CIRCUS - MAXIMUS - IMPERIUM

Glossary

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This mosaic of popular gladiators dates from the late third century. Their names are written beside them.

Roman Entertainment Complexes

Spectacle, the viewing of entertainment, was an important part of Roman social life. Distinct types of public architecture were used for distinct kinds of entertainments, and these architectural types are very identifiable. For many modern people, Roman entertainment complexes are the most recognizable type of Roman architecture.

A Roman chariot-racing arena was called a circus. The most famous of these is the Circus Maximus, located in Rome. A circus typically consisted of two parallel sides, with one end enclosed in a semicircle. The other side held starting gates, ideally twelve (Adkins and Adkins 1994: 141). In the center of the complex was the raceway, divided into two tracks by a long barrier (Boëthius 1978: 198). Audience members sat on either side of the circus. Lighter chariots were, of course, used for racing in the Greek games and the Roman circus, where the tactic for success was to ‘‘shave the turning post’’ at the unbanked track’s end so closely that sparks flew from the axle—or the axle disintegrated, leaving the charioteer with the difficult choice of being dragged to death by his team or cutting himself free of the reins and being left on the track in the path of the pursuing competitors.

Theaters were semicircular structures in which dramatic performances were staged. Roman theaters, while inherently derived from Greek theater architecture, were novel in a number of ways. Unlike Greek theaters, Roman theaters were not cut out of the hillside but were entirely freestanding architectural units (Adkins and Adkins 1994: 140; Woloch 1983: 58). This contributed to the isolated and closed-off feeling of Roman theaters; the Roman theater was separate from the rest of the world. Also adding to this feeling was the back wall of the stage (the scaenae frons), which rose to the full height of the theater, as did the sidewalls (Adkins and Adkins 1994: 140; Woloch 1983: 60). Smaller theaters were roofed as well (Woloch 1983: 61). The seats of the theaters were sectioned off according to social rank (Boëthius 1978: 202). The best seats in the house were the two balconies over the cavea (orchestra pit), in which the emperor and his retinue, as well as the vestal virgins, could sit. Rome did not have a permanent theater until 58 B.C.E., when Aemilius Scaurus built one of wood that seated about 80,000 people (Boëthius 1978: 202–203). In 55 B.C.E., Pompey had a theater built in stone (Boëthius 1978: 205–206). Later, Augustus built the Theater of Marcellus as a memorial to his dead nephew.

Amphitheaters should be distinguished from theaters, both structurally and functionally. Amphitheaters were oval (sometimes circular) in shape and were the site of spectacles like gladiatorial combat. Almost every Roman city had an amphitheater, but many of the older Greek cities did not. Unlike theaters, amphitheaters were an entirely Roman innovation. The first amphitheaters were made of wood and were located outside of Rome, in Campania (Woloch 1983: 64). Usually amphitheaters were situated on the outskirts of the city, unlike most public architecture, which was more central (Woloch 1983: 66). The center of the amphitheater was called the arena, where the spectacle took place. Awnings separated the audiences from the arena, protecting them from the violence below.

Chariot Racing.

Chariot racing was extremely popular in the Roman period. This kind of game had a long history—it was an Olympic event in Greek times. In Roman times, chariot racing was a commercial enterprise in which citizens did not participate (Shelton 1988: 350). It was mere entertainment, not a religious demonstration (but see Auget 1994: 122). Chariot drivers were professionals, usually slaves owned by one of the companies (Humphrey 1988: 1156). In Rome there were four chariot-racing companies, called factio, that wore either red, white, blue, or green (Shelton 1988: 350).

Wealthy businessmen owned these factio; it was an expensive venture (Humphrey 1988: 1156). The owners negotiated rental fees with the aediles, who offered a substantial prize to the winners (Shelton 1988: 350). The races themselves took place at one of the many circuses, the arenas built specifically for them (see chapter 9). The driver stood in the chariot, with the reins wrapped around his body, which was very dangerous if the chariot crashed (Auget 1994: 129). The chariot was attached to a team of two, four, or six horses (Cowell 1980: 171). The number of competitors racing at one time depended on the size of the circus. The sport was a full-contact sport; drivers purposely crashed into one another and attempted to throw off the other racers (Shelton 1988: 357). The chariot race in the film Ben Hur is actually fairly accurate on that account. The audience could also get out of control; a British football type of hooliganism was not unknown in the Roman circuses (Auget 1994: 135–136, 141–142). Betting also took place, and placards with chariot drivers’ statistics were available to the audience (Cowell 1980: 172; Humphrey 1988: 1154). Chariot drivers who were successful could become celebrities of great renown within the city of Rome (Cowell 1980: 173; Shelton 1988: 355, 359).

HIPPODROME

An arena for chariot racing. Long, narrow hippodromes like the Circus Maximus in Rome were common in major cities throughout the empire, and charioteers were popular figures. The Hippodrome in Constantinople was situated next to the Great Palace. From the imperial box (kathisma) the emperor viewed the chariots as they raced around the central spina seven times. Fans supported competing circus factions, each with their respective racing colors; the Greens and Blues were popular in Constantinople in the sixth century. The circus factions frequently rioted; in 532 Belisarius put down the Nika Revolt by slaughtering thousands in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. The decline of racing in the seventh century paralleled the decline of cities, although in Constantinople the Hippodrome remained in use until the Fourth Crusade conquered the city.

CIRCUS FACTIONS.

Hippodrome (q.v.) factions (demoi in Greek, meaning “people”). They were comprised of racing fans loyal to the traditional four chariot colors: the Blues, Greens, Whites, and Reds. By the sixth century the most popular factions in Constantinople were the Blues and the Greens. They were noted for their tendency toward violence and hooliganism. The description of them in the Anekdota (Secret History) of Prokopios of Caesarea makes them sound like thugs sporting gang colors. In addition to defending the walls of Constantinople in times of peril, they can be seen as having a political function, for they created the illusion of popular participation in government. Sometimes their riots expressed support for popular causes or were complaints against imperial abuses. This is what happened in the Nika Revolt against Justinian I in 532. After the seventh century the circus factions in Constantinople were limited to strictly ceremonial functions.

The most destructive acts of civilian unrest were the occasional bouts of urban rioting associated with the circus factions, some of whose conflicts were virtual battles, especially the Nika riot of 532 when troops had to fight their way into Constantinople from their suburban bases and 30,000 perished in the Hippodrome massacre on the final day.

Gladiators.

Gladiatorial combat is one of the most compelling topics of ancient Rome. However, the cultural prominence of gladiators in Roman times is not matched by our modern fascination with them. Think of how many films have featured gladiators prominently. This combat originated in Etruscan times and was an important component of munera celebrations (Humphrey 1988: 1159). Controversial among modern Roman scholars is when gladiatorial combat began to be funded in public celebrations. But certainly by the time of Julius Caesar, gladiatorial combat had become a public spectacle (Shelton 1988: 333).

Gladiators were individuals who had been bought by gladiator-training schools (Shelton 1988: 342). They could have been slaves (this was a punishment for unfavored slaves), enemies captured in war, or even impoverished freedmen who sold themselves (Shelton 1988: 342–343). The training schools provided equipment and instruction in a variety of gladiatorial techniques. The school rented out the gladiators for various events. Because of this, not every match was a fight to the death (Shelton 1988: 343). Often gladiators were spared—it would have been too large of a loss in investment if half of your gladiators did not survive the match. It is somewhat of a misconception that the audience determined the fate of the losing gladiator at the end of a match (Grant 1967: 74). The audience would signal their favor with a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down,” but it was the sponsor of the event who made the actual decision (Watson 1967: 74). Eventually gladiators could win their freedom and retire from the arena. Some gladiators achieved a high level of fame, just as chariot drivers did.

Gladiators specialized in the use of certain kinds of equipment and certain fighting techniques. One class of gladiator was the heavily armored gladiators. These gladiators could not move very quickly but had a lot of protection. The Samnians (later, after the Samnians were Roman allies, the name was changed) and the Thracians were both well armored with helmets and greaves (shin guards) (Grant 1967: 58–59). The myrmillones were very heavily armored, with a distinctive fish image on their helmet (Grant 1967: 59–60). There were also lightly armored gladiators who used speed and agility to their advantage. These gladiators learned to use nets and tridents, bows and arrows, or lassoes. Other types of gladiators were the essedarii, who drove war chariots (Grant 1967: 62) and the dimacherii, who had two swords (Grant 1967: 62). Also noteworthy were the andabatae, who wore a helmet that blocked their vision, forcing them to fight blindly (Grant 1967: 61). Bestiarii fought wild animals without armor (Auget 1994: 89).

Other Events.

There were other types of spectacles within the Roman world. Large naval battles, called naumachiae, were staged on artificial lakes (Adkins and Adkins 1994: 349). Similarly, historic battles or mythological battles were also staged (Grant 1967: 88–91). In these events, people actually died, buildings were destroyed, and ships sank. Also popular were wild animal hunts (Auget 1994: 99). Large numbers of animals were killed this way, and the more exotic the better, as hunts were performed in front of an audience (Adkins and Adkins 1994: 348; Auget 1994: 81). Similarly, animals would be put into arenas to fight each other; for example, lions fighting elephants. Executions were also held in entertainment venues. Convicted criminals would be set, without weapons, against animals or gladiators and killed, to the crowd’s amusement (Auget 1994: 93–95). Nero’s execution of Christians by feeding them to the lions is a famous example.

Circus Maximus

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The Marble Stadium of Trajan

After yet another fire the Circus was rebuilt by Trajan in AD 103. The Roman Empire was at the height of its power and the new Circus Maximus reflected this status. The Circus was now a stone construction, three stories high. The lower part of the cavea (seating area) was built in marble. The arena complex was now more than 600m long and 150m wide (2000x500ft).

Popular Events

The Circus Maximus was occasionally used for events such as processions or gladiator combats, but on most days only chariot races with quadrigaes, pulled by four horses, were held here. The races themselves were wildly popular with people fanatically supporting one of the four factions: red, white, green and blue representing summer, winter, spring and autumn respectively. Bets were laid on one of the factions and supporters of the different factions often clashed, sometimes resulting in deaths among the spectators.

The Last Race

The last race at the Circus Maximus was held in AD 549, almost a millennium after the first races were held at this location. Today only the layout of the original circus can be seen in what is now a large grassland. Most of the original structure has been used as building material for medieval and Renaissance constructions.

LINK

The COLISEUM

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The Coliseum (Coloseum, Colosseum), was built during the reign of Emperor Vespasiano c. 72 AD and dedicated in 80 AD by his son Titus. The popular name of Coliseum came about because the immense oval stadium was situated next to a colossal statue of Nero. The original name of this ancient Roman sports arena, the largest arena of its kind, is The Amphitheatrum Flavium.

Over 64 metres high with eighty entrances, the Coliseum could hold upwards of 50,000 spectators. Public events such as gladiator fights, mock naval battles and wild animal hunts were held at the Coliseum. During the staged fights as many as 10,000 people were killed. Fighters were slaves, prisoners or volunteers. Spectators saw persecuted Christians killed by lions. After 404 AD gladiatorial battles were no longer held, but animals such as lions, elephants, snakes and panthers continued to be massacred in the name of sport until the 6th century.

Mock naval battles were arranged by removing the heavy wooden flooring and flooding the lower cells, which usually housed the animals and prisoners. As gladiator fights proved to be more popular, the naval battles were ultimately moved to another site, and the wooden floors made permanent. During the middle ages, stones from the Coliseum were removed for new buildings.

LINK

Chariots - Circus Maximus

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Chariot racing was the most popular spectator sport. The Circus Maximus, as its name implies, was the largest but not the only venue in Rome for the races: it may have had a capacity of a hundred fi fty thousand in the Augustan age, rising in later centuries to more than a quarter of a million people. (On July 9, 2006, six hundred thousand people watched Italy beat France in the soccer World Cup Final on three enormous television screens in the Circus Maximus.) The Colosseum, where gladiatorial shows were held, could accommodate perhaps no more than fifty thousand, whereas the world’s largest soccer venue, the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, has a capacity of approximately two hundred thousand, and the largest sporting venue of any kind, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has a permanent seating capacity of two hundred fifty thousand and an infield spectator capacity of more than one hundred fifty thousand.

During the games in the Circus Maximus, crystals of selenite are strewn over the sand, giving it a bright sheen that is much admired (Pliny Natural History 36.162). Because it is easily split into very thin plates, selenite was also sometimes used instead of glass in windows.

When he was a boy, Nero’s main theme of conversation was chariot racing in the Circus, even though he was told not to talk about it. Once, when he was complaining to his fellow students about a charioteer from the Green team being dragged along, his paedagogus scolded him; Nero lied and told him that he was discussing the episode in Homer in which Achilles ties Hector’s corpse to his chariot and drags it round Troy (Suetonius Life of Nero 22).

Nero often took part in chariot races. At the Olympic games, he even drove a ten-horse chariot, despite having criticized King Mithridates in one of his poems for doing precisely that. He fell from his chariot and had to be helped back in; even though he could not stay the course and stopped before reaching the finishing line, he was crowned as victor (Suetonius Life of Nero 24).

Marcus Aurelius Mollicius Tatianus, born here in Rome, who lived twenty years, eight months, and seven days, and who won 125 crowns of victory, eighty-nine for the Reds, twenty-four for the Greens, fi ve for the Blues, seven for the Whites. Twice he won a prize of forty thousand sestertii ( Corpus of Latin Inscriptions 6.10049 b , an epitaph for a charioteer). From such inscriptions it has been calculated that the mean age at death for charioteers was twenty-two and a half years. Th is driver’s brother, Polynices, won many more victories, 739, and lived rather longer, twenty-nine years, nine months, and fi ve days (6.10049 a ).

CHARIOTEERS

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There are indications that chariot-racing was at least from the second century AD the focus of a good deal of magic-working. That binding-spells inscribed on sheets of lead and directed against the charioteers who belonged to the teams which competed against each other in the circus or hippodrome were regularly deposited in these places and in other locations is well attested. It is impossible to give a precise date to the tablets, but some of them will certainly go back to the second century AD. The explanation that Pausanias attributes to an Egyptian for horses panicking at a certain point on the racecourse at Olympia is relevant here, for unless the practice of burying curse-tablets in hippodromes and circuses was well known, it would not have made much sense to have an Egyptian speak of Pelops receiving an unspecified object from a magician and of his having buried it to upset the horses of Oenomaus. The general assumption is that such tablets were written at the behest of a fan hostile to a charioteer or charioteers from a team other than the one the fan favoured or for a gambler who had put his money on another charioteer. It is to be suspected that the charioteers themselves were actively engaged in putting spells on each other. What can confidently be asserted is that long before Christian emperors ruled the Roman world, chariotracing encouraged sorcery.

In the eyes of Christian authors the greatest and in some ways most characteristic of the evils associated with chariot-racing was sorcery. For John Chrysostom chariot-racing is almost a byword for sorcery. In one homily, after berating his congregation for going to the theatre, he turns his attention to the other forms of entertainment that they frequent by asking rhetorically what he is to say of the magic-working of the horse races along with that of the contests with wild beasts. In another homily, he complains that men are quite ignorant of well-known characters in Scripture and cannot say, if asked, how many Apostles there were, but nonetheless have a profound intimacy with the world of the racecourse in the form of its horses and their charioteers; their lives are quite consumed by chariot-racing; instead of spending their life on prayer, they spend it on shouting and disturbances, vile language, battles, pleasures that have no proper place and deeds performed through magic. Another Christian author of the fourth century AD, Amphilochus of Iconium, in a poem written in iambs, describes chariot-racing in the hippodrome as a contest in sorcery (goeteia), not speed. The sorcery that Amphilochus has in mind is that practised by the sorcerers to whom the maddened fans hasten in their insane desire for victory. The sorcerers, for their part, according to Amphilochus, summon up evil demons to help them bring about spills, collisions and deaths.

It would be unwise to discount what John Chrysostom and Amphilochus have to say about sorcery in the hippodrome as Christian propaganda. Their testimony is confirmed by other forms of evidence. Jerome in his Life of Hilarion the Hermit tells of two encounters that Hilarion, a Syro-Palestinian saint, had with the sorcery of the hippodrome. Both episodes are set in Gaza. In one of them a charioteer of that city became so rigid while driving his chariot that he was unable to move his hands or bend his neck to look back. This had happened to him because a demon had struck him. He was brought to his bed, where he lay, able only to move his tongue in prayer. Hilarion told him that he could not be cured until he expressed belief in Jesus and renounced his craft. The charioteer did both of these things and was healed. The story is of interest more for what Jerome takes for granted than for what he explicitly tells us. He does not have to inform his readers that the demon who causes the charioteer to seize up in the middle of the race has been conjured up by someone who does not want the charioteer to win, nor that the inability of the man to move any part of his body was precisely the condition that many binding-spells were expressly intended to bring about. As for the man’s having to renounce his craft before he can be saved, that was hardly an idiosyncratic move on Hilarion’s part, but represents the policy of the Church. One of the Canons of the Council of Elvira requires charioteers and dancers to renounce their crafts before they can be treated as believers.

The other story is not about a charioteer, but about a citizen of Gaza and a Christian called Italicus, who raised horses to race them in the hippodrome. He had as his rival a magistrate (duumvir) who was a devotee of the Syro-Palestinian god, Marnas. Because his rival had at his beck and call a magician who was able by the incantations that he addressed to demons both to hold back the horses of his opponents and speed on his own, Italicus approached Hilarion and begged him for help: he did not want to harm his rival, only to defend himself against the man. Hilarion at first thought that the request was beneath his dignity and suggested that Italicus should save his soul by giving the money which he devoted to his chariot-teams to the poor. Italicus replied that it was not a matter of his actually wanting to race horses, but that his position required him to do so; furthermore, as a Christian, he was unable to use magic; he sought help against the adversaries of God amongst the people of Gaza not for his own sake, but for the Church of Christ which they were mocking. Hilarion’s fellow-monks now pleaded with him to help. He acceded to their request and gave instructions that the clay cup from which he drank should be filled with water and handed over to Italicus. The latter took the vessel and with it besprinkled his stable, his horses, his charioteers, the chariot and the starting-gates. Great expectation filled the crowd. When the signal for the start was given, Italicus’ horses flew ahead, while those of his rival were left far behind. Some of the pagans even joined in the applause on Italicus’ side, since Marnas had been defeated by Christ. Italicus’ rivals were furious and demanded that Italicus be punished as a Christian magician.

The lesson to be drawn from the tales that Jerome tells is that magic-working was not only practised by charioteers and the urban masses, but that the rich men who sponsored chariot-teams might engage in it also. A little more of the world in which these patrons of the games lived emerges from a speech in which Libanius denounces young men who are sent to a great city to study rhetoric, but who because of lack of application never bring their studies to fruition. He brings up the part the races played in distracting the young men from their studies: in contrast to diligent students to whom the races were nothing, the only concern of these young men was how such-and-such a charioteer would defeat a rival; a sorcerer (goes), in consequence, who promised the desired result had in their eyes a status higher than a god. He goes on to speak of the continuing fascination that some of the young men had with chariot-racing and with the company of charioteers, even after they had sold the horses that they had bought as a civic liturgy for the chariot-races: they became so absorbed in the races that they judged a day good or bad by the victories or defeats of their favourite charioteers.

Libanius and Jerome not only give us a glimpse of men from the upper class actively engaged in the magic-working of the hippodrome they also conjure up the behaviour of a crowd fully aware that sorcerers were at work and all too ready to come to the conclusion that upset victories represented the triumph of a magician. Behind Jerome’s reference to the call that Italicus’ defeated rivals put up for his punishment as a magician will be orchestrated chants decrying the victorious owner as a magician. Libanius, for his part, makes a telling comparison between the lassitude of the citizen-body when confronted by his complaints about the sorcery that had been directed against him and what happened when a horse or charioteer was thought to have been impeded by sorcery: it was as though the city itself had perished. The suspicion of sorcery in the hippodrome could, accordingly, cause convulsions in the city.

It is not only in the Greek East in the late fourth century that the assumption that sorcery was ever-present in the hippodrome is encountered. Evidence exists that the same phenomenon was visible in Italy one hundred years later. There is from the year AD 507 an extraordinary letter written under the name of the Emperor in the West, Theoderic, by Cassiodorus, a high imperial functionary, to Faustus, the praetorian prefect in Rome in which the writer dwells on the case of a certain charioteer called Thomas, who had come from the East to Italy and whom the Emperor had chosen to reward with a monthly largess to secure his continued presence in Italy. The number of victories Thomas had won was so great that he was called a wizard (maleficus), a charge which we are told charioteers welcomed as a compliment. The writer then comments that where the victory cannot be attributed to the quality of the horses, it needs must be assigned to the wickedness of magic. Successful charioteers are then imagined as a matter of course to have practised magic, a charge which the charioteers, far from rejecting, took a positive delight in, since it added to their fame. The crowd in the Greek East drew the same conclusions to judge from a Byzantine astrological manuscript that contains an excerpt from an astrological writer of the High or Late Empire who had devised a special system for divining winners in chariot racing. The author, an otherwise unknown figure called Theodorus of Alexandria, says that because of a failure to understand the true cause of the victory many or rather almost all judge the winning charioteer to be a magician.

Cassiodorus’s letter and Theodorus refer to the common assumption that it is the charioteers themselves who perform magic. Not all charioteers will have practised on their own behalf. There will have been charioteers who looked to others to perform their magic for them in the conviction that such persons were more effective and powerful magicians than they themselves could ever be. Ammianus records the conviction of a charioteer who falls into this category. The conviction was the result of an investigation in Rome in AD 364 into witchcraft instituted by Apronianus, the praefectus urbi. The charioteer was called Hilarinus and he was convicted of having sent his son, a boy who was just entering adolescence, to a sorcerer (veneficus) to have him taught certain of the more arcane and forbidden portions of the craft of the sorcerer. Hilarinus confessed to his having made the arrangement to ensure that the aid he sought should come from within his own household and so that no one else should be privy to it. He was sentenced to death, but escaped from the rather lax custody of the executioner to a Christian shrine, whence he was dragged forth to be executed on the spot. That it was quite normal for charioteers to have magic performed for them by others is also suggested by the explanation given by Procopius of Caesarea for the facility in sorcery that Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, Justinian’s great general, possessed, which was that both her father and grandfather were charioteers who had plied their trade in Byzantium and Thessalonica and that she had consorted with the sorcerers associated with the paternal side of her family and from them had learned the key elements of their craft. Whatever reservations the reader may feel about the reliability of this information, the notion that charioteers retained their own favourite sorcerers will hardly be Procopius’ invention.

Since charioteers lived in a world in which magic-working was endemic, it is hardly surprising that some of them became adepts themselves. Most of the sorcery they practised will have been directed at other charioteers. The popular charioteer called Athanasius, who was burned to death in Rome under Valentinian after having been caught engaging in sorcery, presumably falls into this category. But the reputation of charioteers as magic-workers also brought them contracts from men who needed sorcery that had no connection with the hippodrome performed for them. In the revelations about magic-working in Rome that followed the arrest of the Campanian haruspex and his allies Ammianus says that three men of the highest rank (clarissimi) were accused of having participated in the sorcery in which the Campanian haruspex and his associates were implicated and of having supported a charioteer called Auchenius for that purpose. They were acquitted and we hear no more of Auchenius. They provided Auchenius with funds, surely not because they were interested in his engaging in sorcery on their behalf against other charioteers and their horses, but because they wished him to employ his craft against their enemies.

Ammianus’ own view of the character of charioteers and their propensity for magic is to be seen in a digression, strongly reminiscent of Juvenal’s denunciation of Roman degeneracy, on the decline in moral standards that had taken place under Valentinian. Ammianus cites as an instance of the decline the readiness of some men, when a creditor pressed them too hard, to have recourse to a charioteer capable of acts of unlicensed audacity, who would make sure that the creditor was charged with being a magician. The unfortunate creditor was then only able to buy his way out of the accusations at heavy expense, after having given an undertaking that he was owed nothing. The passage tells us something about the reputation of charioteers: they were men who felt no moral or legal scruples and lent their hand readily to acts of audacious criminality. That is straightforward enough. What requires interpretation is the embarrassed debtor’s going to a charioteer to get him to charge the creditor who is causing trouble with being a sorcerer. The explanation must lie in the widespread assumption that charioteers were mixed up with sorcery and associated with sorcerers, if they were not sorcerers themselves. They were the sort of men to whom people went if they wanted someone who could plausibly claim to know who was practising magic.

So close was the association in the minds of men between charioteers and magicworking that it even found expression in official edicts. In an edict issued in Rome on August 16th AD 389 under the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius dealing with the arrest of magicians, charioteers are singled out as those most likely to contravene the edict and as those most likely to murder by clandestine means persons accused of magic under the edict. The punishment to be visited on those who contravene the edict in the latter way is to be death, because the presumption exists that persons who have killed someone accused of murder have done so either to prevent the accused revealing their complicity in his crime or as a pretext for exacting personal vengeance.

Charioteers appear to have been a race apart: their sons tended to become charioteers and they took as their wives women with associations with the theatre. The father and grandfather of Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, are instances of the pattern: a son following in the footsteps of his father and becoming a charioteer. It would in fact be surprising should a high proportion of the sons of charioteers not have been brought up to follow the calling of their fathers. Boys from such a background are not likely to have had too many other opportunities for employment and they will have had the immeasurable advantage over other boys of having been brought up amongst horses and of having learned how to handle them.

Antonina’s mother was a prostitute from the stage. There is nothing in Procopius’ description of the mother as a woman who had prostituted herself from the stage that would have shocked or surprised an ancient reader. In the ancient world, women who appeared on the stage were assumed to be available for prostitution. There would in fact have been considerable surprise had that expectation been belied. Most of them were dancers or women who mimed rôles rather than actresses in our sense. It is women of this sort whom charioteers appear to have married. One degraded and socially isolated calling was of necessity thrown into the arms of another. To find instances besides that of Antonina’s mother and father of actresses marrying charioteers requires inspired guesswork, since direct evidence is just not available. There are, however, from late fourth-and early fifth-century Rome a series of curse-tablets directed against charioteers that not only identify the charioteer by his nickname but also as the son of such-and-such a mother. The mothers have such names as Dionysia, Fortuna, Paschasia and Veneria, names that are reminiscent of the stage-names taken by pantomimes.

Overview - Colosseum | Days of Wonder

2008-12-19T21:09:00.003+09:00

In Colosseum you are a Roman impresario - producing great spectacles in your arena in the hope of attracting the most spectators to your events. You'll earn wealth and glory for each event you run, using it to build ever more ambitious events. Attract the most spectators to one of your events and you'll be granted the title of Grand Impresario, with tales of your extraordinary spectacles acclaimed throughout the empire.

However, to produce larger events that will attract more spectators, you will need to build up your arena's infrastructure.

via Overview - Colosseum | Days of Wonder.

THE CELTIC WAR CHARIOT

2008-12-12T14:47:00.002+09:00

Reconstruction of a Celtic chariot (after Stuart Piggott). The essence of the vehicle is its light flexible construction designed for speed and easy maneuverability.

The Celtic war chariot impressed a number of observers. Diodorus describes how (for journeys and in battle they use two-horse chariots, the chariot carrying both charioteer and chieftain. When they meet with cavalry in battle they cast their javelins at the enemy and then descending from the chariot join battle with their swords'. The absence of any reference to chariot warfare in Gaul during Caesar's campaigns suggests that as a means of fighting it was no longer of significance. When, however, he crossed the Channel to Britain, he found the chariot much in evidence. He was sufficiently impressed by the novelty of the tactics involved that he gave an extended description of British charioteering, stressing in particular the agility of the charioteer, who, by virtue of long practice, could run out along the chariot pole between the horses and could check and change direction in a moment. The speed with which chariots could move the combatant from one point of the field to another was particularly effective and led Caesar to make the shrewd observation of a military man that 'They combined the staying power of infantry with the mobility of cavalry.' In Britain his chief opponent Cassivellaunus was able to muster 4,000 chariots, which, if used together, must have been a formidable sight.

Sufficient is known of these machines from the archaeological remains of their metal fittings and from depiction on contemporary coinage to appreciate their lightness and efficiency. The chariot was essentially a platform, carried on a pair of iron-tired, spoked wheels circa 0.9 metres in diameter, linked by a pole and yoke to two small ponies. The sides were low double hoops of bent wood or wickerwork, while the front and back were open for ease of access. The war chariot of this kind was a specialized version of the two-wheeled vehicle which became popular in the Celtic world in the fifth century BC and was used from then on in funerary ritual. Its ultimate inspiration may well have come from the Etruscan world. There is no reason to assume that the funerary vehicles were war chariots. Structurally they were similar, but it is more likely that the vehicle used in burial was a parade vehicle symbolizing the high status of the deceased, though it might have been possible to convert one to the other.

Diodorus, as we have seen, says that, when the chariot teams meet with opposing cavalry, the combatants first throw their javelins and then descend from the chariot to join battle with their swords. Caesar adds that the chariots then moved off but returned when necessary to pick up the warrior and carry him to another part of the field. The chariot driver was evidently a skilled person and of vital importance to the well-being of the warrior he served. Diodorus records that the elite 'bring into battle as their attendants free men chosen from among the poorer classes whom they use as charioteers and shield bearers in battle' (Hist. 5.29).

A remark of Pausanius' throws some further light on the battle order. He mentions the trimarcisia (literally 'three riders') as a Celtic fighting unit, implying that the warrior elite were accompanied by two supporters. In this case we are dealing with a cavalry unit. The supporters would stay behind the ranks as battle proceeded ready to dash to their master's assistance if he needed a fresh horse or was wounded and, if he were seriously injured, to take his place in the battle line.

The chariot team and the trimarcisia imply a close and practised relationship between fighting men bound by obligation and honour, much as a knight and squire worked together in medieval warfare. In this context it is possible to understand the depth of the antagonism between the British queen, Cartimandua, and her husband Venutius when she left her husband in favour of Vellocatus, who was described as his 'armour bearer'. Not only was she publicly dishonouring Venutius, but she was weakening him by removing a trained and trusted member of his fighting entourage.

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2008-12-01T21:51:00.000+09:00

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Ludi circenses

2008-12-01T21:35:00.000+09:00

by: P. Dionysius Mus

In this essay I would like to cover the Ludi Circenses, or chariot races. Their importance in the ancient Roman society can not be underestimated. In the words of the famous Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, writer of many satires:

Iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli vendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses.

Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses.

(Iuvenalis, Satura X, 77-81)

The most common image we have of the Ludi Circenses is that from the magical movie Ben Hur: about ten minutes long the chariots race around the circus, the crowd cheers loud to support their favourites, drama and tension comes off the screen right into the living room, where those watching the movie are thrilled an carried away as if they were in the circus. But how true is this image? There are in fact a whole bunch of mistakes in the Ben Hur chariot race, and some can be noticed right away. First of all, the setting is wrong: the chariot race is held in the eastern part of the empire, in a Roman circus and completely in the Roman style, with the local governor Pilatus as organiser. However, a circus is typical for the western part of the empire, the eastern part only had ‘primitive’ racing tracks in the Greek style (hippodrome). And second, the main characters of the race (and the movie) would never have raced in antiquity. Messala, the Roman tribune, is a man from the nobility class, and his career and status would be ruined if he even thought of participating in such an event. And also Judah Ben-Hur himself, son of a Roman officer, would have faced the same fate. The charioteers in the Roman empire (called ‘aurigae’) were always slaves or freedmen, as we can read in Martialis’ Epigrammata:

"I am Scorpus, the glory of the clamorous circus,

your applause, Rome, and brief darling."

(Martialis, Epigr. X, 53)

As in our modern day sports events, the chariot racing also had its fans, and they can be very well compared to our current sports fans:

“The races are on, a spectacle which has not the slightest interest for me. It lacks novelty and variety. If you have seen it once, then there is nothing left for you to see. So it amazes me that thousands and thousands of grown men should be like children, wanting to look at horses running and men mounted on chariots over and over again. If it was the speed of the horses or the skill of the drivers that attracted them, there would be some sense in it--but in fact it is simply the colour. That is what they back and that is what fascinates them. Suppose half way through the race the drivers were to change their colours, then the supporters' backing will change too and in a second they will abandon the horses on which a moment earlier their eyes had been fixed and whose names they had been shouting. Such is the overpowering influence of a single worthless shirt, not only over the crowd, which is worth less than a shirt anyhow, but over a number of serious men. When I think of their wasting their time so insatiably over such tedious, repetitive inanity, I derive not a little enjoyment from the fact that such enjoyment is not one to which I am a slave. These are days which other people squander on utterly idle business but days when I am at my happiest, occupying my leisure time with the pen.”

(C. Plinius – Epistulae IX, 6)

And every one of those fans supported his own favourite team. The Ludi Circenses had in fact a few teams (called ‘factiones’), determined by the colour they wore: the two big teams were the blues (‘veneti’) and the greens (‘prasini’). There were also two smaller teams, subordinate to the big ones: the reds (‘russati’) and the whites (‘albati’). These ‘factiones’ always started with one, two or three chariots each, so a race consisted of four, eight or twelve chariots. The ‘factiones’ were only a common practice in the western part of the empire; in the east various team owners simply let their own chariot race (so any number of chariots could race, but mostly not more than twelve). It was also possible for drivers to switch ‘factiones’ during their career, but in the end they stayed with one ‘factio’ where they could win a lot of prizes. An example:

“Gaius Appuleius Diocles, charioteer of the Red faction , a Spanish Lusitanian by birth, he lived for 42 years, 7 months and 23 days. He first raced for the White faction in the consulship of Acilius Aviola and Corellius Pansa . He won his first race for the same faction in the consulship of Manius Acilius Glabrio and Gaius Bellicius Torquatus . He raced for the first time for the Green faction in the second consulship of Torquatus Asprenas and Annius Libo . He won for the first time for the Red faction in the consulship of Laenas Pontianus and Antonius Rufinus. Totals: he raced four horse chariots for 24 years, he started in 4257 races, he won 1,463 times. In the first race after the procession: 110 times, in singles , 1064 times. He won 92 major prizes. Of these, 32 were of 30,000 HS, three of them with six-horse teams; 28 of 40,000 HS, two of them in races with six horse chariots, 38 of 50,000 HS, one of these in a seven-horse chariot; 3 of 60,000 HS. In doubles he won 347 times, four of them in races with three horse teams with prizes of 15,000 HS. In triples he won 51 times. In all he won [2900 times], taking second place 861 times, third place 576 times, fourth place once for 1,000 HS, he failed 1351 times. He tied a Blue 10 times, a Green 91, two of these for prizes of 30,000 HS. He won a grand total of 35,863,120 HS. In addition, he won 3 times in races with two horse chariots for prizes of 1,000 HS. He tied a White once, a Green twice. …”

(ILS 5287 - translation by David Potter)

The public in the circus was very loyal to the various ‘factiones’, as we could already read in Plinius’ Epistula (cf. supra). The ‘factiones’ were led by members of the ‘ordo equester’, called ‘domini factionis’; they also had their own headquarters (‘stabula factionis’) on the Campus Martius in Rome, and different stables in the country. In late antiquity the ‘domini factionis’ were replaced by ‘factionarii’, appointed by the state government.

The charioteers of course could suffer serious injuries. A high risk factor for damage to life and limbs was pertinent, but compared to gladiator combats it was quite safe to be a charioteer. The high damage risk was of course much eased by the huge fortunes they could earn in the races. In Rome the prize money varied between 15000 and 60000 sesterces. Good ‘aurigae’ could earn a lot of money, like Diocles in the example above (a total of 35.863.120 sesterces). And not only the drivers, but also their horses could become famous:

"Undenis pedibusque syllabisque

Et multo sale nec tamen protervo

Notus gentibus ille Martialis

Et notus populis--quid invidetis?--

Non sum Andraemone notior caballo."

(Martialis, Epigr. X, 9)

The horses received palm branches that were attached to their harness, or they were awarded gilded 'modii' of barley. The horses were bred and trained on stud farms in the country (on farms belonging to the 'factiones', as mentioned earlier) in Northern Africa, Spain, Cappadocia, Greece and Sicily. Their size should have been between our current large ponies and small full-sized horses, and they all had hard and healthy hooves, necessary to race on the hard underground. Horses also retired after their career, as we see in these sources:

The chariots were named according to the number of horses. The most common were 'quadrigae (with four horses), but also 'bigae' or 'trigae' were used (respectively two or three horses), and sometimes even seiugae, octoiugae or decemiugae (six, eight or ten horses!). the horses were always harnessed side by side, so the difficulty level increased with the number of horses. The harness was simply a strap around the neck and a girth around the belly. Two of these girths were attached to the yoke ('iugum'), and thus the two central horses were called 'iugales'. The other horses were fixed to the left and right of the 'iugales', and they were called 'funales' (if a chariot was pulled by more horses, these were attached in between the 'iugales' and the 'funales'; a 'biga' had only the two 'iugales' attached to the yoke, a 'triga' had one horse attached and two as 'funales'). The 'iugales' were used mainly for pulling and stabilising, while the 'funales' took care of security and speed. The 'iugum' of a chariot was a transverse bar of about 1m in length, attached to a pole of about 2,3m with an upwards curve. The chariots had small wheels (Ø 65cm with 6 or 8 spokes), a small and low body (height 70 cm, width 60cm, depth 55cm) with a woven floor made of leather straps. Such a chariot weighed about 35kg, so together with the driver, the horses had to pull about 100kg. These chariots are called 'currus circensis', to distinguish them from the more elaborated 'currus triumphalis'. In the movie Ben Hur, this last type of chariot is used, most likely to add to the visual aspects, but totally incorrect as these triumphal chariots were never used to race.

The charioteers, unlike the movie Ben Hur shows us, wore protective clothing: a crash helmet (‘pilleus’), a lacing of leather strap around the torso (‘fasciae’) and wrappings of leather or linen around their legs. They also had a curved knife to cut the laces if they were dragged out of their chariot over the track. The racing techniques were in fact quite aggressive and ruthless., often resulting in very dangerous collisions and forming a determining factor for teamwork inside the ‘factiones’. The particularly critical points were of course the ‘metae’, where the chariots all had to make a 180° turn as closely to the ‘meta’ as possible (see further).

The monumental circuses as we know them, date from the late republican period on, but in the east they kept their already mentioned simple hippodromes. The best know is of course the Circus Maximus at Rome, built on an area of 4500m2 (12 times as big as the Colosseum) with a ‘cavea’ for about 150000 spectators (compared to 50000 for the Colosseum). A circus had two parallel long sides (between 244m and 580m), a width of 51m to 80m, a curved narrow side at one end and a straight narrow side with the twelve ‘carceres’ (starting boxes) on the other side. In the middle there was a double wall built in the length (‘spina’ or ‘euripus’), in the Circus Maximus 335m long and 8m wide. At both ends of the ‘spina’ were the ‘metae’, semi-circular platforms with three pillars tapering up to an egg-shaped finial. The ‘spina’ was richly ornamented and decorated, and upon it stood statues of the gods, palms and obelisks. The empty space between the two walls of the ‘spina’ was sometimes filled with water (hence the name ‘euripus’). On the ‘spina’ there were also seven egg-shaped and seven dolphin-shaped statues to count the laps (with possibly a second set of eggs at the edge of the arena for the drivers). The ‘spina’ was not built in the lengthwise axis of the arena: in the Circus Maximus there was a space of 42m at the right side of the ‘spina’, and 30m on the left side. This was of course because the drivers had to come from a starting line as wide as the whole track surface to a space only half that big.

The distance from the starting boxes (‘carceres’) to the first ‘meta’ was in the Circus Maximus 170m. They drove this only once and all the teams then came to the right of the ‘spina’ (the widest side, as noted above) to complete seven laps in anti-clockwise direction. Of course the curved line with the starting boxes was asymmetrically designed, so every team had to ride the same distance to reach the white chalk line at the first ‘meta’ that formed the starting line. The finish line was probably at the right-hand side of the track, just before the end of the ‘spina’. That was also the location of one of the two referee boxes. It is also possible that the race ended with a straight line of 170m (same as the distance from ‘carceres’ to starting line). Anyway, the total distance to be covered in a race would have been around 5km, when driving close enough around the ‘metae’. The surface of the racetrack in the arena is yet another complicated issue. In Arles it was made of stamped mud with a layer of coarse gravel (approximately 10-20cm) on top. In Sirmium there was 30cm of fine gravel over a layer of lime mortar and crushed brick. There should also have been a top layer, most likely with sand, but how much and what kind of sand is unclear. In any case, the surface must have been very well levelled, and a drainage system seems indispensable.

In the imperial period there were about 24 races a day during the Ludi, which means that with ‘quadrigae’ about 1152 horses were used on one day. However, this seems a rather large number, it is more likely that some horses were used more than once during a day, so the total number of used horses should be around 700-800. These races brought of course enormous organisational expenses, mainly on the account of the four racing ‘factiones’: the horses had to be very well prepared and groomed in the stables of the ‘factiones’, and another staff was needed at the circus to maintain the horses. The circus itself also needed a large staff: the mechanism for the starting boxes (see further) had to be maintained and serviced, the cleaning of the circus required a lot of workers, and there were also special teams available for the clearing of the track after an accident, when the wrecked chariots had to be removed (a very dangerous job, with the other chariots still racing at highest speed). There are also images of a special category of helpers: ‘sparsores’. These were young boys who needed to refresh horses and drivers during the race, running between the speeding chariots without any protection. There were also ‘hortatores’ or ‘iubilatores’ on the track. Like the ‘sparsores’, they also belonged to one of the racing ‘factiones’. Their task was probably to guide the chariots in the dust, as some sort of auxiliary. They were individual horsemen and they had protective clothing. They used their smaller size and higher speed to move between the chariots trying to find the best suitable way for their factio’s chariot. In between the races the public was amused and entertained by ‘desultatores’, acrobatic riders riding around in the circus jumping from one horse to another.

Each chariot race started with a ‘pompa circensis’ entering the circus, with the statues of the gods, followed by the participants and then the organiser in a magnificent triumphal chariot. Then the starting boxes were assigned to the participants by drawing lots. This happened publicly with numbered balls in a revolving urn. Like in modern day motorcycle races, the one who’s number came first out of the urn, could pick the starting box he wanted, and so on until every participant had his box. Then the chariots entered the ‘carceres’, which had gates (‘ostia’) about 3m to 6m wide. These gates had double swinging doors that sprung out when they were unbolted. The system was the same like that of some artillery weapons (catapult etc.). then the holder of the games gave the starting sign by throwing down a red cloth (‘mappa’); at the same time the trumpets were blown. All chariots raced out of their boxes straight to the white chalk line at the first ‘meta’. Then they chose the best racing lone possible and rode their seven laps. In the Circus Maximus a race should have lasted for about 8-9 minutes at an average speed of 35kph. After the race there was a victory celebration on a podium, and the winner could ride a lap of honour to greet the spectators.

I would like to finish this text with a rather special piece of epigraphic evidence, and a fine description of the Ludi Circenses by a fifth century author.

First we have a special piece of epigraphic evidence: a lead curse tablet from the third century found at Carthage:

SOURCE: PAPYRI GRAECAE MAGICAE

Note: This spell is an example of a curse tablet inscription that tapers off and forms a triangle.

I invoke you, spirit of one untimely dead, whoever you are, by the mighty names SALBATHBAL AUTHGEROTABAL BASUTHATEO ALEO SAMMABETHOR.

Bind the horses whose names and images/likeness on this implement I entrust to you; of the Red [team]: Silvanus, Servator, Lues, Zephyrus, Blandus, Imbraius, Dives, Mariscus, Rapidus, Oriens, Arbustus; of the Blues: Imminens, Dignus, Linon, Paezon, Chrysaspis, Argutus, Diresor, Frugiferus, Euphrates, Sanctus, Aethiops, Praeclarus. Bind their running, their power, their soul, their onrush, their speed. Take away their victory, entangle their feet, hinder them, hobble them, so that tomorrow morning in the hippodrome they are not able to run or walk about, or win, or go out of the starting gates, or advance either on the racecourse or track, but may they fall with their drivers, Euprepes, son of Telesphoros, and Gentius and Felix and Dionusios "the biter" and Lamuros. For AMUEKARPTIR ERCHONSOI RAZAABUA DRUENEPHISI NOINISTHERGA BEPHURORBETH command you. Bind the horses whose names and images I have entrusted to you on this implement; of the Reds: Silvanus, Servator, Lues, Zephyrus, Blandus, Imbraius, Dives, Mariscus, Rapidus, Oriens, Arbustus; and of the Blues: Imminens, Dignus, Linon, Paezon, Chrysaspis, Argutus, Derisor, Frugiferus, Euphrates, Sanctus, Aethiops, Praeclarus. Bind their running, their power, their soul, their onrush, their speed. Take away their victory, entangle their feet, hinder them, hobble them, so that tomorrow morning in the hippodrome they are not able to run or walk about, or win, or go out of the starting gates, or advance either on the racecourse, or circle around the turning point; but may they fall with their drivers, Euprepes, son of Telesphoros, and Gentius and Felix, and Dionysius "the biter" and Lamuros. Bind their hands, take away their victory, their exit, their sight, so that they are unable to see their rival charioteers, but rather snatch them up from their chariots and twist them to the ground so that they alone fall, dragged along all over the hippodrome, especially at the turning points, with damage to their body, with the horses whom they drive. Now, quickly.

(trans. J. Gager (1992), no. 9)

In the fifth century a man named Sidonius Apollinaris wrote a letter to a certain Consentius, telling about the Ludi Circenses. Two excerpts:

"There behind the barriers chafe those beasts, pressing against the fastenings, while a vapoury blast comes forth between the wooden bars and even before the race the field they have not yet entered is filled with their panting breath...never are their feet still, but restlessly they lash the hardened timber....The others are busy with hand and voice, and everywhere the sweat of drivers and flying steeds falls in drops on to the field. The hoarse roar from applauding partisans stirs the heart, and the contestants, both horse and men, are warmed by the race and chilled by fear....You sped straight past your swerving rival...."

"His horses were brought down, a multitude of intruding legs entered the wheels, and the twelve spokes were crowded, until a crackle came from those crammed spaces and the revolving rim shattered the entangled feet; then he, a fifth victim, flung from his chariot, which fell upon him, caused a mountain of manifold havoc, and blood disfigured his prostrate brow."

Some links, sources and literature:

Encyclopedia Romana: The Circus Maximus

Noctes Gallicanae: Circenses

Capitolium.Org: Panem et Circenses

The Roman Amphitheatre

VRoma: Leisure and Entertainment

G. BARTHEMY & D. GOUREVITCH: Les loisirs des Romains (Paris, 1975)

H.A. HARRIS: Sport in Greece and Rome (Thames and Hudson, 1972)

W.E. SWEET: Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press USA, 1987)

J.P. TONER: Leisure and ancient Rome (Blackwell Publishers, 1995)

M.B. POLIAKOFF: Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence and Culture (Yale University Press, 1987)

J.H. HUMPHREY: Roman circuses, arenas for chariot racing (University of California Press, 1986)

Ancient sources:

Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus: Epistularum Libri X

Caius Sollius Modestus Apollinaris Sidonius: Epistulae

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus: De Spectaculis

Cassius Dio Cocceianus: Romaike Historia

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis: Saturae

Marcus Valerius Martialis: Epigrammaton

Marcus Valerius Martialis: Liber De Spectaculis

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus: Variarum Libri XII

Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The Roman Antiquities

Chariot Racing

2008-12-01T21:26:00.000+09:00

A modern recreation of chariot racing in Puy du Fou

Chariots were the fastest method of travel in the ancient world around the Mediterranean, so it was inevitable that they would be used for racing. A chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle with a pole sticking out the front. Horses are harnessed on either side of the pole to make a two, four or six horse chariot. The rider may sit or stand, but for racing it was normal to stand and assist in steering by leaning the chariot, as well as directing the horses.

The Ancient Greeks

Chariot racing is mentioned in several Greek myths, such as the story of Pelops, son of Tantalus: he wanted to marry Hippodameia, the daughter of Oenomaus, king of Elis. The king was a nasty piece of work, who insisted on all potential suitors competing against him and his charioteer, Myrtilus, in a chariot race (Oenomaus had a two-man chariot); if the suitor lost the race, he was executed, and Oenomaus had so far sent 13 unlucky young men to their deaths. Pelops outwitted the king by cheating. By bribing the charioteer with the promise of half the king's wealth, he persuaded him to take the axle pin out the king's chariot, causing the wheel to fall off during the race. The charioteer survived but the king was killed in the crash.

A chariot race is also described in Book 23 of Homer's Iliad, one of the two oldest surviving works of Greek literature and possibly composed as early as 1000 BC. The race was held as part of the funeral of Patroclus, the charioteer of Achilles. The chariots were two-horse models, and the riders stood in them, urging the horses on with whips. This particular race was won by Diomedes, the son of Tydeus.

The Olympic Games, founded in 776 BC, didn't originally include a chariot race, but this event was added in 680 BC. The hippodrome where the chariot races took place was situated to the south of the running track, but there is no trace of it today - it has long since gone under the plough.

The museum in Delphi, Greece, has a wonderful bronze statue of a charioteer dating from the 5th Century BC.

The Romans

It wasn't only the Greeks that liked chariot racing. The sport was popular throughout the lands around the Mediterranean, but it was the Romans who really made it their own. Chariot racing for the Romans was the premier sport of the day, as exciting as Formula One and as popular as Football. You may have seen the chariot race in the epic film Ben Hur. The reality was just as exciting, although they didn't have blades on the axles of the chariots. A day at the races could attract crowds in the hundreds of thousands.

In Imperial times (from the 1st Century BC onwards), the races were paid for by the Emperor himself and were provided free of charge to the people. This was an important way of making sure that the Emperor was liked by the people and prevented the masses from rising up and overthrowing him. Romans didn't have weekends, working a seven-day week, but there were many holidays, and the holidays always featured chariot racing. At the height of the Empire there were races held on about 80 days in the year, with up to 24 races a day. Men and women were allowed in the audience, and could sit together, making it a popular family entertainment. (They weren't allowed to sit together in the theatre). On-track gambling was extremely popular.

The Roman racing ground was called a 'circus', from the Latin word for circle, although it was not circular but long and narrow. There were a number of circuses in Rome - the biggest, the Circus Maximus, could seat about a quarter of the entire population of the city. The race was three Roman miles1 in length, and involved seven laps of the circus. There could be anything from 4 to 12 chariots competing in the race.

The Circus Maximus

The biggest and oldest of the circuses, this started out in the 6th Century BC as a long flat track in a valley between two hills (the Aventine and the Palatine). The spectators would sit on the ground on either side. Next, wooden seating was provided. Finally a stone building was built. This had a track 540m long and about 90m wide - that's about the size of five football pitches laid end to end. Around this were tiered seats 30m deep and 28m high, capable of taking between 150,000 and 250,000 depending on who you believe.

The track was long and narrow with sharp curves at each end. There was a 3-metre-wide canal of water between the spectators and the track; the main purpose of this was to protect the audience when the circus was used for gladitorial shows involving wild animals, before the Colosseum was built; but the water was also used to keep the chariots cool.

Down the centre of the track was a wall known as the spina or spine, which kept the chariots that were going in one direction from colliding with the ones travelling in the other direction. The three-mile course involved seven circuits of the circus. Situated on the spine were seven wooden eggs and seven bronze dolphins. Both eggs and dolphins were used to show how many laps there were left to run - an egg was lowered each time the leader completed a lap. The dolphins were mounted on a hinged mechanism so that they could be tilted either head up or tail up. As the leader completed each lap, another dolphin would lower his head. It is not known why the Romans used both eggs and dolphins.

Also on the spina were statues of gods, heroes and emperors, and there were two giant obelisks, looted from the temples of Egypt. In full view of the people of Rome, these were a reminder to the common man of the glory of the Empire.

The whole of the western end of the track (about 100m wide) was taken up by the 12 starting gates. These were each wide enough to allow passage of a six-horse chariot. There was a mechanism for opening the 12 gates simultaneously, normally done at a signal from the Emperor, if he was in attendance. Then the race would be off, with a dash of about 200m before the track was split into two by the central spine. From here the track was only 30m wide, so the initial stage of the race would have been very exciting with everyone jostling for first place.

As well as the tiered seating, the circus also had an Imperial Box where the Emperor could attend the races. The Imperial Box was positioned so that it got a view of the start of the race, and the west end turn where there were many spectacular crashes, but strangely couldn't see the finish line.

Despite the size of the building, the lack of ticket booths meant that the the circus could have numerous entrances and exits, and could be emptied within about 15 minutes. There was free food on the way out, to encourage the crowds to leave at the end of the races.

The Circus Maximus was used for more than a thousand years, right up to the 6th Century AD; the last official games were hosted in 549 AD by the Ostrogoth King Totila, who had conquered Rome. Sadly, the Circus Maximus did not survive the 1,500 years since then, and there is little to see there now except for a large open space and the remains of the circular seating at the east end. The two obelisks were removed in the 16th Century. One is now in the Piazza del Popolo and the other in the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano. The ground level is much higher now than it was in ancient times, so it is possible that the remains of the track and spina are still there, buried about 30 feet below the present ground level. Perhaps future excavations will uncover this.

Other Circuses

The Circus Maxentius was built in the 4th Century AD by the Emperor Maxentius. Situated about three miles outside the city centre, along the Appian Way to the southeast of the city, it is in much better state than the Circus Maximus. The towers on either side of the starting gates, the central spina and some of the seats are still standing (although extensively restored), allowing a modern tourist to see how the circuses must have looked. The Circus Maxentius track is almost as big as that of the Circus Maxiumus, with space for 12 four-horse chariots. The seating capacity was much smaller, though, with seating for only 10,000 people.

Of course there were circuses for chariot racing in other places throughout the empire, although they were not as common as gladitorial arenas. One particularly fine example was in Mérida in the south of Spain; this is the best preserved Roman circus in existence.

Recently discovered (2004) is the circus at Colchester, England. This was the only circus in England, and appears to have been built in about the 2nd Century AD.

How Many Horses?

Pictures of Roman chariots, and statues of them, always show four horses. There's even a special word for a four-horse chariot: quadriga. In fact, chariot races were run about equally often with two horses and four horses. Occasionally more horses were used, including one with seven horses per chariot. (It's not clear where the 7th horse was attached.)

A two-horse chariot was almost as fast as a four-horse one, because the method of attaching the extra two horses did not allow them to provide a lot of extra traction, and two horses are much more manoeuvrable than four.

The Emperor Nero liked to think that he was the best at everything. In 67 AD, he competed in the Olympic Games. He decided that to make a particularly spectacular show, he should drive a 10-horse chariot, something which had never been tried, before or since, even though all the other competitors should only have standard two-horse models. Nero's performance was so bad that he didn't even finish the course, being thrown from the chariot, but was still declared the winner.

The Factions

Racing in Rome was controlled by four groups called 'factions', and all chariots ran under their banner. The factions were simply known by their four colours: the Red, the White, the Blue and the Green. In the later years of the Empire, the Red and the White became less significant and the Blue and the Green became the only important factions, dividing the city into two sets of supporters.

Faction Manager

This guy was the rich man who owned and managed the whole faction. He was answerable directly to the Emperor, who paid for the whole chariot racing business out of state funds.

Agitator - the Charioteer

The charioteer, or agitator in Latin, was the man who rode the chariot. He was the superstar of his day. There was great skill in this job; not only did he direct the horses, but he assisted in steering the chariot by throwing his weight around. Racing chariots were very light-weight, not at all like the ones depicted in Ben Hur. To aid in steering, most charioteers used very long reins which they wrapped around their body. Of course, if the charioteer fell from the chariot, he would be dragged along and probably killed, so he normally carried a sharp knife to cut the reins in an emergency.

Unlike modern day footballers, Roman charioteers competed in thousands of races. A milliarius was a charioteer who had won more than 1,000 races. Probably the most famous charioteer ever was Pompeius Musclosus, who won 3,559 races during his career.

Another notable charioteer was Gaius Apuleius Diocles, who not only won many races, but also kept meticulous records of everything he did, so we know a lot about him. He came from the region that is now Spain. He started his career with the White faction, then raced for the Greens and finally for the Reds where he really became famous.

Diocles raced in six-horse, seven-horse and three-horse chariots as well as the normal two and four-horse ones. In fact he was the first person to ever ride a seven-horse chariot in the circus.

He competed in 4,257 races and won 1,463 of them. Of these, 815 were ones were he took the lead at the start and kept it, proving the importance of a good clean start. Nevertheless, there was plenty of scope for catching up and passing - in 502 of his wins, Diocles snatched victory in the last lap.

Hortator - the Encourager

This guy's job was to ride around on horseback and shout encouragement at the charioteer. He also kept an eye on progress and could give status reports to the charioteer.

Sparsor - the Pit-Stop Soaker

Roman chariots had no ball bearings. The axle rubbed directly against its bearing and would get very hot. The soaker had to pour water over the axles at every opportunity to prevent them from going on fire. He would also soak the rider and horses if the weather was particularly hot.

Tentor - the Starting-Gate Operator

The tentor was the man who opened the starting gate at the signal from the official starter. In the early days, each stall would have a separate tentor, but in later years, a mechanism was in place which opened all the gates simultaneously.

Morator - the Horse Holder

More important than he sounds, the horse holder could make or break a race. He had to hold the reins of the horses until the starting gate was opened, and then release them cleanly so that the race got to a good start. Although the charioteer got all the credit for winning the race, many races were won in the first few seconds, because whoever took the lead tended to keep it. The humble horse holder was therefore crucial in getting the chariot to take the lead right from the start.

Stable Workers

There was a huge business in providing horses to the circus. The army insisted on mares and geldings, while the circus insisted on stallions, so the same stables could provide both army and circus. With 24 races in a day and 48 horses per race, the Circus Maximus alone could use more than a thousand horses in a single day, although the same horses could of course run again another day. The stable workers were an essential part of this business, although their names are not now remembered.

Horses

Of course, the stars of the show, second only to the charioteers themselves, were the horses. These were all stallions, and were given impressive names such as Compressor, Victor, Germinator and Incitatus. This last horse was so popular that the Emperor Calligula had a marble stall built for him, and planned to make him a consul.

We know from the records of Diocles that horses were worked hard: nine of his horses won 100 races and one of his horses won 200 races.

A good team of horses was nearly as important as a good charioteer. There's a story of one team who were used to winning. The charioteer fell out of the chariot, but the team went on to take the lead, dodging other chariots, cutting in in front of rivals; they won the race and after stopping at the finish line, went on to do a lap of honour, all without their charioteer!

Racing in Byzantium

When the capital of the Empire was moved by Emperor Constantine to Byzantium (Constantinople - modern Istanbul), the city already had a small chariot racing arena called the Hippodrome. By now, the Red and White factions had become unpopular and were absorbed into the other two factions. The Blues took over the Reds, and the Greens took over the Whites. So everybody supported either the Blues or the Greens. The Factions of Blue and Green were brought to Byzantium along with all the other trappings of chariot racing.

Constantine had the Hippodrome rebuilt to be much bigger - the track appears to have been smaller than the Circus Maximus, with a track length of about 400m, but this was still a huge stadium - there was seating for at least 100,000 people. On the spina were three monuments which can still be seen today: two obelisks from Egypt and a twisted bronze pillar now known as the Serpentine Column. This was originally known as the Tripod of Plataea, and featured three bronze snakes twisted to make a single pillar. It was supposedly made from the shields of the defeated Persians at the Battle of Plataea (479 BC), and had been offered to the Oracle at Delphi, a reminder to the world that the nobody could conquer the Greeks because the Persians had tried and failed. Constantine had it brought to Byzantium and displayed in the Hippodrome as a reminder that the Romans had conquered the Greeks.

The Hippodrome was the social centre of the city of Byzantium, and so it was also the social centre of the Roman Empire. The Emperor and his wife or mistress would attend most of the games. The Imperial Box was linked by a special private staircase and corridor to the Imperial Palace so that they could come and go as they liked.

The Nika Riots and Beyond

The factions had a lot of political clout and tried to control the Emperor by getting the spectators to put pressure on him. Frequently, at the behest of the factions, the spectators would chant a slogan requesting some favour from the Emperor. Things came to a head in the reign of Justinian, when the Blues and Greens combined in their dislike of the Emperor and ran rampage through the city for five days, in the incident known as the Nika riots. Eventually the army pushed the rioters back into the Hippodrome, where the doors were shut and they were all slaughtered to a man.

We know that chariot racing was still popular in 900 AD in Byzantium. An important Muslim visitor, Harun ibn Yahya, was shown around the city at that time and was taken to the Hippodrome. He describes 'two men dressed in gold, each driving a quadriga of four horses, how they enter and race three times round the place of idols and statues'.

Mounted above the starting gates in the Hippodrome was a statue of a quadriga, a four-horse chariot. In 1204, crusaders captured and sacked the city. Among lots of other treasure, four copper horses were taken by the crusaders and brought back to Venice. They were mounted on the front of St Mark's Basilica in the centre of the city, where they stood for seven and a half centuries, until the 20th Century when they were moved indoors to be replaced by replicas. It is generally assumed that these horses were from the statue in the Hippodrome, although records do not confirm it.

The Decline of Chariot Racing

There are no records of chariot racing after the city was sacked in 1204. It is possible that it still took place, but it is unlikely that it was a big deal, as the Empire was much smaller by then and would not have had the resources to supply the large number of horses necessary. Entertainment events were still held in the Hippodrome: a Spaniard visiting Byzantium reported as late as the 15th Century that the Emperor and Empress still attended events in the Hippodrome together. But chariot racing itself had probably run its course by then and become unpopular.

The building of the Hippodrome is gone, but you can still see the shape of where it was in Istanbul in Sultanahmet Square. The obelisks and the Serpentine Column that stood on the spina are still there in the park. The top of the Serpentine Column is gone, having been attacked in the 17th Century by a drunken Polish officer. One of the obelisks had its metal casing stripped off when crusaders sacked the city in 1204. But the shape of the ancient chariot racing track is still visible, and we can think back to when 100,000 people would cheer for Blue, Green, Red or White.

Further Reading

* Working IX to V - Vicki León

* Oxford Archaeological Guides: Rome - Editor Amanda Claridge

1 A Roman mile was 1481.5m in length, or 5,000 Roman feet - about 8% less than an English mile.

Charioteers

2008-11-22T13:29:00.000+09:00

Specialists in warfare using horse-drawn wheeled vehicles for two millennia prior to the Roman Empire. The earliest elite or specialized troops in history must have been chariot riders, who first appeared around 1700 bce in the borderlands between the steppes of Asia and the river lands of Mesopotamia. True two-wheeled light chariots developed from Sumerian wooden carts or four-wheeled battle wagons drawn by onagers, as shown in the third millennium bce Standard of Ur. However, they differ enormously from their early predecessors, and a great deal of technological advancement, specialization, and expense went into their development.

too slow or uncontrollable. Early peoples must have quickly recognized the advantages that the horse offered in both areas. It was necessary, however, to work out a method of controlling the horse with a mouth bit and yoking it to a transport by means of a breast band or padded collar. Even then, horses could not pull heavy loads without these early collars choking them; therefore, chariots had to be developed that were as light as possible, with strong, yet open, frames and bent-wood spoked wheels (eventually the Egyptians built chariots that weighed no more than 75 pounds including harness). Further- more, the axle that held the wheels had to be designed to pivot so the chariot’s maneuverability and turning radius could be improved.

The expertise required to produce good chariots, together with the specialists necessary to maintain them and their horses in combat (grooms, saddlers, wheelwrights, etc.) meant that only wealthy armies could afford them. Moreover, the dominance these vehicles imparted on the battlefield quickly raised charioteers to a position of elite status among warriors of the ancient world.

Although javelins, maces, and swords are shown being used by charioteers in early artistic depictions, the composite bow was their most favored weapon and the one that made them most dangerous. Constructed of laminated wood and horn glued together in a curve, the short composite bow was the perfect weapon with which to rain down death upon masses of infantry and other charioteers as far as 300 yards away.

True chariots probably originated on the fringes of the agricultural world where the western steppe herdsmen met the settled peoples of the city-states of Mesopotamia. No one knows who built the first chariot, but they almost certainly came from these borderlands. Here the knowledge of producing wheels, draughtpoles, and metal fittings for carts and wagons was pressed into service to meet the needs of nomadic sheep and goat herders for a fast-moving herding and hunting platform: the chariot. The advantages of the new vehicle must rapidly have become apparent. The chariot riders of the steppes discovered that their new weapon allowed them to hunt men as well as animals with equal ease. Around 1500 bce, nomadic charioteers began to descend upon the civilized lands of the time: the Hyskos invaded Egypt, the Hurrians, Mittians, and Kassites swept into Mesopotamia, Aryans penetrated India, and the Shang overwhelmed northern China. All these invaders faced organized armies, but they were armies composed of infantry with perhaps a few of the clumsy battle wagons mentioned earlier. The chariot riders could circle these herds of men as they circled their herds of sheep on the steppes. One man drove the chariot while the other picked the enemy off with his compound bow, and both easily stayed out of reach of the infantry’s short-ranged weapons. The assaulted infantry could not close with the far speedier chariots, nor could they retire. In such fashion charioteers consistently routed larger defending forces and carried off what they wished in food, gold, slaves, and other booty. In time, these aggressive nomads overthrew the very states they were raiding and established their own dynasties, based not on their numbers but on the sheer power of the chariot.

The rule of the invading charioteers was not long, however. All were overthrown or absorbed by the native populations, but their legacy lived on in the adoption of the chariot by the peoples they had conquered. The New Kingdom Egyptians and the Assyrians especially learned from the invaders and put what they had learned into practice: Their states became as aggressive and warlike as the nomads, only now they warred to protect their frontiers and to extend their boundaries in order to fore- stall new invasions. They made war a form of state policy, and the heart of their new mobile war machines was the two-wheeled chariot.

The New Kingdom Egyptian army had as its nucleus a chariot force, although not a large one. In reliefs and paintings, the pharaoh is always shown in his chariot, in the forefront of the battle, followed by a few nobles in their chariots and the mass of the army on foot. Despite artistic license and the need to portray the pharaoh in the best light, these depictions may be fairly accurate. In the earliest recorded battle in history, at Megiddo in 1469 bce, the pharaoh Thutmosis III routed the Hyskos and forced their leaders to surrender. Only 83 Hyskos were killed in the battle, and another 340 taken prisoner, hardly the casualties one would expect, had a defeated army been pursued by a large chariot force. Two centuries later, in 1294 bce, Rameses II fought the Hittites at Qadesh to a standstill with an army that, according to Egyptian accounts, numbered only 50 chariots and 5,000 infantry. However, those same accounts claim that the Hittites fielded 2,500 chariots—obviously an exaggeration. Still, the problems and expense inherent in maintaining a standing chariot force ensured that it would never be a large component of any army.

The Assyrians, too, as much as the Egyptians, are closely identified with the chariot. But the Assyrian army was far more professional and more organized for war as an imperial task than any of its contemporaries. Assyrian forces included specialized troops, armored infantry, engineers and siege units, and foreign troops who fought with their own unique weapons. However, Assyrian kings rode into battle in their chariots and the nobles, the cream of the Assyrian state, rode with them. At their core, they were charioteers.

The Egyptians, Assyrians, and most of their foes used a two-man crew—a fighter and his driver—in a light chariot pulled by two horses (Assyrians sometimes used four). This seems to have been the ideal compromise between speed, maneuverability, and fire power. After the ninth century bce, the Assyrians seem to have added a third man, usually a shield bearer, to strengthen defenses. Some carvings and drawings from other ancient Middle Eastern nations depict four-, five-, and even six-man crews being pulled by four horses, although it is difficult to imagine how six men could actually fight from a chariot without constantly getting in each other’s way. In these cases the chariot probably was being used as a means of transporting a combat team to the battlefield, rather than as an actual fighting vehicle. Both the Egyptians and the Assyrians moved the axle back from the center toward the rear of the car and allowed the axle a certain degree of movement within its brackets. Both innovations greatly increased the chariot’s maneuverability. Assyrian iron- smiths even fitted a studded metal rim to the wheels to give the chariot more traction in turning.

Exactly how the chariot was used in combat is somewhat unclear. Certainly it acted as a mobile firing platform for archers, but its shock value must have been limited because the horses were unprotected and therefore vulnerable to hand weapons at close quarters. Despite the fact that kings and pharaohs are shown driving their vehicles over dead and dying enemies, anyone trying to fight from a chariot with a mace or sword must have encountered great difficulties. Furthermore, chariots could not maneuver over broken or wood- ed terrain. Over time, combatants would have learned how to counter chariot tactics, forming shoulder-to-shoulder ranks, using long spears to keep chariots away, protecting themselves with larger and stronger shields, and shooting chariot horses with their bows. Still, for over a thousand years, chariots offered the only real mobile fire power and speed in pursuit available, and this made them an indispensable component of the civilized armies of the time.

Eventually, the horse superseded the chariot in battle. The Assyrians had been breeding stronger horses, and by the eighth century bce had produced a horse that could be ridden from the forward seat (with the weight over the animal’s front shoulders), and thus be better controlled. Some Assyrian archers began to ride horses in battle. However, without stirrups, this was still a tenuous platform. On the steppes, some peoples may have already bred riding horses, or the animals may have been traded from Mesopotamia to nomads in the grasslands. Be that as it may, the nomads soon became mounted archers, and the days of the chariot were over. True cavalry simply possessed much more maneuverability than chariots and required far less trouble and expense to maintain. One of the final appearances of chariots in battle seems to have been at Gaugamela in 331 bce, where the Persian king Darius had a field leveled and prepared so his chariots could charge unimpeded against the Macedonian pike phalanxes of Alexander the Great. The results were disastrous for the Persians and Darius ultimately paid with his life. Some people, like the Bretons, continued to use chariots, but mostly as a sort of “battle taxi” in which to ride to and from combat. Once there, they fought on foot. This is the way Homer described their use in the Iliad, which was set around the twelfth century bce but was probably written around the eighth or seventh century bce. By the time of the Roman Empire, chariots had ceased to be weapons of war, or even to appear on battlefields, and instead became a quaint means of transport for the wealthy and a source of spectacle for the masses in great chariot races held in the Colosseum.

References: Ferrill, Arthur, The Origins of War (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985); Hackett, General Sir John, Warfare in the Ancient World (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989); Keegan John, A History of Warfare (New York: Random House, 1993).

EGYPTIAN CHARIOTS

2008-11-21T20:02:00.001+09:00

Vehicles employed in military and processional events in ancient Egypt, becoming a dreaded war symbol of the feared cavalry units, the chariot was not an Egyptian invention but was introduced into the Nile Valley by the HYKSOS, or Asiatics, during the Second Intermediate Period (1640–1532 B.C.E.). Egyptian innovations, however, made the Asiatic chariot lighter, faster, and easier to maneuver. Egyptian chariots were fashioned out of wood, with the frames built well forward of the axle for increased stability. The sides of the chariots were normally made of stretched canvas, reinforced by stucco. The floors were made of leather thongs, interlaced to provide an elastic but firm foundation for the riders.

A single pole, positioned at the center and shaped while still damp, ran from the axle to a yoke that was attached to the saddles of the horses. A girth strap and breast harness kept the pole secure while the vehicle was in motion. Originally, the two wheels of the chariot each had four spokes; later six were introduced. These were made of separate pieces of wood glued together and then bound in leather straps.

KAMOSE (r. 1555–1550 B.C.E.) was the first Egyptian ruler to use the chariot and cavalry units successfully. The Hyksos, dominating the northern territories at the time, were startled when the first chariots appeared against them on the field at NEFRUSY, led by Kamose. The horses of the period, also introduced to Egypt by the Asiatics, were probably not strong enough to carry the weight of a man over long distances, a situation remedied by the Egyptians within a short time. The horses did pull chariots, however, and they were well trained by the Egyptian military units, especially in the reigns of TUTHMOSIS I, TUTHMOSIS III, RAMESSES II, and RAMESSES III. These warrior pharaohs made the chariot cavalry units famed throughout the region as they built or maintained the empire.

MONSTER COLISEUM

2008-11-21T19:54:00.001+09:00

Arena Combat & Chariot Racing for RuneQuest "Chariot rules include occupational experience tables for charioteers, chariot design procedures, and sample historical chariots add the thrill of chariot racing to campaigns and recreate classic matches from history or fiction. Players lacking fellow gamers can use the Solo Adventuring instructions to pit adventurers against any of the 180 fully-prepared opponents in the Monster Book or in any other RuneQuest scenario. Monster Coliseum includes: Monster Book human soldiers & gladiators, non-human & master gladiators, natural animals, supernatural monsters, encounters on-the-road. Coliseum Book coliseum description, arena diagram, net-use rules, charioteer occupations, chariot design, race rules, sample historical chariots, solo adventuring instructions. Play Aids coliseum floorplan, rangestick, racetrack sections, chariot and team markers, gamemaster aids, player aids."

Why did they decide to make this the first new supplement? This should have been released as a book, not a boxed set. Too much of a narrow subject, unless you long to be Ben Hur or Spartacus. One advantage it does have is that it is usable in both Gloranthan and Gateway settings. I wish this had been a Lunar arena somewhere in the empire. The box cover is pretty cool, especially since I've always liked griffins, but what the box needs inside is a better scenarios book to go with all the encounters. If it wasn't for Gods of Glorantha coming out in the same year, the entire year (like the AH design team) would have been shot. They even recycled the cover. Contents are:

What's in the box, 16 pgs. Contents list with game aids, tables, character and chariot sheets.
Coliseum Book, 40 pgs. Contains an arena overview with diagrams, net and trident skills background, gladiator info, chariot overkill, and solo adventuring tips. The encounters all seem shallow and the artwork is dull. Using the chariot rules would require too much complexity and record keeping. It adds new meaning to the phrase drag racing.

Creatures Book, 48 pgs. Lets copy the monsters from the boxed set Creatures Book, roll their stats and give them a gladiator slant. They are set up more as encounters and some are well done. I always root for Quok the duck and Rosco. The Minotaur picture is memorable, even if little else is.

Rangestick, a ruler for measuring chariot races. It's as flimsy as the chariot rules.
Arena Floorplan, a 22"x34" diagram.

ROMAN CHARIOT-RACING ARENA IS FIRST TO BE UNEARTHED IN BRITAIN - 2005

2008-11-13T22:32:00.000+09:00

This terracotta 'Campana plaque' comes from the 1st or early 2nd century AD and depicts a quadriga (four-horse chariot) thundering towards a turning post. © The British Museum.

Archaeologists working on a housing development in Essex have unearthed what they believe to be the first Roman chariot-racing arena to be found in Britain.

The discovery was made at a site in Colchester and has hit the headlines across the country with local and national press lauding it as one of the most exciting Roman finds in decades.

Experts are thrilled at the possibility that this could be the first evidence of a chariot-racing circus in this country, but have refuted claims that it was the largest to be built outside Italy.

Speaking to the 24 Hour Museum, archaeologist and excavation project manager, Rob Masefield, outlined exactly what it is they’ve found: "Basically," he said, "we are 99% sure it’s a circus in Colchester."

The remains consist of a number of walls, some running parallel to one another, which altogether form a structure measuring 350 metres long by 70 metres wide.

According to Rob it is comparable in size to chariot-racing arenas in Spain and southern France, but he confirmed that a very significant discovery has been made.

"It’s still a major find," he said, "because it’s the only one in Britain and would be the largest Roman building ever found in Britain."

Managed and designed by RPS Planning Transport and Environment, the excavations were undertaken by Colchester Archaeological Trust at Abbeyfield, a housing development by construction company Taylor Woodrow.

The structure was found in the northern area of the development and three separate digs have revealed a series of walls. As well as the remains of an entranceway, other sets of double walls, set five metres apart, are thought to have retained a bank supporting tiers of seating.

All the evidence, said Rob, seems to point to it being a chariot-racing arena, which it is predicted might have held up to 8,000 spectators.

"There are no roof tiles which might indicate a domestic building, or indeed a portico for a temple," explained Rob. The walls, he added, "are something else and are identical in form to those that you’d find in other Roman places of entertainment. It conforms to the basic canon of circus architecture and it would have looked very similar to ones in other parts of the empire."

Dating back around 2,000 years, the find helps paint a picture of just how popular chariot racing was in Roman culture but, added Rob, it won't alter the way historians view Roman Britain.

"It isn’t going to change our understanding of Roman Britain substantially because we know that chariot racing went on," he said.

"It was assumed they used open field arrangements, but this shows that at least in one location they did have a permanent structure to support the most popular Roman sport."

Pete Wilson, senior archaeologist at English Heritage, declared the discovery as "not just nationally significant," but, "internationally significant, because they are so rare."

Pete told the 24 Hour Museum that the infrastructure needed to support such a large sporting arena meant that only larger Roman settlements would have boasted one.

"It’s something that you’re only going to get in major towns and cities," he explained. "In Britain we have various hints at chariot racing, it’s depicted in mosaics, but we’ve never actually before identified a possible circus with certainty."

English Heritage hasn’t, as yet, declared any intentions towards the site but representatives from the organisation have been monitoring the excavation and have paid the development a visit.

While no plans have been revealed as to what will be done with the remains, it is expected that the developers will keep them in situ and incorporate them into the finished site.

"The excavation of a Roman circus is a fantastic discovery for Colchester and has caused a great deal of excitement," said Peter Andrew, Taylor Woodrow Eastern regional managing director.

"We are delighted to have supported the Colchester Archaeological Trust in revealing such significant finds and will endeavour to preserve as much of the remains as possible for future generations."

Historians believe they may have discovered the world's biggest Roman chariot-racing track outside Italy ... in Essex.

The track was unearthed by archaeologists at the site of the Army garrison in Colchester.

English Heritage experts have been drafted in to examine the finds and, if confirmed, it would be at least 1,600 years old and of major international importance.

Colchester holds the title of being the oldest recorded town in Britain as it was mentioned by Roman writer Pliny the Elder in AD77.

The 209-acre site was part of the Army base at Colchester. The garrison is home to 16 Air Assault Brigade, which includes elements of the Parachute Regiment.

Taylor Woodrow, the house builder which bought the land from the Defence Ministry to build 2,500 homes and a business park, was ordered to excavate the area before it started work.

A spokesman said: 'At the moment there are a couple of areas where we are not 100 per cent sure what we have found and we have sent reports to English Heritage.'

Army spokesman Major Ian Marlow said: 'There is not a huge amount left, but the archaeological chaps have drawn up a plan of what it would have looked like.

'It is the remains of what could be the largest chariot-racing circuit outside Italy. It is quite a find.'

Philip Wise, of Colchester Museums Service, said if the find is verified, it could stop the development. But he added: 'I hope we would be able to work something out with the developers.'

Chariot races were hugely popular in Roman times, appealing to all social classes from the Emperor down. There was much private betting, but no public gambling.

Although most charioteers began as slaves, those who were successful soon made enough money to buy their freedom.

The four Roman racing companies or stables were known by the colours worn by their charioteers (red, white, blue and green), and fans became as devoted as modern football supporters to their chosen stable. The stables competed for the services of the best charioteers, whose celebrity matched that of today's sports stars. However, many did not live very long to enjoy their fame.

The biggest racing venue was the Circus Maximus in Rome - a third of a mile long and 150 yards wide and allegedly capable of holding up to 250,000 spectators.

Colchester was one of the earliest and most important Roman settlements, but was sacked by Boadicea and her Iceni tribe followers during an ill- fated rebellion in AD60.

HAVE CHARIOT, WILL RACE

2008-11-06T21:09:00.000+09:00

INTRODUCTION

These rules allow quick and fun chariot racing involving two or more chariots.

Historically the Romans usually raced 4, 8 or 12 chariots.

UNITS

Each player controls one or more units.

A unit can be a chariot OR a driver that survived a crashed chariot.

DOWNLOAD

THE QUADRIGA IN ANTIQUITY

2008-11-03T16:16:00.001+09:00

The name Quadriga (Latin) means the four horses which were harnessed together to draw a military, racing or triumphal chariot.

The quadriga was a four-horse chariot, the most common type that was raced. There also was the two-horse biga, in which novices often competed; and less often, one drawn by three horses (triga), which tended to run only in races with religious connotations. Even more difficult to manage, and all the more impressive when they were, were chariots drawn by six (seiugae), eight (octoiugae), or even ten (decemiugae) horses. Diocles boasts of having won with six and even seven horses, a number that had never been seen before.

The Latin for a racing chariot is currus circensis, from which the word "curriculum" derives for a race or lap.

The Biga [two-horse chariot] is made in imitation of the moon, the Quadriga [four-horse chariot] of the sun. The circus horses, by means of which the servants of the Circus announce the heats that are to be run, imitate the herald-swiftness of the morning star. Thus it came to pass that while they deemed they were worshipping the stars, they profaned their religion by parodying it in their games.

LINK

THE AGE OF CHARIOTS.

2008-11-03T15:46:00.001+09:00

WAR CHARIOT: the war chariot was made possible by two inventions, the spoked wheel and the bit. Complete chariots have been found in Egyptian tombs. The frame was made of wood covered with leather. It had two wheels, each with four (later six) spokes, and an axle placed at the very rear of the body for stability on fast turns. Attached to the sides were one or two quivers, each containing thirty or forty arrows, a bow case, and sometimes a quiver for javelins.

The first chariots seem to have appeared in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, but came to prominence around 1,700 BC. At first they were slow and cumbersome vehicles pulled by the relatively small and slow onager, a cousin of the ass. When the much more powerful horse was employed for power, they became a more terrifying, useful, and prestigious weapon. Historians have long pondered why chariots were so prominent in the accounts and pictorial representations of battle from 1700 to 1200 BC. In all the settled kingdoms and palaces of the late Bronze Age, from Egypt, to Babylon, to Assyria, to Anatolia (the Hittites), to Knossos (Crete), and Mycenean Greece, chariots seemed to dominate the battles.

Chariots were used as fast, mobile platforms for composite bow archers. The relatively slow foot troops were at a great disadvantage when fast chariots could drive up, stop out of range, and pelt the infantry with powerful composite bow shots. The infantry was faced with the choice of falling back to a protected location or dying in place. If they advanced against the chariots, the chariots fell back faster and kept shooting. Infantry thereby lost its ability to take and hold open ground on the battlefield. Chariot archers could be contested only by other composite bow archers.

Cavalry was not the answer to the chariots because the technology of the saddle, bit, and stirrup did not yet exist. A bareback rider could not use a lance at all or a bow with accuracy. Cavalry does not appear on battlefields with any consequence until around 900 BC. Infantry in leather or cloth armor, or behind wood or leather shields, could not stand up forever to composite bow shots. They would fall eventually. Bronze mail armor was too expensive for common soldiers in this period. If the infantry broke formation, they risked being run over by pursuing chariots.

Chariots were manned by two men - the driver and archer - and pulled by two horses. The crew stood on a leather platform and both wore leather or bronze mail armor from head to calf. They were probably tied into the chariot to free their hands for driving or shooting. The expense of bronze mail and composite bows were justified because the chariot armies were relatively small. Even the largest and richest kingdoms maintained no more than several thousand chariots at most.

There is some evidence that Egyptian chariots were organized into groups of ten. These may have been distinguished by name or color, or by carrying left or right- hand firing archers. Five such groups made up a squadron. Each squadron had a commander and several squadrons made up a "host." In his autobiography, the Egyptian Meryptah reports serving in the squadrons "Phoenix" and "Manifest in Justice." Among the positions he held were "standard bearer of the chariot warriors" and "first stable master." All the great Egyptian military pictorials from this period show the pharaohs fighting as archers from speeding chariots.

Chariot tactics:

Chariots attacked in wide, shallow lines, probably spread apart to facilitate turns or crashes without fouling neighbors. There may have been three or four lines, but the rear lines would have had impaired shots. Spreading wide minimized the risk of being flanked while maximizing the chance of flanking the enemy. A short chariot line must have run when facing a significantly longer line because it would have been easily enveloped, brought to a halt, and shot to pieces. A force might have split during its approach, with left-handed shooters turning to the right and right-handed shooters turning to the left, hoping to simultaneously flank the enemy line. A concentrated squadron may have attempted to drive a wedge through the enemy line and then wheel to both sides once through.

The archers presumably opened fire when the range closed to 200 meters or less. As the range closed, shooting accelerated. The point of the chariot battle was to bring down as many opposing chariots as possible by shooting the enemy's horses. The felling of one horse from a speeding chariot must have caused a wreck. It is not clear if opposing lines would charge through each other while firing or if they would approach, wheel, and shoot. A clash of chariot lines could cause a massive pileup of entangled horses and cars, or the point-blank shooting must have caused large numbers of casualties quickly. Once the lines had passed or turned, the archers faced to the rear to keep shooting as the range opened. The chariots would then have wheeled and charged again. At some point, one side would break and run for a nearby fortification or safe position.

Around 1200 BC, however, chariots lost their battlefield dominance. In a period of roughly 50 years, chariots were largely eclipsed and most of the great kingdoms and palaces of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East fell. City after city, including Troy of the Iliad, was destroyed and left in ashes. Only Egypt and Assyria escaped immediate destruction and the area entered a 500-year Dark Age. The principal reason for this catastrophe was the resurgence of barbarian infantry that used new weapons and tactics on the battlefield to defeat the chariots and overrun the kingdoms they defended

GMT Games - Chandragupta

2008-10-30T21:46:00.000+09:00

Chandragupta brings the art of war in ancient India to GMT's "Great Battles of History" Series. Beginning with Chandragupta Maurya's victories over the Nanda clan, the game follows the brief but rapid rise of the Mauryan dynasty, from Chandragupta's expulsion of Seleucus from the Indus river valley to the conquest of the last independent kingdom on the subcontinent, Kalinga, by his grandson Ashoka. The Mauryan empire became the largest and most powerful in India's history - a distinction that would remain unchallenged until the arrival of the Mughals some 1,700 years later.

Chandragupta simulates the traditional "four-fold" division of the Indian military system, with the elephant corps reigning supreme, and the hordes of light infantry regarded as little more than fodder for chariots' wheels and trampling pachyderms. Chariots still play a prominent role on the Indian battlefield of the era, but the cavalry, with its versatility and endurance, is a potent competitor. In Chandragupta, victory goes to the commander who can master the unique aspects of the differing Indian military "classes" - the professional, lifelong soldiers called Maulas, the mercenary levies, unpredictable tribal allies, and the militias of the powerful trade guilds. While Maulas and mercenaries are commanded under a single hierarchical command structure, the tribals and the trade guilds are led by independent chiefs.

Units include cataphracted elephants, "heavy" four- (and sometimes eight-!) wheeled chariots, and even an "elCH" unit - yes, elephant-pulled chariots. Rules include Combined Chariot/Infantry and Elephant/Infantry lines, Dharmayudda or "just" warfare, Guild enmity, and Tribal loyalty. EL units can even breach camp walls and pull down city gates (if they don't rampage first).

Fans of GBoH will appreciate the exciting variety in Chandragupta's scenarios, from huge set-piece battles on flat plains, to tribal suppressions, a night assault on a military camp, and street fighting in the city of Takshashila. Chandragupta is the 13th volume in the GBoH series.

GMT Games - Chandragupta.

Warfare—South Asia

2008-10-30T21:45:00.001+09:00

Mauryan units from Rome: Total Realism 6.0

Throughout most of its long history, South Asia has consisted of a multitude of states, all vying against one another for power, territory, and domination. At times, certain states have expanded outward from their core areas to form India-wide or regional empires, such as the Mauryan empire (c. 324–183 BCE), the Cola empire (850–1279 CE), or Vijayanagara (c. 1346–1565 CE). South Asian empires have also been erected by foreign invaders, as in the case of the dynasties of the Delhi sultanate (1192–1526), the Mughal dynasty (1526–1857), and the British (c. 1850–1947). All these contests have involved warfare.

Traditional South Asian Warfare, 2600 BCE–1720s CE

Very little is known of the military aspects of the first recorded South Asian civilization—the Harappan civilization (c. 2500–1900 BCE)—since its script has not yet been deciphered. That it possessed citadels and walled cities seems to indicate a need for military protection. The Harappans had rudimentary bronze weaponry, mostly swords, spearheads and arrowheads. Most probably, their enemies were not formidable in terms of either ability or numbers. Although it was initially thought that the Harappan civilization was destroyed by the invading Indo-Aryan tribes, current research posits that environmental factors caused its demise, around 1900 BCE.

The Coming of the Indo-Aryans

From about 1500 BCE, seminomadic, pastoralist, and Sanskrit-speaking Aryan tribes people began penetrating South Asia from the northwest. Although they possessed sophisticated military technology in the form of the light two-wheeled war chariot, the incoming Aryans were not a disciplined army led by a great leader on a campaign of swift conquest. Indeed, the Aryan “conquest” was more of a migration, measured in generations rather than in years. The numerous Aryan tribes—about forty are mentioned in the Rig Veda, a sacred text dating from the second millennium BCE, if not earlier—were not peaceful. They were in constant conflict with one another, mostly over cattle, which was how they measured relative wealth and power. (The ancient Sanskrit word for fighting literally means “to search for cows.”) The mythical conflict between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, which forms the central narrative of the epic Mahabharata has a factual kernel, probably originating as a tribal war over cattle and land in what is now northern Punjab.

When not fighting amongst themselves, the Aryan tribes fought the indigenous Dasas. We know that the Dasas had many forts, because the Rig Veda often refers to Indra, the main Aryan god, as Purandaradasa— “destroyer of the Dasa forts.” Dasa forts may well have been wooden, for Aryan hymns often call upon Agni, the fire god, to help defeat the Dasas. In the Rig Veda, a war between two Aryan tribal groupings was won by a King Sudasa, whose name indicates that some Dasas had already been assimilated into Aryan culture. Evidence of Aryan attempts to invade and settle peninsular India is contained in the other great Indian epic, the Ramayana, which tells the story of the Aryan Prince Rama’s expedition to Lanka (Sri Lanka) to rescue his wife Sita, who has been abducted by the evil demon king, Ravana. Rama was aided by the monkey-god Hanuman; some see in Hanuman and his people a reference to the aboriginal tribes or the Dravidian peoples of southern India.

By 500 BCE, the mixing of the Aryan and indigenous peoples had resulted in the distinctive Varna (caste) social pattern, which most resembled the estates or orders of Medieval Europe, and set the template for what became Hinduism. Here, the second-ranking Kshatriyas were the varna of warriors and kings. Yet, throughout the traditional period, considerable social mobility existed, especially in warfare. Lower varna men fought in the Mauryan armies, alongside charioteers and Elephants, and by the eleventh century, it was not uncommon for men from the lowest Vaishya (merchant) or Shudra (labourer) varnas to assume Kshatriya or Rajput (literally, “son of a king”) status through military service. Indian peasantry supplemented their agrarian incomes by soldiering, which was seen as an honourable profession. A military labor market, mediated by military entrepreneurs known as Jama’dars, became a feature of precolonial India.

Magadha and the Mauryan Empire

Kingdoms had developed on the Gangetic plain by 500 BCE. One of these, Magadha, straddling the Ganges River in modern-day Bihar, was responsible for introducing the war elephant into South Asian warfare. Elephants soon became as important as chariots in South Asian warfare. Besides becoming the traditional mount of rajas, elephants were used to trample and slaughter enemy troops, batter down enemy forts, for transport, and as archery platforms. However, elephants were expensive and difficult to maintain, and only the richer Indian polities could afford large numbers of them. Archery was also well developed by 500 BCE. Indian archers used double-curved, composite wood-and-horn bows, which had a range of about 100–120 meters. In battle, archers on foot were shielded by a rank of javelin-armed infantry. The absence of swift horses in South Asia resulted in the transformation of the twowheeled chariot into the four-wheeled armored chariot carrying many more archers. Thus, though their offensive power increased, their battlefield mobility was impeded. Magadha also developed the catapult.

Magadha became the basis for the Mauryan empire (c. 324–c. 200 BCE ), during which time the Arthasastra, a classic work of Indian statecraft that adopted an amoral, realist approach to war and diplomacy, appeared. Reputedly authored by the philosopher and imperial adviser Kautilya (flourished 300 BCE), it included details on military organization, strategy, tactics, and logistics and stressed the value of effective espionage and bribery. That the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707; reigned 1658–1707) wanted to abolish the special fund for bribing enemy forts, and that the British under Robert Clive (1725–1774) defeated the forces of the nawab (provincial governor) of Bengal at Palasi (1757) through bribery demonstrates the remarkable continuity of Kautilyan strategies.

Campaigns

Throughout this period, campaigns of the Indian empires, both north and south, were essentially similar. Armies were moving cities, complete with large bazaars to handle supply. War elephants were the most important component until about 1100 CE. They were displaced by the heavy cavalry of the Muslim invaders, who reintroduced the stirrup—originally invented in South Asia in the first century—to warfare there. The stirrup, by anchoring the rider firmly to the horse, made cavalry a true shock weapon, and more useful than elephants in battle.

Siege engines, and after about 1350, large bombards and cannon—which required industrial and financial capacity that only the large empires could sustain—were highly unwieldy, requiring hundreds of pack-oxen. This meant that the progress of an imperial army was painfully slow, about 8 kilometers per day even in Mughal times. Given the nine-month long, monsoon-delimited campaigning season, an imperial army’s typical reach was between 1,080 and 1,200 kilometers. Campaigns were also slowed by the nature of the frontiers, which were imprecise bands of territory between two core areas, inhabited by petty rajas who would either have to be coopted or subdued before the invading army could proceed. Battles were short and confused affairs, the onus being on individual heroic prowess rather than on disciplined maneuver. If a king or commander were killed or captured, then as in chaturanga, the precursor to chess that was popular among members of the Kshatriya class, his army was considered defeated.

Traditional Indic warfare was land based. The only exception to this were the Colas, who, under Rajaraja I (reigned 985–1014) and his successor Rajendra I (reigned 1014–1044), took to the sea to conquer Sri Lanka and Srivijaya (an empire located on the islands of Sumatra and Java). The strategic vision impelling these seaborne campaigns was the control of Southeast Asian maritime trade.

The Mansabdari System

Traditional Indic polities were segmentary, essentially “military confederation[s] of many chieftains cooperating under the leadership of the biggest among them” (Stein 1980, 55). Loyalty was a problem. The Mughals met this challenge with the mansabdari system, which entailed granting a specified rank to a noble and entitled the noble to revenue from an assigned area of land. Mansabdari ranks carried with them the duty to provide a specified number of cavalrymen for battle. A rank was not hereditary, however, and could be revoked at the emperor’s pleasure. The mansabdari system was an early attempt at creating military professionalism in India.

Ramsses II: The Battle of Kadesh [Qadesh]

2008-10-30T21:43:00.000+09:00

By Anthony Spalinger

The final and decisive Egyptian battle in Asia, a turning point equal to that of Megiddo under Thutmose III, took place in year five of Ramesses II at the city of Kadesh in central Syria.1 Yet this was the second northern campaign of Ramesses II because a preparatory advance had occurred one year earlier. A stela of the king, set up at the Nahr el Kelb on the southern coast of Lebanon, probably bears witness to Ramesses’ first preparations for the major war.2 We can presume that the Pharaoh followed the earlier practice of his father (and Thutmose III) in first assuring control over the coast before marching inland. Noteworthy is the presence of Sherden “mercenaries” within the Egyptian army at Kadesh in the king’s fifth regnal year.3 They are referred to in the main inscriptions that recount this war as well as in the reliefs. The latter differentiate these warriors from the Egyptians by means of their round shields, long swords that are wide close to the haft, and their cap-like helmets surmounted by two prongs and a small sphere. Because the Egyptians had fought some of these sea pirates at the mouths of the Nile earlier than the fourth year of Ramesses, it seems reasonable that not a few had now become a staple ingredient within the Egyptian military. Their absence in the battle reliefs of Seti supports this contention.

Ramesses II ordered an account of the Battle of Kadesh to be inscribed and drawn on the walls of various temples.4 Abydos, probably the earliest, reveals only the lowermost portions of the war owing to the fragmentary condition of the temple.5 At Karnak two versions are still extant while at Luxor three may be found, although one of them presents only the two main narrative accounts. The king’s mortuary temple to the west of Thebes, the Ramesseum, has two versions as well, and Abu Simbel in Nubia presents a more condensed version.

The importance of the detailed account, the so-called “Poem,” and its shorter companion, the “Bulletin” is balanced, if not dwarfed, by the pictorial record.6 Indeed, the latter may be said to provide the fullest visual information concerning the Egyptian military in Dynasty XIX. As noted earlier, all campaigns were divided into various portions. By and large some of these episodes are present in all of the temples. On the other hand, Ramesses wished to highlight four main events in this campaign: the camp and the war council, the battle itself, the spoils and captives, and the second presentation at home to the gods.

Note once more the war council. In the narrative of the Megiddo battle this was a prominent portion of the account, and the same may be said for the opening section of Kamose’s war record. But the reason for Ramesses’ interest lies in the fact that, after the king settled down in his camp to the west of the city of Kadesh, he received news that the Hittites were close by and not far away in Aleppo as he had originally thought. After the spies of the Hittites were beaten and forced to tell the truth, the attack of the numerous enemy chariots occurred. The pictorial representations cover these two interlocked events as well as the arrival of the Pharaoh’s fifth division, the Na‘arn. The latter traversed southern Syria by foot, undoubtedly leaving the ports of the Lebanon in order to meet up with the king and his four main divisions, all of which had advanced northward through the Beqa Valley.7 If this elite division left Tripoli, to take a case in point, then approximately 121 km would have been traversed before they met up with Ramesses. Hence, it would have taken them more than 9 ½ days to reach their destination, providing that there were no delays. Although this is not a long duration, the coordination of the Na‘arn with the king’s other four divisions is remarkable, and one is left with the feeling that Ramesses earlier had been in communication with these additional troops, probably by messenger, in order to effect the juncture of the Na‘arn with his army. If these men had arrived earlier they would have been isolated. If they came later, then the entire composite army would been prepared as a large unit at least one day after Ramesses’ arrival at Kadesh. I feel that the coincidence is too great to allow for chance.

The second episode draws together the attempt of the king to hasten his other divisions that had followed the first where he was at the front. The all-mighty king is carved in superhuman size charging on his chariot against the foe and, of course, shooting his arrows. Since this portion is highly detailed, I shall leave it for a more detailed analysis below. The remaining two episodes are more straightforward but present interesting details of their own.

Globally, Ramesses II intended to retake the city of Kadesh which had switched sides after the withdrawal of the large Egyptian army under Seti I. His strategy was a simple one: march to the city and take it. From the background to the eventual combat it is clear that Ramesses with his four divisions did not intend to meet the Hittites.8 The “Poem” begins the narration at the departure from Sile, and then continues with the arrival at a royal fortress in the “Valley of Cedar.” There was no opposition in Palestine; combat was expected only in Syria. He is then described as crossing the ford of the Orontes, which was south of the city and at a point where the river coursed in a westward direction, perpendicular to the march of the king.

Earlier, Ramesses had received false information from two Shasu at the town of Shabtuna (modern Ribla), who stated that his Hittite opponent, Muwatallis, with his army, was in Aleppo, north of Tunip. In other words, the king felt that he could reach Kadesh unopposed and settle for a battle or a siege. A series of background points can now be made. The first is the simplest, and one that I have referred to on more than one occasion. The war was known to all and sundry. Both the local princes in Palestine and Syria as well as the leaders of the two great states of Hatti and Egypt could not hide their feelings, their war preparations, indeed their war aims. The journey of Ramesses, though not rapid by today’s standards, nonetheless covered the same number of miles per day as, for example, Thutmose III did when approaching Megiddo. The march was thus ca. 12.5 miles/day and no lengthy delays occurred. If we allow about 10 days from Sile to Gaza, and then about 12 days to get to Megiddo, we can place him in central Palestine about three weeks after his departure from Egypt. He left Egypt approximately at the close of March to early April, following the practice of his Dynasty XVIII predecessors. On day nine of the third month of the harvest season he was at Shabtuna south of Kadesh, and about one month had passed. (The departure from Sile is dated exactly one month before the arrival at Shabtuna.) At this point he received the false news that the Hittites were not around the city of Kadesh. The Egyptians were approximately 14 km from Kadesh. Ramesses then advanced, and it would have taken at most half of a day for the first division to set up camp opposite the city.

More details help to elucidate the final stages of the march to Kadesh. In the morning the king awoke and prepared his troops for the march. Sometime after that the army reached Shabtuna. This would have taken time. Ramesses’s extended army was composed of four divisions, all marching separately and behind one another; the advance would have been slow. The temporary halt at Shabtuna did not last long. Moreover, the king discussed with his commanders the oral evidence of two Shasu “deserters” who falsely reported that the Hittites were not at Kadesh but away in the north. Again, we can assume the passing of time, at least one hour, but probably more. One line of the “Poem” (P 60) states that a distance of 1 Egyptian iter separated that ford south of Shabtuna from the position of Ramesses when the second division (Pre) was crossing the Orontes.9 The distance from the ford to the camp, or even to Kadesh, was at most 16.5 km. To march it would have taken 3/5 of a day. I cannot but assume that the time when Ramesses settled peacefully in his camp must have been in the afternoon. One final point needs to be brought into the discussion; namely, the length of the Egyptian iter. There were two: a larger one of about 10.5 km and a smaller, of approximately 2.65 km. It is evident that the former was employed here.

We can perhaps better understand why the Egyptian monarch failed to take cognizance of the Hittites.10 According to the Poem the latter were “concealed and ready to the northeast” of Kadesh. The first division of the Egyptians was at the northwest of the city, settled beside a local brook that was so necessary for the animals and men. They had pitched the tents, and from the scenes of relaxation the army had already settled down for the day. However, as one relief caption indicates, they were not completely finished with the preliminary tasks of pitching the camp (R 11).

But no attack by Ramesses was planned on day nine. The city of Kadesh was not directly approached. Indeed, the king settled down on the west, across the Orontes, and arranged his camp for the arrival of the following divisions. We must assume that either he expected a military encounter with the enemy forces stationed within Kadesh on at least the following day or that he intended a siege of the citadel. The second alternative is a secure and economical way to victory, provided that time is not of the essence. Such a blockage prevents additional men from supporting the enemy, and eventually the lack of food and water becomes a major problem for the defenders. Yet in this case there is no evidence that Ramesses immediately proceeded to invest Kadesh. Indeed, he was somewhat removed from that citadel. The topography of the region indicates that west of the city and around the Orontes there was a relatively level plain, one suitable for chariot warfare.11 The Egyptian camp and the advancing three other divisions were well placed to suit their purposes. If this analysis is accepted, then we may very well wonder if once more the possibility of a “pre-arranged” battle was understood. That is to say, soon after dawn on the following day, the clash of the Egyptians and the foes within Kadesh was expected, provided that no surrender took place.

The Hittites, as all now know, were hidden. The less detailed but highly useful account of the “Bulletin” twice says “behind” Kadesh whereas the “Poem” is more specific, locating Muwatallis, the Hittite monarch, and his army at the “northeast of the town of Kadesh.” This report also uses the word “behind” but adds that the enemy’s chariots charged from the “south side of Kadesh” and broke into the second division of Pre that was still marching north to meet Ramesses. Either the Pharaoh had not used advance chariotry or scouts of his own to size up the strategic situation at Kadesh, and this appears the correct solution, or the Hittite king arrived after any Egyptian scouts had left. Considering the location of the enemy, the depictions of their camp, and the prepared state of Kadesh, the second alternative must be rejected. But the crucial question remains: how could Ramesses have not seen or heard the enemy?

Armies such as Muwatallis’ had horses, and we know that his chariots and troops were prepared. Do not horses neigh and create dust clouds by their moving hooves? How can one hide them? Was the grass very high? Or was the enemy simply too far away for traces of their presence to be noted? Evidently, the Egyptian king had not sent a reconnaissance party across the river to the east. This may have been due to the fact that his first division was just on the point of settling down, and that the sun had begun to dip faster in the mid afternoon.12 Nonetheless, Ramesses thought that the coast was clear because the two Shasu had deceived him concerning his opponent’s whereabouts. Was the hour of the day a factor? We have calculated, albeit in a tentative way, that before Ramesses reached his desired spot a considerable amount of time had passed. Sunset occurred around 6 p.m. local time, and I doubt if evening twilight had already occurred at the point when the Hittite chariots were sent directly across the Orontes. The Poem helps us further when it states that Muwatallis and his soldiers were hidden “behind” Kadesh. The mound and the city itself therefore provided the necessary cover.

A few additional remarks concerning this deception can be offered, not in order to excuse the mistake of the Egyptian monarch, but rather to indicate how armies that are at close quarters are unable to perceive each other. It may be possible to surprise small forces but with large ones it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain. The Baron de Jomini observed “As armies at the present day [1838] seldom camp in tents when on a march, prearranged surprises are rare and difficult, because in order to plan one it becomes necessary to have an accurate knowledge of the enemy’s camp.”13 Surprisingly, this sentence fits neatly with the tactics of Muwatallis. He allowed Ramesses to settle down, or at least to begin pitch the tents, before he moved his forces across the river. In addition, he waited for the second division of Ramesses to advance sufficiently so that he could smash it and hence isolate the first division at the camp.

Muwatallis must have known about the Na‘arn, the fifth division, when he sent his chariots ahead. As stated before, these armies had reasonable knowledge of the strategic goals of their enemy. In the case of the Hittites, their basic situation was better than the Egyptians. They already held the area and had sufficient reconnaissance to enable them to understand the enemy’s advance. If so, they should have known of the incoming fifth division. Muwatallis was also able to send two Shasu south to meet up with the main Egyptian force. He realized that his plans had succeeded. Otherwise, Ramesses would not have acted the way he did.

The numbers of chariots said to have been employed by Muwatallis belie the truth. Once more we meet nice rounded integers: 2,500 in the first wave, the one that reached the Egyptian camp, and another 1,000 later on.14 We could add the 19,000 and an additional 18,000 teher warriors said by the Egyptian account to have remained with their leader. But let us return to the force of chariots. As the Hittites followed a system of three men to a chariot in this battle, 7,500 men are implied. Following the data, we arrive at an area of 27,941 m2; in a square the sides would be 167 m or about 548 feet, 10 percent of a mile.15

These calculations have avoided any other soldiers in the Hittite army. Even though the Hittite chariots were somewhat different from the Egyptians’, their length (including the horse) was about the same. The only other problem is that with three men in the vehicle the width would have been greater. Hence, we ought to increase our result by a few meters although we cannot assume that the chariots were set up neatly in a square. The type of fighting as well as the width of a chariot arm would have depended upon the area in which they could maneuver. We cannot assume that the chariots attacked en mass with no depth. For the original 2,500 the space would not have allowed it.

If a camp for a Roman legion totaled 6,000 men, then the area would be approximately 60 acres.16 For a mere 7,500 men we have 75 acres or .12 miles2. Muwatallis certainly did not require such a large area because the city of Kadesh could have supplied him with provisions. The Hittite monarch had already camped there before Ramesses arrived, and his tactical situation was excellent. But given the figures of the enemy troops in the text, especially those of the 37,000 teher warriors, it would have been remarkable if the Hittite king could have not been observed from a distance. I believe that we must discount all of the numbers in Ramesses’ account of the battle of Kadesh.

Yet this does not mean that the battle cannot be analyzed. In particular, we have to ask ourselves: what was the original intention of Muwatallis when he sent his chariots across the Orontes? The lack of footsoldiers is the key. He did not intend to fight for a long time. The infantry were kept behind. Hence, the purpose of the attack was to run through division number two, that of Pre, and to get to the camp of his foe as soon as possible. Muwatallis also knew that the Pharaoh was just settling down. He did not delay, for that would mean that the Egyptians could assemble with double the number of troops. Considering his action, we may suppose that he felt, with about 75 percent of the enemy army still marching north, the odds were certainly in his favor. Nonetheless, he did not commit himself to full force: additional chariots were left behind.

At this juncture there are a series of imponderables. Was the second group of Hittite chariots, fewer in number than the first, a strategic reserve or only the remaining ones that Muwatallis had? We do not know. In addition, what happened to the division of Pre? If most of the Hittite chariots sped quickly upon the Egyptian camp, then it would appear that they did not bother to wipe out that division. For if they did, the time element would have been squandered. From the pictorial evidence I must conclude that the enemy burst through the marching column of Egyptians, sped north, and although killing some of the soldiers, did not bother to stop. It was sufficient to give them a mauling; the aim was not to liquidate the vast majority of the second division. Strategically, Muwatallis’ goal remained focused upon the camp of Ramesses.

The attack of the enemy chariotry upon the second division of Pre took place south of Kadesh. Major Burne assumed that these men were, at most, about 2.4 km from Ramesses’ camp.17 This might be discounted as it is based on his analysis of the size of the king’s main army (20,000 soldiers).18 More useful, however, is his argument that the enemy crossed a ford south of Kadesh. This seems reasonable; otherwise the chariotry could not have easily gotten through the waters. But should we argue that the front of the Hittite chariot line was relatively small because of the width of the ford? Most certainly, the scenes of later carnage at the Orontes as well as those of the Hittite attack indicate that the passage was not difficult.

The number of Hittite chariots that reached Ramesses’ camp also remains a thorny issue. Most certainly, the Pharaoh was able to dispatch some of his high officials south in order to warn the remaining divisions of what was transpiring. Actually, only the third division (Ptah) is specifically mentioned; the situation of the fourth (Seth) is left aside. Allowing the distances assumed by previous historical research, one interesting question is whether those men reached the actual melee at the Orontes or not. One additional remark indicates that the enemy forces reached Ramesses with Hittites and peoples from Arzawa, Masa, and Pidassa (P 85–6). Can we assume that at some point the enemy had organized itself into four groups?19

Yet they were repulsed. Subsequently Muwatallis sent another, albeit smaller, wave of chariots westward, and we must credit Ramesses for being able to repel all of them. This might have appeared impossible. But the Pharaoh, with the troops of the first division and the relief support given to him by the arrival of the contingents of the Na‘arn, found his resources sufficient to repulse the advancing enemy chariots. His success must have depended upon three factors. The first was the number of Hittite chariots that reached the camp, the second the presumed destruction of the division of Pre, and the third the possibility that many Hittite chariots were still fighting against those Egyptian troops. Indeed, one relief caption notes that the Hittite king had also sent forward some of his infantry. The latter would have arrived at the battlefield somewhat later than the faster-moving chariots, and they may have ended up only on the immediate west side of the Orontes.

The type of combat appears to have been mainly based upon chariots. Else, Ramesses could not have repelled the attacks of his enemy. The roles of the Pharaoh’s footsoldiers and those of Muwatallis are not described. Because the reliefs show the king’s attack in a chariot, a common theme of New Kingdom war representations, we cannot evaluate the service that the Egyptian infantry performed at Kadesh. All that we are left with is an assumption of the size of both armies, and that is based upon the evidence of the texts (Hittite chariotry and teher footsoldiers) and the probable size of an Egyptian division (5,000). I feel that all of these figures are open to question.

If Muwatallis sent 2,500 chariots and if Ramesses had the same number in his first division, then unless the former were held up by the carnage of Pre, the Pharaoh’s immediate success makes sense. With an additional 1,000 chariots on the enemy side, and the lack of reinforcements from the third division of Ptah, the Hittites would have had a numerical advantage. Moreover, the relief captions note the presence of Hittite infantry. All in all, unless we argue that the second division was not massacred, or that it held up the Hittite charge, one is thrown back upon the role of the Na‘arn in the fifth division. Earlier Egyptologists had noted their crucial presence, and we cannot but follow their analyses.

One lengthy caption in five versions refers to a pictorial representation of arriving infantry and chariotry. These are the Na‘arn, and with them the king was able to charge into the foe. Although they might have been tired from marching, by no means were they exhausted. In fact, they were ready to fight like Pickett’s men. Unlike General Lee, Ramesses immediately used them, and with this advantage in chariots – I assume double that which he first had – the enemy was repulsed. Did Muwatallis have some idea that the Na‘arn were nearby, and thereby decided to attack the Egyptians as quickly as possible before these reinforcements could have come into play?

Even though much ink has been spilled in analyzing the battle, some details can be reconstructed. The account of the second day, however, has left everyone in suspense. It is only given in the account of the Poem, but the high-blown verbiage is impenetrable, or not of any use to the military historian. I believe that further combat took place, “prearranged,” so to speak. The king was able to marshal his ranks. Hence, at daybreak of the following day the two armies met once more. Granted that this section of the Poem is short, it nonetheless provides some support for my contention that often battles were fought on plains, normally soon after dawn, with the tacit agreement of both war leaders.

When we turn to the scenes of this battle, many useful military details can be ascertained. We see the Na‘arn arriving. They are Egyptians, and hold their long shields in the same manner as the natives, whether on foot on in a chariot. The third men in the enemy chariots hold spears or javelins. Sherden are present acting as a guard around Ramesses on the occasion when he ordered the Hittite scouts to be beaten. Clearly, these men served as an elite guard whose duty was primarily to their liege lord. The Hittite parallel is the group of teher warriors who surrounded Muwatallis. The same set-up was carved for Ramesses’ camp except here more specific details are conveyed, even to the point of indicating the relaxed mood of the Egyptian troops. In the enemy camp pack animals are shown. The oxen of the Hittites pull wagons with six spokes; donkeys are also laden with provisions. 20 The similarity to the Egyptian camp is self-evident.

Returning to the Egyptian army, a series of significant military aspects can be noted. The army of the Na‘arn marched as follows: first a line of chariots, then soldiers, and then another line of chariots. This point, hitherto unnoticed, provides a useful estimate for the size of a brigade. In particular, three chariots lead the force. Behind each of them are two columns of ten men. There are thus forty footsoldiers and twelve men on the chariots, making a grand total of fifty-two. Was this the way that Egyptian armies were organized when marching, or do the reliefs follow artistic license? Whatever are our conclusions, it appears from the Kadesh scenes, but not from the literary narrative of the Megiddo battle, that the Egyptian army used oblong squares.21

At Abydos we see a column of fifteen men proceeding in front of one chariot.22 Further to the forward position there is another group of chariots.23 Clearly, the arrangement is different. Can we assume that the artists worked to a specific pattern, one that depended upon a predetermined artistic interpretation rather than solely upon the actual events? Furthermore, in these reliefs there is a bottom row of marching chariots, apparently serving as a protective wing for the footsoldiers. But when we survey the approach to battle, the system alters. Abydos shows the following. When marching in normal order, normally two men are placed on the side of, or within the protection of, one chariot. But as we near the expected danger zone the two footsoldiers are now depicted with shields, and they have raised them for protection. Finally, there is the charge of the chariots, and, as may be expected, the infantry disappear because the rapidly moving vehicles have outpaced them. The onslaught is also indicated by the upward direction of the horses: a true charge into the fray is present.

Version L1 at Luxor reveals the same pattern but also with a contrast.24 The number of Na‘arn footsoldiers appears to be six or seven. R1, one of the Ramesseum variants, has ten men between the two sections of chariots, yet they are marching with at least seventy footsoldiers. Its companion (R2) does not help us very much. But all accounts indicate that the Egyptian counterattack was made up of chariots; the soldiers on foot must have followed soon after.

The precise if limited pictorial subsections dealing with the army of Ptah likewise are useful for our analysis of Egyptian marching order. Two speedy officials reach this division, and at Abu Simbel we see two distinct sectors of the group. One is composed of archers and the others of spearmen. The latter are identical to the marching Na‘arn at Abydos. In a Luxor version (L1) the lagging division is led by five standard-bearers and the division leader. Behind all of them are three footsoldiers preceding a chariot.

Other subtle contrasts among these pictorial representations show that a hard and fast rule concerning the number of combat soldiers per subsection in a division is impossible to determine. Yet we can notice the variances in tactics. When marching, for example, the footsoldiers were protected by chariots. This is most clearly seen with the Na‘arn. The advancing division of Ptah, for example, is shown in a more relaxed mode. Because the footsoldiers and the standard-bearers are at the head of the division with the division leader in front of them, it is evident that they did not expect any danger. So we must separate out those representations that indicate a relaxed but careful march from the advance to combat, the immediate attack, and the actual melee.

The mopping up of the Hittite attack is not recorded. Instead, the oversized figure of Ramesses on his chariot plunges into the Hittite host of chariots. But there are many ancillary points worthwhile indicating. Above all is the repulse to the Orontes. This is most evident by the specific details of Hittite dead in the river and the figure of the luckless prince of Aleppo rescued from the waters. Evidently, Ramesses’ charge pushed the chariot divisions of the enemy backward. If the full power of the first chariot wave had reached the Egyptian camp I feel that this would have been impossible. It would have taken some time for the Pharaoh to recover from his initial surprise and to prepare his troops for combat. But with the arrival of the Na‘arn Ramesses had on hand an additional chariot force ready for battle. They must have seen the attack of the Hittites, and I believe that not many of the enemy’s chariots had attained their desired aim. In other words, the king’s division of Amun plus the Na‘arn first blunted and then ended the tactical superiority of Muwatallis. Hence, Muwatallis had to send another wave of chariots forward in order to hold his own lines.

But this support failed. The evidence of Egyptian success may be read from the captions that accompany the figures of many Hittites. There is little doubt that the names and titles of these men were written down by the military scribes who accompanied the king. Enemy charioteers as well as troop-captains and a shieldbearer are listed together with two brothers of Muwatallis and two chiefs of the enemy’s teher. A dispatch-writer and a “chief of the suite” of Muwatallis may also be found. Note that these are all prominent men; none are mere footsoldiers. This befits the type of military action that took place in which high-ranking men were responsible for the carnage. We can assume that after the battle these men were identified, but their names and titles could only have been determined with the help of the enemy. Whether this list was drawn up with the aid of captured Hittites or, following the melee, with the assistance of Muwatallis, is unclear.25 Perhaps after the subsequent fighting on day two an official list of enemy dead on both sides was determined. As the dead Hittites were prominent men I cannot but conclude that their bodies were examined, their names recorded, and the corpses sent back to the camp of the foe.

On the second day the result of the carnage must have been clear to all. Ramesses had won the battle; his tactics were superb. On the other hand, he was forced to withdraw from the field because he was unable to dislodge the Hittites. Losing the strategic aim of the campaign, Ramesses left the field having failed to take Kadesh. No wonder, then, that the Egyptian monarch was forced to return to Asia soon thereafter.

Later in the reign of Ramesses II, most probably in his third decade as Pharaoh, the peaceful relations between Egypt and the Hittites had grown to such an extent that diplomatic marriages took place. On two occasions the Hittite monarch, Hattusilis III, sent one of his daughters to the Egyptian court. The intense political activity between the two states may be read on the various cuneiform tablets that are still preserved. But within Egypt, in particular at the Delta capital of Avaris, Egyptian–Hittite interconnections are overt. Recent archaeological discoveries at Qantir, located just opposite the capital of Avaris, have allowed us to reconstruct the military setting of this northeast Delta capital.30 Shield molds with Hittite motifs explicitly indicate that a foundry was established there for the production of these defensive weapons. Archaeologists have concluded that Hittites themselves were producing and repairing Hittite shields. This leads to the supposition that there were Hittite “mercenaries” or guards at Avaris. Tools of these foreigners were also discovered, further proving that the large site of Avaris-Qantir was the major military center in the northeast. Parts of chariots such as fittings, harness pieces, bronze foundries, javelins, arrow tips, horse bits, short swords, projectile tips, scales of coats of mail, and even stables indicate the warlike nature of the capital. A large number of vast buildings point to a chariot garrison that contained an exercise (or training) court, adjoining workshops, and horses’ stables. It has been estimated that, at the minimum, 350 horses could have been housed. But whether this was done for contingents within the entire Egyptian army, or solely for the foreigners, must remain an open question. None of the later battle reliefs of Merenptah or Ramesses III point to any Hittite sector of the native war machine.

NOTES

1 The most recent Egyptological analyses are the presentations by Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated, Translated II, 2–26, and his commentary in Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 3–55. The latter remarks must be read in conjunction with the earlier scholarly treatments, among which we may cite: Alan Gardiner, The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, Oxford (1960); Thomas von der Way, Die Textüberlieferung Ramses’ II. zur Qades-Schlacht, Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim (1984); and Hans Goedicke, ed., Perspectives on the Battle of Kadesh, Halgo, Baltimore (1985) – four separate studies. A recent study on this battle is that of Walter Mayer and Ronald Mayer-Opificius, “Die Schlacht bei Qades. Der Versuch einer neuen Rekonstruktion,” Ugarit Forschungen 26 (1994), 321–68. The numbers following “P” indicate the presently accepted scholarly agreement on the lines of the Poem. They are artificial.

2 Conveniently, see Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Translations II, 2–26, with his Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 1–2.

3 Murnane, The Road to Kadesh, covers the intense political jockeying that led up to the crucial encounter between the Egyptians and the Hittites.

4 Conveniently, see Gaballa, Narrative in Egyptian Art, 113–19; Spalinger “Notes on the Reliefs of the Battle of Kadesh,” in Goedicke, ed., Perspectives on the Battle of Kadesh, 1–42; Kitchen’s comments in Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 5–10; Heinz, Die Feldzugsdarstellungen des Neuen Reiches, passim, especially pp. 126–44; and Müller, Die Thematik der Schlachtenreliefs, 79–83, 91–2, and 96–8, with his Der König als Feldherr, chapter IX.

5 Spalinger, “Historical Observations on the Military Reliefs of Abu Simbel, and other Ramesside Temples in Nubia,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 66 (1980), 83–99.

6 Gardiner, The Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, 1– 4, saw that the “Bulletin” was a lengthy caption of one specific scene – namely, a legend “which served to explain the accompanying reliefs” (p. 4). Von der Way (note 1 above) covers the Bulletin as well as the Poem in a literary and philological study, with emphasis upon the personal piety of Ramesses. With regard to the latter situation, see the important lengthy article of Jan Assmann, “Krieg und Frieden im alten Ägypten,” Mannheimer Forum 83/4 (1984), 175–321.

My study, The Transformation of an Ancient Egyptian Narrative: P. Sallier III and the Battle of Kadesh, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden (2002), covers the later papyrus versions of the account.

7 See now Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 37–8.

8 The situation of the king’s march, especially its duration and composition, is presented by Kitchen in Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 41–2.

9 On the iter see Adelheid Schlott-Schwab, Die Ausmasse Ägyptens nach altägyptischen Texten, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden (1981), 118–22. She argues that this distance was 10.5 km if we understand the figure as an average one, determined by the distance of 900 km (Nile length of Upper Egypt). Additional studies are: Erhart Graefe, “Einige Bemerkungen zur Angabe der S†£t–Grösse auf der Weissen Kapelle Sesostris I.,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

59 (1979), 72–6; P. Vernus, review of Schlott-Schwab’s 1969 Dissertation on the same subject, in Revue d’Égyptologie 30 (1978), 189–93; and Schlott-Schwab, “Atlägyptische Texte über die Ausmasse Ägyptens,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 28 (1972), 109–13.

10 On the element of surprise, the classic military remarks are those of Jomini, The Art of War, 190–1; note as well Turney-High, The Military, 57–9. There are enough examples in history of armies failing to see one another even though they were close by. Dust, clouds, not to mention problems caused by the terrain, have had remarkable effects upon the failure of a war leader to recognize that his enemies were near. We also have to take into account the time of day. Kitchen discusses these afternoon events in Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 43–7.

11 The best analysis of the topography remains that of Breasted, “The Battle of Kadesh. A Study in the Earliest Known Military Strategy,” The Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago 5, Chicago (1904), 81–126. Later work on the subject has refined this analysis.

12 See note 8.

13 This is also discussed in Kitchen’s general comments cited in note 8.

14 These were the Hittite chariots attacks: P 84, P 132, and P 153. The Poem (P 221) indicates that Ramesses entered (on his chariot) into the enemy six times.

15 The data for these calculations have been presented in earlier chapters. The arithmetic works as follows. (1) 7,500 men, allowing 3 feet per person with a space in between, means a line of about 6,858 m long. Let us assume a depth of 91 m. The area is 6241 m2. In a square, that means that each side is 79 m. (2) The width of Egyptian chariots is approximately a bit over 1 m. We can assume that the Hittite chariots were roughly the same size as the Egyptian ones. The reliefs, for what they are worth, indicate this. (3) Cab plus draught pole equals 3 m. But we must deduct from that result ca. 0.5 m because the pole ran under the floor of the cab all the way back. Hence, outside of the chariots they were about 2.5 m long. (4) But it is easier to work with the diameter of the wheel, ca. 1 m. The result is that the length one chariot and horse occupied was 3.25 m or so. 3.25 m × 1 m = 3.25 m2. (5) If there were 3,500 chariots then the total area would have been 11,375 m2. (6) Allowing 61m between them standing in a file and when situated side by side, this means an area per chariot of 1.61 m × 3.86 m or 6.2 m2. (7) So (5) becomes 21,700 m2.

(8) Adding (1) and (7) results in 27,941 m2. In a square the sides would be 167 m or 548 feet, about 10 percent of a mile.

16 Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, 10; see the text to note 16 in chapter 5.

17 Major A. H. Burne, “Some Notes on the Battle of Kadesh,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 7 (1921), 191–5.

18 Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 39–40. Breasted was the first to maintain that the four divisions consisted of about 20,000 men: see excursus 1 to this chapter. John Keegan felt that “the Egyptian army appears to have had fifty chariots and 5000 soldiers”: A History of Warfare, 176. Both of his figures are too small. He observed that with 2,500 chariots, the enemy’s front of attack would have been “8000 yards wide,” about 7,315 km. I follow Kitchen.

19 Later in the account (P 149ff.), and at the time that the second Hittite chariot attack occurred, a more detailed and significantly different enumeration of the Hittite allies is given. The leaders of this follow-up attack were high-ranking members of the enemy coalition.

20 Elmer Edel, “Kleinasiatische und semitische Namen und Wörter aus den Texten der Qadesschlacht in hieroglyphischer Umschrift,” 99–105.

21 Machiavelli, The Art of War, Lynch, trs., 102 (Book V 13ff.). Kitchen discusses this situation in Ramesside Inscriptions, Translated and Annotated. Notes and Comments II, 41–2. Classical generals were accustomed to operate with oblong squares, a tactic which the writers of the Renaissance, such as Machiavelli, modified.

22 Wreszinski, Atlas zur altägyptischen Kulturgeschichte II, Pls. 16–24; Charles Kuentz, La bataille de Qadech, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo (1928–34), pls. XVII–XXIII; and Edouard Naville, Détails relevés dans les ruines de quelques temples égyptiens, Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris (1930), pls. V–XXII (his drawing are sometimes inaccurate).

23 The following remarks are dependent upon my study of these chariot scenes, “The Battle of Kadesh: The Chariot Frieze at Abydos,” Ägypten und Levante

13 (2003), 163–99.

24 The designations of the variants are taken from Kitchen, Ramesside Inscriptions II, 2; the scenes may be found in Wreszinski’s study referred to in note 22.

25 Edel, “Hethitische Personnennamen in hieroglyphischen Umschrift,” in Erich Neu and Christel Rüster, eds., Festschrift Heinrich Otten, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden (1973), 59–70.

26 A summary will be found in Kitchen, Pharaoh Triumphant. The Life and Times of Ramesses II, Aris and Philips, Warminster (1982), 64–70. His translations and commentaries of the inscriptions can be found in the two works cited in note 1 to the present chapter. David Warburton provides an overview of Egyptian–Hittite relations in his chapter, “Love and War in the Late Bronze Age: Egypt and Hatti,” in Roger Matthews and Cornelia Roemer, ed., Ancient Perspectives on Egypt, UCL Press, London (2003), 75–100.

27 See Kitchen, “ Some New Light on the Asiatic Wars of Ramesses II,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50 (1964), 47–70; Peter W. Haider, “Zum Moab-Feldzug Ramses’ II,” Studien zur altägyptischen Kultur 14 (1987), 107–23; and John Coleman Darnell and Richard Jasnow, “On the Moabite Inscriptions of Ramesses II at Luxor Temple,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993), 263–74.

28 I cannot but conclude that the cost to the state was significant; see our comments in excursus 1.

29 The war to the east of Palestine indicates that the traditional Egyptian military administration was not that successful in dealing with these new groups of enemies. Noteworthy is the data presented in P. Anastasi I: Fischer-Elfert, Die satirische Streitschrift des Papyrus Anastasi I, Chapter XIXa. There, portions of the East Jordan are covered. This information partially allows one to support the editor’s date for this composition up to year five of Ramesses II (pp. 261–7). However, I place the time of redaction into an interval commencing with the Kadesh campaign of this Pharaoh and ending around Ramesses II’s twelfth regnal year.

30 The following three studies are useful: Edgar B. Pusch, “‘Pi-Ramesses-Beloved of-Amun. Headquarters of the Chariotry’. Egyptians and Hittites in the Delta Residence of the Ramessides,” in Arne Eggebrecht, ed., Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim Guidebook. The Egyptian Collection, Phillip von Zabern, Mainz, (1996), 126–44, with his “High Temperature Industries in the Late Bronze Age Capital of Piramesses (Qantir),” in Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ancient Egyptian Mining and Metallurgy and Conservation of Metallic Artifacts, Ministry of Culture, Supreme Council of Antiquities, Cairo (1996), 121–32; and Herold, “Piramesses – the Northern Capital: Chariots, Horses and Foreign Gods,” in Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions, Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem (1998), 129–44. Memphis, however, remained a major production center of armaments at this time: Serge Sauneron, “La manufacture d’armes de Memphis,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 54 (1954), 7–12.

LINK

MEGIDDO

2008-10-30T21:42:00.000+09:00

Date

16 April 1457 BC (9 May traditional)

Location

Megiddo, Israel

Result

Egyptian victory

Belligerents

(1)Egypt

(2)Canaan

Kadesh

Megiddo

Mitanni

Commanders

(1)Thutmose III

(2)King of Kadesh

Strength

(1)10,000 - 20,000

(2)Unknown, probably fewer than Egyptian forces

Casualties and losses

(1)Unknown

(2)83 killed,

340 captured

Importance

By reestablishing Egyptian dominance in Palestine, Thutmose began a reign in which Egypt reached its greatest expanse as an empire.

Historical Setting

In the early years of the eighteenth century b.c., the power of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom was waning. That coincided with the immigration of the Hyksos, a Semitic population probably from the region of Palestine, that used superior weaponry to topple the faltering Thirteenth dynasty. The Hyksos dynasty began ruling Egypt in 1786 b.c.and lasted until 1575 b.c.By then the Hyksos had become sufficiently complacent and content to lose their edge, and the Egyptian population reasserted control over their own nation. The new pharaoh, who began the New Kingdom era, was Ahmose (ruled 1575–1550 b.c.). Ahmose was not content with merely regaining his country, but wanted to extend Egypt’s northeastern frontier to establish a strong buffer zone. He also wanted to extend Egypt’s power because exposure to foreign peoples had given the Egyptians a taste for things that could come only from outside their country. Hence, conquest and trade as well as security motivated Ahmose’s war making.

Following in Ahmose’s footsteps, later pharaohs extended Egyptian authority into the region along the eastern Mediterranean as well as southward into Nubia, modern Sudan. Under the direction of Thutmose I, Ahmose’s grandson, Egypt established hegemony in Palestine and Syria. Upon his death in 1510, however, Egyptian expansion was temporarily halted because of the attitude of the new pharaoh, Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut was daughter of Thutmose I and stepsister and wife to Thutmose II. When Thutmose II died in 1490, Hatshepsut at first ruled as regent for their young son Thutmose III, but soon threw off all pretense at regency and ruled openly as pharaoh, the only woman ever to do so. Her rule (1490–1468 b.c.) was marked by more than 20 years of peace, during which time Egypt embarked on a serious building program of constructing temples and monuments.

Hatshepsut’s passive foreign policy, however, encouraged subject kings in the Middle East to ponder the idea of independence. Under the direction of the King of Kadesh, supported by the powerful Mitanni population east of the Euphrates, the states of Palestine and Syria broke free of Egypt’s rule about the time of Hatshepsut’s death.

Early rumblings of discontent had not been punished by Egyptian forces, so the King of Kadesh, who probably exercised suzerainty over most of Syria and Palestine, demanded and received affirmations of loyalty from his subject kings. Some small kingdoms in southern Palestine hesitated, perhaps remembering the days of Ahmose and the penalty for disloyalty. Kadesh sent troops to compel them to cooperate, and it seems that the kingdom of Mitanni gave Kadesh covert support. They were an up-and-coming power themselves, currently competing with the nascent power of early Assyria. If Kadesh could hurt Egypt, then the Mitanni certainly hoped to benefit.

The cause of Hatshepsut’s death has never been positively determined; it may have been assassination at Thutmose III’s direction. Whatever the reason, Thutmose III was eager to take the throne and restore Egyptian power. After directing that Hatshepsut’s name be obliterated from all public buildings, he set about rebuilding an army that had been idle for more than two decades. His southern flank was secure because the Nubians had become increasingly Egyptianized. He could therefore focus on the rebellious kings to the northeast without having to worry about threats to the rear of his army.

How many men Thutmose enrolled has never been determined. Most historians believe that no Egyptian expeditionary force ever numbered more than 25,000 to 30,000 and the first army to take the field after such a long hiatus would almost certainly not be that large. The Egyptian army was comprised primarily of infantry, carrying shields and side arms—either axes or sicklelike swords. The aristocracy fought from chariots and probably as archers. Weapons at this time were bronze. The forces that Egypt faced were equipped in much the same fashion.

In his second year as pharaoh, Thutmose III took his army into action. He appears to have been skilled as an organizer because the rapid progress his army made implies a well-laid-out logistical system. He was also the first pharaoh who, apparently, took his own chroniclers on campaign with him because the details of the march and the battle are contemporary with the campaign. Megiddo was the first battle in history for which that can be said. Thutmose departed the Nile delta at Tharu on 19 April 1479 and just 9 days later was at Gaza, some 160 miles up the coast. He arrived there on the anniversary of his coronation, but spent no time in celebration; his troops were on the march the next morning.

The Battle

Twelve days from Gaza, the Egyptians encamped at Yehem, about 80 to 90 miles from Gaza and probably about 16 miles southwest of Megiddo. That walled city was the target because Thutmose’s intelligence corps had reported that the King of Kadesh and all his vassal kings were there. At this point, Thutmose had three possible routes to Megiddo. The road north to Aruna, along the ridge of Mount Carmel, turned northeast at that town and ran through a narrow pass directly to Megiddo. His second alternative branched north-northeast just past Aruna and intersected the Tannach road north of Megiddo. The third possibility was to take the road toward Damascus. This road ran eastward from Yehem and then hit a junction, which led north-northwest through Tannach. This route would enable him to approach Megiddo from the south. Thutmose’s advisors counseled either of the latter alternatives, as the pass was too narrow, inviting an ambush. Thutmose brushed their cautions aside, determined to take the direct route. He told them they could go by any route they pleased, but he was going through the pass. “For they, the enemy, abominated of Ra, consider thus, ‘Has His Majesty gone on another road? Then he fears us,’ thus do they consider” (Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. II, p. 105). His subordinates reluctantly agreed to go with him.

Whether through accurate supposition or by good intelligence, Thutmose was correct in his choice. Apparently, the King of Kadesh never thought that Thutmose would be stupid enough to commit his force to a narrow defile, so he concentrated the bulk of his army on the road near Tannach. Thutmose led his men out of Yehem toward Aruna on 13 May. As they approached the pass, he took the point position in his chariot, certainly a decision designed to inspire his troops and assure them of the correctness of his decision. As they debouched from the pass, they encountered only a small covering force, which they quickly drove away. Here Thutmose heeded his subordinates. Instead of launching a pursuit, he agreed to deploy his force in a defensive posture to allow the entire column to come up. Hearing of the arrival of the Egyptian army, the King of Kadesh withdrew his forces back to Megiddo.

Thutmose, either that afternoon or during the evening, decided not to attack the forces of Kadesh but instead to take up a position to the west of the city. He deployed his men in an arc athwart the small river Kina, with his flanks resting on high ground. This gave him a good route of retreat, if necessary. On the night of 14 May, the two armies camped, facing each other. At dawn, Thutmose spread his forces in three groups. He commanded in the center, and his left flank extended to the northwest of Megiddo, to be in a position to block any enemy retreat on the road that led northwest from the city. The details of the battle are too sketchy to determine how it was conducted. All the contemporary chroniclers state is that the enemy fled before the pharaoh’s forces: “His Majesty went forth in his chariot of electrum adorned with his weapons of war, like Horus armed with talons, the Lord of might, like Mentu of Thebes, his father Amen-Ra strengthening his arms” (Petrie, A History of Egypt, vol. II, p. 107).

Whatever the missing details, the Egyptians gained the upper hand, and the enemy fled in haste for the protection of the city walls, abandoning their camp and much of their materiel. That was what saved the Egyptians, at least temporarily. The Egyptian troops, lured by the prospect of loot, abandoned the chase and turned themselves over to pillage. That allowed the enemy to escape, although just barely. The residents of the city closed the gates rather too quickly, and the fleeing troops had to be hauled over the walls with ropes made of clothing. Thutmose was not happy, and chastened his men. “Had ye afterwards captured this city, behold I would have given [a rich offering to] Ra this day; because every chief of every country that has revolted is within it” (Breasted, A History of Egypt, p. 290).

Having failed to capture the city in a rush, Thutmose settled down for a siege. He ordered a wall of circumvallation built of wood from the surrounding forests; the rampart was called “Thutmose, encloser of the Asiatics.” In the wall, one gate was built, through which those inside the city that wished to surrender could exit. The details of the siege were recorded on a roll of leather stored in the temple of Amon, but only the reference to that scroll survives. The countryside was sufficiently lush to allow the Egyptians to eat well out of the fields and off the cattle and sheep herds. The length of the siege is debatable, sources listing it as anywhere from 3 weeks to 7 months, although it was probably shorter rather than longer. However long it took, the besieged finally ran out of food and surrendered.

Results

Although a number of kings were taken captive, surrendering either during the siege or at the city’s fall, the King of Kadesh managed to escape, probably in the immediate wake of the battle. Thutmose took little retribution on the captive kings or the city, although he did remove back to Egypt much of the city’s wealth. Thutmose, however, had captured on the battlefield the king’s son, who he took back to Egypt as a hostage, along with others of the king’s family as well as the sons of the other rebellious but now humbled kings. The description of the spoils of war is long and impressive, including 924 chariots, 2,238 horses, 200 suits of armor, and the tent belonging to the King of Kadesh along with all his furniture and household goods. Added to the spoils of later victories on this campaign, 426 pounds of gold and silver were acquired.

With Megiddo now firmly in hand, Thutmose marched his men northward toward Lebanon, taking possession of the cities of Yenoam, Nuges, and Hernkeru. It is not known if these cities had sent their submission to him during the siege of Megiddo or if Thutmose had to capture them upon his arrival; either way, they came under his control quickly. He ordered a fortress built in the area in order to keep back any threat the escaped King of Kadesh might mount and then proceeded to reestablish Egyptian hegemony by either accepting the vassalage of the local kings or replacing them with successors who would swear loyalty. Just as he had done with the son of the King of Kadesh, Thutmose took the sons of those rulers back to Egypt. This not only ensured cooperation, but it allowed the Egyptians to raise the hostages in a manner that would immerse them in Egyptian culture and power, making them more amenable to control when the hostages were in a position to succeed their fathers.

Thutmose was back in his capital city of Thebes in early October and master of a new and more stable Egyptian Empire. It would not always be happy; he conducted another fifteen campaigns in the northeast to either subdue rebellions or beat back foreign threats. During his eighth such campaign, he fought and defeated the Mitanni on the other side of the upper Euphrates, taking Egypt to the limits of its empire. This completely transformed Egypt as a nation. The wealth that came into Egypt in the form of annual tribute was so massive that it allowed for the construction of temples and public buildings for which Egypt is best known today, barring only the Pyramids and Sphinx.

Through both the Old and Middle Kingdoms Egypt had striven to remain isolated; after the expulsion of the Hyksos and the wars of the New Kingdom, commerce with foreign powers was too profitable to ever go back to the old days. The administration of an empire required the establishment of an expanded bureaucracy as well as a large standing army, both of which are expensive propositions. The wealth was the gift of the gods, so the priesthood also expanded, gaining in both wealth and power. Their temples demanded the best in craftsmanship, and the artistic life of Egypt benefited. Two hundred years after Thutmose III, Rameses II fought to maintain the borders of the empire. No pharaoh fought as often as he, but by the thirteenth century b.c. the power of Egypt had reached its height. From then onward, the Sea Peoples, the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans all either weakened Egypt or exercised dominion over Egypt.

LINK

The Nika Rebellion 532 AD

2008-10-30T21:39:00.000+09:00

Hippodrome of Constantinople (196-330) was initially built by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus and later enlarged by the Roman emperor Constantine The Great. Spina (the long wall dividing the racing track, with columns and obelisks) was embellished by the Roman emperor Theodosius The Great, who brought the obelisk of Thutmosis III from Karnak, Egypt, and the Delphi Tripod from Delphi, Greece

The hangman was probably new. He certainly didn't know his craft. And his ignorance almost killed Western civilization.

It wouldn't have taken much to kill Western civilization in the year 532. In distant Britain, which had not seen a Roman soldier in more than a century, the Saxons had recovered from the defeat the man known as "Arthur the Soldier" had inflicted on them at Mt. Badon, 16 years earlier. Their chiefs, Cynric and Ceawlin, were preparing new invasions. But Arthur had another project on his mind-he was preparing to battle his own son, Medraut (or Modred). The savage Franks owned Gaul and western Germany. The Visigoths, defeated by the Franks, ruled Spain. Across the Straits of Gibraltar, the Vandals controlled the province of Africa, the breadbasket of the Empire, and all of the Mediterranean. Italy, including Rome itself, was under the sway of the Ostrogoths.

The once-mighty Roman Empire consisted only of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It was menaced not only by the barbarians in the west, but by the civilized and powerful kingdom of Persia in the East. To the north, the Huns, despite the destruction of Attila's empire, were still the best cavalry in Europe. They and their allies, the Heruls, a Hunnicized German nation, remained a threat, and a new threat was joining them. The Slavs, a people savage enough to make the Huns look like exemplars of civilization, were massing on the Balkan boundaries. But to the people of Constantinople, capital of the Empire, these external threats were not as serious as the internal troubles. The emperor, Justinian, had coped well with the external problems during the five years he wore the purple. Surprisingly well. When the Persians attacked, Justinian had put a young, unknown officer named Belisarius in charge of the Imperial forces. At Daras, Belisarius lured the Persians into a trap and scattered their army.

But another of the emperor's appointments, John of Cappadocia, was bringing disaster at home. As praetorian prefect, or chief financial officer, John was balancing the budget by levying crushing taxes and curtailing essential services. John's measures were driving small farmers out of business. They began swarming into Constantinople, where they strained the city's relief facilities and increased its crime rate. Even more serious was religious dissension. Paganism among the Romans was defunct. The two principal Christian sects in Constantinople, however, showed no Christian charity toward each other. Quarrelling between the Catholics and the Monophysites was continuous and often violent. Three men to be hanged had committed their murders in one of those quarrels.

The factions

The men belonged to street gangs sponsored by two factions known as the Blues and the Greens. They took their names from the colors of the chariots they entered in the Hippodrome races. The government recognized the factions and established them as civilian militia divisions charged with defending the walls of the city. With official recognition came political affiliation, and, after Christianity became the religion of the Empire, affiliation with either the Catholics or the Monophysites. The Blues were Catholic and supported Catholic emperors; the Greens were Monophysite and supported Monophysite emperors. The factions sponsored street gangs, called partisans. The partisans dressed like Huns. They shaved the front of their scalps and let their hair grow long in the back. They wore Hunnish trousers and boots and shirts with baggy sleeves. Inside the sleeves, they carried daggers.

A large crowd had assembled to watch the execution on January 10, 532. The three men were marched to the scaffold and nooses placed around their necks. When the floor gave way beneath them, the three bodies dropped. But two of the bodies dropped all the way to the ground. The ropes had broken. After a moment of embarrassment, the hangman and his assistants hustled the two convicts-one a Green, the other a Blue-back up on the scaffold and tried to hang them again. The ropes broke again.

The executioners were stunned. The crowd murmured. Was God sending them a sign? A crowd of monks from a nearby monastery rushed up to the prisoners and carried them to a boat, rowed them across the Golden Horn and gave them sanctuary in a church. The city prefect, who had condemned the men to death, sent guards to the church to seize the men as soon as they stepped out.

Nika!

That pleased neither the Blues nor the Greens. Three days later was the Ides of January, a traditional occasion for chariot races. As tradition demanded, the emperor appeared at the Hippodrome. Both the Blues and the Greens implored him to pardon the fugitives. He gave them no answer. As the 22nd race began, a cry went up from all parts of the Hippodrome, "Long live the humane Greens and Blues." It must have shocked any neutral observers (if there were any). The Greens and Blues had never agreed on anything before. That night, a mob of Blues and Greens demanded that the prefect remove his guards. He refused. The mob burst into his headquarters, killed several officials, opened the jail, and released all the prisoners. Then the rioters set fire to a number of buildings. The fire spread, and many more buildings burned, including the huge church of Hagia Sophia.

Rioting went on and on. The mob was organized. Officers of the Green and Blue factions-high-ranking Romans-provided the leadership. The partisans, the dispossessed farmers, and the armed retainers of the great magnates supplied muscle. To identify themselves, the rioters shouted the traditional cheer of a winning faction at a chariot race-"Nika!" (Victory!). Historians later named this movement the Nika Rebellion.

The two regiments stationed in the city refused to move. Belisarius, who had returned triumphant from the Persian War, led his private army of retainers against the rioters, as did another general, Mundus, who had arrived leading a group of Herul auxiliaries. The mob, however, swarmed around the soldiers in the labyrinthine streets of the city and attacked them from all sides. The troops could accomplish nothing. On January 18, a week after the failed hangings, Justinian, his empress Theodora, Belisarius, Mundus, their troops, and a few picked officials were huddled in the palace while the Blues and Greens assembled in the Hippodrome crowning a new emperor. John of Cappadocia urged the emperor to flee.

Although probably none of the participants realized it, the moment was a turning point in history. If Justinian had fled, his dreamed-of project, the codification of Roman law, would probably never have happened. The civil and criminal law of most of Europe, Africa, and the Americas is based on Justinian's code. The law in the United Kingdom, most of the United States, and the rest of the world, although not based directly on the Roman code, is strongly influenced by it.

The shape of civilization for the next two millennia depended on the actions of as unlikely a cast of characters as fate had ever brought together.

First, there was the emperor, Justinian, who had been born Peter Sabbatius on a small farm in Illyria, north of Greece. His uncle, Justin, years before had joined the army. Justin could barely read and write, but he learned enough about military tactics to become count of the Excubitors, commander of one of the elite units of the army.

Stationed in the capital, Justin sent for his nephew and arranged for his education. Peter became Justin's secretary. To Justin, that meant confidential agent. Succession to the throne in the Roman Empire did not depend on heredity. Theoretically, the senate, the army, and the populace proclaimed the emperor. Actually, the army did most of the choosing, with the factions playing an important part in the process. When the old emperor died, Peter's intrigues with military and religious officials resulted in Justin becoming emperor. Justin gave Peter the rank of patrician and promoted him to Master of Soldiers, or commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Justin became ill, he made his nephew co-emperor. Peter Sabbatius changed his name to Justinian. When Justin died, Justinian became sole emperor. A tall, cadaverous, and humorless man, he shared the throne with his wife, Theodora, who had an even stranger background.

The empress, a pretty dark-haired woman, was much younger than Justinian, who was now about 50. She had once been an actress, which in those days was practically synonymous with prostitute. Also, she was a Monophysite, and Justinian was a Catholic. But when Justinian met her, long before he became emperor, he fell madly in love. He wanted to marry Theodora, but the empress Euphemia-herself a former slave-forbade a wedding. The patrician and the former prostitute married after Euphemia died.

In spite of their differences, and in spite of her background, Theodora remained passionately loyal to Justinian all her life, and he to her. At this moment, her voice resolved a crisis.

"If you wish, O Emperor, to save yourself, there is no difficulty," she said. "We have ample funds. Yonder is the sea, and there are the ships. Yet reflect whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you will not prefer death to safety. I agree with an old saying 'Purple makes a fair winding sheet.'"

Justinian agreed, too. He wasn't ready to die, though. He had a plan. But the plan depended on two other unlikely people: Belisarius and the emperor's private secretary, Narses.

Belisarius, not yet 30, had also married an actress, a friend of Theodora. The wedding, in fact, had taken place shortly before the riot. Antonina's affair with Belisarius may have had something to do with the young soldier's rise in the world. In the war against Persia, he had fully justified the emperor's faith in him. In Constantinople, though, his best efforts had been futile. His success in carrying out Justinian's plan would depend on the performance of the man who had to play the hardest role: Narses. And Narses was the most unlikely of this entire unlikely group.

Justinian planned to make him grand chamberlain, the second most powerful civilian in the Empire. But Narses had once been a slave. He was also a eunuch, castrated as a boy in his native Persarmenia (the portion of Armenia occupied by Persia), so he could be a servant in Persian harems. Somehow, he ended up in the slave market of Constantinople, and somehow, he attracted the attention of Justinian. Justinian was impressed with the slave's intelligence, loyalty, and capacity for hard work. The emperor had no need for a harem guard, but he could always find a use for brains. Narses, about four years older than Justinian, became a free man and rose rapidly in the imperial service. He was not only smart, but also generous and gregarious. These characteristics made him one of the most popular of court officials. And he was also, as he was to prove at this time, utterly fearless.

Justinian told Belisarius and Mundus to take their troops to the two entrances of the Hippodrome. Once again they would meet the rioters. But this time, Narses would prepare the way for them.

To Narses, he gave a bag of gold. The skinny little eunuch entered the Hippodrome alone and unarmed, walking through the howling mob that had already killed several hundred people. He circulated through the Blue section, waving to acquaintances and approaching important Blues. He reminded them that Justinian was a Catholic and had favored the Blues during Justin's reign. He pointed out that Hypatius, the man they were now proclaiming emperor, was a Green. He asked how they could support a Green. And he passed out the gold. The Blue leaders conferred quietly with each other. Then they unobtrusively spoke to their followers. Suddenly, in the middle of the coronation, all of the Blues turned and streamed out of the Hippodrome. The Greens were stunned. Before they could recover from their surprise, the soldiers of Belisarius and Mundus attacked. The Greens had no chance to organize. The soldiers killed 30,000, and Justinian had no more trouble with the factions.

The emperor was now free to rebuild the fire-ravaged city and build a new Hagia Sophia, a church still considered one of the marvels of the world. He could now start the reconquest of Africa and Italy-a Herculean task actually performed by Belisarius and the incredible Narses. Finally, Justinian could commence his greatest accomplishment: the codification of the law. Thanks to that, the rule of law, not the changing whims of a succession of tyrants, became established in Western civilization.

Chariot Tactics in the Bronze Age

2008-10-30T21:38:00.000+09:00

by Paul S. Dobbins

Introduction

The following comments are made in response to Nigel Stillman's short essay on the same subject in his supplement to Ancient Battles, Chariot Wars. I disgree very strongly with some of the points Stillman made in this essay, for reasons I am about to demonstrate, but first I would like to say something positive about a significant contribution he has made to the popularization of the new chronology proposed by Peter James and colleagues in the estimable Centuries of Darkness. Having wrestled with the arguments made in the latter, I confess to having joined fellow traveller Stillman in his acceptance of the new scheme. James would have us adjust all dates in the late Bronze Age by subtracting 250 years, implying among other things that the Trojan War, e.g., took place 950 - 900 B.C., rather than 1200 - 1150 BC. Applying this single, seemingly simple correction, eliminates mysterious "dark ages" from one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other!

Any arguments that may be made about apparent weaknesses in the particular details of James' account cannot be complemented with correspondingly well grounded, positive arguments about the old chronology. Even Colin Renfrew, doyen of Aegean Bronze age archaeology, does not dispute the overall weakness of the latter; he just isn't convinced James' correction is in the right direction. The gist of the James argument hinges on technical issues beyond the ken of the casual gamer or the amateur historian. Ultimately, following Renfrew, the issue may turn on the results of the extensive application of radio carbon dating and dendrochronolgy to ancient timbers; his expectation is that these techniques usually reveal surprising, greater-than-anticipated antiquity in the samples tested. The James group expects otherwise and there we shall leave it.

Chariot Functions in Ancient Warfare

Harking back to the matter at hand, chariot warfare, there seems to be much confusion in Stillman's account of the tactical use and abuse of the chariot in antiquity, and in the late Bronze age in particular. Outside of the wargaming literature, there is general agreement the chariot had two functions in ancient warfare: ( i) providing a mobile platform for archery, and (ii) "taxi service" for transporting (usually elite) foot soldiers into battle. Its historical development initiated with function ( i) and gradually evolved through various stages of (ii) until its demise. Stillman perpetuates the wargaming fantasy of a third function, "chariot killer", wherein chariot warriors are purpose armed with lance- and/or spear to overmatch the bow-armed chariot archers in swirling chariot-born melees. Putting to rest the myth of the "chariot killer" is the major theme of this article. In the absence of direct evidence, an analytical method that makes use of several "thought experiments" is employed. It is not claimed that these experiments - little essays - prove anything, rather it is hoped the arguments provide food for thought.

Starting from first principles, one may quickly dismiss the Sumerian precursors to the chariot, the ramshackle 4-onager wagon and the sulky-like, 2-onager log on wheels. The horse-drawn chariot proper was introduced into the Middle East, likely from the Caucasus, by PIE (proto-Indo-European) speakers in the 2nd millennium B.C. These were either the Hyskos or their immediate ancestors. No disagreements here with Stillman's piece; the combination of the highly maneuverable and (in relative terms) very fast light chariot with the composite bow-armed archer was devastatingly effective.

Experiment 1 Hyksos chariotry vs. Middle Kingdom Egyptian infantry

To illustrate this, in our first thought experiment, imagine the following. A formation of Hyskos chariots falls upon a (Middle) Egyptian force patrolling the eastern frontier. The Egyptian army at this time was composed of infantry brigaded into units differentiated by their arms: spearmen, axemen and bowmen; there were no chariots in the army of the Middle Kingdom. Most of the infantry would be massed by unit into close order formations for battle. In the absence of rough terrain or some such to anchor their flanks, the Egyptian units are fully exposed in the open. The primary arm of the Hyksos army was the chariotry, comprised of 2-horse light chariots, bearing a driver and an archer, either or both of whom may be armoured; for simplicity's sake, throughout the following text the chariot archer bears the designation, maryannu, which term is less generic than this use would imply.

The Hyksos would be expected to maneuver around the Egyptian battleline, focusing their attention on the flanks. One would observe squadrons of chariots setting up mere yards from the Egyptians, and methodically pumping aimed shots with their very powerful composite bows, at near point blank range, into targets of choice -- file leaders, standard bearers and rank closers. The best Egyptian countertactics would be twofold: counterfire by massed bowmen, and ad hoc counterattacks (rushes) by groups of (elite) warriors. In the first case, success would be fleeting at best, primarily because (i) it is assumed the Egyptian bowmen were not trained to shoot as individual marksmen, and (ii) the Egyptian bowmen would be unable to bring volleys to bear upon their tormentors, who would be expected to utilize their mobility to maneuver out of, or better yet, under the firing arcs.

Once they had passed under the firing arc of the footbows, the Hyksos could quickly and ruthlessly outshoot the exposed front rankers still able to return fire and intrepid enough to do so. On a technical note, the phrase passing under the firing arc refers to the chariot warriors moving through the zone of optimal effectiveness of the footbow's indirect, plunging fire and into the direct fire zone immediately in front of the foot; this direct fire zone is deep enough to give the chariots the 15+ yards they need to maneuver. Most of the footbows in a massed formation cannot fire directly at a target, rather they arch their shots over the heads of the comrades in the front rank(s); it is exceedingly difficult for a back-ranker to place a shot on a target 15 yards away via indirection. Wargamers have gotten used to the idea that bowfire is more effective at shorter range than long, but as noted wargamer and songmaster George Gershwin pointed out long ago, "it ain't necessarily so"; for the direct fire of the heavily armoured Hyksos maryannu, peppering the unarmoured Egyptian foot bow at short range, it is; for the ineffective mixture of scattered direct and indirect volley fire returned by the latter, it ain't.

There is a remote possibility that the Egyptian footbows could stand up to the maryannu, despite mounting casualties, and eventually bring their greater number of bows to bear, but the bet here is the Egyptian morale breaks as soon as the Hyksos move in for the kill.

As for rushing the chariots, one would expect no more than an occasional (isolated) success, provided the Hyksos were careful about rotating their squadrons and resting their horses; besides, mounting casualties to Egyptian officers would soon make any organized action unlikely. It may be safely argued that the Egyptian infantry, cowering behind their shields (those who had them), unable to bear so much pressure, would soon skedaddle.

The New Kingdom

Having lost to the Hyksos invaders, the Egyptians were co-opted into the former's military system, which served them very well when it later came time to throw off the Hyksos' yoke, at which point native Egyptian chariotry could match up with their Hyksos counterparts. In the subsequent era of the New Kingdom, light chariot archery tactics reached their zenith. Anatolia to Egypt - the entire eastern Mediterranean littoral - was dominated by the light chariot. The scenario played out above (thought experiment 1), demonstrating the overwhelming power of the new technology when opposed to the old, was transformed into a duel between technological equals.

In thought experiment 2, Egyptian chariotry is matched against Syrian, wherein the winner must earn victory against a formidable foe. Suppose Thutmose III is campaigning in Syria. An advanced division of the Egyptian army, composed of a mixed force of infantry and chariotry, is confronted by a mixed Syrian force. The battle will be decided by the outcome of the chariotry battle.

Experiment 2 New Kingdom vs. Syrian chariotry

The chariot squadrons employed by both sides are remarkably similar. Perhaps the modern modern analogy for the chariot squadron is the fighter squadron. Each chariot represents a very large investment for its respective side; in the subsistence economy of the ancient world, acquiring and maintaining horses was very expensive, requiring up to 10 acres of good pasturage per horse. The maryannu is a highly trained specialist, whose training and upkeep dominate the budget; his inventory of arms included: armour often but not necessarily comprised largely of scarce bronze (the anomaly of the bronze age was its scarcity; bronze is an alloy of tin and copper, and tin was very rare in the Mediterranean), a composite bow of horn and glue, taking up to 10 years to manufacture, and the finely crafted chariot itself, beautifully designed for its task, but difficult to maintain in good repair. Like aerial dogfights, chariot battles would rapidly consume both sides' resources, so the circumstances inducing their commitment in battle needed to be compelling.

A recent study, Sumer to Rome: the Capabilities of Ancient Armies (Gabriel and Metz, 1991), makes two relevant points about chariot archery. First, in contemporary experiments simulating archery fire from a chariot moving at a 20mph clip, a skilled archer, who had never attempted such a stunt before, was able to achieve a good degree of accuracy after a remarkably short amount of practice. Second, when stationary, a skilled archer is able to consistently hit a 4 sq. in. target 15 yards away. These points imply the following: a chariot archer fixed 15 yards from his foe is a deadly proposition (recall thought experiment 1), but a chariot archer, moving at the same distance, is proximately just as dangerous, though perhaps less consistent. We shall assume that 15 yards defines the outside edge of the maryannu's drop-dead kill zone. If one looks at illustrations of bronze age chariotry, e.g. the Perry drawings in Chariot Wars, there is no shortage of potentially crippling 4 sq. in. targets, even on the most heavily armoured of chariot ensembles, those of the Mitanni, whose maryannu, drivers and horses all apparently wore armour. Doubtless a direct hit by such a weapon at short range was a lethal proposition even for many a well-armored but unlucky warrior (or horse). Keep in mind, however, that powerful though the composite bow was, the body armors of the maryannu were sufficient to protect their owners from many varieties of direct hits at even close range, hence the importance of accurate fire into unprotected targets of opportunity (man or beast, arms or legs or groins or faces, etc).

One must put aside the romance of the chariot charge into melee. What the maryannu must do is close within 15 yards of his enemy and deliver kill-shots with his composite bow. In making his run-up, he must avoid presenting an easy target, by (e.g.) not taking a straight line of approach, instead weaving in and out, at varying speeds, etc. The better archer and the more stable platform have the advantage delivering death, but the faster car and the more skillful driver have the better chance ducking it. These were the parameters of the maryannu duel.

Our antagonists would be quick to seize a perceived advantage, such as attacking out of the sun (thereby confounding the aim and return fire of those attacked), but otherwise they would approach each other cautiously. Unless circumstances were extreme, an outnumbered chariotry could and would avoid closing with the enemy. Once the chariots of both sides were committed, however, all semblance of order would be lost, as "dogfights" break out all over the field. Operational losses would likely be high relative to combat losses; however sturdy the chariot cars may appear to have been, in the stress of mobile combat, as envisioned here, wheels would be broken and thrown, horses would come up lame, harness and tack would pull apart, and unwary maryannu would be tossed from sharply moving, twisting, turning and over-turning cars.

Charioteers operating within their kill zones face death as they deal death. Fatal and near fatal wounds to man and beast are the norm in the zone. The time of greatest vulnerability for the otherwise unimpaired maryannu occurs when he has pushed his team too hard, and the horses are blown. During the down time that follows, he is subject to attacks from all directions.

One supposes that the god of victory is on the side with the larger or luckier or more skilled chariotry, and the matter would end as the survivors on the losing side flee the field. Pursuit is possible, but dangerous and relatively ineffective. Victimizing the enemy left behind is the surer course to take.

As for our fight between Thutmose ///'s advance division and the Syrians, in the absence of an obvious advantage on either side, let's suppose the Egyptians won, since thirteen victorious campaigns in Syria was Thutmose ///'s legacy.

The Hittites

We have with the advent of the Hittites the first appearance of Stillman's "chariot killers". The concept ultimately arises from the fact there is evidence in Egyptian glyphs (Ramesses II account of the battle of Kadesh) that the Hittites used three-man chariot crews, but there is no evidence in the same sources that the Hittites used chariot archery. The fact that there are plenty of epigraphs bearing Hittite chariot archers in Hittite sources has been given short shrift in the literature. Regardless, the argument is made the Hittites added a spearman (or spear-armed runner) to their chariot cars with the mission of killing an opposing chariot archer in hand-to-hand combat, from car to moving car.

Thought experiment 3 concerns a meeting between an Egyptian maryannu and the 3-man Hittite -- sans bow -- chariot killer. Experiment 3a makes the more probable assumption that the Hittite chariot had an archer and a spearman. In general, Hittite chariots are thought to be slightly heavier and less maneuverable than the Egyptian cars, especially when they bear three crew instead of two. Whether they are slower than the Egyptian chariots depends on the respective qualities of horses employed; it is not improbable that Hittite horses were qualitatively superior, since the Hittites had access to the best horse breeding lands.

Experiment 3 New Kingdom chariot vs. Stillman's Hittite chariot killers

As posited in thought experiment 2, the maryannu had a kill zone of 15 yards. The question to be considered here is: could a spear-armed crewman outperform the maryannu in anti-chariot warfare? The resounding answer is no! The great difficulty with the spearman construct is imagining how the fellow gets anywhere close to the maryannu, given his co-riders do not include an archer who can suppress or distract the maryannu. How does the spearman bring his weapon to bear against an opponent who possesses lethal force at 15 yards. Indeed, there seems to be considerable difficulty using a thrusting weapon from a chariot under any circumstances. By supposition, the spearman is not seeking victory via missile fire (a javelin is a poor match against a composite bow at the edge of the kill-zone), rather by overwhelming force in melee, since Stillman believes the spear is used to better sweep the battlefield clear of enemy chariotry.

From the Egyptian viewpoint, there is no reason to maneuver into the attacking Hittites, thus playing into their hands. It would be better to stand off and shoot them down as they close. One is reminded of the tactics the Egyptian mamluks adopted against the crusading western knights approximately 2000 years later. The mamluk ghulams would stand their ground and pump as many arrows as possible into an attacking mass of knights; the intensity of the mamluks direct missile fire was capable of bringing the knights' charge to a dead halt.

Stillman, however, in the estimable Armies of the Ancient Near East or AANE (WRG, 1984) argued (p.55) that “[t]he disadvantage to the Egyptians would be the danger of being swept away by their heavier opponents in the initial charge.” There appears to be some elementary notion of physics at work here, in which the presumed greater weight (mass) of the charging Hittite chariots, operating through the distance of the charge, brings an inexorable physical force to bear on the Egyptians, such that they are physically pushed back. This is nonsense. No one actually believes that chariots fought by charging into direct contact with each other, much like ramming galleys or hoplites.

If there were collisions between chariots, and there must have been, it is not because the drivers coaxed the horses into doing so. Such accidents as may have happened would in no way stand either Hittite nor Egyptian in better position apart from pure luck. The weight of the chariots and the number of men crewing them – their physical force -- was irrelevant in chariot-to-chariot warefare, outside of considerations for the sustainable speed and stamina of the horses, and the maneuverability of the cars. Stillman’s statement may be turned around: the disadvantage to the Hittites would be the danger of exhausting their horses without ever bringing their melee weapons to bear against their more nimble foes.

One may imagine the Hittite tactics as follows. A Hittite chariot wants to close as quickly as possible with an Egyptian. A direct approach is the quickest, but fraught with danger, so the Hittite may attempt an elliptical one, circling his prey, perhaps seeking out rises and hollows that mask his approach. The last mad dash through the zone must pass as close to the enemy car as possible, giving the spearman a chance to strike the maryannu or his driver, and (too bad) the maryannu a chance to put an arrow between his eyes in the attempt. A tail chase would be the best, wherein the Hittite charioteer comes up (unobserved) behind the Egyptian, and strikes a deathblow as he passes by, but it is difficult to see how this could transpire, even if the average Hittite chariot were faster than the Egyptian (which is not impossible); just such a scene is depicted on the cover of Chariot Wars, and one notes poor pharaoh, distracted no doubt by the cheekiness of the Hittites, has put aside his bow and taken up a kopesh to do battle. This dead duck cannot have singlehandedly turned the tide against the Hittite onslaught at Kadesh.

There may be something of value to be gleaned from the example. Ramesses II's monumental relief, dedicated to his victory at Kadesh, tells the tale of the pharoah's heroic personal counterattack saving the Egyptian army. Suppose Ramesses account is broadly true, that a small number of maryannu saved the day by falling on the overextended and distracted Hittites, whose thoughts had turned to looting the Egyptian camp, and driving them from the field. If the Hittite chariotry were caught flatfooted and bowless, a relatively small number of maryannu could render great execution among them, once again, by closing to killing range and peppering the defenseless bastards. The Egyptian pharaoh of the Kadesh relief, in contrast to the Perrys' Chariot Wars pharaoh, is depicted in his full glory as an archer - no kopesh for him.

Experiment 3a New Kingdom vs. Hittite chariotry (2)

Alternatively, Hittite tactics may have been evolutionary instead of devolutionary. If a third crewman - a spearman - were added to the standard archer-driver pair, additional possibilities loom large. Total Hittite chariotry may have numbered somewhere around 2000 - 2500 cars, implying 2000+ spearmen riding into battle. Since it is believed that bronze age armies were usually small, seldom exceeding 10,000 men (except at really big battles like Kadesh), the Hittites would have been capable in battle of delivering up to 20% of their force at 20 m.p.h! Having managed to slip or fight past an enemy's flank, the chariots would discharge their spearman supercargoes on the enemy rear, not unlike a (very) large commando. If this speculation rings true, the Hittites may be considered the innovators of the second function of chariotry noted above, the ferrying of foot warriors into battle (this was later perfected by the Assyrians - see below). If Hittite chariotry had taken up the spear by adding an additional crewman, it was not because they had developed a superior tactic for chariot fighting, rather they had developed a new tactic for fighting infantry.

There remained the matter of defeating the enemy chariotry. This was the job of the Hittite maryannu, whose weapon of choice was the composite bow, with which he could deliver lethal force, rapidly and consistently, over a distance of 15 yards.

Stillman, in passim, mentions other possible tactical uses for chariot-borne spearmen/runners. There is no reason why they could not have dismounted during the chariot battle itself, dangerous as that seems, with the goal of seizing control of the ground and its detritus of wrecked chariotry. Roving groups of runners could kill off incapacitated or outnumbered enemy dismounted and succor friends in distress. Woe to the charioteers whose horses are exhausted in the presence of hostile runners; joy to those charioteers whose horses may rest behind a screen of friendly runners. Presumably, the charioteers would be too busy fighting their counterparts to pay heed to such actions; pity the poor runners if their side's chariotry breaks, thus allowing the enemy maryannu to focus on them.

Robert Drews, in The End of the Bronze Age, theorized that the dart was an important late bronze age weapon; runners dropping off chariots to scavenge the battleground may very well have had darts, which would have made them potentially very dangerous to unwary charioteers. Thus, groups of runners, whether dart armed or not, fanning out across the ground upon which the chariots were fighting and maneuvering, could potentially deny some of that ground to one side or the other, thus tipping the scales of battle in their side's favor. If Hittite chariotry had taken up the spear by adding an additional crewman because they had developed a superior tactic for chariot fighting, it was a very different tactic than that suggested by Stillman.

Hittite chariotry had greater antiquity than Egyptian, having fallen off the PIE tree earlier in time; it had succeeded against other formidable chariotries, including the Hurrian and the Syrian. At Kadesh, it apparently had the Egyptians on the edge of defeat before pharaoh’s desperate riposte extracted his army in the eleventh hour. There is no doubt the Egyptians suffered a strategic defeat at Kadesh, regardless how the tactical calculus works out. Thereafter, Hittite and Egyptian struck up a nonaggression pact that lasted until the Hittite empire finally succumbed to mystery aggressors in the catastrophic end of the Bronze Age.

The Aegean and the Mycenaeans

The ultimate statement of the chariot killer idea may be found in the romance of the chariot lancer. In what may be interpreted as a bald-faced fabrication, Stillman asserts that the Mycenaeans (i) learned their chariot tactics from the Hittites, and (ii) they perfected the latter's anti-chariot spear tactics by adopting a lance, or pike, for formal chariot-borne jousting. Nowhere else in the literature is (i) found; rather, the Mycenaeans are usually assumed to have dropped off the same PIE tree as the Hittites, and share common chariot fighting ancestors. As for the chariot lancer, there is no extant evidence whatsoever of such use in anti-chariot warfare. What one can see is a few representations of Mycenaean chariot warriors (possibly) engaging foot soldiers with sword or spear.

The difficulty for the present argument lies in the lack of evidence for the use of the bow in Mycenaean chariotry. The few surviving scenes showing the chariot bow are strictly lion hunting scenes. However, there is considerable circumstantial evidence for the use of the bow, including inventories of arrow heads, the design of the famed Dendra cuirass, which is functionally the same as the heavy armors of Middle East maryannu, and the Mycenaeans' PIE origins; if they originally used the bow in chariot warfare, why would they have given it up, unless their concerns had become so isolated and provincial that they no longer had to compete with superior chariotries to the east. But historians are convinced a Mycenaean power was a major player in eastern Mediterranean power politics in the late bronze age, so isolation was not a universal feature of Mycenaean military development.

As was argued above for the Hittites, forgoing the bow for a spear or a lance is a retrograde development, a devolution of tactics. There is the additional observation that Mycenaean horses are known from burial remains to have been very small, and despite counter-assertions in the gaming literature, Mycenaean chariot cars were small and lightly constructed. None of this adds up to a chariot-borne lancer boldly charging the enemy ranks. I continue to favor the argument of Robert Drews that the composite bow and the light chariot are a single, integrated weapons system that was common to all chariotries of the Bronze Age.

Experiment 4 Mycenaean chariot lancers duel

One may imagine an encounter between two Mycenaean chariotries armed as Stillman's lancers. As per the foregoing analysis, the chariots feature relatively small cars pulled by smallish horses. The warriors are heavily armored, lance bearing nobles, but neither drivers nor horses are protected. As the chariots approach one another, a few champions emerge from the ranks to take center stage by issuing challenges to their opposite numbers.

Jousting via chariot is a tricky business. First, one assumes the warrior is braced by some means, most likely by use of a baldric, for otherwise any hit on a solid target would pop him right out of the car. Second, and far more serious, is the limited reach of the lance. Please examine for a moment the Perrys' drawings of the Mycenaean chariot warrior, which may be taken as fair representation of the Stillman lancer. The lance is clearly depicted as a long thrusting spear or a pike; even so, the weapon does not appear to project forward of the chariot team, meaning the reach of the lance falls within the "footprint" of the chariot/team ensemble.

This implies that in a chariot joust, the obvious target of a lance thrust is the horses of one's opponent. One can with impunity strike at the horses without leaving oneself open to a counterthrust, because your opponent is too far away to reach you with his lance; putting this another way, the horses are always significantly forward of the lancer, such that striking them and seriously injuring them may be accomplished well before the opposing lance can strike you. In a straightaway chariot joust, the horses are always at risk regardless the length of lance employed. This is the very big difference between the horseback lancer and the chariot borne lancer; the former must focus on his opponent, because a strike at anything else leaves him open to a killing counterthrust, thus he protects himself as well as his horse by aiming at the enemy lancer (that old canard, chivalry, has nothing to do with this). Chariot borne archers could also strike at each others' horses, and one suspects they often did, but they also would leave themselves open to fatal return shots if they routinely did so, especially in the zone.

Presumably, good blinders, the whip, and a severe bit may go partway to solving the problem of the horses shying away from the approaching lance, but they cannot overcome the reality of injury. Chariot lancers would be compelled to play psychological games with each others horses; one imagines a hard rap on a horse’s nose being just as good as a killing blow to the neck or breast for derailing a chariot charge. An experienced horse would shy away from an enemy car well before "taking the rap" (again). It therefore seems too much of a gamble for skilled warriors to depend on the toughness of their horses to win the jousts, and so far as anyone knows, Mycenaean horses were not armored; no doubt they would have been had they actually been used to joust! Thus we are left, again, with the notion of the elliptical approach, or the tail chase, to arrive at a possible means of bringing a lance to bear on an enemy chariot warrior.

It is also clear that the chariot lancer's inability to protect his horses would discourage charges into unbroken infantry, be they skirmishers, close order or whatever. Since the lance doesn't project far enough forward to strike an enemy soldier in a straightaway run-up, the horses are asked to bear the brunt of the initial contact in melee. Doubtless though they may have fooled some of the people some of the time, most often they would have been fair game for a host of nasty tricks. If lengthening the lancer's weapon was a rational response to this shortcoming, then one would expect to see at minimum 15' - 20' long pikes, much as the Perrys draw them. It is left to the reader to imagine how a chariot-borne warrior could wield a 20 foot pike forward, around the heads and shoulders of the horses, without fouling tack and/or spooking the team; if the lance cannot be used forward effectively, then the horses are so much dead meat.

The End of the Bronze Age

The end of the bronze age is the proverbial mystery wrapped in an enigma. With the exception of Ramesses II's Egypt, which narrowly escaped, the city-states of the eastern Mediterranean litterol, and the Hittite empire as well, were rent by predation on an unprecedented scale, all subsumed under the rubric "The Sea Peoples"; the bronze age didn't so much end as crash-land. The grand age of chariot warfare ended as well. A few comments are in order before closing with a short piece on the Assyrians.

First, despite the effectiveness of the light chariot-maryannu combination, it has its limitations. Chariot warfare is a game that is best played by two, if played at all. Chariot warfare is literally best played out on a level playing field. It is therefore somewhat ritualistic in practise, since both sides implicitly agree on suitable grounds. The earliest experiences of unsupported infantries being victimized by aggressive chariotries was not a characteristic of the Bronze Age end-game. Rather, the end was characterized by refined, aggressive infantry tactics, by those peoples having little or no respect for the rituals of chariot warfare, putting the charioteers to run. (Bronze age infantry tactics is the subject of a future article).

Taking the initiative and conducting a strategic offensive is likely the best way to make use of the chariot's great mobility to force an opponent otherwise not so inclined to give battle on ground favorable to its use. On the other hand, the great mobility of chariotry makes it an excellent countermeasure to diverse threats operating across a broad front, provided the force it can deliver is sufficient to meet the separate threats. It is the feeling here that the bronze age chariotries were caught "wrong-footed", i.e. off-balance, by being put on the strategic defensive by large scale threats that could (either) dictate the ground of the encounters and (or) shrug off underpowered counterattacks.

The Assyrians

Whether the new chronology is accepted or not, the ascendency of the Assyrians is part of a new age - the iron age -- issued in after the Bronze Age disasters. There may or may not have been a 200 - 250 year hiatus separating the two, but the military regime that came into power in Assyria was very different from its Levantine predecessors. The economics of the light chariot/maryannu combination turned decisively against their continued use into the new age. The widespread adoption of abundant iron to replace scarce bronze as the fundamental material of warfare resulted in the proliferation of individual arms and armor, and an upward scaling in the size of armies. And cavalry appeared on the scene, the final nail in the coffin of the light chariot for Near Eastern armies.

The advent of the so-called heavy chariot seems anomalous. Assyrian glyphs in the British Museum indicate its obvious function as a command vehicle and presumably a status ride for notables in the army. The heavy chariot featured a three to four man crew and a three to four horse team. The car was substantially a large, heavy box. Its crew consisted of a (probably noble) archer, a driver, and one or two shieldbearers. The horses were armored with textile and/or scale housings.

If chariots of this ilk were expected to play a major role in battle, then one has to consider what they added to the tactical mix that made them so useful. I am certain chariots were never used to break steady infantry lines by charging frontally into melee, apart from the occasional, ineffective gimmicks utilized later such as scythes and cataphract lancers. Chariots operating on the flanks had to have been very effective; similarly, chariots committed against disintegrating battlelines would have ended organized resistance. The gaming convention of identifying some chariots, such as the fictional Mycenaean lancer-armed light or the Assyrian heavy, with knights, may hold water under WRG assumptions, but it simply doesn't fly outside of those conventions.

The obvious answer that comes to mind is the still very dangerous combination of the expert archer, composite bow, and mobile platform. Was this combination so effective that the Assyrians were willing to pay a greater price than hitherto seen to keep the chariot archer alive on the battlefield?

In Chariot Wars there is a wonderful panoramic, 2-page Perry drawing of a meeting engagement between Assyrian and Babylonian forces. The Assyrian heavy chariots are drawn up in two lines on the right flank, squared off against the Babylonoian chariots, formed up in two lines before them. The remarkable aspect of this set-up is the chariotries of both sides are deployed in front of large bodies of bow and/or lance armed cavalry.

Stillman has argued for years, ever since AANE, that cavalry was necessary to guard the rear and flanks of Assyrian heavy chariots. So, for each chariot archer, it apparently required two on-board shieldbearers and an indeterminate number of cavalrymen -- we'll assume at least two -- to make a viable force, or a total of 5 to 6 horses (and up to 60 acres of permanent pasturage), five skilled supporters (a driver, two shieldbearers, and at least two cavalrymen), and the large, expensive and probably temperamental chariot car. The numbers given by Stillman in AANE imply a larger proportion of cavalry to chariots than two; it is interesting that the original Assyrian sources lump the cavalry with the charioteers under the common designation chariotmen. The economics of this arrangement suggest the chariot was prohibitively expensive for practical use.

There is another possibility, suggested above (see Experiment 3a), that the Assyrian heavy chariot was used to deliver up to two elite close combat warriors to a crucial spot on the battlefield. I would like to suggest that the deployment of heavy chariots in the Perry drawing is not likely an accurate picture. To deploy the cavalry passively behind the chariotry is nonsensical, since it suggests the more valuable resource is to be committed first, and the decisive battle will be fought to its rear, when- and wherever the cavalries collide.

Rather, one would expect the cavalry to be formed up in front of the chariots, such that the initial stage of the battle would be a cavalry action to clear the field for the safe deployment of the chariots into battle. The victorious cavalry would accomplish two things, (i) clear the field of enemy cavalry thus making it safer for their own chariots, and (ii) immediately force the withdrawal of the now overmatched opposing chariotry.

As described (speculated) above for the Hittites, the Assyrian chariots, once freed from the threat of enemy mounted, could skirt a flank and operate on the enemy rear, disgorging a strike force of commandos and peppering key targets with direct fire. Thus, 500 cars could deliver up to 1500 warriors (including archers) at speeds of up to 20 m.p.h., a very considerable strike force. The second function of chariotry -- the taxi service -- may well have reached its zenith with the large cars and full crews of the Assyrian chariotry.

Conclusions

The foregoing essays demonstrated the shortcomings of some of the conventional views about the tactics used in the age of Chariot Wars. The arguments hinge crucially on the skills of chariot-borne expert archers, who are assumed to be no less proficient 3000 years ago than their proxies are today. In military terms, these experts were technologically superior in anti-chariot warefare to a short list of alleged evolutionary countermeasures, including chariot-borne spear- and pikemen, whose adoption by Hittite, Mycenaean and Assyrian chariotries cannot be taken at face value as an “improvement” in chariot tactics. Rather, they are interpreted here as augmentations of the archer-light chariot combination, which was the primary weapon system of all chariotries well into the iron age.

Finally, these comments are reactions to Stillman's historical commentary on the use of chariots; there is no overt proposal here to change anything about any given rules set. I would hope that historically-minded wargamers might test some assumptions in friendly games.

References

Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks. Princeton University Press. 1988

----------------- The End of the Bronze Age. Princeton University Press. 1993

Gabriel, Richard A. and Karen S. Metz. From Sumer to Rome: The Military

Capabilities of Ancient Armies, Greenwood Press. 1991

Stillman, Nigel. Chariot Wars. Warhamer Historical Games Ltd. 1999

------------------ and Nigel Tallis Armies of the Near East, 3000BC to 539 BC.

Wargames Research Group. 1984.

Chariot Races - Warhammer

2008-10-29T15:11:00.000+09:00

Sorry Boss!’ Snigit stood before two
large Orcs with his head bowed low.

‘Dat’s the third chariot you’ve wrecked
this week.’ Gazbag shouted, smacking
the Gobbo round the ear. ‘You’d better
learn to take those corners a bit slower
next time. Now get out of ‘ere before I
get really mad.’ Snigit didn’t need
telling twice and legged it away.
‘Boss,’ the second Orc spoke up. ‘Why
do you let im keep driving your best
chariots if all he ever does is keep
wrecking dem?’

Gasbag replied ‘He loves going too fast
and don’t care about iz safety,’ a wry
smile fell over Gasbag’s face. ‘The
perfect qualities for a chariot driver.’

Main Rules PDF

Extra PDF

Circus Maximus-1980

2008-10-28T14:29:00.000+09:00

A racing combat game where you plan your resources. Four Preparation Points are allocated to each team. These can be used to improve Driver, Team Speed and Endurance or the Chariot itself. A race consists of three laps.

Turn Sequence

Movement Notation-each player logs the speed they will be going and whether or not the whip will be used
Movement Order Prep-each player places their colr chit into the draw pile
First and Subsequent Movement-a chit is drawn that player performs their move

During your movement you procede in a generally forward direction. Along the way you may pause to attack your opponents chariot, driver or team of horses (whipping them just before a corner can be very effective). Points spent on your chariot before the race makes it a better weapon but slows you down.

The two big corners are crucial. They have a speed maximum that, if exceded, could cause very unpleasant after effects. A seasonal campaign is offered that presents player with long term options. Drivers could improve through experience if they survive. Betting is mandatory to accrue the wealth needed to field a contender.

General Articles

Vol. 17 #5
1. Flipping Out Alan R. Moon-Elaborate play sugestions plus extensive optional rules with a whole new preparation system.
2. Contest #99
3. Question Box
Vol. 19 #4
1. Circus Maximus II Don Greenwood-
2. Colosseum Campaign Gopin, Nuemann-Combines Circus Maximus with Gladiator in an Emperor sponsored season

CIRCUS MAXIMUS HOME PAGE

Chariotmaster Homepage

2008-10-24T21:47:00.000+08:00

Once in a while I do write rules for some kind of game. Sometimes it’s just an extension to an existing game, like campaign rules, sometimes it’s a complete game on it’s own.

I’m quite a fan of the chariot races of ancient Rome and I’m also a fan of Warmaster and especially the Warmaster miniatures, so it was only a matter of time when I would write some chariot racing rules for Warmaster chariots.

The rules could be adopted to other scales, but because the relation of model size and movement distance is quite important (and therefore should be retained) the race track needed for other scales is quite enourmous.

I’ve build a Circus Maximus like stadium, but the races can be run on any kind of course even some kind of rallye over hedge and ditch.

The rules are available as online document and as pdf as an ordinary set of rules. I’m toying with the idea to add some flash to explain certain rules better, but haven’t made my mind up yet.

There is a second pdf file which holds templates, player sheets and counters that will come handy.

The site is still a bit rough. If you encounter any problems, please drop me a mail.

And I want to thank Michael Hellmig, Agis Neugebauer and Marco Schulze who helped playtesting the rules.

via Chariotmaster Homepage

ARENA MAXIMUS REVIEW

2008-10-24T21:05:00.000+08:00

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer -- MARCH 2, 2004

Initiative Round

Arena Maximus is an exciting game of chariot racing for 2-5 players from Fantasy Flight Games. Arena Maximus retails for $19.95.

Arena Maximus brings all the excitement of fantasy chariot racing into your dining room. Well, somewhat, anyway. The goal of the game is to be the first to bring your chariot team to victory. Beware, though, for your opponents will do anything to try to stop you and if you crash twice, you’re out of the running!

The game is fairly easy to play. Each participant chooses a chariot team, each of which has three stats; a beast score, a driver score, and a chariot score. The beast score determines how quickly a chariot can change speed, the driver score is how many cards can be discarded to refresh your hand and how many cards can be used to attack other charioteers, and the chariot score is how much damage your chariot can take before it crashes.

The track that represents the area is made up on die-cut cardboard pieces that are laid out in an oval pattern. Only the three squares immediately in front of the lead chariot are revealed, so the exact layout of the course remains a mystery. This adds excitement to the game, because some tiles contain hazards that can cause damage to a chariot. The chariots are placed inside the track at the start/finish line and each player is dealt seven cards.

The race deck contains three types of cards; whip, reign, and magic. Whip cards affect a chariot’s speed, reign cards are used to swerve around hazards, and magic cards function as wild cards and power magical abilities. In addition, whip and reign cards also provide skill, indicated by symbols in their upper-left hand corner. Magic cards are considered to have any skill icon. Skills can help you in avoiding hazards as you race around the track.

On their turn, each player either plays one or more whip cards to the table in their speed pool or discards one or more whip cards from the speed pool. The exact number of whip cards that can be played or discarded is equivalent to their chariot’s beast score. For each card in the speed pool, the chariot will move ahead one tile during the movement phase.

Then, the player may discard a number of cards from their hand equal to or less than their driver score. Discarding is useful to free up space in your hand for cards you may need later. If, for example, you need reign cards, you might choose to discard a few whip cards in hopes of drawing reign cards. After you have discarded, you draw cards to bring your hand back up to seven cards. However, the cards in your speed pool count towards your hand, so if you have three cards in your speed pool, you can only have four cards in your hand. Essentially, the faster you are going (the more cards you have in your speed pool…), the harder it is too steer (…the fewer cards you have to devote to maneuvers).

Having settled your card debt, you may move your chariot. However, other players may attempt to ram you as you move into the same space they occupy, block you to keep you from moving ahead, or attack other chariots in the same tile as themselves. In addition, there are hazards that crop up as you proceed around the track. Attempting to block, ram, or attack (or to avoid such) costs whip cards (to attack), reign cards (to block), or whip and reign cards (to ram). Avoiding hazards costs reign cards.

Hazards come in different flavors. Some are large rocks that have been scattered on the track, others might be jumps that require you be moving at a certain speed, and still others might be pits. Rocks have a rating, the number of reign cards that you must discard from your hand to bypass them. Jumps have a rating that indicates the number of cards that must be in your speed pool to clear the jump. For each card that you are short, your chariot takes one damage.

Hazard cards have at least one skill icon. You must discard from your hand one card with the appropriate skill icon for each icon shown on the hazard tile. For each card you are short, your chariot suffers one point of damage. However, you are immune to hazards of your own color and may ignore them when discarding to avoid hazard tiles. You may also find recovery stables, where you can choose to end your turn, reduce your speed to zero, remove all damage markers, and get seven new cards.

Magic is an optional rule that can spice the game up. During your turn, you may cast a spell from the spell list by discarding from your hand one magic card and a card with the appropriate skill icon on it. You can cast any spell by discarding two magic cards (because magic cards are wild). There are five spells in the game; alter terrain (switch any two revealed, unoccupied tiles up to three tiles in front of or behind your chariot), hasten (increase your speed by three tiles for one turn), heal (remove up to 3 damage markers from your chariot), teleport (skip one tile ahead), and fireball (give one point of damage to any chariot up to three tiles ahead or behind your own).

Critical Hit
The game is easy to learn and a blast to play, even if the magic rules are not used (we didn’t use them for our first outing). Since it relies only on basic counting and recognition skills, even fairly young children can be taught to play (the magic/skill system uses both icons and colors, so youngsters who have difficulty recognizing the icons can rely on color association), but it’s just as much fun for adults. A typical game lasts no more than about 30 minutes, but it does require a solid, steady surface for the track to be set up.

Oh, just in case anyone is curious, the chariot in last place is the first to move each turn, so the order of play will be constantly changing as the game progresses. This sounds imbalanced, but in practice, it works out quite well. Trust me.

Critical Fumble
One problem my group had was with racing the chariots along the inside of the track. The track pieces are fairly small, so you don’t place your chariots on them, but rather below them, to the inside of the oval. This is all well and good, but I’d rather have seen the track pieces be a little larger and have room for the markers. Plus, the inside of the track gets very crowded, especially around turns.

While there is a good mix of hazards, there comes a point at which the race gets blasé because you’re seen them all and there’s no real excitement left. Short of an expansion set with new hazard tiles, I don’t really see a way to resolve this problem. It also seems that, with seven cards, you’ve almost always got plenty to avoid any hazards that crop up (or at least enough to keep your chariot intact), especially if the magic rules are not being used. One idea that my group had though, was to make the turns tougher the faster you go. For example, while in a turn, you must expend one reign card for each card in your speed pool. For each card you are short, your chariot suffers a point of damage.

Coup de Grace
All things considered, this is a nice distraction for an evening, and with five players competing, it can get both exciting and cutthroat. In our first game, we had one chariot unable to finish the race (it crashed twice), one that slowed down too much (to avoid hazards) to catch back up, and three that crossed the finish line in a close heat. It was quite enjoyable, rather like watching Ben Hur again.

Final Grade: B

ARENA MAXIMUS!

2008-10-24T21:00:00.002+08:00

A FAST-PACED GAME OF FANTASY CHARIOT RACING!

For the glory of the Emperor, these brave charioteers stand before you today to face the deadliest race track ever devised - Arena Maximus! The winner will receive the laurels of victory and the mantle of immortality from the Emperor himself. The losers will die and be erased from the annals of history. Will you dare to wager everything on one race? Immortality or oblivion awaits you on the Arena Maximus!

Pit your team against your opponents' charioteers on a track complete with traps, pitfalls, and other hazards. Race to be the first to finish, but remember - the faster you go, the more likely you are to crash! If you find yourself falling behind, call upon your arsenal of spells to skirt the dangers of the arena and get back in the running. However, don't fall too far behind, as there's only so much magic can do.

Arena Maximus is a chariot racing game filled with thrills, spills, and spells for 2-5 players.