Table Of ContentBattle and Battle Description in Homer
Battle and Battle
Description in Homer:
A Contribution to the History of War
Dr Franz Albracht
Translated and edited by
Peter Jones, Malcolm Willcock
and Gabriele Wright
Part I
Supplement to the Annual Report of the Royal
State School Pforta, published at Naumburg on
the Saale, 1886, Programme Number 227
Part II
Supplement to the Annual Report of the Cathedral
Grammar School at Naumburg on the Saale,
1895, Programme Number 246
Duckworth
First published in 2005 by
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
90-93 Cowcross Street, London EClM 6BF
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First published in German in
1886 and 1895 (see title page).
English translation © 2005 by Peter Jones,
Malcolm Willcock and Gabrielle Wright.
Preface © 2005 by Peter Jones
Appendix © 2005 by Malcolm Willcock.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 0 7156 3241 8
Typeset by Ray Davies
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk
Contents
Foreword 7
Conventions 8
Preface by Peter Jones 9
Part I
Introduction 17
Council of War. Marshalling of the Army 21
Use of Chariots 34
Advance into Battle 49
The 'Standing Fight' 53
Massed Attack and the Defence to it 63
Retreat, Flight and Pursuit 73
Notes 90
Part II
Introduction 93
Protection Against the Enemy 95
Attack on and Defence of a Fortified Camp 104
Siege and Defence of a Fortified City 113
Notes 129
Bibliography 131
Index locorum 133
Appendix by Malcolm Willcock 137
5
Foreword
Franz Albracht (1848-1909) was senior classical master at the presti
gious Landesschule Pforta in eastern Germany from 1876 to 1892,
and then Headmaster of the nearby Domgymnasium at Naumburg
from 1892 till his death. As a young man he had served in the army
in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1, and his own personal experi
ence of warfare permeates his discussion of the battle scenes in the
fliad, just as he argues (p. 20) that the clarity and understanding of
Homer's descriptions show that Homer himself had had personal
experience in the field. Albracht was a distinguished Homeric schol-
. ar, one of the contributors to Ebeling's massive Lexicon Homericum
(1871-85). The two parts of his Kampf und Kampfschilderung bei
Homer appeared as appendixes to Annual Reports of the above
schools, the location of the publication of many scholarly papers in
nineteenth-century Germany.
We undertook the translation of Kampf und Kampfschilderung bei
Homer because we believe it to be still the best available account of
battle in Homer, written clearly and persuasively in straightforward,
non-technical language, with many ingenious solutions to a range of
problems. The latest writer on the subject, 0. Hellmann, describes it
as 'the most comprehensive analysis of the battle descriptions to date'
(Die Schlachtszenen der flias [Stuttgart 2000], p. 14).
PJ was the leader of the team. He has written the Preface, sum
marising and commenting on Albracht's work. MW, who proposed this
particular book for translation into English, has supplied the foot
notes to the translation, the bibliography, index locorum and
Appendix. All Greek has been translated. For this purpose we have
used E.V. Rieu, Homer: The Iliad (revised by Peter Jones),
Harmondsworth 2003, and E.V. Rieu, Homer: The Odyssey (revised by
D.C.H. Rieu), Harmondsworth 1988, modified where necessary to suit
the precise point made by Albracht. Occasional inaccuracies in
Albracht's line or page references have been silently corrected.
The translation was done by GW, but all have contributed to it. PJ
must take responsibility for the final result.
January 2005 Peter Jones
Malcolm Willcock
Gabriele Wright
7
Conventions
1. References enclosed in square brackets are to the page numbers of
Albracht's original text. These are marked in bold in the translation
as e.g. [1.23], [11.7], where I refers to Part I (1886) and II to Part II
(1895).
2. We have chosen to keep Albracht's traditional use of letters of the
Greek alphabet to refer to the books of Homer. Capitals refer to the
fliad, minuscules to the Odyssey, thus:
R.Od. Book
A a 1
B p 2
r
y 3
/l 6 4
h E 5
z 6
~
H 11 7
e 0 8
I t 9
K 1C 10
A A. 11
M µ 12
N-- V 13
-
l; 14
0 0 15
n
16
1t
p p 17
l: CJ 18
T 't 19
y 20
'\)
et, cp 21
X X 22
'I' "' 23
n ro 24
8
Preface
Peter Jones
Albracht begins by assuming that Homer's battle scenes, while pri
marily a poetic construct, reflect a basic historical reality. He admits
that drawing lines between the one and the other is extremely diffi
cult but is sympathetic to the view that Homer himself observed and
fought in battles [I.3-4] .1
At [1.5-13] Albracht deals with preparations for battle.
Understanding that the army was perceived not as a single unit, but
a collection of privately trained tribes and families, he sees that the
overall leader, Agamemnon, can have no ultimate authority over
these individual contingents under the control of their personal lead
ers like Diomedes, Ajax and Nestor. 2 Strategy and tactics therefore go
out of the window. Battle, once started, goes on till it stops, without
any possibility of overall control or intervention. All the leader and his
senior advisory council can do, therefore, is to make sure the army is
drawn up properly before launching it into action [I.6-7]. So the basic
sequence goes (with food, sacrifices, exhortations etc. thrown in ad
lib.): order for battle; arming; the men move to the meeting place;
there they are sorted and drawn up; the advance [I.8-9]. It is a lengthy
business, beginning early in the morning, and there is a skill involved
in drawing up the troops efficiently. There is also an especial empha
sis on the promachoi 'front-line fighters', leaders and heroes who set
an example to the rest by their individual prowess [1.10].
The depth of the formation and its cohesiveness are a matter of
guesswork, though Albracht speculates that it must have been fairly
loosely formed to allow warriors to brandish and throw spears; he
rejects the idea that the gephurai of battle, literally 'bridges', are lon
gitudinal gaps between the front and subsequent lines, wide enough
for chariots to pass along [I.11-12]. He agrees that ranks could be
tightly formed to start with, but argues that a looser formation would
inevitably develop as they marched into battle.
At [I.13-24] Albracht digresses on the use of chariots. Pointing out
that they are never used in massed formation (except in a tale of his
youth placed in old Nestor's mouth, [I.14]), he goes on to argue that,
since they are manned by heavily armed foot-soldiers who fight as
such, their purpose is not martial; they are used first and foremost as
a platform for advance and retreat [1.16]. He firmly rejects the idea
9
Battle and Battle Description in Homer
that they might form the front rank of the army [1.17]. Albracht then
examines and interprets a number of passages to illustrate how the
chariots are used in battle and relate to the activities of the rest of the
troops, whether advancing or retreating, especially Books 5, 8, 11 and
16 [1.17-20]. He also discusses their use as an 'ambulance' and the
skills required by the drivers, especially holding the chariot in posi
tion close to the fighter; the dangers inherent in the driver's position
are emphasised [1.20-2]. Throughout, Albracht offers clever solutions
to and radical interpretations of a range of problems.
[1.24-7] deal with the advance into battle. Albracht, making the
point that there is no sign of any unified 'signal for the advance', sees
this too as a matter for individual commanders to decide, who take
their contingents into battle as they see fit. He also sees the distinc
tion between Greek silence and Trojan hubbub as a feature not of the
moment of advance into battle itself (which would be characterised by
battle-cries on both sides) but of the preceding sequence, as they move
from the mustering-place towards the battle area. Albracht interprets
the Greek silence as a precursor of the disciplined Dorian advance
[l.25-6]. The heroes are always in the front line; some of them step out
in advance of it to act as an example and start the engagement.
At [1.27-34] Albracht turns to the (controversial) 'standing fight'. He
understands this as a time when the battle lines are essentially sta
tionary, and combat is engaged between individuals or small groups
in the space between the two enemy front lines. 3 He contrasts it with
the massed assault, designed to break the enemy lines and turn them
in flight - which, he maintains, is the real purpose of the battle.'
Essentially, he sees battle as veering between these two styles in the
following sort of sequence: standing fight - massed assault - retreat
or rout - lines regroup - standing fight, etc. [1.27].
Albracht also observes that, whereas most of the fighting is of the
'single combat' type, Homer now and again refers to both armies
engaging on a massive scale, and to the field being littered with dead.
As a result, he suggests that the 'single-combat' style of fighting is
simply meant as an example of what is happening all along the line,
designed to illustrate the whole course of battle at that moment [1.28].
Albracht now illustrates this thesis with a series of examples and,
using ldomeneus as his main model, draws particular attention to the
need of the warrior not only to be a skilful fighter but also to show
agility and quickness of foot as he darts in to strip an enemy and darts
back again, and as he ducks and dodges enemy spears [1.31-2].
Albracht covers the second type of fighting, massed attack to break
through the opposing line, at [1.34-40]; and finds it quite credible that
the assault of a single warrior could create the circumstances from
which such a breakthrough could occur. For it to be successful, how-
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