3. The Culture of Delium
The Battle
Direct quotations are from the two brief ancient narratives of the battle found at Thucydides 4.91–101 and Diodorus 12.69–70. For a detailed commentary on the Greek of Thucydides’ contemporary account, see A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, Volume III (Oxford, 1956), 558–71; and S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume II (Oxford, 1996), 301–10. Cf. also G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte bis zur Schlacht bei Chaeroneia (3. vols.; Gotha, 1893–1904), III.2, 1147–51.
Delium is discussed fully and with an astute strategic assessment by D. Kagan, The Archidamian War (Ithaca, 1987), 282–90, and afforded a lengthy treatment in the classic history of G. Grote, A History of Greece, vol. 6 (4th ed.; London, 1872), 379–97. There is also a very general article on the battle by V. D. Hanson, “Delium,” Quarterly Journal of Military History 8.1 (1995): 28–35. The topographical problems are discussed by W. K. Pritchett, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography, Part 2 (Battlefields) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 24–36; Studies in Ancient Greek Topography, Part 3 (Roads) (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980), 295–97; as well as in the earlier survey of J. Kromayer, Antike Schlachtfelder, v.4 (Berlin, 1903–31), 177–98 (written by J. Beck).
Euripides and the Rotting Dead
The quotations are my own translations from the Greek text of Euripides’ Suppliants, and are found at the following lines: “violation of what all Greece holds to be lawful” (311); “they are violent and deprive the dead of their due burial” (308); “Sparta is savage and duplicitous in its character” (187); “The mothers wish to bury in the earth the corpses of those destroyed by the spear” (16–17); “Save the corpses, take pity on my misfortunes, and on the mothers whose children have been slain” (168–70); “A city based on an equal vote” (353); “The city is not governed by a single man, but is free. And the people themselves rule, and the offices are held by annual turns. Nor does the citizenry assign the highest honors to the rich, but the poor also have an equal share” (405–8); “A struggle evenly balanced” (706); “Making [their] way over to the struggling wing of the army” (709); “Whenever the issue of war comes before a vote of the people, no one reckons on his own death; that misfortune, he thinks, will come to others than himself. If death stood before his eyes as he cast his vote, Greece would not be self-destructing from a madness for the spear” (481–85); “There are three classes of citizens. The rich are of no use and always lusting after more gain; the poor who lack a livelihood are dangerous folk, who invest too much in envy, trying to goad the rich, as they are hoodwinked by the tongues of wicked leaders. But of these three classes those in the middle save states, since they preserve the order which the city has established” (238–45); “Freedom is simply this: Who has a good proposal and wishes to bring it before the citizenry? He who does so, enjoys repute, while he who does not merely keeps silent. What can be more just for a city than this?” (439–41); “Let the dead be covered by the earth, and let each thing return to that place from whence it came into the light of day, the spirit of a man to the upper air, his body back into the earth. For we do not possess our bodies altogether as our own: we live our lives in them and then the earth, our nourisher, must take them back” (531–36).
For the controversies of connecting Delium with Euripides’ Suppliants and the exact parallels between the real and fictional battles, see C. Pelling, Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford, 1997), 45–51; S. Mills, Theseus, Tragedy, and the Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1997), 91–97; C. Kuiper, “De Euripidis Supplicibus,” Mnemosyne 51 (1923): 102–28; C. Collard, Euripides: Supplices, 2 vols. (Groningen, 1975); and P. Giles, “Political Allusions in the Suppliants of Euripides,” Classical Review 4 (1890): 95–98.
Thespian Tragedies
I have written at length of the Thespian holocaust with reference to the Greek sources in V. D. Hanson, “Hoplite Obliteration: The Case of the Town of Thespiae,” in J. Carman and A. Harding, Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives (Trowbridge, U.K., 1999), 203–18. On the remains of Thespiae, see J. Fossey, Topography and Population of Ancient Boeotia (Chicago, 1986), 135–40; and W. K. Pritchett, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography, Part 5 (Berkeley, 1989), 138–65. For a history of the city, see in general P. Roesch, Thespies et la confédération béotienne (Paris, 1965); and C. Fiehn, “Thespeia,” in A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, Paulys Real-Encyclop?edia des classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Berlin, 1936), 37–59. For Philiades’ epigram of the Thespians, see J. M. Edmonds (translator), Greek Elegy and Iambus, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 439. For the Spartan epigrams for the family dead, see W. R. Paton (translator), The Greek Anthology, Books VII–VIII (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 239.
For the Thespians and the Persian Wars, cf. Herodotus 7.202, 222, 226; 8.75, 50; 9.25; and cf. C. Hignett, Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (Oxford, 1963), 146–48; 371–78; J. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, 490–479 B.C. (Warminster, 1993), 144–47.
For the purported grave of the roughly three hundred Thespians slain at Delium, the casualty list of Delium with a partial accounting of its dead, and the black limestone sepulchral stelai of some of the prominent Boeotians killed, see W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Vol. 4 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974), 132, 141–43, 192–94; N. Demand, Thebes in the Fifth Century: Heracles Resurgent (London, 1982), 110–18.
The Faces of Delium
On the career of Alcibiades, cf. W. M. Ellis, Alcibiades (London, 1989); S. Forde, The Ambition to Rule: Alcibiades and the Politics of Imperialism in Thucydides (Ithaca, 1989); J. Kirchner, Prosopographia Attica (Berlin, 1901), Vol. 1, 43–49; J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971), 18–20. For the main points of Laches’ career, see Kirchner, Vol. 2, 6–7; and for Pyrilampes, Kirchner, Vol. 2, 244–45; Davies, 329–31. For Hippocrates, see Kirchner, Vol. 1, 502–3; Davies, 456. A chronology of the major events in Plato’s life is found in Kirchner, Vol. 2, 204–6.
Plutarch’s quote about Alcibiades, Alcibiades 23.5; Hippocrates’ speech is at Thucydides 4.95; Pausanias’ suggestion that Hippocrates died in the early moments at Delium is in Description of Greece, 361. For the relevant passages in Plato’s Laches, see 181 A–B; 182 A; 189 B; for passages in Plato’s Republic that seem to allude to Delium, see 5.468A–70D; cf. Laws 8.829A–C.
Socrates Slain?
There is a vast hagiographic account of Socrates’ mettle at the battle found in the works of Plato (Laches, 181 B; Symposium, 221; Apology, 28 E) and Plutarch (Alcibiades, 7; Moralia, 581 D). Later sources sought either to magnify his achievements or deny his presence largely on the grounds that his courage is not mentioned by Thucydides; see, for example, Athenaeus 5.215; Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus, 65.19; Stobaeus, 3.750; Theodoretus, Ecclesiastical History, 12.26. A common theme in the Delium tradition was that Socrates’ inner voice or daimon had steered him in the right direction during the retreat (Cicero, On Divination, 1.54). Similarly, an entire tradition of false knowledge grew up concerning his followers at the battle, often citing individuals as taking part in the battle who did not (Strabo, 9.403), or mistaking names and chronologies (Andocides, Against Alcibiades, 13). On Aristophanes’ Clouds and the playwright’s treatment of Socrates, see K. J. Dover, Aristophanes’ Clouds (Oxford, 1968). For general information about the life of Socrates, his thought, and his relationship with his contemporaries, see G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates (London, 1875); A. H. Chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth: The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (Notre Dame, 1957); and G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (New York, 1991).
Beauty from the Dead
Diodorus (12.70.5) discusses the Theban artistic renaissance following Delium. On Aristeides and his art that is to be connected with Delium, see N. Demand, Thebes in the Fifth Century: Heracles Resurgent (London, 1982), 42–43; 114–15. For publication of the warrior steles from Delium, see A. Keramopoullos, “Eikones polemiston tes en Delio maches (424 B.C.),” Archaiologikon Ephemeris (1920): 1–36. See also R. Higgins, Tanagra and the Figurines (Princeton, 1986), 52–53. The inscriptions of the Boeotian dead from Tanagra and Thespiae are published in C. Clairmont, Patrios Nomos (Oxford, 1983), 231; and Inscriptiones Graecae VII 585, 1888.
The Birth of Tactics
On the status of Greek cavalry at the time of Delium, see for example, most recently, L. Worley, Hippeis: The Cavalry of Ancient Greece (Boulder, 1994), especially 93–96; I. G. Spence, The Cavalry of Classical Greece: A Social and Military History with Particular Reference to Athens (Oxford, 1993), 40, 153, 155. On the Athenian surprise at the sudden appearance of the Boeotian horsemen, see F. E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (Berkeley, 1957), 85. For the innovations in Greek warfare, the Theban pedigree, and the later development at Macedon, see V. D. Hanson, “Epaminondas, the Battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.) and the ‘Revolution’ in Greek Battle Tactics,” Classical Antiquity 7 (1988): 190–207.
The depths of Greek phalanxes are discussed in W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Part I (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), 134–43. For the heniochoi and parabatai, see J.A.O. Larsen, Greek Federal States: Their Institutions and History (Oxford, 1968), 106–71. On such specialized troops in general, see L. Tritle, “Epilektoi at Athens,” Ancient History Bulletin 3.3/4 (1989): 54–59; and for the origins of the Sacred Band, cf. J. G. DeVoto, “The Theban Sacred Band,” The Ancient World 23.2 (1992): 3–19. In V. D. Hanson, The Soul of Battle (New York, 1999), 420–21, there is a discussion of strategic and tactical traditions in Boeotia.
On Pagondas’s family, his connection to Pindar, and his age at Delium (about sixty?), see C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford, 1964), 98–99.
Acknowledgments
Secondary literature is discussed in the following brief bibliographical essay, with page numbers cited for direct quotations in the text. I would like to thank veterans of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 29th Regiment, 6th Marine Division, for their letters, phone calls, photographs, and notes concerning Victor Hanson—especially Richard Whitaker, Robert Sherer, William Twigger, Louis Ittmann, Michael Senko, Edward Hewlik, and others. Some fifty-seven years after Victor Hanson perished on Okinawa, I finally know how he died, have his pictures from the war, and his ring, all thanks to the generosity of these brave veterans.
Classics students at California State University–Fresno, Kristi Hill and Sabina Robinson, helped with selection and acquisition of the photographs, as well as typing and proofreading duties. Rebecca and Raymond Ibrahim and Ray Sanchez aided with bibliographical tasks. Katherine Becker, a doctoral student in military history at Ohio State University, made available a great number of sources not otherwise available here at CSU Fresno and read the manuscript. My colleague in Classics, Professor Bruce Thornton, offered invaluable insight about the organization of the book and critiqued the text at its penultimate stage. Professor M. C. Drake once again drew the maps and the rendition of the warrior grave of Saugenes.
My wife Cara read the entire manuscript and helped in efforts to locate members of F Company from the 29th Marines—and took up many of my obligations on our farm that I often was obliged to neglect these past three years. My literary representatives of a decade, Glen Hartley and Lynn Chu, gave invaluable advice throughout preparation of the manuscript as both agents and friends. I thank once again my editor of a decade, Adam Bellow, at Doubleday, for continued confidence and support.