The Cambridge History of Warfare

The waning Greek city-states attempted valiantly – but more often tragically – to incorporate new methods of fighting, even though they were antithetical to the old amateur hoplite battle and the traditional etiquette of agrarian warfare. Nostalgia about the old ways continued, but political leaders were forced to confront the new military realities. ‘Nothing’, the orator Demosthenes warned his fourth-century BC audience of complacent Athenians, ‘has been more revolutionized and improved than the art of war.’ ‘I know that in the old times’, he continued, ‘the Spartans, like everyone else, would devote four or five months in the summer to invading and ravaging the enemy's territory with hoplites and citizen militia, and then would go home again. And they were so old-fashioned – or such good citizens – that they never used money to buy advantage from anyone, but their fighting was fair and open.’