IPHICRATES, PELTASTS

AND LECHAION

Edited by
NICHOLAS VICTOR SEKUNDA
and
BOGDAN BURLIGA

GDAŃSK
2014
Published by the Foundation for the Development of Gdańsk University for the Faculty
of Historical Studies and the Faculty of Philology, Gdańsk University, Gdańsk 2014.

Monograph Series ‘Akanthina’ no. 9.

ISBN

Layout: dr Sławomir Jędraszek & mgr Stanisław Rokita.

Cover Illustration: Mug in Stuttgart (Württembergisches Landesmuseum inv.

KAS 117) showing a notorious ‘proto-Iphicratean’ peltast.
 PREFACE

The article written on the battle of Lechaeum by Andreas Konecny in Chiron 31

(2001) is an exemplary piece of work. He not only reconstructs the location and phases
of the battle, in the best traditions of traditional military history, but does his best, in
the canon newly established by modern war studies, to get into the mind of the soldiers
involved. Hence its impressive length, which could have put off the common reader. But
Brian Bertosa is no common reader, he is an extrenely dedicated reader. So much so
that, rather than read it in its original German, he decided to translate it into English
in order to understand it better. Having translated it, he sent it to me, with the article
of his authorship in the present volume, and asked me if I wanted to publish them.
This presented me with a problem, because even the two articles together were insuffi-
cient to justify a book. There the matter rested for some years, until my colleague at
Gdańsk, Bogdan Burliga, hit upon the idea that if the area covered by the book were
extended to cover, not merely the Battle of Lecheum itself, but the whole question of
the use of peltasts in the world of late classical Greek warfare, then we could make
a book out of it. Hence the extended title ‘Iphicrates, Peltasts and Lechaion’, and the
appearance of Bogdan Burliga as joint editor of the volume.

Andreas Konecny was the first person in print to locate the ‘last stand’ of the
Lacedaimonian mora on the small hill of Aghios Gerasimos. In fact I visited the battle-
field and identified the site in 1988, while on a visit from Australia to gather material
for a book on Greek battles, a book, however, which has never appeared. In the photo-
graph printed here, the steep sides of the hill are evident, as is the proximity to the
coast, barely a few hundred metres away. It is just as well that my book never ap-
peared, for I could hardly have done better job than the article that appears in this
volume. It gives me great pleasure to present to the English reading public the masterful
article of Andreas Konecny, thereby ensuring it of a wider readership than was the case
with the original article, and enormous thanks are due to Brian Bertosa for his fastidi-
ous translation, without which this volume would not have appeared at all.
The two following chapters in the present volume deal with the Lacedaemonian
forces, the first, by myself, deals with the components of the mora that was defeated at
Lechaeum, and the other, by Bogdan Burliga, deals with their conduct. There follows
a chapter by Roel Konijnendijk on the historiography of the battle in later times, and
the building of the reputation of Iphicrates as an innovator. I identified the need for
a chapter of this type in the process of preparing the book for publication, and I am
particularly grateful to Roel for entering the project at such a late stage, and providing
such an authoritative account.
The following three chapters of the book deal with peltasts and their evolution.
Sławomir Sprawski studies the evidence for peltasts incorporated in Thessalian armed
forces from the first half of the fifth century onwards. Cavalry was the dominant arm,
and it seems that the Thessalians chose to use peltasts in cooperation with their caval-
ry. Jason of Pherae played an all-important role in Thessalian military affairs at the
time, and Sprawski speculates that Jason supplied his light foot soldiers with more
weapons, ‘starting from a different point than Iphicrates, but going in the same direc-
tion’.
In the following chapter Brian Bertosa considers, among other matters, the evidence
for peltasts carrying close-quarter weaponry prior to the fabled ‘Iphicratean reform’ and
muses that, the very success of Iphicrates’ peltasts against hoplites at Lechaeum may
have been, paradoxically, a catalyst for reforms aimed at making peltasts better able to
take on hoplites. Finally, in the last chapter, I argue that the Iphicratean Peltast Re-
form is real enough, and happened during the Persian campaign against Egypt. This
work appears simultaneously in the commemorative volume in honour of my friend
Valery Nikonorov, which was submitted prior to the conceptual emergence of the book
in his present form, which would have been incomplete without a chapter of this type.
The majority of the contributors to this volume have chosen to write Greek names
in their Latinate form in English, and I have unified the spellings in the volume ac-
cordingly. My apologies to anyone who feels offended by this.

Gdańsk, March 2014.

 CONTENTS

Preface
................................................................................................................3

Contents
................................................................................................................5

Notes on Contributors
................................................................................................................6

Chapter 1:
Andreas Konecny, Κατέκοψεν τὴν μόραν Ἰφικράτης. The Battle of Lechaeum,
Early Summer, 390 BC
................................................................................................................7

Chapter 2:
Nicholas Sekunda, The Composition of the Lakedaimonian Mora at Lechaeum
................................................................................................................ 49

Chapter 3:
Bogdan Burliga, Did They Really Die with Their Shields? The ὕβρις of the Spar-
tan Hoplites at Lechaeum, 390 BC
................................................................................................................ 66

Chapter 4:
Roel Konijnendijk, Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaeum
................................................................................................................ 84

Chapter 5:
Sławomir Sprawski, Peltasts in Thessaly
................................................................................................................ 95

Chapter 6:
Brian Bertosa, Peltast Equipment and the Battle of Lechaeum
................................................................................................................ 113

Chapter 7:
Nicholas Sekunda, The Chronology of the Iphicratean Peltast Reform
................................................................................................................ 126
 Chapter 4:
Roel Konijnendijk, Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaion

The Tradition
The Athenian victory at Lechaion sent shockwaves through Greece. The Spartan mora
was not simply defeated; it was utterly crushed. More than forty percent of its men
were killed, a casualty rate far higher than that typically suffered by the losing side in
a hoplite battle – higher even than the death toll among the Spartans who surrendered
on Sphakteria (Thuc. 4.38.5).1 The battle stands as the second most costly Spartan
defeat of which we know. To add insult to injury, Iphikrates’ force of peltasts returned
to Corinth completely unscathed. The unthinkable had happened, and none described it
more poignantly than Plutarch (Ages. 22.2):

καὶ πάθος τοῦτο μέγα διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου συνέπεσεν αὐτοῖς πολλοὺς
γὰρ ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς ἀπέβαλον κρατηθέντας ὑπό τε πελταστῶν
ὁπλίτας καὶ μισθοφόρων Λακεδαιμονίους.

‘This was the greatest disaster that had happened to them in a long
time, for they lost many brave men – peltasts overwhelmed hoplites,
and mercenaries Lakedaimonians.’

Rage, understandably, took hold of the Spartans. King Agesilaos reached Lechaion
soon after the battle, and saw the trophy the Athenians had set up; this trophy was the
Greeks’ inviolable monument of victory, yet Xenophon (Hell. 4.5.10) felt it a notewor-
thy demonstration of Agesilaos’ exemplary self-control that he did not tear the taunting
thing down. Instead, Agesilaos ravaged the land, burning and trampling what he could,
to show that Sparta still held sway – but in the end he was forced to slink away back
home, avoiding cities along the way to spare his soldiers the sight of men rejoicing at
their misery (Xen. Hell. 4.5.18).
Xenophon provides us with the luxury of a contemporary account of these events. It
is interesting to note that he already marks the battle as exceptional, and Iphikrates as
an especially capable commander (Hell. 6.2.14, 27-36, 39). When he is compelled to
report some of Iphikrates’ later failures, he does so almost apologetically (Hell. 6.2.51-
2). Clearly the general commanded the respect of the veteran Xenophon – and here we
see the beginning of a great ancient tradition. The works of writers from Diodoros to
Polyainos and from Nepos to Plutarch all polished Iphikrates’ reputation to the point
where he now shines out to us as one of the most brilliant commanders of his day. As
Parke put it, none other than Epameinondas of Thebes was ‘the only serious rival of
Iphicrates as the hero figuring in popular tradition’.2 Such a man, perhaps, could have
achieved the astonishing feat that was Lechaion.

1
For the butcher’s bill of Greek battles see P. Krentz, ‘Casualties in Hoplite Battles’, Greek, Roman and
Byzantine Studies 26.1 (1985) pp. 13-20; J.C. Dayton, The Athletes of War: An Evaluation of the Agonis-
tic Elements of Greek Warfare (Toronto 2005) pp. 81-102.
2
H.W. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers from the Earliest Times down to the Battle of Ipsus (Oxford 1933)
p.79; note for example the unrivalled sixty-three stratagems attributed to him by Polyainos (Strat. 3.9).
Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaeum 85

It is only through the later writings of Diodoros (15.44.1-4) and Nepos (11.1.3-4)
that we are informed that Iphikrates was also an innovator. These authors credit him
with a grand programme of military reforms of which Xenophon tells us nothing. The
details of these reforms and the question of their date are discussed elsewhere in this
volume; it is likely that the particular challenges Iphikrates faced in Persian service in
376-4 BC prompted him to turn his mercenaries into pikemen. 3 This view, of course,
renders the reforms irrelevant to the narrative of the Corinthian War. But the theory is
relatively new. The date of the reforms has long been a matter of considerable debate –
and this lies at the heart of an age-old controversy about how the battle of Lechaion
was won.

The Germans’ Doubts

The earliest comprehensive academic works on Greek warfare and tactics were written
by German scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their works usually
treated Greek military history as a whole, and therefore necessarily included discussion
of both the battle of Lechaion and the reforms of Iphikrates – assigning both a place
within their particular narratives of the development of tactical sophistication in An-
cient Greece.
The earliest of these authors tended to give a rather straightforward account of the
battle itself. Faithful to Xenophon’s description (Hell. 4.5.13-17), they presented
Lechaion as a victory of a known type of light-armed warrior supported by a phalanx
of hoplites. This meant, of course, that there was nothing very unusual about the fight.
As early as 1852, the great Rüstow and Köchly said of Lechaion that ‘the helplessness
of the pure hoplite phalanx against combined troops was demonstrated in practice yet
again’, implying that the battles fought near Spartolos in 429 BC (Thuc. 2.79.2-7) and
on Sphakteria in 425 BC should have made the outcome at Lechaion unsurprising to
any Greek. Droysen followed this assessment nearly to the letter in his own overview
of Greek warfare some decades later.4 Bauer, too, noted that Iphikrates does not appear
to have done anything spectacular at Lechaion – that, effectively, ‘this commander of
mercenaries had only used a familiar troop type more extensively than before’. 5 When
Lippelt wrote the earliest work focused entirely on Greek light-armed warfare, he
nipped any alternative theories in the bud by pointing out specifically that the account
of Xenophon showed no trace of reformed peltasts; ‘rather, what it makes abundantly
clear is that the peltasts engaged at Lechaion definitely still fought in their old Thraci-
an gear’.6
To these men, then, the reforms of Iphikrates did not affect the events of the Corin-
thian War. Droysen in fact believed the reforms never took place at all – a position
famously revived eighty years later by Best, who appears to have been unaware of his
Prussian predecessor.7 The others shared a different interpretation: they believed that

3
J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, Los Angeles 1970) pp.
130-1.
4
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. 162-3; H. Droysen, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen (Freiburg 1889) pp. 96-7.
5
A. Bauer, Die Griechischen Kriegsaltertümer (Munich 1893) p. 357.
6
O. Lippelt, Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) p. 66; the work
of Delbrück, discussed below, had already appeared at this point, but Lippelt made no reference to it here.
7
H. Droysen, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen (Freiburg 1889) p. 26 n. 1; J.G.P. Best, Thracian
Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) pp. 103-110 (discussed below).
86 Roel Konijnendijk

Iphikrates tried to make his hoplite mercenaries tactically self-reliant by turning them
into a new, mobile and flexible type of infantry, thoroughly disciplined, capable of rapid
manoeuvre and combat both with javelins and pikes. 8 Yet they gave entirely different
dates for this development. Rüstow and Köchly argued that it happened after Lechaion,
when Iphikrates realised that he would eventually have to fight without hoplite sup-
port, but that it was completed at some point before 378 BC. Lippelt followed
Diodoros’ text more closely and concluded that the reforms must have taken place after
the end of Iphikrates’ service in Egypt in 374 BC. Bauer, confusingly, argued instead
that the reforms did take place before Lechaion, but that they were so inconsequential
– merely creating a native Greek force of peltasts – that there was little reason to credit
Iphikrates with real tactical innovations.9
Soon, however, other German scholars introduced a more complicated view. Instead
of the earlier separation between, first, a battle of Lechaion according to Xenophon,
and second, a reform package according to Diodoros and Nepos, they presented a mixed
account, deliberately rewriting the details of Iphikrates’ reported innovations in order
to make the case that he won his most famous victory using his newly reformed troops.
So Hans Delbrück argued that pikes and swords had long been common among Thra-
cian peltasts in addition to their javelins, and that Iphikrates neither introduced nor
standardised these arms; the real achievement of his reforms was to instil greater disci-
pline in his men, turning them from an unruly barbarian horde into a frighteningly
efficient force of missile troops.10 Kromayer and Veith suggested instead that Iphikrates
had only adopted and ‘de-nationalised’ the Thracians’ typical equipment, creating na-
tive Greek peltasts armed with both pikes and javelins and dressed in linen cuirasses
for better protection in close combat. 11 It was with these new-fangled troops that he
annihilated the Spartans at Lechaion.
These scholars still acknowledged that the battle was won by missile troops,
fighting ‘entirely in the manner of older light infantry’ 12 – yet they insisted that
Iphikrates had done something to dramatically increase their effectiveness. We may
wonder why they felt compelled to make this claim, doing violence to Diodoros’ ac-
count and its chronology in the process. Indeed, they seem to have been well aware of
what missile-armed specialists were capable of in Greek ‘Kleinkrieg’, that is, in raids,

8
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. 163-6; A. Bauer, Die Griechischen Kriegsaltertümer (Munich 1893) pp. 356-7; O. Lippelt,
Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) pp. 65-6. These ‘mobile
pikemen’ are a fantasy; there is no evidence whatsoever for such troops, as noted already in H. Delbrück,
Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der Politischen Geschichte I (Berlin 1908), p. 142. H. Van Wees,
Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London 2004) p. 197 has rightly pointed out that the restrictive use of
long pikes would have made Iphikrates’ new infantry significantly less mobile and capable of independent
action than a formation of hoplites.
9
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. 163, 170; O. Lippelt, Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen
(Jena 1910) pp. 66-7; A. Bauer, Die Griechischen Kriegsaltertümer (Munich 1893) p. 357. The year of
Bauer’s publication also saw the appearance of J. Adam and A.M. Adam’s edition of Plato’s Protagoras
(Cambridge 1893) in which (p. xxxvi) the reforms of Iphikrates are casually dated to 391 BC.
10
H. Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der Politischen Geschichte I (Berlin 1908) pp. 139-
43; see also O. Lippelt, Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) pp.
63-5.
11
J. Kromayer, G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1928) p. 89.
12
ibid.
Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaeum 87

ambushes, skirmishes, in night attacks, and on the march;13 why did they feel a need to
introduce the reforms in order to explain the victory at Lechaion?
It is relevant here that most of the early specialists on Greek warfare had military
experience themselves; several of them were in fact high-ranking officers, devoted in
their retirement to the study of the tactics of the Ancients. They wrote their accounts
in order to trace the development of battle tactics in particular, with a view to instruct-
ing, not just academic scholars, but soldiers most of all.14 It is apparent that they ap-
proached their subject mainly as an early expression of the timeless realities of war –
and that they sought signs in the sources of the modern tactical principles with which
they were familiar. Needless to say, the Greeks let them down. The works of our Ger-
man scholars therefore leave us with an oversimplified impression of a crude and primi-
tive way of war: massed hoplites dominated the battlefield, faithfully re-enacting
a supposedly fixed sequence of basic infantry tactics in every battle. Combined arms
tactics were regarded as notably underdeveloped, and missile troops, like cavalry, were
considered ineffective to the point of irrelevance. 15 Since they could not find proper,
modern skirmisher deployments in the sources, these scholars discussed only briefly
what real feats Greek light-armed troops could and did achieve. They could not win
pitched battles; little else needed to be said.
Yet Lechaion, of course, was a pitched battle. Two fully formed hoplite phalanxes
were drawn up for battle on nearly level ground – but peltasts won the day. I would
suggest that, in light of these scholars’ paradigm of tactical primitivism, the fact that
Greece’s finest hoplites were overcome by skirmishing forces was difficult to swallow
on its own. Their general appraisal of the missile-armed mobs of the fifth century sug-
gests that these authors would never consider such troops capable of pulling off what
happened at Lechaion.16 Rüstow and Köchly, Droysen, and Lippelt ultimately did ac-
cept Xenophon’s description, though they stressed the decisive part played by the Athe-
nian hoplites.17 Delbrück, however, and after him Kromayer and Veith, preferred
a more comforting solution. Diodoros and Nepos helpfully suggested to them that the
13
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. 128, 157-8; H. Droysen, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen (Freiburg 1889) pp.
95-7; H. Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der Politischen Geschichte I (Berlin 1908) pp.
111-2; O. Lippelt, Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) pp. 40, 54,
57, 63-4; J. Kromayer, G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1928)
p. 87.
14
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. iii-iv, ix; Kromayer, G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer
(Munich 1928) p. 16.
15
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) pp. 142, 144, 178-9; H. Droysen, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen (Freiburg 1889)
pp. 93-7; E. Lammert, ‘Die geschichtliche Entwicklung der griechischen Taktik’, Neue Jahrbücher für das
Klassische Altertum, Geschichte und Deutsche Literatur und für Pädagogik 3 (1899) pp. 7-11; H. Delbrück,
Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der Politischen Geschichte I (Berlin 1908) pp. 107-110; O. Lippelt,
Die griechischen Leichtbewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) p. 5; J. Kromayer, G. Veith,
Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1928) pp. 84-5, 87.
16
For typically disparaging comments on the abilities of these troops see O. Lippelt, Die griechischen Leicht-
bewaffneten bis auf Alexander den Großen (Jena 1910) pp. 35, 43-4, 50.
17
W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
(Aurau 1852) p. 162; H. Droysen, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen (Freiburg 1889) pp. 96-7;
J. Kromayer, G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1928) p. 89. The
role of this contingent is explored in more detail in J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on
Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) p. 89, and especially in Konecny’s contribution to this volume.
88 Roel Konijnendijk

very general who won at Lechaion was an innovator of infantry equipment; all sources
further depict him as a ruthless disciplinarian. Could this brilliant young commander
perhaps have used his innovations to unlock the true potential of his light troops – long
ignored by the Greeks in their pitched battles – and so defeat the vaunted hoplites of
Sparta?
With this, the battle of Lechaion was dragged into the running controversy over
when, and in what way, Iphikrates reformed his troops.

The Middle Road and the Radical View

The theories of Delbrück and of Kromayer and Veith have their appeal, and indeed
variants of them still occasionally crop up in even the most recent publications. 18 Yet
they have obvious flaws. They freely adapt Diodoros’ account of the reforms, and they
chafe at the clear evidence provided by Xenophon that what happened at Lechaion was
nothing more than missile troops doing exactly what they had always done since they
made their first appearance in our sources. Parke, therefore, in his seminal study on
Greek mercenaries, adopted a more moderate view. He followed Delbrück on the novel-
ty and crucial importance of discipline in Iphikrates’ victory, but noted once again that
this victory ‘was not brought about by any revolution in arrangement or tactics’ – that
the battle was certainly not fought by the reformed troops of which Diodoros and Ne-
pos tell us. In Parke’s view, the most revolutionary feature seen at Lechaion was the
peltast himself: a very specific kind of light infantry that had not previously proven its
devastating potential. A new troop type, then, but no new fighting style. Parke regard-
ed the actual reforms as a gradual process, which apparently began before Lechaion
with the introduction of harsh discipline among the peltasts, and was finally completed
around the time Iphikrates returned from Egypt.19
This compromise explained both the shocking defeat of the Spartans at Lechaion
and the straightforward description of it in Xenophon. It is therefore not surprising that
Parke’s view has been very influential, and that he continues to be seen as one of the
leading authorities on the subject.20 No less a scholar than W. Kendrick Pritchett seems
to have accepted his interpretation; while he did not treat the reforms in any detail,
mentioning them only in passing and referring to Lippelt for details, he did reiterate
Parke’s point (and Delbrück’s) that it was the peltasts’ unprecedented level of disci-
pline, training and morale that made them so effective, allowing these missile-armed
warriors to achieve victory at Lechaion. 21
However, just two years after Parke published his work, G.T. Griffth presented
a far more extreme view on the matter. His work suggests that he felt no earlier schol-
ar’s interpretation had gone far enough to express what he supposed to be the massive
impact of the reforms of Iphikrates. He considered the ‘Iphicratid peltast’ to be an
entirely new kind of soldier – a flexible pikeman of the type proposed by Rüstow and
Köchly – whose appearance changed Greek warfare forever: ‘mercenaries of the fourth
18
J.D. Montagu, Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds (London 2000) pp. 27, 87; S. English, Mercenar-
ies in the Classical World to the Death of Alexander (Barnsley 2012) pp. 87, 99-100.
19
H.W. Parke, Greek Mercenary Soldiers from the Earliest Times down to the Battle of Ipsus (Oxford
1933) pp. 53-4, 77-81.
20
Trundle, M. ‘Light Troops in Classical Athens’ in ed. D.M. Pritchard, War, Democracy and Culture in
Classical Athens (Cambridge 2010) pp. 156-7; S. English, Mercenaries in the Classical World to the Death
of Alexander (Barnsley 2012) p. 100.
21
W.K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War, Part II (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1974) pp. 117, 122-5.
Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaeum 89

century became standardized to a type’, which, being an even more effective form of
heavy infantry, ‘reduced war to a stalemate’. 22 At Lechaion the world saw the first
demonstration of what these men could do. Griffith later corrected his own statements,
admitting that he was ‘persuaded by Best’ – whose position will be discussed below –
that his own view ‘was mistaken’.23 Nevertheless, it is important to mention it here as
the polar opposite to Droysen’s contention that the reforms were a fiction. Here we
have the first author ever to assume that the battle of Lechaion was fought by a force
of pikemen. Even a theory that totally ignored the date of the reforms suggested by
Diodoros, and that essentially rejected the whole of Xenophon’s account, was conceiv-
able in order to make a particular point about the historical development of Greek
warfare. Iphikrates’ name was here supposed to have been so intimately connected to
his innovations that Griffith, for some decades at least, was convinced that one had
never existed without the other.24 As we shall see, this view, too, is still possessed of
some persuasive power.

The Three Theories

The current debate on Lechaion and the reforms of Iphikrates is dominated by three
main views launched between the late sixties and the eighties. The first of these was
a thorough restatement of Droysen’s belief that there were no reforms at all; the second
was the wholly original idea to connect the reforms to Persia and Egypt, which has
gained by far the greatest following since its publication; the third was an anomaly,
a powerful reassertion of Griffith’s radical suggestion, proving both the persistence and
the attraction of an interpretation that combines all aspects of the tradition on
Iphikrates to explain his greatest successes.
It was Jan Best who first made the case in detail that the reforms of Iphikrates
never took place. A significant section of his work is devoted to dismissing earlier
theories on the reforms – primarily those of Lippelt and Parke – and demonstrating
that only traditional Thracian peltasts fighting with traditional Thracian equipment are
attested in fourth-century Greece.25 The evidence from Diodoros and Nepos suggesting
otherwise should, in his view, be discarded as worthless. Needless to say, Best de-
scribed the battle of Lechaion as entirely the work of typical light-armed troops, calling
it ‘identical’ to the infamous events in Aitolia (Thuc. 3.97.2-98.4) and on Sphakteria.26
It was a victory of peltasts with hoplite support – a battle of which the outcome was
known before it began. Since the course of the earlier battles and Xenophon’s account
explain perfectly well how the Spartans could have ended up suffering such a humiliat-
ing defeat, there was no need for Best to suppose that Iphikrates’ innovations had
bestowed previously unseen abilities upon his mercenary peltasts. Furthermore, with no
uncontested evidence for the existence of reformed peltasts even in later years, Best saw

22
G.T. Griffith, The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World (Cambridge 1935) pp. 5, 239 – but see below
n. 27.
23
G.T. Griffith, ‘Peltasts, and the Origins of the Macedonian Phalanx’ in ed. H.J. Dell, Ancient Macedo-
nian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson (Thessaloniki 1981) p. 163 n.8; the view he proceeded to adopt,
however (ibid., pp. 165-6) basically agreed with that of Anderson, discussed below.
24
This view was apparently shared at least by Snodgrass, who noted in passing that ‘the final effects’ of the
reforms were ‘dramatic’ – referring specifically to the battle of Lechaion. A.M. Snodgrass, Arms and Ar-
mour of the Greeks (London 1967) p. 110.
25
J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) pp. 103-110.
26
J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) pp. 87-8.
90 Roel Konijnendijk

no remaining reason to maintain that the Athenian general was an innovator at all:
‘Iphikrates and Chabrias were undeniably great strategists, but definitely not reformers
of peltasts.’27
As noted above, it was Best who convinced Griffith to change his mind on this sub-
ject; more recently, Trundle has also declared his support for Best’s theory. 28 Yet an-
cient historians tend to be justly cautious about a theory that requires the wholesale
dismissal of evidence – certainly if this evidence is found in two independent sources
and may derive from two independent traditions. This is probably the reason why few
now argue in favour of Best, and why so many before him have tried to find ways to fit
the reforms into their accounts of fourth-century warfare.
The main problem here, as Best rightly identified, was the silence of Xenophon. 29
The battle of Lechaion only made sense as a victory of traditional peltasts, and no
theory inserting reformed troops into Greek history could be secure without confirma-
tion from this fourth-century source. But, in 1970, Anderson presented the solution.
Completely abandoning all earlier theories, he was the first to take Diodoros’ framing
of the reforms literally, leading him to an entirely original point: the reforms only, but
overwhelmingly, made sense within the context of the Persian campaign against
Egypt.30 This allowed scholars to have their cake and eat it. The reforms could now be
argued to have happened without requiring Xenophon to report them. The details of the
argument have been set out and improved upon by Nick Sekunda in this volume. The
upshot of Anderson’s view, of course, was that the reforms did not take place until the
mid-370s BC, and so Anderson’s version of the battle of Lechaion is not troubled by
the introduction of any supposed tactical innovations; he described it as a battle fought
with the javelin, in which, again, ‘a skilful combination of heavy and light infantry’
soundly defeated the helpless Spartan hoplites. 31
Best and Anderson both explicitly refuted the view of Kromayer and Veith in par-
ticular, stressing that there is nothing at all in Xenophon to suggest that pikemen were
present at Lechaion.32 However, as noted above, none of the German scholars ever
suggested that the battle was fought with such troops. If they felt compelled to date the
reforms of Iphikrates to the years before the battle, they strived to make this possible
by altering later, less reliable sources to agree with Xenophon. Anderson and Best may
therefore have somewhat overstated the distance between themselves and their predeces-

27
J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) p. 110; the partic-
ular question of Chabrias’ troops and tactics in 378 BC goes back to W. Rüstow, H. Köchly, Geschichte des
Griechischen Kriegswesens von der Ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos (Aurau 1852) p. 170, and continues to this
day; note C.A. Matthew, A Storm of Spears: Understanding the Greek Hoplite at War (Barnsley 2012) pp.
217-9.
28
He refers to Best with the plain statement that ‘the reforms to which Diodorus and Nepos referred never
took place’: M. Trundle, ‘Light Troops in Classical Athens’ in ed. D.M. Pritchard, War, Democracy and
Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge 2010) pp. 156-7.
29
J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) pp. 107-8.
30
He seems to have first hinted at this theory in J.K. Anderson, ‘The Statue of Chabrias’ American Journal
of Archaeology 67.4 (1963) p. 412; the full argument may be found in J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and
Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, Los Angeles 1970) pp. 129-32.
31
J.K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, Los Angeles 1970) pp.
123-6.
32
J.G.P. Best, Thracian Peltasts and their Influence on Greek Warfare (Groningen 1969) p. 103; J.K.
Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, Los Angeles 1970) p. 130; in
this they follow Parke, Lippelt, Delbrück and, ultimately, Rüstow and Köchly.
Iphikrates the Innovator and the Historiography of Lechaeum 91

sors. They must be given credit, though, for comprehensively doing away with some of
the early German scholars’ awkward compromises. Anderson followed this up by ex-
pressing in detail the theory that made by far the most sense of the evidence. Of course,
neither scholar left any room for doubt: Lechaion was fought and won by traditional
peltasts, with hoplites present to deliver the final blow.
The persuasive power of Anderson’s theory is clearly apparent from the fact that
modern scholars have overwhelmingly adopted it in their discussions of the reforms of
Iphikrates.33 In addition, we may credit Anderson and Best to some extent for the fact
that modern treatments of the battle of Lechaion tend to no longer even consider the
possibility that the reforms may be relevant to it. Since the reforms are now widely
held to have taken place in Egypt around 374 BC – if they took place at all – they no
longer feature in scholarly accounts of the battle fought a decade and a half before this
time. The best example of this, of course, is the account of Konecny, translated into
English for this volume. It offers a meticulous reconstruction of the whole of the battle
in unrivalled detail, but it does not mention the reforms even once. 34 Lechaion is now
generally seen as a triumph of combined arms, like scholars as early as Rüstow and
Köchly already argued – the sort of battle in which, as Iphikrates himself is said to
have put it, ‘the light-armed troops are like the hands, (…) the phalanx itself is like
chest and cuirass, and the general is the head’ (Plut. Pel. 2.1; Polyain. Strat. 3.9.22).
Even so, wildly alternative views continue to be offered. There simply is as yet no
consensus on the nature and date of the reforms of Iphikrates. 35 By far the most com-
prehensive dissenting voice has been that of Marinovič, whose work on fourth-century
Greek mercenaries was made available to non-Russian audiences when it was translat-
ed into French in 1988. It contains detailed rejections of the theories of both Best and
Anderson – the former as a weak and biased reading of the sources, the latter as an
attempt to restrict to Egypt a phenomenon which could easily have made its appearance
in Greece.36 Instead, Marinovič argued that Iphikrates turned his hoplites into mobile
and manoeuvrable pikemen, a force of the kind envisioned by Rüstow and Köchly – but
that he did so during the Corinthian War. It was this force that made the peltast’s
name. Traditional Thracian javelin men were denied any influence; they ‘doubtless did
not serve as models for Iphikrates’.37 It is implicit in the work of Marinovič that even
the battle of Lechaion was already won by these reformed troops. The chapter that
33
See above n.23, and for example M.M. Sage, Warfare in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook (London 1996)
pp. 145, 147; H. van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London 2004) p. 197; J.P. Roth, ‘War’
in edd. P. Sabin, H. van Wees, M. Whitby, The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, Part I
(Cambridge 2008) p. 368. In the latter volume, Sekunda (‘Military Forces, A: Land Forces’, ibid., pp. 326-
9) looked ahead to the argument he elaborates here.
34
A. Konecny, ‘Κατέχοψεν την μόραν ’Ιφιχράτης. Das Gefecht bei Lechaion im Frühsommer 390 v. Chr.’,
Chiron 31 (2001) pp. 79-127; see also, for example, P. Ducrey, Guerre et Guerrier dans la Grèce Antique
(Paris 1985) pp. 126-8; J.F. Lazenby, The Spartan Army (Warminster 1985) pp. 173-4.
35
Ueda-Sarson has taken Diodoros’ date for the reforms to mean that they were actually implemented after
Iphikrates returned to Greece in 373/2 BC; Lendon recently suggested that the reforms were an attempt to
further integrate peltasts into Greek military ideology by making them look and fight more like Homeric
heroes. These theories do not affect views on Lechaion, however; they need not concern us here. See
L. Ueda-Sarson, ‘The Evolution of Hellenistic Infantry, Part 1: The Reforms of Iphikrates’, Slingshot 222
(2002) pp. 30-36; J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (London
2005) pp. 96-8.
36
L.P. Marinovič, Le Mercenariat Grec au IVe Siècle avant notre Ère et la Crise de la Polis (trans.
J. Garlan, Y. Garlan, Paris 1988) pp. 47-9.
37
Ibid. pp. 43, 47 (with quote), 49-53.
92 Roel Konijnendijk

follows the description of the reforms is summed up by its title: ‘The age of the peltasts
of Iphikrates (380-360)’.38
This is essentially the same view as that offered and subsequently abandoned by
Griffith. It constitutes a wholesale rejection of the account of Xenophon, and requires
substantial alteration even of that of Diodoros; it is not known why Marinovič chose to
revive it. Scholars as early as Lippelt were driven by the lack of evidence of pikemen
in Classical Greece to interpret the reforms of Iphikrates as an experiment, limited in
scope and time, which apparently failed to change the fundamental features of Greek
warfare.39 Here instead we find the assertion that Greek warfare was defined by the
Iphikratean pikeman from the late 390s BC onward. Here, again, we find the implicit
assumption that even the battle of Lechaion was fought and won by a new type of
infantry.
No scholar has come out explicitly in support of Marinovič – but at the same time
her views remain as yet formally unchallenged. Even if the field seems to gravitate
increasingly towards Anderson’s interpretation of the reforms, and by consequence
towards a straight reading of Xenophon’s description of the clash, there is ongoing
conflict over what aspect of Greek military history was exemplified at Lechaion. It is
interesting to note that casual surveys of the reforms of Iphikrates tend to be extremely
disparate; compromises continue to be thought up and old views continue to be occa-
sionally (and perhaps unconsciously) reinstated. 40 The battle of Lechaion continues to
be dragged along with the tide. To most, now as before, it was a perfect example of the
effectiveness of combined arms tactics of the kind seen earlier on Sphakteria: missile
troops ran out to engage while hoplites stood by to keep the enemy contained to their
phalanx; this enemy, helpless, was worn down till they could take no more. To others,
though, it was one of those moments of revolutionary tactical chance with which mili-
tary history remains obsessed to this day. Iphikrates effortlessly defeated the finest
fighting men of his age – and not even the testimony of Xenophon himself will keep
scholars from connecting this fact to the general’s famous innovations.

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A. Bauer, Die Griechischen Kriegsaltertümer (Munich 1893).

38
Ibid. pp. 57-77.
39
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Kromayer, G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegführung der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1928), p. 90; note also
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40
See above, n. 18, n. 24, n. 34.
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94 Roel Konijnendijk

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