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I am curious about opinions on the training of ancient armies (mentioned in another thread).  There is what believe to be compelling evidence that hoplites for example had a minimal level of formal drill.  I have watched a group about 50 men trained to deploy and move in the manner of a 5th century phalanx, complete with Laconian countermarch in less than an hour.

This makes me wonder about all of the uses for training and how historical armies dealt with each challenge:

1) Individual weapon skill (or horsemanship)
2) Deployment
3) Group movement coordination
4) Fighting in groups
5) Not routing
6) Regrouping after routing

To start us off, here are may answers for hoplites:

1) Limited training.  As Xenophon tells us, weapon use is "natural" like an animal using it's claws or teeth. Probably it was handled within families, and Hoplomachoi provide training for the wealthy, but even this is most useful in the rout and chase.
2) Xenophon's "Dinner drill" shows how simple deployment is from a line of march.  As long as the men know who stands in front of them, or that there is no one in front of you if you are a file leader, all you have to do is form up to the left of the files in front of you. It is indicative that only Spartans could form up with just anyone- probably because they had a better understanding of their actual place in file and rank.
3) Here, I believe much of this is best explained by drawing in concepts from swarm behavior that do not require very much training or understanding of the movement of the larger group around you. For example, birds and fish move in elegant unity by simply responding to the few individuals around them- which Thucydides tell us is all a hoplite has awareness of in any case. Some things that are not traditionally considered drill- like group dancing or even wrestling- made moving in groups, where much of the information is passed between men by reading the jostling of those around them, easier.
4) While I am sure that a hoplite would take opportunity shots at men to either side of the foe in front of him, I believe such tactics are wildly overblown and hoplites focused on the fellow in front of them.
5) Part of the problem with all of the lack of excessive drill described above is that hoplites could be quick to break.  More drill, seen in groups like the Spartans and probably the various select units, the Sacred bands, etc., carried the primary advantage of allowing men to stay on task when bad things happened.  To counter this, hoplites formed up first with kin, then with civic groups, which eliminated anonymity in flight, and raised the price of doing so an leaving allies to die.
6) The linear deployment described above and emphasis on standing ground that aids in holding a position in battle rendered hoplite formations largely unable to reform without some physical feature to rally around.

There's a lot that could be said, but this:

Quote
More drill ... carried the primary advantage of allowing men to stay on task when bad things happened.

seems to me to be the crux of it. Probably anyone could march around a parade ground in good style with very little training; but doing the same thing in the heat of battle required more drill and experience.

Ask the re-enactment people.  They know about such things.

Quote from: evilgong on February 22, 2019, 06:09:39 AM
Ask the re-enactment people.  They know about such things.

They will tell you the basics of personal drill are quickly taught and can be improved through practice (ask any drill sergeant on the latter :) ).

What may be harder - opinions from the more knowledgeable on classical matters needed - is moving beyond drill moves to operating on a battlefield.  Did armies muster in large groups and go through evolutions?  Or was this where on-the-job experience kicked in?

For Hellenistic armies, yes they did large scale manoeuvres, some examples:

(Perseus, Macedonians): "It was the custom when the ceremony of purification was finished to manoeuvre the army and dividing it into battle-lines to clash in a sham battle." Livy 40.6.5

(Citium review, Perseus, Macedonians): "The array of the review was set briefly in motion (not however in a regular manoeuvre), so that they might not seem to have merely stood under arms; the king summoned them, in arms as they were, to an assembly." Livy 42.52.4

(Philopoemen, Achaeans): "Moreover, we are told that at the celebration of the Nemean games, when he was general of the Achaeans for the second time and had recently won his victory at Mantineia, but was at leisure the while on account of the festival, Philopoemen in the first place displayed before the assembled Greeks his phalanx, with its splendid array, and performing its tactical evolutions, as it was wont to do, with speed and vigour." Plut Philop 11.1-2

Also clarification from the other thread, it was Livy said this, not Polybius:

"The twenty-sixth year was passing, since peace had been granted to Philip at his request; throughout all that time unmolested Macedonia had both produced offspring, a large number of whom were of military age, and yet, in minor wars with her Thracian neighbours, of a sort to give training rather than to produce weariness, had been unremittingly in arms." Livy 42.52.1-2

Though Polybius was Livy's main source here, so ultimately Polybius.

Quote from: Dangun on February 22, 2019, 02:02:17 AM
I don't think the efficacy of training or experience is doubted.
I think the more interesting question is: How much combat experience did the average soldier have? I am positing the answer: very little.

This may be not far off the mark, although the historical record may be missing a lot of comparatively low-level combat activity (raids, patrols, etc.).  Alexander the Great's men had on average one or two battles and one or two sieges every year, in addition to various subjection campaigns which get only a sentence or two in the sources.  So out of 365 days in the average year, they might be in combat for 25 or so, one way or another.  Xenophon's Ten Thousand seemed to have an action every week or two.  In each case, the result was troops who were essentially at the top of their class.

Quote

Quote from: Patrick on February 21, 2019, 06:35:16 PM
In any event (as Richard has also pointed out), classical period phalanx combat does not appear to have been particularly lethal, at least for the winner.

This essential seeks to avoid the maths, by saying there is an inexhaustible supply of foreigners willing to die to give me experience.

Is this not what Alexander found? :)  Although one does not have to kill opponents to gain experience, merely defeat them.  Some will of course end up dead, but even in a rout like Issus or Gaugamela this is usually no more than 16-25% of the total and the vast majority of the loser's deaths occur after the battle has been won.  Spartans forbore to pursue routers ('let the cowards breed'), indicating that killing per se was not considered ipso facto essential for putting an edge on a soldier's quality.

QuoteTake a really simple case, two adjacent Greek city states who don't like each other. Pick your lethality numbers, maybe 3% for the victor and 10% for the loser? There is no way that a population could sustain annual practice, its too lethal. So I think that most of an army, most of the time, had no combat experience. But then periodically you have an unlucky age cohort who accumulate a lot of experience and probably have their demography and economy wrecked for a generation because of it.

There might be some excellent direct evidence that suggests otherwise?

Again, I would not equate death with combat experience (particularly for the deceased ;)).  Being in the field, seeing and facing an actual enemy and surviving your first combat through following your training all helped to cement troop quality; striking down an opponent, while wonderful for individual morale, was an optional extra.  What seems to have been most important was being 'in the system' for some length of time; combat experience put the edge upon good, or even adequate, training and self-belief.

The classic case in these matters is the war between Sparta and Thebes from 395 to 387 BC, the so-called 'Corinthian War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_War)'.  395-394 BC saw, unusually, three major land battles (two Spartan victories) and a major sea battle (a Spartan defeat).  393 BC saw raiding and a battle at Lechaeum, won by the Spartans.  392 BC was quieter, as everyone avoided engaging Spartans and tried to build up their diplomatic positions (i.e. get Persian support and money); the Spartans raided Persian territory.

391 BC was quite exciting, as Iphicrates reversed the trend of Spartan victory at Lechaeum and the Spartans countered by invading Argos.  No major battles resulted.  390 BC was comparatively quiet; in 389 BC Sparta assailed Acarnania and inflicted a defeat, taking Acarnania out of the war.  Spartan operations against Asia Minor continued until Iphicrates ambushed the Spartan force involved.  At the same time fighting spread to Aegina, in what became primarily a war of ambushes, land and naval.

The following year, the Spartan general Antalcidas persuaded the Persians that supporting the anti-Spartan league was not helping them (the Persians were also keen to make peace in Greece, the reason being they wanted to hire Greek mercenaries to help them reconquer Egypt) and the Persians accordingly shifted support to Sparta, resulting in the King's Peace of 387 BC.

The result of all this fighting was that the city-states involved all developed experienced armies, but interestingly began to switch their emphasis from citizen hoplite armies to epilektoi, full-time crack troops almost on the Spartan model.  The reaction to continuous war was to produce a class of men who specialised in continuous warfare.  City-state demographics seem to have been largely unaffected, although Sparta continued to show a steady decline; this decline would not however become critical until after Leuctra in 371 BC and its aftermath.  Economies may have been strained, although they were a long way from being wrecked (with the possible exception of Corinth, which had been a main battleground for much of the war and was temporarily subsumed by Argos) and Athens actually seems to have improved in all respects during the fighting.

In any event, with re-establishment of what was essentially the status quo ante bellum, both sides subsided muttering for the next sixteen years or so, the Spartans keeping their hand in with occasional punitive expeditions against the more prominent mutterers.

[Edit: tidied up typos]

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 22, 2019, 10:02:59 AM
Again, I would not equate death with combat experience (particularly for the deceased ;)).  Being in the field, seeing and facing an actual enemy and surviving your first combat through following your training all helped to cement troop quality; striking down an opponent, while wonderful for individual morale, was an optional extra.  What seems to have been most important was being 'in the system' for some length of time; combat experience put the edge upon good, or even adequate, training and self-belief.

I don't mind, how we define combat experience. I think any experience or training would be valuable.
But I am very interested in how much the average soldier had. I sense a potentially very large difference between the casual comments we make and reality.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 22, 2019, 10:02:59 AM
In any event, with re-establishment of what was essentially the status quo ante bellum, both sides subsided muttering for the next sixteen years or so, the Spartans keeping their hand in with occasional punitive expeditions against the more prominent mutterers.

And that illustrates the point... for a whole generation afterwards (and maybe beforehand? not my period) no-one had any experience. So for an unlucky few age cohorts they get a lot of experience and many of them die. But most potential soldiers, most of the time, would have had no combat experience at all. I think the combat experience of your average Roman legionnaire might also be surprisingly low.

The efficacy or training/drill seems obvious.

Quote from: Dangun on February 23, 2019, 03:29:03 AM
And that illustrates the point... for a whole generation afterwards (and maybe beforehand? not my period) no-one had any experience.

But that's not true. The next major war broke out in 378, just nine years after the end of the Corinthian War, and in the meantime there'd been Spartan interventions in Boeotia and whatnot.

At the other end, there's also just nine years between the end of the (2nd) Peloponnesian War and the start of the Corinthian, and in between there was opportunity for excercise most notably in the expedition of the Ten Thousand.

Not to mention Chabrias' mercenaries in Cypriot (390 BC) and Egyptian (c.377 BC) service and then Iphicrates' in Persian service (375-3 BC).  Arguably, these men acquired more combat experience than did their compatriots in Greece.

Quote from: Dangun on February 23, 2019, 03:29:03 AM
I don't mind, how we define combat experience. I think any experience or training would be valuable.
But I am very interested in how much the average soldier had. I sense a potentially very large difference between the casual comments we make and reality.

And whether we equate combat experience with battle experience.  The latter is often a subset of the former, especially for cavalry and lighter types of infantry.

If we consider Xernophon's Ten Thousand, when they initially came together they included numbers of men with no combat experience whatsoever (and some officers with no command experience).  Yet between their ethnic elan and their battle-wise leader and comrades (and the presence of veterans is as good as personal combat experience for making a unit effective*) they were fighting fit by the time they assembled at Tarsus (some contingents had on-the-job training against Thracians etc. as a by-product of Cyrus' cover plan for assembling his army) and sufficiently effective at Cunaxa to beat (in stages) the entire Achaemenid army.

[*It was standard Wehrmacht practice to keep a unit in the field until it burned down to about 20% of its strength.  It was then sent back to Germany to rebuild; the veterans trained the new recruits and the full-strength unit returned to the front fully combat-effective.]

QuoteSo for an unlucky few age cohorts they get a lot of experience and many of them die.

With reference to Greek hoplite warfare, the first part is usually more true than the second.

Getting back to the hypothetical instance of a polis which fields an army, loses 3% and inflicts 10% and the question of how long it (or its foes) can sustain such operations, it is worth considering the 'replacement rate', i.e. how many citizens come of age and take up arms each year.  This will of course vary depending upon the birth rate, death rate, abundance or scarcity of food, disease and such factors, but normally in the ancient or classical world the population pyramid will have a 'youth bulge' which more than makes up for the 3%.  10% is unsustainable (leading to Livy's implicit questioning of his sources about Rome's repeated annual early victories over its immediate neighbours) and appears to be sufficient to promote peacemaking, or at least avoidance, for a few years.  (The latter is my impression; I have not correlated it with recorded loss figures and it anyway does not apply to Rome.)

However even in a decade of (relative) peace the younger citizens of a polis will a) exercise for war and b) converse with their living antecedents and friends of same, picking up knowledge, information and a few interesting tricks second-hand.  Once contemporaries engage in mercenary service, they will come back with experiences and stories which are avidly devoured and go into the pool of general knowledge.

And there will usually be a war (generally foreign, occasionally civil) every few years - not necessarily a major one, although these are not infrequent in 5th-4th century BC Greece - so everyone gets to keep their hand in.

QuoteBut most potential soldiers, most of the time, would have had no combat experience at all. I think the combat experience of your average Roman legionnaire might also be surprisingly low.

Or surprisingly high.  The doors of the Temple of Janus were only closed twice (indicating Rome was not at war) for two years during the history of the Republic.  Livy describes annual campaigns as the norm.  While not every Roman served every year, a Roman citizen's military service obligation extended to sixteen (if I remember correctly) campaigns, and most of these campaigns would involve fighting, often more than once.

QuoteThe efficacy or training/drill seems obvious.

Yes.  I suppose what we are really reaching for in this discussion is whether good training is more important than actual combat experience in determining a soldier's (and a unit's) effectiveness.  It probably is, although it is a bit like asking which is better: the cake or the icing. :)

There are a whole set of nested questions here.

What were the key points of advantage of trained and/or experienced troops?  We can agree, I expect, that untrained and inexperinced is bad and trained and experienced is good but where do the advantages lie in between?  Are well trained inexperienced troops better than badly trained troops with some combat experience? 

How well was experience and training distributed.  Andreas and Patrick have demonstrated that Greece had a period where there was always something going on, even if there was no major war.  But was this experience equally spread, or were there communities who rarely fought and ones who had a near constant level of low level war?  Did mercenaries come from all communities or were they the speciality of only some?  This would be important in the refreshing of communities experience of war even if not actually at war.

And a related point, which Patrick has touched on, which is the importance of leaders with experience (from generals to nco-equivalents).  The availability of combat-tested leaders seems to me to be a constant theme when it comes to what we might refer to as citizen armies, where the army is drawn from obligated civilians rather than a social or professional military caste.

Quote from: Andreas Johansson on February 23, 2019, 07:42:08 AM
But that's not true. The next major war broke out in 378, just nine years after the end of the Corinthian War, and in the meantime there'd been Spartan interventions in Boeotia and whatnot.

I was actually relying on Patrick's quote, where I think he said 16 years...  :)

Anyway, we may have picked a portion of Greek history crowded with violence. Or maybe it was constant. I am not sure, that is part of the question.

But even if Greek history really (in aggregate) is so violent that someone, somewhere is always getting lethal combat experience, we have to demonstrate - as Anthony suggests in the comment re: distribution - that all Greek citizens/potential hoplites are always getting the same experience. Consider by analogy, a Roman timeline of violence, it might look like a font of lethal combat experience, but what percentage of the legions fought in any one engagement or campaign, 5%? 10% on average? What about the lucky buggers sunning themselves in a Spanish garrison. (I haven't thought through the specifics of Spain as example, but it illustrates the point.)

Could I add to this thread fitness and particularly stamina. I suggest there is a major difference between a unit that does hard regular marches, trains with heavy swords, practise shields, etc, and one in which chaps sit in garrisons or ponce around the palace or get blind drunk in the mead hall and do a bit of hunting. My suggestion is that skill with your weapon might be relatively easy to train, but endurance isn't. A good swordsman with stamina will keep up a rhythm of attack and parry with his opponent until one if them tires. He then has to parry more and eventually, if the difference in fitness is great enough, the fitter man will wound or kill his opponent. A man, shall we say a Kelt, who slashes madly for the first few minutes is dangerous and intimidating, but if you can hold him off he will tire and become an easy victim.

Secondly, we should be careful with differences in technique. Only a small advantage is needed to beat an opponent unless he gets lucky because both warriors will concentrate more on defence than offence, so a minor difference will result in wounding, perhaps only a nick, but that will affect the confidence of the less good man and he will cede the initiative to concentrate on defence.

When Romans fight a barbarian tribe the likelihood is that the best barbarians are as good with their weapons as Romans, but the mass are not. It depends a bit on which period Romans, but I suggest that the Legionaries and auxiliaries are likely to be quite a bit fitter than their opponents. Of course the Romans are better protected, but I suggest that the tribesmen's effectiveness will decline after their initial burst and then the fitter Romans will pick them off.

I do also wonder If there is a difference in stamina between the hoplites and the Persians?

Roy

Interestingly isn't it Caesar who cites Roman legionaries who, due to long experience in Spain, fought inna looser order much like the Spaniards with whom they were in combat?
Caesar's handling of his newly recruited legions is interesting, he took care not to expise them to the brunt of a fight. At Pharsalus Pompey was weak because he had many newly raised troops, oerhaps this was a cosequence of not srptarting with a cadre of vets? Though soneone in a 5,000 strong unit must know what they are doing. Caesar's Xth legion gets smaller and smaller, but hugely experienced and more elite.
Roy

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 23, 2019, 08:46:55 AM


Getting back to the hypothetical instance of a polis which fields an army, loses 3% and inflicts 10% and the question of how long it (or its foes) can sustain such operations, it is worth considering the 'replacement rate', i.e. how many citizens come of age and take up arms each year.  This will of course vary depending upon the birth rate, death rate, abundance or scarcity of food, disease and such factors, but normally in the ancient or classical world the population pyramid will have a 'youth bulge' which more than makes up for the 3%.  10% is unsustainable (leading to Livy's implicit questioning of his sources about Rome's repeated annual early victories over its immediate neighbours) and appears to be sufficient to promote peacemaking, or at least avoidance, for a few years.  (The latter is my impression; I have not correlated it with recorded loss figures and it anyway does not apply to Rome.)

In campaigns where we have decent figures, losses through disease, desertion and men dying or being injured in brawls within camp are normally higher than in battle
Veteran campaigners who could pass on skills that kept the new guys alive in camp could well be more useful than veterans who kept them alive on the battlefield

Quote from: Dangun on February 23, 2019, 11:02:51 AM

Quote from: Andreas Johansson on February 23, 2019, 07:42:08 AM
But that's not true. The next major war broke out in 378, just nine years after the end of the Corinthian War, and in the meantime there'd been Spartan interventions in Boeotia and whatnot.

I was actually relying on Patrick's quote, where I think he said 16 years...  :)

Patrick was over-simplifying (smacks wrist).  It was sixteen years to the next major all-out war.  Patrick should have been clearer about the bouts of restlessness in the interim.  Sorry.

QuoteBut even if Greek history really (in aggregate) is so violent that someone, somewhere is always getting lethal combat experience, we have to demonstrate - as Anthony suggests in the comment re: distribution - that all Greek citizens/potential hoplites are always getting the same experience.

Or at least comparable levels of experience.  In 400-390 BC it seemed that every second Arcadian was off to be a mercenary, while in the 370s and 360s BC Athenians seemed to be at the head of the mercenary queue.  During the 370s and 360s everyone who was not Boeotian or Achaean was generally ganging up on the Thebans to try and break up Thebes' hegemony, and this meant all the usual suspects (Athens, Sparta, Argos) plus their friends were marching back and forth gaining experience.  Backwater powers like Corinth, Megara and Tegea were largely subsumed into someone else's army, usually as part of a league.

It is probably fair to say that in the 5th and 4th centuries Greek city-states were rarely short of a war they could join or were already part of; in the late 5th and for much of the 4th they turned out a steady stream of mercenaries as the cream of their military crop.  After the decline of Thebes post-362 BC, Phocis (a small state rather than a city) had its moment of glory in the Third Sacred War (356-346 BC), but only by hiring every loose mercenary in Greece.  After Alexander, the Greek powers essentially split betwen Macedon and the Achaean League, with occasional sideshows, and Greece was still a simmering pot (occasionally boiling over) when the Romans introduced themselves late in the 3rd century BC.  Action in the Hellenistic era seems to have been just as frequent as in previous centuries, but tended to be more consequential.  The Lamian war knocked out Athens as a real power; Sellasia almost finished Sparta (although Nabis managed to make himself felt until he tangled with the Romans) and Thebes was of no consequence following its revolt against Alexander.

QuoteConsider by analogy, a Roman timeline of violence, it might look like a font of lethal combat experience, but what percentage of the legions fought in any one engagement or campaign, 5%? 10% on average? What about the lucky buggers sunning themselves in a Spanish garrison. (I haven't thought through the specifics of Spain as example, but it illustrates the point.)

This depended upon the century and the war; most of the time it was four legions being enrolled, two in each consular army.  This meant that 20,000 or so of the citizen body gained a season's combat experience, most of it (as Jim indicates) involving making camp in sanitary (and defensible) places, rapidly becoming fully familiar with procedures and discipline and looking forward to distinguishing themselves in battle (and, if opportunity offered, coming home noticeably richer than they left).  Hence around 10% of the listed citizenry of presumably all ages (census numbers here (https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/romancensus.html)) were getting campaign experience every year; this proportion would increase when larger armies were fielded for major wars.  Come the Second Punic War and mobilisation rocketed: eight, ten, even twelve legions might be mobilised in a year, fighting in Italy (two consular armies), Spain (one consular army) and conceivably also elsewhere, e.g. in Illyria.  Casualties also skyrocketed during the early part of the war, when Hannibal was gobbling up Roman armies; this in turn led to hastily-raised forces without the customary buttress of veterans, notably the army which perished at Cannae, following which Roman generals were more careful about when, where and how they fought battles.

Service in Spain invariably involved fighting until the early Empire; once Scipio had more or less persuaded the main tribes to align with Rome, a succession of get-rich-quick consuls spent the next century subduing the remainder, albeit with a number of reverses, notably at the hands of Viriathus, and even then Spain was never quiet: Lusitanians and Gallaecians were usually on the move, trying their hand at a bit of hit-and-run.  Then came Sertorius, and the armies sent against him soon learned that Spain was more of an ulcer than a picnic.  The legacy of this was, as Roy has mentioned, that Pompey's legions as of 49 BC had adopted Spanish tactics, the better to chase the thieving natives in their own mountains.

It may be worth mentioning that most powers and cultures lived in a ground state of war or likely war, and much of their attention was focussed on preparation for same.  It was a rare tribe or city that did not engage in periodic conflict with someone.

Quote from: Erpingham on February 23, 2019, 10:05:16 AM
There are a whole set of nested questions here.

What were the key points of advantage of trained and/or experienced troops?  We can agree, I expect, that untrained and inexperinced is bad and trained and experienced is good but where do the advantages lie in between?  Are well trained inexperienced troops better than badly trained troops with some combat experience? 

Not a particularly easy question to answer, but one might attempt to do so.  The classic case would seem to be Marathon, 490 BC, although this involves a few assumptions, namely that the Greeks were well-trained but inexperienced and the Achaemenids were experienced but not really trained.  The scale would come down heavily on the side of training (as Nicholas earlier hinted).  A few more cases might be desirable to avoid drawing premature conclusions.

QuoteHow well was experience and training distributed.  Andreas and Patrick have demonstrated that Greece had a period where there was always something going on, even if there was no major war.  But was this experience equally spread, or were there communities who rarely fought and ones who had a near constant level of low level war?  Did mercenaries come from all communities or were they the speciality of only some?  This would be important in the refreshing of communities experience of war even if not actually at war.

There seem to have been major and minor players.  Smaller cities generally belonged to a league or similar either for their own safety or because they had been made an offer they could not refuse.  As such, unless (like most members of the Delian League) they bought themselves out of military service, they would benefit from inter-league techniques and experience.  (Allies of Thebes might actually be disadvantaged when the Thebans went into their typical deep formation, leaving the allied wing to be outflanked and defeated.)

Once mercenaries became popular they came from most if not all cities; unless fighting other Greeks, it was usually albeit not invariably an easy and comparatively risk-free occupation and paid well.  Some city-states, notably Athens, quickly turned mercenary hire into a business, usually contracting for a complete package of troops plus generals already organised into contingents.  The (usually Achaemenid) hirer could provide armour and weapons, especially if they were keen on appearances and/or Iphicratean reforms.  The Egyptian revolts of the 4th century BC and consequent Persian campaigns of attempted reconquest turned mercenary hire into big business.  And in all of this activity we also have the Xenophons of this world writing their recommendations and the likes of Iphicrates teaching their troops.  Knowledge of war was being established on an intra-cultural basis, the forerunner of the tactical manuals of the Hellenistic era and the books on stratagems of the early Roman Empire.

QuoteAnd a related point, which Patrick has touched on, which is the importance of leaders with experience (from generals to nco-equivalents).  The availability of combat-tested leaders seems to me to be a constant theme when it comes to what we might refer to as citizen armies, where the army is drawn from obligated civilians rather than a social or professional military caste.

The selection (or in some cases election) of generals was productive of variable results.  Sparta relied primarily on its kings for command; these were traditionally cautious and conservative, but on occasion a Spartan officer with an independent command would distinguish himself and practically win a war on his own.  Athens threw up a variety of generals ranging from the excellent to the abysmal; Thebes muddled along with the adequate until Epaminodas turned up, while Argos, Corinth, Megara etc. never seemed to produce a military leader of note.  There does seem to have been a strong and close correlation between the fortunes of a given city-state and the quality of its military leadership: Athens owed its rise to Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles; Sparta to Lysander and Agesilaus; Thebes to Epaminondas.  So, a good point.

There may be some value in looking at what Hannibal did with his Gauls once he had both captured roman equipment and time to retrain them in it.

But I would suggest that it could be said to reinforce what Roy was looking at.  That learning to be a fighter is one level of training, and learning to fight in an optimal tactical manner is another.

How many years longbow archery practice before you were of use on campaign?

How many months did Frederick need to take the useless cavalry he inherited and turn them into the best in Europe?

How many months on the channel  coast did napoleon need to produce the grand armee of austerlitz?

How long did it take to build the British army in World War One?  Did the Tsar need? Did Stalin need 27 years later?

It all depends on the sort of tactical method you want, on the physical quality of the men you start with,how motivated are they? on the type of weapons they are given, and most importantly of all, on how much time you have and how many you can let die before you have to win.

An important factor in the classical period which was often absent in later centuries (particularly in the gunpowder era) was the continuity of military tradition and practice.

Quote from: Mark G on February 23, 2019, 10:07:22 PM
There may be some value in looking at what Hannibal did with his Gauls once he had both captured roman equipment and time to retrain them in it.

Indeed.  He hung onto what he had acquired and waited until the winter of 217-216 BC to issue it and settle his veterans into it and the tactical prodcedures involved.  This indicates he could not retrain them on the march, but needed a few weeks undisturbed to get on with the job.  (This seems to be something of a constant: to train or retrain soldiers generally seems to take about six weeks or, at most, one winter.)

QuoteBut I would suggest that it could be said to reinforce what Roy was looking at.  That learning to be a fighter is one level of training, and learning to fight in an optimal tactical manner is another.

In the classical world, the two seem to go together.  Every culture has its mix of equipment and tactics, with the former usually optimised for the latter.  Hence the Roman legionary would spend his morning drilling with his unit for collective coordination and his afternoon fighting a stake for individual improvement.

QuoteHow many years longbow archery practice before you were of use on campaign?

Add up the number of Sundays in a year, discounting holy days ... about six weeks of collective shooting time?

We are always told about how longbowmen needed years to train to shoot properly.  Maybe so; but in a population which grows up shooting longbows (or bows, with mature physical specimens using the full longbow) we can take individual archery for granted and the only significant feature is how well they are trained to shoot collectively.  Most classical cultures trained with weapons from a fairly early age; Spartans were distinguished by doing so all the time.

QuoteHow many months did Frederick need to take the useless cavalry he inherited and turn them into the best in Europe?

He discovered their limitations at Mollwitz (10th April 1741) and they were fully reconfigured before Chotusitz (17th May 1742), although this does not entirely answer the question of how long the actual remounting and retraining took.  We can say 'between the campaign seasons of 1741 and 1742'.

QuoteHow many months on the channel  coast did napoleon need to produce the grand armee of austerlitz?

I think this is more a question of: how long did they get, and how much did they need?  They were not bad when he started and good when he finished.  My impression is that he had them train to fill in time rather than because he felt they needed it.

QuoteHow long did it take to build the British army in World War One?  Did the Tsar need? Did Stalin need 27 years later?

The British Army came ready-trained to World War One, as it demonstrated at Mons, Le Cateau, etc.  Similarly the Russian army (although its command left something to be desired).  Each had been retrained starting around 1906, although administrative inertia meant that the Russian army would not have finished reconfiguring itself until 1916.  (The raising of wartime troops was more an administrative and logistical limitation than one of training, although the need for the latter was initially overlooked.)  Stalin, of course, never bothered training men he sent into action*: that was up to commanders of individual formations, and only if they were allowed the time.  In 1941, this was not usually the case.

*The exception being pilots, who were merely taught to take off and land before being posted to the front.  Unsurprisingly, the Germans shot them down in droves before the survivors picked up skills the hard way.

QuoteIt all depends on the sort of tactical method you want, on the physical quality of the men you start with,how motivated are they? on the type of weapons they are given, and most importantly of all, on how much time you have and how many you can let die before you have to win.

For most of history it seemed to depend more upon what your culture was doing at the time.  Your ability to pick physical quality was limited to what you had (although in a pre-industrial era this was generally good), your tactical method was the one handed down by your culture, as was your weapon system, and time was rarely lacking, because there was always a winter between one campaign season and the next.  Sometimes there was spring, too.  On occasion, when Achaemenid administrators were gathering resources for a campaign, you might have a whole year.

The question of how long to retrain arises when one changes one's system, like Cleomenes III before Sellasia and Philopoemen convincing the Achaeans to adopt the phalanx.  Again, one winter seems to have sufficed for the conversion.

QuoteHow many years longbow archery practice before you were of use on campaign?

We can attempt an answer here based on Henry VIII's laws.  Archery practice was mandated from the age of seven.  At the age of 17, a man became responsible for providing his own bow.  At the age of 24, laws about minimum shooting distances applied.  So, we might suggest 17 years training to be fully effective.  I'd guess though that men in their late teens would be effective enough for most purposes.

This of course plays into many of our previous points.  This is individual training to achieve weapon competence.  It made adequate raw material, not combat ready soldiers.  Other aspects of training were missing, like close combat weapon use or operating in conjunction with others.  Rapid shooting might also be missing.  The same statutes of Henry VIII show that under seventeens had two practice arrows, while adults had four.  Being let loose with whole sheafs of arrows in groups was something learned on campaign or in garrison.

Quote from: aligern on February 23, 2019, 11:18:01 AM
... one in which chaps sit in garrisons or ponce around the palace or get blind drunk in the mead hall and do a bit of hunting.

Sounds rather like the Brigade of Guards, but how does one factor in that the troops are led by complete idiots and too stupid to run away?

This is not an entirely academic nor anachronistic question.  I mean, the Swiss vorhut at Grandson had to wait 2 hours for the rest of the army to put in an appearance, and at Murten the reason Charles sent his troops off for their pay was because the Swiss had been so disorganised during the previous days with various bits of their army marching towards the Burgundians, realising no one was following them, then turning back.  Yet still the troops saved the officers from a nasty defeat on both occasions...  ::)

Quote from: Erpingham on February 24, 2019, 12:33:43 PM

QuoteHow many years longbow archery practice before you were of use on campaign?

We can attempt an answer here based on Henry VIII's laws.  Archery practice was mandated from the age of seven.  At the age of 17, a man became responsible for providing his own bow.  At the age of 24, laws about minimum shooting distances applied.  So, we might suggest 17 years training to be fully effective.  I'd guess though that men in their late teens would be effective enough for most purposes.

The useful part is that the 17 years' training was built into the way the men grew up.  As a result, although lengthy (and we can probably use Anthony's 17-year figure as a guide to how long it take to produce dedicated specialists like Balearic slingers) the training is comparatively painless and does not dislocate society.

QuoteOther aspects of training were missing, like close combat weapon use or operating in conjunction with others.  Rapid shooting might also be missing.  The same statutes of Henry VIII show that under seventeens had two practice arrows, while adults had four.  Being let loose with whole sheafs of arrows in groups was something learned on campaign or in garrison.

The classical world appears to have built in a fair amount of this: I remember Jim detailing Polybius' account of Bomilcar's attempted coup in Carthage bringing to light mention that the young men had been practising with their armaments in the gymnasium during the day.  The Romans conducted annual exercises on the Field of Mars.  While our sources are somewhat quiet on the topic of unit training (except for mention of the Spartans being at it all the time), one gets the impression that armies began campaigns fully trained, or as trained as they were going to get.  This collective training seems to have taken weeks rather than months or years, although it is worth remembering that most men going through it would have done so before and their presence and experience helped to bring the new additions through with minimum fuss and/or misunderstanding.

I have a trace memory that says Roman Legions, around the end of the Republic, were considered newly raised until they had spent a year (or winter) together...

Thus, at the end of the Republic, a Legion was considered combat ready after a winter (or the year after it was raised). 

What the time was required for is another matter - stamina, esprit de corps, trust in your companions/mates/unit....?

We might say that such a force represents the professional style army - rather than part-time/small-band soldiers/warriors - and levies...

Quote from: NickHarbud on February 24, 2019, 03:17:41 PM
... how does one factor in that the troops are led by complete idiots and too stupid to run away?

Run by committee, perhaps?  (Um ... maybe I should not have said that ... ;D)

Quote from: gavindbm on February 25, 2019, 09:28:41 PM
I have a trace memory that says Roman Legions, around the end of the Republic, were considered newly raised until they had spent a year (or winter) together...

Probably true; the old rules for raising them had pretty much gone out of the window by then and raw troops were being conscripted wholesale, for example about half of Pompey's legions at Pharsalus.  By that time (c.50-48 BC) it seems the fashion was to raise clusters of cohorts from scratch and then assemble them into legions.  This presumably meant they missed out on the traditional integration into formations consisting partly or mainly of men who already knew what to do and hence took noticeably longer to shake down.

Just to get a feel, I checked out the basic training time for US infantry (the only army for which I could find instant information online).  This is being raised from 14 to 22 weeks, although the reasons for doing so were not clearly stated.  Typically, the US Army trains people in Basic Combat Training for 10 weeks and the balance is for Advanced Individual Training, where the recruit masters, or at last gets, a Military Occupational Speciality.  Unlike classical armies, it does not train recruits together with experienced men who are all going to be part of the same unit, resulting in longer training times and more effort for less result.  (By contrast, a WW2 German division would assimilate 80% raw recruits and rebuild from 20% to full strength and combat effectiveness in 4-6 weeks.)

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 25, 2019, 11:35:22 PM
b

Just to get a feel, I checked out the basic training time for US infantry (the only army for which I could find instant information online).  This is being raised from 14 to 22 weeks, although the reasons for doing so were not clearly stated.  Typically, the US Army trains people in Basic Combat Training for 10 weeks and the balance is for Advanced Individual Training, where the recruit masters, or at last gets, a Military Occupational Speciality.  Unlike classical armies, it does not train recruits together with experienced men who are all going to be part of the same unit, resulting in longer training times and more effort for less result.  (By contrast, a WW2 German division would assimilate 80% raw recruits and rebuild from 20% to full strength and combat effectiveness in 4-6 weeks.)

I think that's the difference between peace time and war time
A lot of things happen differently in wartime. For a start we could build a submarine in six weeks. Admittedly after the war virtually all of them were scrapped

UK National Service men got six weeks basic training before being sent out to their units, which might be in combat

Its also a matter of the tactical configuration. A German WW2 infantry unit need experienced men to operate the MG42......you are dead if the no 2 cannot change a barrel. The other squad members need to be able to shoot in a direction and do basic fieldcraft. The tactical choices are made by the NCOs and the LMG crew.
The research carried out after WW2 concluded that in American units the killing was done by NCOs and BAR men and presumably the 30 cal crew. The systems tgat inducted new recruits were geared to them learning on the job. So a couple of weeks rifle training produces a marksman. It likely takes longer to get to a sniper who need many more skills. However the basic infantryman is delivering covering fire whilst tge LMG moves or an NCO or vet bombs a bunker.

In Ancientvarmies one suppises that the first two men in a file and the last need to be skilled. In the middle the experience can vary and the system copes, so I expect advancing Romans chant Look out here I come or sme such when taking the running paces that lead to a pilum throw. The tyros can folliw their leader to do this. Its going to be a major problem in any context when everybody is inexperienced. Tgat's the point at which you heed to blood the soldiers gradually to build up technique and confidence and when a formation might be very fragile.
Roy

A few observations

We should be careful with contexts when making comparisons.  A training regime when the main need is to replace individuals coming to the end of short enlistments may be different to when raising whole new formations from scratch or rebuilding decimated units from cadres. 

Roy has what I suspect is a widely applicable concept that the burden of fighting a unit does not fall equally on everyone.   Having the best men at the front seems to have been a commonplace, with the common herd in a supporting role behind.  As said, this enabled the inexperienced to learn on the job in the relative safety of the middle ranks.  How formalised this was doubtless varied from army to army; you might be at the front because of experience or because of social expectation, for example.

Quote from: Erpingham on February 26, 2019, 10:53:33 AM
A training regime when the main need is to replace individuals coming to the end of short enlistments may be different to when raising whole new formations from scratch or rebuilding decimated units from cadres.

The regime may well differ; the need for six weeks (thanks, Jim; this is also the figure I remember) to instil basic soldiering skills appears to be pretty much a constant.  Four weeks' preliminary square-bashing and cross-country running is essentially optional.  A subsequent 4-12 weeks learning weapon/branch specialisation appears to be more relevant to present-day armies than their classical counterparts.

QuoteRoy has what I suspect is a widely applicable concept that the burden of fighting a unit does not fall equally on everyone.   Having the best men at the front seems to have been a commonplace, with the common herd in a supporting role behind.  As said, this enabled the inexperienced to learn on the job in the relative safety of the middle ranks.  How formalised this was doubtless varied from army to army; you might be at the front because of experience or because of social expectation, for example.

Indeed.  Naturally, the Romans did things differently, at least on the surface.

The Roman system (under the Republic) placed the hastati, who were the least experienced troops, in the front line.  The experienced principes formed the second line; the veteran triarii the third.

That said, the front rankers included the centurions, who were perforce the best fighters in their unit, or likely to be.  Hence the hastati would include a spread of experience, with the least experienced probably tucked into the middle of each file, awaiting the time when they would count as sufficiently experienced to fight in the front rank (which could of course happen in unplanned fashion if their side was losing badly, but in such an eventuality line relief would already have kicked in).  If things went right, they could pick up experience quickly, and if not, there were always the principes and triarii to retrieve the situation.

Quote from: aligern on February 26, 2019, 09:39:01 AM
It's going to be a major problem in any context when everybody is inexperienced. That's the point at which you need to blood the soldiers gradually to build up technique and confidence and when a formation might be very fragile.

Too true (as illustrated by Luftwaffe Field Divisions and US Army Vietnam deployments), and usually this sort of thing was avoided as a matter of course in classical times.  The chaps of a polis would anyway tend to train together, as would the varying-experience enlistees of a Republican legion and the veterans-plus-new-intake of an Imperial legion.  The raw troops would start off training with their battle-wise comrades and experience - and confidence - would swiftly even out.

Quote from: Erpingham on February 24, 2019, 12:33:43 PM
We can attempt an answer here based on Henry VIII's laws.  Archery practice was mandated from the age of seven.  At the age of 17, a man became responsible for providing his own bow.

This thread needs more negativity.  :) Allow me...

I don't think we can assume compliance or enforcement.
More broadly, I think we should deeply discount any elite's take on military culture, or similarly any demand by a king that, when an army turns up, it should know what it's doing.

Consider the numbers. If England had a population of 3.5mn in the mid 16th century, compliance with that law would suggest there were about  800,000 longbows kicking around in England. Quite apart from the deforestation, it doesn't gel with the Wikipedia fact that  only 120 of those bows surviving to the current day.

Similarly, our Greek historians are among the elite of the elite, so when they qualitatively describe the martial character of a people, it's as likely an aspiration of the elite and may not tell us anything about the great unwashed.

Quote from: Dangun on February 27, 2019, 12:43:36 PM

Quote from: Erpingham on February 24, 2019, 12:33:43 PM
We can attempt an answer here based on Henry VIII's laws.  Archery practice was mandated from the age of seven.  At the age of 17, a man became responsible for providing his own bow.

This thread needs more negativity.  :) Allow me...

Your negativity needs to have some more negativity applied to it  :)

It doesn't matter how many men followed the law, rigorously or occasionally. Surely that's not the point. The main point is as a guideline to what sort of time was thought to be required.

QuoteConsider the numbers. If England had a population of 3.5mn in the mid 16th century, compliance with that law would suggest there were about  800,000 longbows kicking around in England.

There were certain exclusions - "the kynges subjectes, not lame nor havynge no lawfull impedment"; "except spirituall men, Justices, &c. and barons of the escheker". I don't know what that would do to your figures - what degree of disability is required? how many clergy were there in England?

QuoteQuite apart from the deforestation, it doesn't gel with the Wikipedia fact that only 120 of those bows surviving to the current day.

This point I seriously doubt. An old bow is just a stick, useful for firewood or whittling down into something more useful. It's hard to see why any should survive at all, except in circumstances like the Mary Rose. As a timber-based comparison, there is said to be one surviving Tudor bed (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576732/Bed-Tudor-king-Henry-VIII-conceived-worth-20million.html). (I'm not sure how that can be quite correct - isn't the Great Bed of Ware Tudor? - but there can't be very many.)

Quote from: Dangun on February 27, 2019, 12:43:36 PM

I don't think we can assume compliance or enforcement.

Agreed.  Enforcement in particular was weak.  Compliance is a different matter.  We have loads of evidence that archery pratice was a popular pastime in England into the 17th century, well after official military usage had ended.  Did everyone practice with heavy bows at longer distances?  Perhaps not, as 16th century military writers complain about the quality of archers they had (but not numbers - there were enough archers just not enough good ones).  We might note muster records from the 15th century that show by no means everybody who should have had a bow brought one along or was considered competent with one, which again suggests compliance was patchy.

Quote
Consider the numbers. If England had a population of 3.5mn in the mid 16th century, compliance with that law would suggest there were about  800,000 longbows kicking around in England. Quite apart from the deforestation, it doesn't gel with the Wikipedia fact that  only 120 of those bows surviving to the current day.

England, of course, imported a lot of its bowstaves, which caused the deforestation to happen in central Europe.  Large areas had their yew stocks depleted.  Non-military standard bows were deliberately made from a variety of "mean" woods to ensure that cheaper practice bows remained available.  It was possible to make practice bows from coppiced poles, especially the lower weight ones suitable for younger archers.  But ensuring supplies was a strategic issue for English regimes and probably featured in more legislation that longbow practice.

On survival, bows were very biodegradeable.  None of the parts normally survive.  They were also disposable - if they broke you threw them away.  Think about how many spear shafts and lances we still have, as opposed to spear and lance heads.


[/quote]

I think Duncan and Anthony have covered everything except this.

Quote from: Dangun on February 27, 2019, 12:43:36 PM
Similarly, our Greek historians are among the elite of the elite, so when they qualitatively describe the martial character of a people, it's as likely an aspiration of the elite and may not tell us anything about the great unwashed.

Well ...

There was a tendency to focus on the known and perceived features of the section of the people which was most evident from interaction, so the valour of Persians and Sacae is commented upon in contrast to the at best lukewarm enthusiasm of subject peoples.  These were observed characteristics as opposed to aspirations real or imagined, and were relevant in that the Greek audience could expect to meet these characteristics (and perhaps already had) and see for themselves; the Greek historian put down what he saw together with whatever answers he received when he asked questions on subjects less generally known.  He wrote for an audience usually familiar with the character of neighbouring and/or important nations, not in a vacuum in which his imagination had free rein.  While this might result in a stereotype, it would be an essentially accurate one and not a parody or a caricature.  (That was left to dramatists ...)

From what I can tell, national characteristics back then tended to apply pretty much to everyone from the most influential aristocrat to the ordinary man in the public baths.  (Greeks and Romans tended not to have a great unwashed.)  Athenians were enterprising, Spartans laconic and dedicated, Persians proud and brave, and so forth.  While individual exceptions existed, they do not appear to have done so in sufficient numbers to affect the qualities of the people in question and the general perception of those qualities.

One area of preparedness which occurs to me from medieval examples is what you might call a socioprofessional dimension.  Certain groups in society, because of their position within that society, perceived they had (or were perceived to have) a social profession in arms.  The obvious medieval example is knighthood or, more broadly, men of gentle blood.  This doesn't mean they were all highly trained veterans (few specialised, most dabbled) but some degree of preparedness existed.

If we look at some Classical examples doubtless we can see the same.  Spartiates, for example, had a social status related to military service.  More widely, to fight in the phalanx at all was a declaration of social status.  I'm afraid I don't know enough about the Macedonian situation.

What impact, I wonder, does this have on military preparedness and the distribution of experience within a community?

I think it does much for ease of campaigning, battlefield evolutions and unit cohesion.  Most importantly, it provides a 'living tradition' which the new soldier very rapidly becomes part of.  Men who live together (or at least in the same city), train together and campaign together on a regular basis barely need formal training to keep things going.  While some explanation and demonstration of the finer points is doubtless necessary, most of what it takes to be a hoplite/phalangite/knight/archer can be picked up through observation and shared activity as opposed to formal instruction.

Where such a cultural military system exists, individual awareness would begin in childhood (especially for Spartans, who did not have a choice in the matter), observing the men of the city training, exercising and going off to war, soaking up tales from father, grandfather and the one-eyed veteran at the drinking-house and being 'tested' on their knowledge by elder boys keen to show that they themselves had knowledge of what it took to be a man.  Most boys have tended throughout history to be fairly keen on military subjects, and would at least develop keeness for distinction and a wish to handle weapons.  When the time came to begin their real military training, they would already be familiar with at least appearances of how things were done and mentally and physically prepared in many important respects.

The combination of mental preparation and close observation of relevant military activities would be a good grounding, and would ensure that no citizen (or knight) started off completely raw*.  While Greek hoplites (other than Spartans) typically had not much training (compared with a Spartan or a Roman legionary of the Imperiial period) they probably did not need all that much much to bring them to a useful standard of battlefield performance.

*Although some Italian communal and contadini knights appear to have come close, more through neglect of the system than the system itself.

I agree the socioprofessional dimension is important; we can contrast the situation in (e.g.) 18th century Europe, where armies were quite isolated from society (as opposed to being society) and anyone who enlisted really had to begin pretty much from scratch unless he was a gamekeeper or hunter and hence had some idea of timing and the use of firearms.

Quote from: Duncan Head on February 27, 2019, 01:18:07 PM


This point I seriously doubt. An old bow is just a stick, useful for firewood or whittling down into something more useful. It's hard to see why any should survive at all, except in circumstances like the Mary Rose. As a timber-based comparison, there is said to be one surviving Tudor bed (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576732/Bed-Tudor-king-Henry-VIII-conceived-worth-20million.html). (I'm not sure how that can be quite correct - isn't the Great Bed of Ware Tudor? - but there can't be very many.)

yes I was thinking that there are few things more useful than a broken bow. It's ready made kindling  ;)
As for survival rates, how many victorian dolly pegs survive  :)

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on February 28, 2019, 08:44:33 PM
observing the men of the city training, exercising and going off to war...

I can't help but notice that you used the word city twice.  :)
So it begs to note that 90% of people didn't live in cities, so you're cultural transmission mechanism is something for the elites. Most people saw nothing.

You also suggested that "going off to war" was so common as to be familiar. But as per the earlier conversation I don't think that can be possibly true other than for very short periods of time.

Quote from: Dangun on February 28, 2019, 11:31:24 PM
You also suggested that "going off to war" was so common as to be familiar. But as per the earlier conversation I don't think that can be possibly true other than for very short periods of time.

I still don't see why you think that. In the period we discussed - latest 5th to early 4th century BC - the major poleis were at war more often than not, and while not every year of war would see any major campaign, smaller expeditions were mounted all the time, even outside of the major wars.

So I guess I'm saying you should specify in which period(s) you take "going off to war" as not being quite common.

Quote from: Dangun on February 28, 2019, 11:31:24 PMSo it begs to note that 90% of people didn't live in cities, so you're cultural transmission mechanism is something for the elites. Most people saw nothing.

But did those "90%" play any military role anyway? If the weapon-training/exercising/fighting tradition was the standard amongst the military class,  then its supposed foreignness to the rural peasantry is an irrelevance to questions of army-building.

Quote from: Dangun on February 28, 2019, 11:31:24 PM
So it begs to note that 90% of people didn't live in cities, so you're cultural transmission mechanism is something for the elites. Most people saw nothing.

That is somewhat misleading for the classical period (Duncan has covered the essential point for mediaeval etc. cultures).  If we take Athens as an example (simply because we have more information about it than on most), the ten demes ('tribes'') who farmed land in Attica appear to have visited the city on a regular basis, not just to go to market but also to do things like watching plays, attending festivals and, of course, voting on the latest proposals.  There was plenty of opportunity to rub shoulders, chat and share thoughts.  In addition, when invasion threatened, the rural populace piled in to shelter behind urban walls.  While differing characteristics between demes were noticeable and the Acharnians in particular were considered rustic, all were citizens and all did their military service, nearly all willingly.  Everyone belonged to their city; all were citizens, even if living and farming miles away in a rural backwater.

In addition to filling out armies (Thucydides noted that in 431 BC Athens could deploy 29,000 hoplites of all ages under arms - and did) Athens also manned navies, so there were in fact two parallel combat traditions existing side-by-side.  Late in the Peloponnesian War (which lasted from 431 to 424 BC and then 415-404 BC) hoplites rowed their own ships in order to save money.  We have little information about how often trierarchs assembled and exercised their crews, but this had to be done (like military practice) even in peacetime, and when Athens collected money from its 'allies' (subjects) it seems to have mobilised a fleet and supporting troops to do so (just in case it occurred to anyone to say no).  All of this kept increments of the citizen population familiar with the business of warfare.

QuoteYou also suggested that "going off to war" was so common as to be familiar. But as per the earlier conversation I don't think that can be possibly true other than for very short periods of time.

To expand from Andreas' comment.
If we look through a list of major conflicts in Greece, starting in 480 BC, we get:
Persian Invasion 480-479 BC and Greek counterattack 479-460 BC (in which dozens of Greek cities were involved; this alliance later became the Delian League).
Athenian campaigns against Boeotia 457-447 BC
Peloponesian War 431-424 BC (peace in 421 BC but fighting in 423-422 BC was minimal)
Argive-Spartan War 418 BC
Athenian expedition to Sicily 415-413 BC
Peloponnesian War (restarted) 413-404 BC
Corinthian War 395-387 BC
Challenges to Spartan hegemony 383-371 BC (intermittent)
Theban hegemony and challenges to it 371-362 BC (continuous)
Third Sacred War 356-346 BC

And this brings us to the rise of Macedon.  The above campaigns are only those which involved a sizeable proportion of Greek cities; I have not counted such things as squabbles between founding cities and their colonies in which only two or three cities were involved, or the occasional and distressingly vicious civil wars within some Greek cities.

I may have initially misled the reader by selecting a period in which a cluster of major battles occurred within a couple of years and then giving the impression that absence of major battles equated to an absence of campaigning; if so, my apologies.

Quote from: Andreas Johansson on March 01, 2019, 06:16:18 AM
In the period we discussed - latest 5th to early 4th century BC - the major poleis were at war more often than not,

No population can be at war "more often than not" for anything but really short periods of time.
Are we forgetting that war is lethal? And if you keep it up, the lethality quickly damages your state.

If you thinks that lethal warfare is so common that an adult population can be constantly at war/or familiar with it, I would really like to hear from you so some numbers. Just as a thought experiment.

1. Incidence - How often is the state engaged in a single battle, once a year, twice a year?
2. Involvement - How much of the adult population is engaged?
3. Lethality - How lethal is a single battle? 3%/5%/10%/20%?

You can't have big numbers for 1 and 2 without 3 destroying your state.

Quote from: Duncan Head on March 01, 2019, 08:45:58 AM

Quote from: Dangun on February 28, 2019, 11:31:24 PMSo it begs to note that 90% of people didn't live in cities, so you're cultural transmission mechanism is something for the elites. Most people saw nothing.

But did those "90%" play any military role anyway? If the weapon-training/exercising/fighting tradition was the standard amongst the military class,  then its supposed foreignness to the rural peasantry is an irrelevance to questions of army-building.

You can change the claim to being one only about a military class if you like. I think that is called moving the goal posts. Although the claim makes much more sense if we are only talking about 10% of the population. But hitherto in this thread, this was distinctly NOT the claim being made. The claim being made in this thread was that an entire state can be constantly at war, or that most men can get regular experience in lethal warfare, or that most boys will be regularly exposed to adults going to war.

Similarly, a list of Greek warfare, is not evidence for how much lethal combat experience the average Greek male had. How many Greek combatants? How frequently?

Consider the US population during WWII, just because we have some numbers. Of a male population of 70mn, over a 6Y period, 9mn servicemen got posted overseas for an average of 16months each. If we generously assume that everyone who got posted overseas got lethal combat experience, then 3% of the US male population received practice in lethal combat per year during WWII. So if you want to posit that all Greek men got annual lethal combat experience then you are about 30x more militarised than the US was during WWII... and very obviously WWII is picking on an exceptionally rich period for lethal combat experience.

The history of Thespia after the Persian invasion is salutary as to the effects of losing too many citizens in one battle

QuoteThe claim being made in this thread was that an entire state can be constantly at war, or that most men can get regular experience in lethal warfare, or that most boys will be regularly exposed to adults going to war.

I suspect that different people are talking about different things here.  What did it matter to the average Greek polis if its slaves didn't have hands on experience of warfare?  Surely, it is the preparedness of the fighting class that matters?  How much exposure did the cavalry, hoplites and ship crews get to their type of warfare?  In some societies, keeping the huddled masses ignorant of combat experience might have been a desireable thing.

Quote from: Dangun on March 02, 2019, 08:24:09 AM
No population can be at war "more often than not" for anything but really short periods of time.

So what's your contention - ancient historians simply made up many or most of the wars on Patrick's list?

Quote
Are we forgetting that war is lethal? And if you keep it up, the lethality quickly damages your state.

War is not necessarily particularly lethal, especially by the standards of ancient populations with peacetime mortality rates of several percent. More recent history has plenty of examples of countries remaining at war for decades with negible demographic impact.

QuoteIf you thinks that lethal warfare is so common that an adult population can be constantly at war/or familiar with it, I would really like to hear from you so some numbers. Just as a thought experiment.

1. Incidence - How often is the state engaged in a single battle, once a year, twice a year?
2. Involvement - How much of the adult population is engaged?
3. Lethality - How lethal is a single battle? 3%/5%/10%/20%?

You can't have big numbers for 1 and 2 without 3 destroying your state.

This will be a fairly meaningless excerise, I fear, but consider the Corinthian War, which lasted eight years. The Spartans fought three major land battles - Haliartus, Nemea, and Coronea. Their numbers were, acc'd some cursory online research, respectively about 6,000, 18,000, and 15,000. I can't find a casualty figure for Haliartus in a hurry, but at Nemea and Coronea they're supposed to've lost about 1,500 and and 350 respectively, or about 8% and 2% respectively. That's casualties - heavens know how many were lightly enough wounded they could eventually return to fighting, less alone be economically or demographically productive back home. Since the Spartans lost at Haliartus, likely the proportional losses were higher. Still, as the battle was smallish losses can't have been all that catastrophic in absolute numbers.

Now, from how large a population were these armies drawn? A lot of the troops were not Spartans or even Lacedaemonians, but various allies. Estimates for the Classical population of Greece varies from under one million to over ten, so presumably the combined population of Sparta with allies was somewhere in the range from some hundreds of thousands to some millions, but we're left with an uncertainty of an order of magitude. Still, battle deaths must have been a small proportion of total lethality - even a population of just 100,000 times eight years times of a background mortality of perhaps 3% (corresponding to a life expectancy of 33 - not low given ancient infant mortality) would give you 24,000 deaths.

Your numbers may thus perhaps be about one third of a major battle per year, possibly up to 36% involvement if the Nemea army was really drawn from a total population of just 100,000 (assuming about half the population to be adult) but very much less if the Haliartus one was drawn from one of several million, and about 8% if Nemea as a hard-fought win represents some sort of "average" battle, and we assume all casualties were actually or effectively dead.

Now, does this matter much for the sustainability of warfare? I suspect not, because (i) losses wouldn't be spread evenly over the adult population and losses of Spartans would be more politically (but perhaps less economically) significant than those of Helots or Eleians, and (ii) judging by better attested ages, battle losses are the minority of war losses.

Quote from: Dangun on March 02, 2019, 08:24:09 AM
The claim being made in this thread was that an entire state can be constantly at war, or that most men can get regular experience in lethal warfare, or that most boys will be regularly exposed to adults going to war.

I'm not sure what you mean by an "entire" state here? I mean, back in the day, you could be at war with some constituent bit of the Holy Roman Empire without being at war with the empire as a whole, but Classical Greek poleis were pretty unitary - outside of intervention in civil war, if you were at war with Athens you were at war with the lot of it.

Modulo that uncertainty, as to the first of the three claims you list, it seems to me that that Greek states could be at war more often than not is a brute fact, unless we're prepared to throw the historical record out of the window. None, it's true, was to my knowledge constantly at war during the period, but I don't believe anyone's claimed that either.

As for the second, I very much doubt that most males had combat experience. It may have been the case that most of the military classes had - and if so I expect more commonly of raiding and minor actions than of field battles. It may have varied between different poleis - Spartans may have been more experienced on average than Corinthians, say.

As for the third, it would seem to follow from the sheer frequency of campaigns, but it may hinge on the definition of "exposed". Is it enough that men from your neighbourhood leave for war, or do you have to see a father or brother actually march away as part of the army?

QuoteSimilarly, a list of Greek warfare, is not evidence for how much lethal combat experience the average Greek male had. How many Greek combatants? How frequently?

My remarks about the frequency of war have not been aimed at showing how much experience anyone had, but at correcting your apparently overly peaceful image of Classical Greece.

Quote from: Dangun on March 02, 2019, 08:24:09 AM
No population can be at war "more often than not" for anything but really short periods of time.
Are we forgetting that war is lethal? And if you keep it up, the lethality quickly damages your state.

We must beware of ascribing annihilatory force to semantics.  War in Classical Greece was not a matter of front lines, attritional fighting and Iranian-style offensives, but of armies marching in (usually) lesurely style around the countryside without let or hindrance until another army turned up to oppose them.  Both sides then had a think about whether they were likely to win any upcoming fight, or whether they felt they had to fight anyway because they were out of options, and if they were positive about this they had a fight.  Such fights usually dropped something like a couple of hundred winners and a couple of thousand losers, and made the loser a bit more careful about next time.

It may be worth remembering that in most cases leagues or alliances of city states were fighting leagues or alliances, so as Andreas has noted casualties were shared around, not always proportionately.  In a league of (say) ten cities, two or three (on the left of the army) might take the lion's share of casualties.  They would be sending smaller contingents in the next campaign (and probably arguing that they should be posted somewhere else in the line) but everyone else would have gained good combat experience with minimal casualties.

QuoteIf you think that lethal warfare is so common that an adult population can be constantly at war/or familiar with it, I would really like to hear from you so some numbers. Just as a thought experiment.

1. Incidence - How often is the state engaged in a single battle, once a year, twice a year?
2. Involvement - How much of the adult population is engaged?
3. Lethality - How lethal is a single battle? 3%/5%/10%/20%?

You can't have big numbers for 1 and 2 without 3 destroying your state.

Actually you can.  Take Athens in the Peloponnesian War: it lost perhaps half its population in the plague of 430-429 BC (more people than it lost in the entire war) and yet even after additionally losing a fair part of its citizen army at Delium in 424 BC and then its entire Sicilian expedition of several thousand and a similarly-sized relief expedition in the 415-413 BC war against Syracuse, it was able to give the combined forces of Sparta, the Peloponnesian League and Persia a good run for their money from 412 to 404 BC.

Thereafter, it lost its empire, but was far from finished, playing a prominent role throughout the 4th century BC, notably opposing Sparta and then Thebes, providing substantial mercenary contingents for Egypt and Persia, then taking the field against Macedon at Chaeronea in 338 BC and sustaining significant losses there, but was back for the Lamian War in 322 BC after Alexander's death.  In the meantime, Athenians had served with Alexander (as League of Corinth troops) and some may have even taken service as mercenaries.

All of the above did noticeably weaken Athens, and the number of young men enrolling as citizen soldiers underwent sharp reduction, not unlike contemporary Sparta, but the state was far from being 'destroyed' and persisted until the Romans conquered Greece.

QuoteSimilarly, a list of Greek warfare, is not evidence for how much lethal combat experience the average Greek male had. How many Greek combatants? How frequently?

I am not sure we have anything like individual 'service records', but let us consider the 'Ten Thousand'.  These were on campaign from the moment 12,500 of them assembled under Cyrus at Tarsus.  Nearly half had already been retained on campaigns in various parts of Cyrus' domains, so were already picking up experience there.  We should note that battle is not the only experience they needed or acquired; foraging and moving through hostile territory were also important parts of warfare.  From Tarsus, they had an easy time until they fought at Cunaxa, whereupon their problems quickly became (at least apparently) astronomical.

On the plus side, they had chased off the entire Persian army which outnumbered them by silly ratios.  On the minus side, they were deep in hostile teritory and the only way out was controlled by the King's satraps and their dependent populations.  The next few months consisted of near-constant fighting, initially of rearguard actions against the King's favoured satrap of the moment, subsequently cutting their way through the most warlike tribes of Asia Minor and managing to stay in supply the whole time.  The 'Ten Thousand' reached the Black Sea, broke up into several contingents and drifted west, where some took service with the Spartans.

Of the original 12,500, some 6,000 survived the entire process, emerging from a campaign which by rights none of them should have survived.  The majority of their losses seem to have been taken when detachments did something foolish and were annihilated or heavily depleted in consequence.

Conversely, Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire saw him end up with an army significantly larger than that with which he began.  The Macedonian component appears to have remained more or less the same size, but what is noticeable is how the number of mobilised Mcedonians just kept growing as the Successor Wars proceeded.  Quality took a knock as the Companions were spread around and the Argyraspides rusticated, but this simply took the generality of the armies down from elite to good, where they remained despite more than a century of campaigning, primarily against each other, until those spoilsport Romans appeared on the scene.

QuoteConsider the US population during WWII, just because we have some numbers. Of a male population of 70mn, over a 6Y period, 9mn servicemen got posted overseas for an average of 16months each. If we generously assume that everyone who got posted overseas got lethal combat experience, then 3% of the US male population received practice in lethal combat per year during WWII. So if you want to posit that all Greek men got annual lethal combat experience then you are about 30x more militarised than the US was during WWII... and very obviously WWII is picking on an exceptionally rich period for lethal combat experience.

I think we need to be careful about bandying around a term like 'lethal combat experience'.  In my understanding, the only lethal combat experience is actually being killed. ;)  I think what you mean is 'useful military experience', i.e. the sort of experience which might make them useful on the battlefield.

So - did Greek or Roman citizens campaign year in, year out?  The answer is: sometimes.  At other times they would keep their hand in with a campaign every few years, occasionally one with very low risk.  In any event, we have to be careful about equating enemy deaths with friendly combat experience: the Athenian campaign against Melos in 416 BC gave the participants plenty of experience at killing, while their opponents all received 'lethal combat experience' - but the mere fact of killing a man does not necessarily make one a better soldier.  Effective practice in battlewinning techniques against a live opponent is far more effective.  Otherwise one could create elite troops simply by slaughtering a set number of slaves.

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on March 02, 2019, 09:39:14 PM
So - did Greek or Roman citizens campaign year in, year out?  The answer is: sometimes.

I have a completely different answer. Did Greek or Roman citizens campaign year in, year out?  The answer is: On average, very few of them, very rarely.

But I am confused by the switching between claims about the combat experience of the collective state, and claims about the average combat experience of the average man/citizen/pesant? Mathematically, very different, but the difference as to what is being claimed in not always clear, to me at least...

For example...

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on March 02, 2019, 09:39:14 PM
At other times they would keep their hand in with a campaign every few years, occasionally one with very low risk. 

Are you talking about the state? Or the average citizen. Put another way, you can't possibly be talking about the average citizen. Right? X million men in the Roman Empire weren't "keeping their hand in" every few years?

The example of the US in ww2 showed that even with all the blood and mayhem to go around in ww2 America was only giving combat experience to about 3% of men annually. Spread out over the 20th century the annual figure would be well below 1%. If you are talking about individuals, what percentage of the Greek or Roman populations were getting combat experience annually?

Coming late to this one, but do I recall correctly, that some Roman Generals were very strict about training and were loath to use men even in the Civil War when they had been inadequately trained?

Also there's a significant difference in drill and combat drill. Drill means you can move around a battlefield in an organised way, battle drills tell you how to receive cavalry, inculcate the need to remain in line rather than pursue, when to release missile weapons, how to perform a withdrawal, how to deal with different kinds of opponents, how to close up and lock shields etc.

It's relatively easy to take a farmer and stand him in a line with a pointy stick, it's a lot more complex if you expect him to do anything other than run away when a wave of barbarians is advancing towards him.   

Quote from: Dangun on March 03, 2019, 02:18:46 PM
But I am confused by the switching between claims about the combat experience of the collective state, and claims about the average combat experience of the average man/citizen/pesant? Mathematically, very different, but the difference as to what is being claimed in not always clear, to me at least...

For example...

Quote from: Patrick Waterson on March 02, 2019, 09:39:14 PM
At other times they would keep their hand in with a campaign every few years, occasionally one with very low risk. 

Are you talking about the state? Or the average citizen. Put another way, you can't possibly be talking about the average citizen. Right? X million men in the Roman Empire weren't "keeping their hand in" every few years?

My main focus has been the Greek city-states, a societal system where the citizenry and the army were pretty much synonymous.  The 'average citizen' would have had several campaigns under his belt by the time he was passing his military wisdom on to his offspring.

The Roman Empire was a different beast because it had a professional long-service standing army while everyone else, unless from a tribe or client kingdom which was providing auxiliaries, had no military involvement at all.  Hence all military experience (and, more importantly, training) was, with an exception I shall note, concentrated in the Roman army, with the result that the population as a whole was quite defenceless per se.

The exception was city garrisons, which appear to havce been maintained by cities at their own expense as gate guard, wall guards, police etc. and which rarely if ever did anything other than garrisoning their home city.  So under the Empire effective military experience was concentrated in the army.

As Doug indicates, the Romans took their training very seriously; legionaries in particular trained, or were supposed to train, on a daily basis.  As combat tradition was held within the army rather than the citizenry as a whole, it took longer to train recruits and if mustering whole units became necessary (e.g. after the Varian disaster or during AD 69) generals were not keen on committing them until they had been 'worked up' for some time.

A legionary, once trained, could expect considerable combat experience, not least because in the early Empire there were usually barbarians on the borders and Rome felt it a good idea to teach them who was boss; also, troops left to age and murmur in one place for too long without action tended to mutiny or otherwise cause or threaten trouble.  Keeping them active kept them busy and constituted effective asset utilisation, not that the Romans ever seem to have been troubled by this concept.

QuoteThe example of the US in ww2 showed that even with all the blood and mayhem to go around in ww2 America was only giving combat experience to about 3% of men annually. Spread out over the 20th century the annual figure would be well below 1%. If you are talking about individuals, what percentage of the Greek or Roman populations were getting combat experience annually?

Can we consider the male citizen population, otherwise demographics will somewhat skew the answer?  Among the Greeks, close to 100% of the citizenry would have combat experience at some time in their lives, usually more than once.  Except when threatened with invasion, it would be unusual for an individual Greek to be in combat every year; if operating further afield a fraction of the citizenry would be committed.  Thucydides I.98 (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D98) and following (up to I.117 inclusive) tracks the expansion of Athens' empire and one can derive one's own estimates from that.

Athens, with a mobilisable population in 431 BC of perhaps 80,000 men, had 13,000 hoplites in the field, 16,000 in garrison and 200 triremes manned of which 130 were committed to campaigning.  Actual combat in 431 BC was as follows: 1) 1,200 cavalry who skirmished with the Peloponnesian invaders.  2) 100 ships (each with c.200 men) went to ravage the Peloponnesian coast.  3) 30 ships did much the same closer to Attica.  4) 3,000 hoplites besieged Potidaea. 5) 10,000 hoplites (plus 3,000 allies and associated light troops) invaded the Megarid.  Leaving aside the cavalry, the number of citizens gaining combat, if not actual battle, experience, was 10,000 + 3,000 + 6,000 + 20,000, i.e. 39,000 of whom about 60% were oarsmen unengaged in land fighting but keeping up their naval proficiency.

The Athenians were thus giving campaign experience to about half their citizenry in that particular year.  The ratio does not seem to have changed much - except to increase - as the war went on.  Combat experience within that campaign experience was more diluted: not every Athenian raider made contact with armed enemies (Cephallenia, for example, was taken without resistance).  As has been previously observed, combat puts an edge on training rather than being a substitute for it, and the Athenians were keeping their forces at a 'good enough' level but never felt they could win a battle against Spartans (Alcibiades in 418 BC was the exception, and that did not work out).  Apart from the 418 BC venture, throughout the Peloponnesian War period the Athenians were deliberately eschewing open battle with the Spartans and their Peloponnesian allies, conscious of their opponents' manpower (and, in the case of Spartans, training) advantage.

When making comparisons with modern societies, one should be aware that the later 20th-early 21st centuries, like the 19th century, tend to have short, intense wars followed by serious outbreaks of peace, so averaging combat experience through a whole century is misleading: a nation's armed forces are either very experienced (e.g. in 1815, 1918, 1945) or mostly stultified through insufficient activity.  There is also a tendency nowadays to use special forces in small wars and general incidents, resulting in these being highly experienced in combat while the bulk of the army has next to nothing by way of experience.  Furthermore, modern society has a sharp and artificial dividing line betwen civil and military which simply did not exist before Diocletian.  I am not sure we can validly make comparisons between modern societies and anything except the later Roman Empire (unless we go further east).

Quote from: DougM on March 04, 2019, 08:24:48 AM
Also there's a significant difference in drill and combat drill. Drill means you can move around a battlefield in an organised way, battle drills tell you how to receive cavalry, inculcate the need to remain in line rather than pursue, when to release missile weapons, how to perform a withdrawal, how to deal with different kinds of opponents, how to close up and lock shields etc.

True.  As far as I know, in a classical army, drill was combat drill, as there was no reason to do anything else (except march and occasionally escort a VIP as we see in some Egyptian reliefs and read in accounts of classical parades).  The Romans in particular are noted by Josephus as: "their drills are bloodless battles and their battles sanguinary drills", indicating the seamlessness between drills and battle procedures.  As far as I know, the idea of ceremonial drill dates from the Age of Reason, when parading about in front of the monarch was the ground state of most armies, or at least the household regiments, which set the tone and fashion for the remainder.