Just how much training did an ancient army require?

[Patrick Waterson]

I think Duncan and Anthony have covered everything except this.

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.

[Erpingham]

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?

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

[Jim Webster]

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. (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 

[Dangun]

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.

[Andreas Johansson]

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.

[Duncan Head]

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.

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.

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

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.

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.

[Dangun]

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.

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.

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.

[Jim Webster]

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

[Erpingham]

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 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.

[Andreas Johansson]

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?

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.

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.

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.

[Andreas Johansson]

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?

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?

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.

[Patrick Waterson]

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.

If 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

[Dangun]

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...

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?