Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:02:35.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE ‘MYTH’ OF THE PHALANX: BATTLE FORMATIONS AND CULTURAL INTERACTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2020

Daniel Alexandru Chiriţoiu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article will discuss the importance of the phalanx as a way to point out cultural links and cultural competition between Greeks and Romans. It will argue that there is a wider discourse in military literature on the phalanx as a cultural commodity, by both historians and authors of ‘military manuals’, each author building on the arguments of the other, and that the Taktika of Aelian and Arrian are a key link in understanding this discourse in the context of the second century AD.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 66 , December 2020 , pp. 1 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Philological Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works cited

Barnes, C. H. L. (2005) ‘Livy 33.8.13 and 35.5.18 revisited’, CJ 100, 349–63.Google Scholar
Birley, A. R. (1997) Hadrian: the restless emperor, London.Google Scholar
Boatwright, M. T. (2000) Hadrian and the cities of the Roman Empire, Princeton and Oxford.10.1515/9780691187211CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosworth, A. B. (1993) ‘Arrian and Rome: the minor works’, in ANRW ii.34.1, 226–75.10.1515/9783110861563-006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, E. L. (1974) ‘Greeks and their past in the Second Sophistic’, in Finley, M. I. (ed.), Studies in ancient society, London, 166–209.Google Scholar
Briscoe, J. (2013) ‘Some misunderstanding of Polybius in Livy’, in Gibson, B. and Harrison, T. (eds.), Polybius and his world: essays in the memory of F.W. Walbank, Oxford.Google Scholar
Busetto, A. (2013) ‘Linguistic adaptation as cultural adjustment: treatment of Celtic, Iberian, and Latin terminology in Arrian's Tactica’, The Journal of Ancient History 1.2, 230–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, B. (1984) The emperor and the Roman army 31 BC – AD 235, Oxford.Google Scholar
Champion, C. (2004) Cultural politics in Polybius's Histories, Berkley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiriţoiu, D. A. (2017) ‘Commanding texts: knowledge-ordering, identity construction and ethics in “military manuals” of the Roman Empire’, PhD thesis, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Connolly, P. (1998) Greece and Rome at war, London.Google Scholar
d'Agostino, B. (1990) ‘Military organization and social structure in Archaic Etruria’, in Murray, O. and Price, S. (eds.), The Greek city from Homer to Alexander, Oxford, 59–82.Google Scholar
Dain, A. (1946) Histoire du texte d’Élien le tacticien: des origines à la fin du moyen age, Paris.Google Scholar
De Blois, L. (2007) ‘Army and general in the Late Roman Republic’, in Erdkamp (2007) 164–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devine, A. M. (1989) ‘Aelian's manual of Hellenistic military tactics: a new translation from the Greek with an introduction’, The Ancient World 19.1–2, 31–64.Google Scholar
Devine, A. M. (1993) ‘Arrian's Tactica’, in ANRW ii.34.1, 312–37.Google Scholar
Erdkamp, P. (ed.) (2007) A companion to the Roman army, Malden, MA and Oxford.10.1002/9780470996577CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldherr, A. (2009) ‘Magna mihi copia est memorandi: modes of historiography in the speeches of Caesar and Cato (Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 51–4)’, in Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, at www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/feldherr/100901.pdf.Google Scholar
Formisano, M. (2017) ‘Fragile expertise and the authority of the past: the “Roman art of war”’, in König and Woolf (2017) 129–52.Google Scholar
Formisano, M. and van der Eijk, P. (eds.) (2017) Knowledge, text and practice in ancient technical writing, Cambridge.10.1017/9781316718575CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geagan, D. J. (1979) ‘Roman Athens: some aspects of life and cutlture. I: 86 BC – AD 267’, ANRW vii.1, 371–437.Google Scholar
Gilliver, K. (2007) ‘The Augustan reform and the structure of the Roman army’, in Erdkamp (2007) 183–200.Google Scholar
Hamilton, J. R. (1969) Plutarch: Alexander, a commentary, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hanson, V. D. (2009) The Western way of war: infantry battle in classical Greece, 2nd edn, Princeton.Google Scholar
Hanson, V. D. (2013) ‘The hoplite narrative’, in Kagan and Viggiano (2013a) 256–76.10.1515/9781400846306-015CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, S. (2018) Plutarch's pragmatic biographies: lessons for statesmen and generals in the Parallel lives, Leiden and Boston.Google Scholar
Jones, C. P. (1971) Plutarch and Rome, Oxford.Google Scholar
Jones, C. P. (1996) ‘The Panhellenion’, Chiron 266, 29–56.Google Scholar
Kagan, D. and Viggiano, G. E. (eds.) (2013a) Men of bronze: hoplite warfare in Ancient Greece, Princeton.Google Scholar
Kagan, D. and Viggiano, G. E. (eds.) (2013b) ‘Introduction’, in Kagan and Viggiano (2013a) xi–xxvi.Google Scholar
König, A. C. writing as Weeks, A. C. (2004) ‘Ancient knowledge, Roman politics and Frontinus’ ‘technical’ treatises’, PhD thesis, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
König, A. C. writing as Weeks, A. C. (2007) ‘Knowledge and power in Frontinus’ On aqueducts’, in König and Whitmarsh (2007a) 177–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, A. C. writing as Weeks, A. C. (2009) ‘From architect to imperator: Vitruvius and his addressee in the De Architectura, in Taub, L. Doody, A. (eds), Authorial voices in Greco-Roman technical writing, Trier, 31–52.Google Scholar
König, A. C. writing as Weeks, A. C. (2017) ‘Conflicting models of authority and expertise in Frontinus’ Strategemata’, in König and Woolf (2017) 153–181.10.1017/9781107446724.008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, J. (2009) ‘Conventions of prefatory self-presentation in Galen's “On the order of my own books”’, in Gill, C., Whitmarsh, T. and Wilkins, J. (eds), Galen and the world of knowledge, Cambridge, 35–58.10.1017/CBO9780511770623.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, J. and Whitmarsh, T. (eds.) (2007a) Ordering knowledge in the Roman Empire, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, J. and Whitmarsh, T. (eds.) (2007b) ‘Ordering knowledge’, in König and Whitmarsh (2007a) 3–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
König, J. and Woolf, G. (eds.) (2017) Authority and expertise in ancient scientific culture, Cambridge.10.1017/9781107446724CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krentz, P. and Wheeler, E. (1994) Polyaenus: Stratagems of war, Chicago.Google Scholar
Lamberton, R. (1997) ‘Plutarch and the Romanization of Athens’, in Hoff, M. C. and Rotroff, S. I. (eds.), The Romanization of Athens, Oxford, 151–60.Google Scholar
Luginbill, R. D. (1994) ‘Othismos: the importance of the mass-shove in hoplite warfare’, Phoenix 48, 51–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, R. (2013) ‘Generalship: leadership and command’, in Campbell, B. and Tritle, L. A. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of warfare in the classical world, Oxford, 457–73.Google Scholar
Morello, R. (2002) ‘Livy's Alexander digression (ix.17–19): counterfactuals and apologetics’, JRS 92, 62–85.Google Scholar
Oakley, S. P. (1998) A commentary on Livy, books vi–x, Oxford.Google Scholar
Oakley, S. P. (2005) A commentary on Livy, book ix, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, R. M. (1965) A commentary on Livy, books 1–5, Oxford.Google Scholar
Ramsey, J. T. (2007) Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, 2nd edn, New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
Romeo, I. (2002) ‘The Panhellenion and ethnic identity in Hadrianic Greece’, CPh 97, 21–37.Google Scholar
Rosenstein, N. (2007) ‘Military command [and] political power’, in Erdkamp (2007) 132–47.Google Scholar
Rosenstein, N. (2010) ‘Phalanges in Rome?’, in Fagan, G. and Trundle, M. (eds.), New perspectives on Ancient warfare, Leiden and Boston, 289–304.Google Scholar
Russell, D. A. (1983) Greek declamation, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511897887CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmieri, G. (2000) ‘Dio, Rome, and the civic life of Asia Minor’, in Swain, S. (ed.), Dio Chrysostom, Oxford, 53–92.Google Scholar
Shear, T. L. (1981) ‘Athens from city-state to provincial town’, Hesperia 50, 356–77.Google Scholar
Snodgrass, A. (2013) ‘Setting the frame chronologically’, in Kagan and Viggiano (2007a) 85–94.10.1515/9781400846306-007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S (1999) ‘The Panhellenion again’, Chiron 29, 339–52.Google Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S (2012) Greece and the Augustan cultural revolution, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Spawforth, A. J. S. and Walker, S. (1985) ‘The world of the Panhellenion. I: Athens and Eleusis’, JRS 75, 78–104.Google Scholar
Spencer, D. (2002) The Roman Alexander: reading a cultural myth, Exeter.Google Scholar
Spivey, N. and Stoddart, S. S. (1990) Etruscan Italy, London.Google Scholar
Stadter, P. A. (1978) ‘The Ars tactica of Arrian: tradition and originality’, CPh 73.2, 117–28.Google Scholar
Stadter, P. A. (1980) Arrian of Nicomedia, Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Swain, S. (1989) ‘Plutarch's De fortuna Romanorum’, CQ 39.2, 504–16.10.1017/S0009838800037538CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tatum, J. W. (2010) ‘Why parallel lives?’, in Humble, N. (ed.), Plutarch's lives: parallelism and purpose, Swansea, 3–18.Google Scholar
Thompson, H. A. (1987) ‘The impact of Roman architects and architecture on Athens 170 BC – AD 170’, in Macready, S. and Thompson, F. (eds.), Roman architecture in the Greek world, London, 1–17.Google Scholar
Viggiano, G. E. (2013) ‘The hoplite revolution and the rise of the polis’, in Kagan and Viggiano (2013a) 112–33.10.1515/9781400846306-009CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walbank, F. W. (1967) A historical commentary on Polybius. Volume ii, Oxford.Google Scholar
Wees, H. van (2004) Greek warfare: myths and realities, London.Google Scholar
Wees, H. van (2013) ‘Farmers and holplites: models of historical development’ in Kagan and Viggiano (2013a) 222–55.Google Scholar
Wheeler, E. L. (1978) ‘The occasion of Arrian's Taktika’, GRBS 19, 351–65.Google Scholar
Wheeler, E. L. (2008) ‘Land battles’, in Sabin, P., van Wees, H. and Whitby, M. (eds.), The Cambridge history of Greek and Roman warfare. Volume i: Greece, the Hellenistic world and the rise of Rome, 186–223.Google Scholar
Whitehead, D. (1990) How to survive under siege / Aineias the Tactician, Oxford.Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. (2005) The Second Sophistic, Oxford.Google Scholar
Woolf, G. (1994) ‘Becoming Roman, staying Greek: culture, identity and the civilizing process in the Roman East’, PCPhS 40, 116–43.Google Scholar