One of the triggers to my own research on 'what really happened' on 5th century B.C. Greek battlefields was my fortunate discovery of Hans Delbrueck's work. His attempts to relate ancient accounts to known realaties of turn of the 20th century military practices seem to have been at the forefront of a wave of revisionist military historians in his era (General Sir Frederick Maurice was another whose research aided me). These men were trying to apply science and practical experience to a field long dominated by writers that were often more linguists or literary experts than soldier-scholars. It's certainly true that the knowledge they were applying (mostly from the 19th century) seems outdated today, but is it really? After all, when looking at the Battle of Marathon do you gain much by having data from 2,500 years later rather than 2,400 years later? In fact, one might make a valid argument that the less mechanized armies of Delbrueck's era were much more in tune with ancient warfare than the push-button, high-tech armies of today. When cancon fire wasn't involved, for example, infantry fighting in the Napoleonic era wasn't really very different from that in the Hellenic era. A Napoleonic 'column' was actually much like the array of a typical Greek batallion (lochos), and its use of bayonets to intimidate and break the opposition not so greatly different from how hoplites used their spears. Likewise, writers of Delbrueck's era had a much better handle on cavalry than anyone in today's military and were familiar with the sort of marching and logistics bereft of mechanized support upon which the ancients also had to rely. Thus, all in all, I think that Delbrueck and his contemporaries remain an excellent source of sound analysis on ancient combat. The only real caveat I would suggest is that Delbrueck himself seems to have been a bit of an extremist at times, pushing his ideas to their farthest limits. Perhaps he was reacting to criticism from more traditional historians; at any rate, he seems to have enjoyed getting 'in their face' by making some of his more contentious claims even more radical than they probably needed to be. However, if you follow his general approach, credit the direction of his points as guides and, when needed, moderate his views slightly to give literary sources a little more credence, then I think you have an excellent opportunity to reach conclusions on ancient battle that are both practical and consistant with our scant surviving records. |
