Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (Penguin Classics) (14 page)

[1] No craftsman would be able to shape things as he wished without plastic material in a condition to comply with his will.
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You will not be able to do anything with your men either unless, with the god’s help, they have been conditioned to feel loyalty for their leader and
to consider him more knowledgeable than themselves when it comes to fighting the enemy.

Subordinates come to feel loyalty, of course, when their leader is [2] considerate towards them – that is, when they can see him making sure that they have food, that they are in no danger while they withdraw after a pursuit, and that they are guarded when they rest. When the unit is on garrison duty, the commander should be seen [3] to be concerned about essentials like fodder for the horses, tents, sources of water,
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and firewood, and to be attentive and alert to his men’s requirements. When he has more than he needs of something, it is in a commander’s best interests to share the surplus with his men.
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Briefly stated, there is the least chance of a commander being [4] despised by his men if he shows himself to be better than them at the tasks he sets them. He therefore has to practise every aspect of [5] horsemanship, from mounting onwards, so that they can see that on horseback their commander can clear a ditch safely, scramble over a wall, jump down from a bank and throw a javelin competently. All these things improve his chances of avoiding their contempt. If they [6] recognize that he is an expert tactician as well, who knows how to deploy them so that they can get the better of the enemy, and if they also come to realize that he is not going to lead them against the enemy carelessly, or without having solicited the gods’ goodwill, or when the sacrificial omens are unfavourable, this all helps to make the men in a commander’s unit more ready to obey his orders.

While intelligence, then, is a desirable quality in every leader, an [1] Athenian cavalry commander needs to excel in two respects – in his homage to the gods and in his expertise at military matters – since his opponents just across the border have almost the same numbers of horsemen and large numbers of heavy-armed foot-soldiers.
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If he tries [2] to invade enemy territory without the rest of the community’s armed forces he will come up against both divisions of their armed forces with only his cavalry, which is hardly safe. At the same time, if the
enemy invades Athenian territory, the first point to note is that he is bound to do so with extra horsemen over and above his own cavalry and also with as many heavy-armed foot-soldiers as he thinks are [3] required to defeat the whole Athenian army. If the whole community comes out to defend their land against an invading force of this size, there are grounds for expecting a favourable outcome. I mean, given the help of the god and proper management, the cavalry will prove better than the enemy cavalry, while the heavy infantry will match their opponents’ numbers and, with the help of the god and proper training, will have the advantage both physically and mentally – in their fitness and their desire for victory. Besides, Athenians are just as proud of their lineage as Boeotians.
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[4] However, during the invasion of the Spartans (supported by contin-gents from all over Greece) Athens relied on its navy and was content to do no more than defend the city walls.
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If it did this again, and expected the cavalry to defend everything beyond the walls and to run the risk of taking on the entire enemy force all alone, there would, in my opinion, be two indispensable requirements: the staunch support of the gods and a thoroughly accomplished man for cavalry commander. After all, when faced with vastly superior forces plenty of intelligence is needed, and plenty of daring at the critical juncture.[5] He must also be a good strategist, I would say. If he took the gamble of engaging the army facing him – an army which not even the whole community was willing to confront – he would obviously be entirely at the mercy of the superior force and incapable of any significant [6] action. However, suppose he left the protection of property outside the city walls to just as many men as were needed to look out for the enemy and also to remove essentials to a place of safety from as wide an area as possible. A small force is as good as a large one at taking care of this; moreover, men who lack confidence in themselves and their horses are rather well suited to the job of guarding and removing [7] the property of people on their own side, because fear is apparently a formidable ally for a guard. So it may well be a good idea for him to select men of this kind for his pickets, but the rest of the men under his command – the ones not chosen as pickets – will turn out to be too few to be regarded as an army, in the sense that open combat will
be completely beyond their capacity. However, there will probably be enough of them for him to use them as a force of marauders.
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What he has to do, in my opinion, is keep these men in a state of [8] constant readiness to strike and, without exposing himself, watch out for any mistakes the enemy army might make – and the greater the [9] number of soldiers, the more liable they are to make mistakes. For instance, they might spread themselves thin in search of provisions and booty,
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or while on the march, some of them might forge ahead in disarray, while others lag too far behind. The cavalry commander [10] should not let mistakes like these go unpunished, or the whole country will be occupied by the enemy; but he has to plan his strategy carefully, and withdraw straight after a strike before hostile reinforcements can arrive in strength.

It is also not uncommon for an army on the march to come to [11] roads where numerical superiority is no real advantage. The same goes for when it is crossing rivers too: this affords an opportunity for an alert commander to harass an army without endangering his own men and to control events so that he can choose how many enemy troops to attack. It is also a good idea sometimes to fall on the enemy [12] when they are in their camp, at their morning or evening meal, or just as they are waking up, because these are all occasions when soldiers are unarmed for a while – a longer or shorter while depending on whether they are horsemen or foot-soldiers.

Lookouts and sentries, however, should be the constant target of [13] the cavalry commander’s plans, because there are never more than a few of them posted together at one time, and they may be at a considerable distance from the main body of troops. Once the enemy [14] is taking proper precautions against this kind of attack, the cavalry commander should, with the god’s help, steal into enemy-held territory, taking care that <he has found out in advance>
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how many men they have stationed at various points and whereabouts their patrols are. The reason for doing this is that if he can overpower one of their patrols, there is no finer booty in the world. And patrols are easy to [15] trick; they go after any small band of men they spot, in the belief that this is their function. However, it is important for our commander to check that he has an escape-route which does not take him straight
into the path of any reinforcements that might be coming to help the patrol.

[1] Clearly, if your men are to succeed in inflicting losses on a far superior force without incurring losses themselves, the difference between them and the enemy has to be such that they make the enemy seem amateurish compared to their own expertise at horsemanship and its [2] military applications. The first prerequisite for this is that the men detailed to be marauders become so completely used to riding that they can exert themselves as much as their military role might require, because to send into battle horses and men whose training in this respect has been inadequate would in all probability be like pitting [3] women against men.
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However, those teams of horses and men which have been drilled and schooled in jumping ditches, clearing walls, leaping up banks, scrambling safely down gullies and riding at speed downhill, will make those which have not learnt all these techniques seem as clumsy as land animals compared to winged creatures.
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Or again, when it comes to rugged terrain, the difference between those who have and those who have not put considerable time and effort into toughening up their feet is like the difference between healthy and disabled people. And when it comes to pursuing the enemy and retreating back from his lines, if we say that those who have familiarized themselves with the terrain are like people who can see, then those who have not are like blind people.

[4] You should also be aware that for a horse to be in good condition, it has to be well fed and to have been exercised until it can exert itself without getting short of breath. In addition, since bridles and horse-cloths are fastened with straps, a cavalry commander should never run out of them. They do not cost much, and without them your men will be useless.

[5] You might think that having to train at horsemanship in the way I have been recommending is very laborious; if so, you should reflect on the fact that athletes preparing for a competition have much more
work to do, and of a more demanding kind, than those who practise horsemanship, however assiduously they do so. After all, most athletic [6] training involves working up a sweat by hard work, whereas pleasure is what nearly all cavalry training involves. It is the closest a man can get, as far as I know, to flying, and that is something people long to be able to do.
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Then again, a military victory brings with it far more [7] glory than winning a boxing-match. The point is that although in either case the state gains in glory from the victory, yet in the case of a military victory the gods invariably also crown states with prosperity.
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Speaking for myself, then, I cannot think of anything that deserves to be practised more than the arts of war.

It is worth bearing in mind that sea-pirates too are able to make a [8] living at the expense even of people who far outnumber them, because they have inured themselves to hard work. If your men are short of food, it is all right for them to turn land-pirates, even though the crops they gather belong to others. After all, there are two sorts of people: those who work the land and those who live on the products of others’ work. And without recourse to one or the other of these practices, it is hard to find the means to stay alive, and the goal of peace becomes more remote.

You should also remember never to charge a superior force if you [9] leave behind you ground which is awkward for horses to cross. It is quite a different matter to become unseated during the pursuit than during the retreat.

Next, there is something else I want to remind you to be on your [10] guard against. It is true that some people use a totally inadequate force to charge an enemy who is perceived to be superior (and the upshot often is that the attackers have done to them what they were expecting to do to the other side), but others throw all the resources they can muster against an enemy who is known to be superior. In my opinion, [11] this is quite the wrong way to go about it: it is when you are proceeding against an enemy you expect to defeat that you should draw on all available resources. After all, an easy victory never gave anyone cause for regret. However, when you are attacking a considerably superior [12] force and you know in advance that you are going to have to pull back after doing your best,
this
is the situation, in my opinion, when
it is much better to use only a fraction of your total manpower, rather than the whole lot, for the assault. You should pick your best horses and men, however, because then they will be able to have some effect

[13] and withdraw in relative safety. On the other hand, if you use
all
your men to attack a superior force and then decide to pull back, the ones mounted on the slower horses are bound to be captured, poor horsemanship will cause some to become unseated, and the difficulty of the terrain will result in others being cut off, since you will hardly come across a sizeable stretch of ground which is as good as one might [14] wish for. Moreover, there will be so many of them that collisions will take place among them, their progress will be hampered, and they will play havoc with one another in all kinds of ways. But good horses with competent riders will manage to escape even from hopeless situations,
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especially if the cavalry reserves are used to threaten any [15] contingents that set out after them. False ambushes are advisable for this too, and another valuable plan is to find the best place to have some men from your side suddenly appear to slow the pursuit down. [16] Besides, there can be no denying that when it comes to making an effort and turning in a burst of speed, a smaller number has the advantage over a larger number rather than vice versa. I do not mean that a small band of men will be able to exert themselves more and will be quicker just because there are, merely in terms of number, a few of them, but that it is easier to find a few rather than a lot of men who will not only look after their horses properly, but also practise their own horsemanship with intelligence.
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[17] If it so happens that your men are taking on another cavalry unit of more or less the same size, I think it advisable to divide each regiment into two squadrons. One of these squadrons should be headed up by the regimental commander, the other by whoever [18] strikes you as the best man for the job, which would be for him to follow for a while in the rear of the regimental commander’s squadron, but then, when the enemy was close at hand and he received the command, to bring his men up against the enemy. These tactics would, I am sure, increase the force of the shock delivered by your [19] men to the enemy and make them harder to resist.
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If each squadron was also accompanied by foot-soldiers, who suddenly appeared from
where they had been hiding behind the cavalry and closed with the enemy, I am sure that this would greatly increase your chances of victory. The point is that, in my experience, nothing cheers people up so much as unexpected good fortune, and nothing destroys their morale more effectively than an unexpected fright.
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If you want [20] evidence of this phenomenon, you need only bear in mind the dismay felt by those who fall into an ambush, even when they greatly outnumber their adversaries, and the terror felt by opposing armies for the first few days after they take up positions facing each other. The division of your men into squadrons is unproblematic, but it does [21] take a good cavalry commander to find men to come up from behind and charge the enemy in an intelligent, reliable, committed and courageous fashion. Why does this require a good commander? [22] Because he has to have the ability to make it clear to the men in his command, by his words and his actions, that obeying orders, following their officers and closing with the enemy are desirable, and to fire them with a longing for glory and the capacity to see their intentions through to the end.

Another possible scenario is that there are two armies drawn up in [23] battle lines facing each other, or at least two areas of ground held by opposing sides, so that the cavalry does its wheeling, pursuing and retreating in the intervening space between these two forces. In this situation, the cavalry units from both sides tend to come out of their turns
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slowly and then ride flat out in the unoccupied space in the middle. However, if you were to make it look as though you were [24] going to do this, but then come quickly out of the turn and into pursuit or retreat, so that you pursue the enemy at speed while you are near your own lines, and pull back at speed away from his lines, this would enable you to inflict heavy losses on the enemy, while in all probability escaping with minimum losses yourself. Moreover, if [25] you can manage to leave behind four or five of your best horses and men from each contingent concealed somewhere near the enemy lines, they will be very favourably placed to fall on the enemy unit as it is wheeling around to resume pursuit.