logistical and institutional
systems of the Greek city-state.
Cities such as Sparta, Syracuse, Thebes, and Athens were the places where the methods were
developed due to their advanced systems and that allowed the completion of such tasks.
Moreover, if the defender chose to fight then a hoplite battle would ensue, while if he
decided to stay behind the walls the attacker would invade every year, in the hope that
the damage sustained by the agricultural infrastructure would weaken the opponent and force him to
either fight or surrender.
Ultimately, the so-called ‘strategy of devastation’ along with hoplite warfare and the independent
city-state came to an end with the invention of practical siege artillery in 340 BC, as
previously mentioned, by Plyidus the Thessalian, chief mechanic of Phillip II of Macedon.
Thank you for watching our documentary covering the siege portion of the ancient Greek warfare.
In our next video, we will talk about the rise of Macedon.
We also have plans to describe the armies and units that were used in the documentaries
we are covering, so stay tuned.
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