It is generally believed by modern military historians that the hoplite battle was the preferred and dominant form of warfare among Greeks in the Archaic and Classical periods and that a number of conventions or unwritten laws in warfare kept the Greeks from committing wholesale destruction of towns and cities until the mid or late fifth century (cf. e.g. Hanson 2000: 206; Ober: 1994: 12-26; Pritchett 2.173; 251-252; Connor 3-28). Sieges of cities, wanton plunder and massacres are gradually introduced into Greek warfare in the period from 450 to 300 BC, particularly in the period of the Peloponnesian War, so the argument goes, when all-out war escalates and social and political conditions deteriorate, particularly in Athens. In a well-known passage in the introduction to his history, Thucydides makes the case that the Peloponnesian War was the greatest war ever to befall Greece: “Never had so many cities been taken and left desolate […] Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed” (1.23.1-2; trans. C. F. Smith). Some scholars hold that Thucydides may be attributing more to “his” war than the sheer number of atrocities that accompanied it; that in the Peloponnesian War, the Greeks behaved with greater brutality than they had in the past.
In his important study of the treatment of war prisoners in ancient Greece, Pierre Ducrey agreed with this assessment, concluding that the Greeks of the late fifth century found it difficult to “contain their passions and prevent abuses” in what was an all-encompassing war (Ducrey 1968: 336; cf. also Ducrey 1985: 283). Along the same line, Andreas Panagopoulos has argued that the treatment of the defeated became progressively worse during the war itself, culminating with unprecedented mass executions as the war ran on (Panagopoulos 1978: 219-20). The consensus held among modern scholars is that in the mid or late fifth century, and during the Peloponnesian War in particular, ancient Greek warfare experienced a turning point, after which we begin to see a breakdown in traditional restraints on war resulting in increased sieges and violence.
A closer look at Greek warfare in the archaic and early classical periods, however, suggests that there were no shortages of attempted sieges and their accompanying atrocities. A study of early siege techniques reveals that the fewer number of sieges in the earlier period was due not to “traditional restraints” but rather to the inability of attacking armies to carry out successful sieges. We see an increase in siege warfare and war atrocities in the fifth century BC in part because our sources for the period improve and because the Greeks, namely the Athenians, are able to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in besieging an enemy polis. Thucydides states that the Peloponnesian War saw an increase in the number of cities taken and Greeks killed or exiled because the war was fought over many years and involved a great number of poleis. The historian does not, however, state or imply that this behavior was a recent phenomenon, only that it was on an unprecedented scale. In view of the frequency of early sieges, we need to rethink the current notion that the Greeks had checks in place to restrain themselves from besieging towns and committing war atrocities, as both were prevalent in Greek warfare long before the mid to late fifth century BC.
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