Page 130 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

130 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Total War - the Ancient Perspective

JORIT WINTJES

intrOductiOn
A hypothetical scenario: an army of for example the English Civil Wars, that is laying
siege to an enemy town, at some point succeeds in forcing its way into the city. But instead of
meeting a shaken crowd of townspeople eager to capitulate and to avert any possible horrors
from their city, the victorious army is faced with stubborn resistance not only by the remnants
of the town’s garrison, but also by the citizens themselves - men, women and children have
taken to the roofs of their houses and are blasting away at the invaders with everything at
their disposal right down to roof tiles. Such behaviour, particularly if displayed by women
and children, would probably have seriously irritated any contemporary observer.
In antiquity however, things were different. Here, active participation in war of people
normally considered to be non-combatants was quite a commonplace occurence. When in
278 BC the Galatians invaded Greece, the citizens of the various Aetolean cities decided to
join forces in order to repel the invading Gauls. They took to the field with literally everyone
who was able to carry a weapon, which included the womenfolk of the towns, and eventually
managed to push the invaders back. Many other examples show how widely accepted the
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direct use of force by non-combatants had been. One particularly well-attested case is the de-
fence put up by the Plataeans against the Thebans at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in
431 BC. In a surprise attack a fairly small force of Thebans managed to get inside the walls
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of Plataea; after the citizens had recovered from their initial shock, bitter street fighting fol-
lowed in which the Plataean soldiers were greatly aided by women, children and even slaves,
which took to the roofs of their houses and peltered the Thebans with stones and tiles. In the
end those few of the Thebans who were not killed in the fighting surrendered. The case of
the Sicilian town Selinus, which was attacked by an Carthaginian army in 407 BC provides a
similar example, though with a different outcome. Here, the invader again managed to break
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into the town, where he faced not only the defenders but also the women of the town throwing
tiles from the rooftops. The Selinuntines managed to keep the Carthaginians at bay for some
time, but once the roofs had been stripped of all the tiles the Carthaginians finally prevailed;
Selinunt fell and its inhabitants were enslaved. Without doubt the most famous example is
king Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of the great military figures of his age. Pyrrhus was killed by

1 Paus. 10.22.5-7 (abbreviations of ancient authors follow H. G. Liddell/R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon,
Oxford 1968, G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford 1969 and P.G.W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dic-
tionary, Oxford 1983); see also C. Antonetti, Les Étoliens. Image et religion, Paris 1990, 126-31. Pausanias
emphasizes that the Aetolian women displayed greater courage than the men did.
2 Thuc. 2. 4, Aen. Tact. 2.6, Diod. 12.41. The three accounts show only minor differences regarding the im-
portance of the tile-throwing action for the overall outcome of the battle; in Thucydides and Aeneas Tacticus
the tile barrage is just one element of the Plataean counterattack, while in Diodorus it is the military action
of the women which eventually brings about the decision in favour of the Plataeans.
3 Diod. 13.56.7-8.