Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - The things they carried
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations, transliterations, and other conventions
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 The march route
- Chapter 3 The army
- Chapter 4 Unit organization and community
- Chapter 5 The things they carried
- Chapter 6 Marching
- Chapter 7 Resting
- Chapter 8 Eating and drinking
- Chapter 9 The soldier's body
- Chapter 10 Slaves, servants, and companions
- Chapter 11 Beyond the battlefield
- Tables
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Cyreans carried some things because they had to, other things because they wanted to. They carried the tools of their trades – shields and spears, sling bullets, arrows, javelins. They carried the necessities of life – food, water, firewood, cooking pots, cloaks, tents. They carried plunder, anything that looked portable and valuable enough to haul over one hill after another. The things they carried were as heavy and unwieldy as hammered bronze breastplates, as light and tiny as flint and tinder. Only a few had animals or slaves to help with the carrying.
Examining what the mercenaries carried significantly enhances our appreciation of the arduousness of the march. The Cyreans shouldered not the light, waterproof synthetics we take for granted, but bronze, leather, wood, and wool. Their non-combat gear was not standardized military-grade, but a mélange of borrowed and adapted items neither designed nor built for years of continuous hard use. More importantly, understanding the characteristics and sources of Cyrean equipment is essential to assessing the troops' behavior. Reliance on suskenoi, reluctance to abandon equipment, vociferous protection of pack animals – all make more sense when placed against the practical context of the army's gear.
Recovering the details of Cyrean equipment means dealing with the difficulties of the textual, archaeological, and art-historical evidence. Xenophon, for example, mentions weapons and armor repeatedly but gives few specifics; on non-combat items such as cooking pots, he says almost nothing.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Greek Army on the MarchSoldiers and Survival in Xenophon's Anabasis, pp. 109 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008