I've just noticed this in Thucydides
Thuc. 2.13.8
"Pericles also showed them that they had twelve hundred horse including mounted archers, with sixteen hundred archers unmounted, and three hundred galleys fit for service. "
Has anyone ever noticed this before?
I can't say I have every seen any hoplite army with native horse archers. Scythians, sure, but not native.
Does he mean horse archers or just archers who happen to be mounted on horses?
Athenian horse archers have been in army lists for decades. But your opposition between native and Scythian horse archers is probably mistaken; it's the existence of these Athenian horse archers that justifies the "Scythians" that we see in some tabletop Greek armies. Note that Thucydides doesn't say whether they are Greeks or barbarians.
The reason for depicting them as Scythians is probably (a) because we know of the Athenian "Scythian" slave archer-police, (b) because mounted archers in Scythian dress are shown in Athenian art, such as the famous "Miltiades kalos" plate (http://www.ashmoleanprints.com/image/322166/paseas-plate). Of course, we don't really know whether these paintings show Scythians, or Athenians in fashionable Scythian riding-gear, nor whether any of them were actually intended to represent members of the Athenian hippotoxotai regiment.
Some of the Athenian horse-archers were certainly native Greeks, because we know of one Athenian citizen, Alkibiades the sone of the famous Alkibiades, who was brought to law because he served as a (paid) horse-archer, thus evading his obligation to serve as a hoplite. But the implication of the case is that it was unusual that the horse-archers were citizens. Spence (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IidfC0UMHdYC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=lysias+against+alcibiades+archer&source=bl&ots=xL1Wzpx6Po&sig=1x0AGFHGo1R-bmHy8VH_5mkUoPI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SfOfU83tM8u9PYbhgfAB&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=lysias%20against%20alcibiades%20archer&f=false) thinks they were probably mercenaries.
The context of the statement was a derailing of what Athens had to wage war. So if they are Scythian police, they are permanent ones.
It does come over as native Athenian, though. And I'm skeptical of the longevity of any Scythian slave given a horse and a bow, i cant see him staying for long if he wasn't paid well
We know - it's in one of the links I gave - that the horse-archers were paid, hence Spence's suggestion that they were merecenaries. Scythians don't necessarily have to be slaves: some people seem to identify the slave-police with the wartime infantry archers, but I suspect that is completely wrong. If, as the Alkibiades case implies, rich Athenians didn't usually serve in the horse-archers - and poor Athenians didn't usually have an opportunity to learn to ride - it is hard to see how they could be citizens. The foot-archers, who occur in the same list in Thucydides, are in at least one place said to be Cretans. The horse-archers may have been quite a mixed bag of both Greek and barbarian foreigners with the occasional citizen maverick.
One might expect the horse archers - assuming them to be at least predominantly Scythians - to be officered by Athenians. Having glanced through the passage, there is nothing to suggest that the horse archers themselves would necessarily be Athenian, as Pericles lists 'hippeas ... diakosious kai khilious xun hippotoxotais' or 1,200 cavalry 'with' horse archers: xun, aka syn, can mean together with, besides, in company with, so maybe the horse archers were additional rather than inclusive. That said, translators seem universally to interpret it as inclusive in this case.
On the subject of Athens' Scythian archers, this brief paper (http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/scythian_archers.pdf) may be of some interest.
Those interested in how the Greek cavalryman mounted and rode might find this page (http://www.comitatus.net/greekcavalry.html) handy.
That makes more sense
Incidentally this paper (http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/hesperia/148421.pdf) discusses the end of the Athenian horse-archers, as well as some other interesting stuff on later "light cavalry" corps that succeeded them.
An interesting paper
The material on Athenian prodromoi is useful, and intriguingly the thought is advanced that perhaps the designation means they were first into battle: indeed, when Xenophon refers to 'prodromoi' (Cavalry Commander I.25) he indicates they should be equipped as well, or as attractively, as possible, but when he refers to scouts (ibid.4.5) he uses 'proodous', not 'prodromoi', and describes what they do as 'proēgeisthai' (go first and lead the way, take the lead).
The assumption that prodromoi replaced hippotoxotai (horse archers) is speculative, but the absence of mention of horse archers along with prodromoi may support it. The period in question seems to coincide with the rise of Macedon under Philip II, namely 359-350 BC, and one wonders if this is just coincidence.
Also interesting is Arrian's reference (IV.4.5) to Alexander committing four squadrons of sarissophoroi against the Scythians in his fight at the Jaxartes: we missed this when discussing sarissophoroi earlier.
prōton mian hipparkhian tōn xenōn kai tōn sarissophorōn ilas tessaras
(leading were a hipparchy of Greeks and four ilai of sarissophoroi)
This suggests that Macedonian prodromoi may have had a leading rather than a scouting role. It is possible that Athenian prodromoi did the same.
In addition to, i think.
They still seem to have performed light cav duties outside of a battle situation.
The separation of role between battle and non battle is quite normal
It's a shame we don't know how many Athenian prodromoi there were (or were meant to be, given that the ordinary Athenian cavalry were frequently not up to strength after the 5th century).
Somewhere I had got it into my head that they were fifty strong. At a guess, I'd taken Sekunda's suggestion that Dexileos was a prodromos, which Bugh doubts, and taken "one of the five" from his inscription to mean five per tribe, hence 50 total. But this looks unsupported, now, though not impossible. All we seem to know is that they were directly under the command of the hipparchs, so presumably their numbers can't have been huge.
I was intrigued by the fact their wages were increased from 2 obols a day (the amount a citizen got as a juror), to 8 obols a day, when mercenary hoplites probably got 4 obols
Jim
It looks as if the pay increase for the mounted archers is uncertain: this paper by Loomis (http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/1995/107pdf/107230.pdf) suggests it was actually a pay cut, from two drachmas (12 obols) to 8. The only source is a fragment of a speech by Lysias, in a papyrus which is hard to read in places.
Eight obols (let alone 12) is indeed quite a high rate, but as Loomis points out, they were specialists with horses and composite bows to maintain. Interesting that he sees them as a high-status citizen force, rather than the lower-status mercenaries that other scholars suggest.
Loomis makes sense.
But there was one bit that fascinated me. He quotes Xenophon, footnote 15 has the Greek, it's from Mem. 3.3.1 (Sokrates to a young hipparch):
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&query=Xen.%20Mem.%203.3.1&getid=1 translates it as
"Young man," he said, "can you tell us why you hankered after a cavalry command? I presume it was not to be first of the cavalry in the charge; for that privilege belongs to the mounted archers; at any rate they ride ahead of their commanders even."
I can see horse archers riding ahead of their commanders, their commanders supervising the maneuvering etc. But horse-archers being 'the first of the cavalry in the charge'
Unless the Greek actually says something different it looks as if our Athenian horse-archers were keen to get stuck in
Jim
Quote from: Jim Webster on June 20, 2014, 10:21:56 AM
Unless the Greek actually says something different it looks as if our Athenian horse-archers were keen to get stuck in
Your instinct is correct, Jim: the Greek actually says:
ou gar dē tou prōtos tōn hippeōn elaunein(assuredly not for being first of the cavalry to march/drive/strike)
'Charge' seems to be the translator overloading the term: I have been unable to find anything on Edgar Carew Marchant's background, but suspect he knew from other periods that cavalry 'charged' into action so decided that 'charge' was a good word for the somewhat flexible elauno (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29lau%2Fnein&la=greek&can=e%29lau%2Fnein0&prior=i%28ppe/wn&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0207:book=3:chapter=3:section=1&i=1#lexicon), which can mean anything from 'march' to 'drive off' (e.g. cattle) to 'strike' (with a weapon). I would plump for '
first into action' as conveying the sense intended here.
That rather implies they lead the army, i.e. Scouted, and opened the skirmishing, rather than lead any attack
Just a conjecture, but they probably opened the action in a similar manner to Alexander's hippotoxotai at the Hydaspes.
Not an unreasonable assumption. They'd probably have an advantage when scouting and driving in enemy scouts and light troops.
I do rather wonder exactly how skillful they were, are we looking at men who were happy to fire from horseback if the horse was standing still, or were they good enough to fire from the back of a galloping horse.
Do we hear any mention of them from non-Athenian sources?
Jim
We don't have much account of them in action at all. The Athenians sent only 20 horse-archers to Melos, only 30 to Sicily: does this suggest a role as scouts and couriers rather than much battlefield impact?
That seems reasonable.
But if 'Against Alkibiades' is interpreted correctly, service could be defended as being at least on a par with hoplite service.
Acting as a scout and courier probably can fall into that category but I think they're still to be regarded as 'combatants'
Jim
As Mark suggested, they could have done both scouting and combat duties. With a dearth of solid evidence we are reduced to making reasonable (I hope) guesses, and my thinking as an Athenian cavalry commander would be that I would want full value out of these highly-paid chaps.
This brings up the question of what represents 'full value', and a dual role of a) scouting and b) delivering short, sharp, sagittarian shocks against the extremities of enemy battlelines might seem to fit the bill. One way to utilise even small numbers of horse archers on the battlefield could be to operate them as a semi-independent detachment, so that when the Athenian cavalry lines up to face its opponents the horse archers split off and swing in against an enemy flank, releasing a stream of missiles from outside javelin range. If some enemy cavalry start to redeploy against them, that would be a good moment for the Athenian cavalry to charge and catch their opponents 'between orders'. Hypothetical, of course, but it has its attractions.
If I may revive this thread from the vaults:
This blog post (https://stefanosskarmintzos.wordpress.com/2016/03/22/officers-of-the-horsearchers-in-ancient-athens/) (of 2016) includes images of what is suggested to be an officer of the Athenian horse-archer corps, in helmet, cuirass and greaves. The pictures are said to be a rendering of a vase by the Pistoxenos Painter (*) in the Ashmolean, in Oxford. I can't find any other version of this vase online (including in the CVA Online (http://www.cvaonline.org/cva/)); does anyone else know of it?
(*) The blog post says a "vase painted by Pistoxenos"; but Pistoxenos is the potter, "the Pistoxenos Painter" is the artist, name unknown, who decorated stuff signed by the potter Pistoxenos.
Afraid not, though you might come across it here:
https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/searchAshmolean.asp
(I didn't at a quick glance)
Found it! It's not in the Ashmolean, it's in Berlin. Number 211328 at http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/dataSearch.asp, or see here (http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/browseCVARecord.asp?id=%7B2A212643-9039-475B-95CC-D4246DB001AA%7D&startRef=2954).
Thanks!
Quote from: Duncan Head on June 01, 2018, 04:31:13 PM
Found it! It's not in the Ashmolean, it's in Berlin. Number 211328 at http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/dataSearch.asp, or see here (http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/browseCVARecord.asp?id=%7B2A212643-9039-475B-95CC-D4246DB001AA%7D&startRef=2954).
Thanks!
It does beg the question why this unit has two apparent officers and no rank and file. What if they are simply armoured horse archers?
Quite possibly, assuming the scene is meant to be a portrayal of that unit at all.
Does anyone know what the scenes on the vase are meant to mean?
Roy