Wars and fighting are very prominent in the literature of classical antiquity. This chapter looks at literary sources about war and fighting and the problems of using them. It concentrates on three types of fighter: archers, women, slaves. The chapter deals with the interaction between military and non-military institutions: the relationship between the state and organized violence, and attitudes to that relationship as they are displayed in the literary sources, are topics of central importance to the ancient historiography of warfare. It explores why there is so much about war in ancient literature if war was not regarded as the natural, normal state of affairs. Homer's Iliad, with its nearly incessant fighting, might seem to provide a complete reply to any notion that war was viewed by Greeks as unnatural. The chapter ends with six suggestions for the resolution of the paradox of war.

This chapter considers the military capacities and costs of different military forces. These capacities and costs, however, involved considerations rather more complex than, for example, the limited ability of arrows to pierce hoplite armour. The chapter covers the period from the lifting of the Dark Age (c. 750) to the end of the classical period (338). In 338 the Macedonian army of Philip II defeated a coalition of the most powerful Greek city-states, Athens, Thebes and Corinth, established Macedonian dominance over mainland Greece and put an end to hoplite dominance of land warfare. A brief description serves to sum up the treatment of military forces, since the Macedonian army in many ways represented the culmination of classical trends. The Macedonian army was powerful, not only because of the phalangite who replaced the hoplite as the mainstay of the infantry, but also because of the coordinated use of different types of military forces: cavalry of different types, peltasts, slingers and archers.