Warfare was pandemic in the ancient world, and almost every ancient historian is a military historian. Among the Greeks whose works survive, Herodotus (c.484-424 bc) gives an account of the Graeco-Persian wars including long digressions on peoples and places. His credibility has been questioned from his day to this, but what other evidence there is tends to bear him out, often in detail, and he shows much common sense in sifting evidence, giving different versions, and frequently confessing doubt. He has been particularly criticized for lack of military experience and naive views of warfare. But, although his accounts are dramatic and omit many things a modern historian may wish to know, it should never be forgotten that he stands at the very beginning of historical study, and had to depend almost entirely on oral evidence. His material may be presented in an unfamiliar way—strategy and tactics, for example, often discussed in speeches or conversations between protagonists—but enough is there, if we care to look, to enable us to understand what happened and why, at least in broad outline. As for his lack of military experience, that is true of most military historians, and his supposed naivety may accurately reflect the unsophisticated nature of the warfare of his time.
Thucydides (?460-c.390 bc) is very different, but he was contemporary with his main subject, the Peloponnesian wars, and too much can be made of his military experience, which only certainly amounted to one campaign. Despite the existence of far more documentary evidence, most of the evidence he used was also oral, and we should not assume that he checked it more carefully than Herodotus just because he claims to have done so. Nevertheless, his accounts of military operations are more detailed and precise than Herodotus', and, although there are still many things we would like to know, one feels that one is dealing with something approaching proper military history, whereas reading Herodotus is like watching a good historical film. The danger is that Thucydides hardly ever gives alternative versions, and for better or worse we virtually have to accept his. His evident intelligence and precision are of some comfort, but he is clearly sometimes one-sided and tendentious. His style, too, is often tortuous and gnomic, and it can be almost impossible to see what he actually means, as the endless discussions of his analysis of the causes of the war show. Nobody could accuse Thucydides of being naive, but he was, perhaps, too intelligent for his own and our good.
Polybius (c.200-c.118 bc), like Thucydides, had some pretensions to military experience, serving as ‘Hipparch’ (‘Vice-President’) of the Achaean League in 170/169. But, although he wrote a lost work on tactics, he is not known to have taken part in any military operations, let alone exercised command. Through his friendship with Scipio Aemilianus while in exile, he did witness the latter's operations at Carthage and Numantia, and he obviously liked to think of himself as a military man, sometimes, for example, using what look like technical terms. One can only be thankful that when so much of his work is lost, what survives includes so many important military events. He is not as detailed and precise as Thucydides can be, but usually gives a clear, unpretentious, though somewhat pedestrian, picture of events.
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius apart, one is left with a very mixed bag. The ‘Library of History’ of the Sicilian Diodoros, written between 56 and 30 bc, is the most extensive Greek historical work to have survived, even though we only have fifteen of its 40 books. Diodorus is the classic example of a historian who is only as good as his sources, his own contribution being perhaps only his moralistic and rhetorical tone. Thus he contributes little of value where we have Herodotus and Thucydides, but is sometimes a useful corrective to Xenophon, for example, where he perhaps used the anonymous history of Greece known as the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia. He is invaluable where he preserves Hieronymus of Cardia on Alexander's successors and, as one might expect, on the history of Sicily.
Plutarch (ad c.50-120) of Chaeronea is not really a historian at all, let alone a military historian, although his biographies of famous commanders inevitably contain much military material. Like Diodorus, he is full of moralizing and rhetoric, but he was a learned man who frequently refers to his sources, and occasionally he preserves interesting material.
Arrian (Lucius Flavius Arrianus, ad c.86-160), as governor of Cappadocia, would certainly have had military experience and works on tactics survive. But he is chiefly known for his account of Alexander the Great's campaigns, which, as its title Anabasis suggests, was modelled on Xenophon, but also harked back to Herodotus and Thucydides. Arrian's main sources were the contemporaries Ptolemy 1 and Aristobulus, but he also worked in later stories, and as a result, although detailed, his account is not wholly reliable.
Roughly contemporary with Arrian, Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of Rome mainly organized geographically. Of 24 books, only eleven survive complete, and it is clear that Appian not only reduced and reorganized his sources, but introduced rhetorical flourishes to suit his pro-Roman and monarchic views, He is chiefly valuable for his account of the Roman civil wars, where he preserves material otherwise lost.
Polyaenus' collection of ‘stratagems’ was intended to assist Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus in the Parthian war of ad 162-6. Unfortunately, although the work preserves some valuable items, such as Philip's feint withdrawal at Chaeronea, it contains obviously mythical and fictitious anecdotes as well as historical ones, and unless the source is clear, is of dubious reliability.
Finally, Cassius Dio (ad c.164-230) wrote a history of Rome from its origins to his own time, of which only the part covering the years 69 bc to ad 46 survives at all intact. He is particularly useful on the struggles for power, which destroyed the Roman republic and led to imperial rule, and can be perceptive, but devotes too much attention to the supernatural.
Bibliography
- Hornblower, Simon, and Spawforth, Antony, The Oxford Classical Dictionary (
3rd edn. , Oxford, 1996)
— John Lazenby
