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ad Hem Naulicam pertinentes Comment. • Abbott on Shipping, Index, Exercitor Navis.} [G. L.]
EXERCITUS (o-rparos), army. 1. greek. The earliest notices which we possess of the military art among the Greeks are those contained in the Homeric poems. The unsettled state of society in the first ages of Greece, led to the early and general cultivation of the art of arms, which were habitually worn for defence, even when aggressive warfare was not intended. (Thuc. i. 6.) But the Homeric poems contain an exhibition of combined military operations in their earliest stage. Warlike undertakings before the time described in them can have been little else than predatory inroads (fioyXacricu, II. xi. 667). A collection of warriors exhibiting less of organisation and discipline than we see depicted in the Grecian troops before Troy, would hardly deserve the name of an army. The organisation which we see there, such as it was, arose, not from any studied, formative system, but naturally, out of the imperfect constitution of society in that age. Every freeman in those times was of course a soldier ; but when all the members of a family were not needed to go upon an expedition under the command of their chieftain or king, those who were to go seem to have been selected by lot (//. x. 418). As the confederated states, which are represented as taking part in the Trojan Avar, are united by . scarcely any other bond than their participation in a common object, the different bodies of troops, led by their respective chieftains, are far from being united by a common discipline under the command-in-chief of Agamemnon. Each body obeys its own leader, and follows him to the conflict, or remains inactive, according as he chooses to mingle in the fight or not. Authority and obedience are regulated much more by the nature . of the circumstances, or by the relative personal distinction of the chieftains, than by any law of military discipline. Agamemnon sometimes urges the chieftains to engage, not by commands, but by taunts (//. iv. 338, &c. 368, &c.). Accordingly, nothing like the tactics or strategy of a regularly disciplined army is to be traced in the Homeric descriptions of battles. Each chieftain with his body of troops acts for himself, without reference to the movements of the rest, except as these furnish occasion for a vigorous attack, or, when hard pressed, call for assistance from the common feeling of brotherhood in arms. The wide interval which in the Homeric age separated the noble or chieftain from the common freeman, appears in as marked a manner in- military, as in civil affairs. The former is distinguished by that superior skill and prowess in the use of his arms, which would naturally result from the constant practice of warlike exercises, for which his station gave him the leisure and the means. A single hero is able to put to flight a whole troop of common soldiers. The account of a battle consists almost entirely of descriptions of the single combats of the chiefs on both sides ; and the fortune of the day, when not overruled by the intervention of the gods, is decided by the individual valour of these heroes. While the mass of the common soldiers were on foot, the chiefs rode in chariots [CuRRUs], which usually contained two, one to drive and one to fight. In these they advanced against the antagonists whom they singled out for encounter, sometimes hurl ing •their spears from their chariots,
but more commonly alighting, as they drew near, and fighting on foot, making use of the chariot for pursuit or flight. The Greeks did not, like the ancient Britons and several nations of the East, use the chariot itself as an instrument of warfare. Cavalry was unknown at that time to the Greeks, and horsemanship but very rarely practised ; the linrrjes of Homer are the chieftains who ride in chariots. These chiefs are drawn up in the front of the battle array (II. iv. 297, Trpdyuaxoi, 'npo/j.d-Xeadai) ; and frequently the foot soldiers seem to have done nothing but watch the single combats of their leaders, forming, in two opposite, parallel lines, something answering to a ring (epKos TroAe-jLLoto, II. iv. 299) within which the more important single combats are fought. How they got the chariots out of the way when the foot soldiers came to close quarters (as in //. iv. 427, £c.) is not described.
Though so little account is usually made of the common soldiers (TrpuAees, II. xi. 49, xii. 77), Homer occasionally lays considerable stress on their orderly and compact array ; Nestor and Me-nestheus are honourably distinguished by the epithet Koa^rope \clo>v (II. ii. 553, iv. 293, &e.). The troops were naturally drawn up in separate bodies according to their different nations. It would appear to be rather a restoration of the old arrangement, than a new classification, when Nestor (//. ii. 362) recommends Agamemnon to draw the troops up by tribes and phratries. Arranged in these natural divisions, the foot soldiers were drawn up in densely compacted bodies (rrvKival (f>d\ayj€s) shield close to shield,— helmet to helmet — man to man (//. xiii. 130, xvi. 212, &c.). In these masses, though not usually commencing the attack, they frequently offer a powerful resistance, evea to distinguished heroes (as Hector //. xiii. 1457 &c., comp. xvii. 267, 354, &c., xiii. 339), the dense array of their spears forming a barrier not easily broken through. The signal for advance or retreat was not given by instruments of any kind, but by the voice of the leader. A loud voice was consequently an important matter, and the epithet mv &yaQ6s is common. The trumpet, however, was not absolutely unknown (II. xviii. 219). Respecting the armour, offensive and defensive, see arma.
Under the king or chieftain who commands his separate contingent we commonly find subordinate chiefs, who command smaller divisions. It is difficult to say whether it is altogether accidental or not, that these are frequently five in number. Thus the Myrmidons of Achilles are divided into five (TTi%€s, each of 500 men. Five chiefs command the Boeotians ; and the whole Trojan army ig formed in five divisions, each under three leaders. (II. iv. 295, &c., xvi. 171—197, ii. 494, &c., xii. 87—104.) The term $d\a.y£ is applied either to the whole army (as II. vi. 6), or to these smaller divisions and subdivisions, which are, also called crrix^s and irvp-yoi.
When an enemy was slain, it was the universal practice to stop and strip off his arms, which were carefully preserved by the victor as trophies. The division of the booty generally was arranged by the leader of the troop, for whom a portion was set aside as an honorary present (yepas, II. i. 392, 368, ix. 328, xi. 703). The recovery of the dead bodies of the slain was in the Homeric age, as in all later times, a point of the greatest importance, and fre-