The Art of Manliness - #231： How the Ghosts of Tradition Inspired Ancient Military Might

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so the armies of

00:00:18.520 ancient greece and rome have gained legendary status both militaries successfully conquered

00:00:23.040 much of the known world in their respective eras but what made them so formidable was it

00:00:27.700 technological innovation novel strategies or just plain old grit well my guest today on the show

00:00:32.640 argues that it was the greek and roman armies reverence for their mythic past that made them

00:00:37.340 great his name is j linden he goes by ted he's a classical scholar and the author of the book

00:00:42.020 soldiers and ghosts a history of battle in classical antiquity today on the show ted and i discuss how

00:00:47.240 the ghost of the iliad and the odyssey haunted greek soldiers the ways in which both the greeks and the

00:00:52.100 romans ritualized warfare and why the ancient greeks made a competition out of pretty much

00:00:56.680 everything in life we also discussed the competing virtues of courage and discipline within the roman

00:01:01.360 army this is a riveting conversation with some fascinating insights into ancient notions of

00:01:05.760 masculinity after the show check out the show notes at aom.is slash linden that's l-e-n-d-o-n

00:01:12.260 or you can get links to resources or you can delve deeper into this topic

00:01:15.720 okay professor linden welcome to the show uh mr mckay thank you very much for having me

00:01:24.700 uh so your book is called soldiers and ghosts and it's about battle and classic antiquity

00:01:32.480 it's talking ancient greeks ancient romes um and i love this book because i'm a classics guy

00:01:37.780 and uh but i thought it was interesting you begin your book about uh ancient greeks and ancient romans

00:01:43.880 talking about how american soldiers won't leave a fallen comrade behind even if they're dead

00:01:48.980 and then you say that this puts them in the company of these great warrior civilizations like

00:01:53.760 ancient greece and rome how so well i would i would limit that to a certain degree to to greece

00:02:01.520 because the romans seem a much have to have been much less fastidious about picking up their dead

00:02:07.320 um but um the greeks were um very very finicky about this what would happen would be that um

00:02:16.300 they'd have a battle uh and then one side would turn to flight and um the side that was victorious

00:02:24.180 would basically move forward and stand on all the bodies um not physically stand on them but stand over

00:02:32.000 them and then the losing side would have to send a herald who's protected by the gods to ask the

00:02:39.000 winning side for the bodies back um that is to say the bodies of their dead and when that happened

00:02:45.860 that was an admission of defeat so they had this very formal way of indicating victory and defeat

00:02:51.080 and then the then the winning side says yes um and uh then people from the losing side come and

00:03:00.420 and pick up the bodies of their people which must have been if you just think about it kind of weird

00:03:05.480 i mean you've just been fighting and now you're sort of all um all sort of dragging bodies around

00:03:11.580 together um very odd but in any event uh they they will then carry them home uh the bodies uh to be

00:03:19.900 buried um and uh the winning side uh will uh build a trophy uh at the point where uh the decisive um

00:03:29.860 uh effort in the battle happened but the turning point which is what trophy means in greek the

00:03:35.460 turning the turning and then um and that's the end of things but as you can see it's all very

00:03:42.440 it's all reformalized um the greeks believe that that if you didn't bury someone um or cremate them

00:03:49.920 correctly um there would be uh they would never be able to get properly into hades and would wander

00:03:56.600 around as ghosts um and that was of course a very bad thing to have ghosts wandering around the place

00:04:02.280 so i mean everybody knows the greek custom of putting a coin under the tongue of of a person

00:04:08.600 uh who's being buried so that they can pay the ferryman to take them over into hades well

00:04:13.920 you know burying them properly in every other respect is uh is also very important and that the

00:04:20.120 greeks are terrified and horrified by the prospect of bodies lost at sea uh because they can never be

00:04:26.480 um properly recovered and and uh and sent down to hades um i mean every class of this knows what

00:04:34.260 what i just told you what interested me was to discover that um oh that a parallel process has

00:04:43.180 evolved in the american armed forces uh and uh that um the american armed forces will happily fight

00:04:51.800 and endanger living soldiers to recover the bodies of dead soldiers um and what's interesting to me

00:05:00.720 about this uh is that and of course you know you couldn't we can see the ritualized quality of it

00:05:06.220 with the uh the ceremony um at the airplane when the body is taken back to the state the ceremony

00:05:12.880 at the airplane when the body arrives in the states the the military funeral all that type of thing

00:05:18.900 um it's not identical but obviously parallel to what the greeks are up to what really interested me

00:05:25.620 about it is we can see it happen that is to say unlike the greek custom which doesn't seem to exist

00:05:32.400 uh in the iliad but exists in historical time but we don't see it evolve uh we can really see it

00:05:38.760 evolve in the american case uh if you look if you read books about the sacral war and i'm thinking

00:05:44.660 here particularly of eugene sledges with the old breed it's a great book yeah great book uh about

00:05:51.260 particularly about the battle of okinawa um they're very he and his comrades are very indifferent

00:05:58.660 to the presence of american dead bodies um they do not feel any particular need to evacuate those

00:06:07.600 bodies and in fact there are unpleasant scenes in which they use those bodies they pile them up to

00:06:13.480 be fortifications um and um uh so they in that generation generation in the 40s they really don't

00:06:23.180 seem to have had this this this code um and um but it's very clearly very much there particularly in

00:06:32.360 the marine corps but also in the other services by the vietnam war and my suspicion is um that it

00:06:41.340 derives from the battle of chosen reservoir uh or the retreat from chosen reservoir in the korean war

00:06:47.800 um where the marines left a large number of comrades bodies behind and i think they sort of made a

00:06:54.820 corporate decision then that they were never going to do that again and um that and and acting on that

00:07:01.780 then um elaborated itself through the rest of the american services so that this has become a

00:07:07.680 an important part of the american way of war as i say i'm interested in it because we can sort of see

00:07:12.720 it evolve yeah that's really fascinating so like what we're seeing then is is a ritualization

00:07:17.760 of warfare absolutely right and so let's go back to the ancient greeks so they had this very elaborate

00:07:24.440 ritual for what to do with uh the dead bodies after a battle were the greeks we'll talk about some of the

00:07:32.220 other ways that the greeks were they ritualized warfare but were the greeks always this ritual when

00:07:38.340 it came to battle and if not when did this ritualization begin well um it uh to a certain

00:07:45.120 degree i mean it uh it appears in a kind of uh in a place we don't know much about that is

00:07:51.540 we have the iliad um and the iliad doesn't seem to involve this anywhere near this degree of

00:07:59.040 ritualization um of course it's fictional it's an epic poem uh it's based on material from 1200 to

00:08:06.760 700 bc all all muddled together so it doesn't necessarily really describe a real world um but

00:08:14.200 any event it um it is useful in the sense that we can say at least that at some point uh it doesn't

00:08:19.520 look like the greeks did this uh but when the greeks do pop into um uh in into our vision uh around

00:08:27.040 500 ad 500 bc i'm sorry um they do um have it seems this whole system of dealing with the dead

00:08:35.920 uh already well developed uh and we can't really um we can't really speculate about um exactly when it

00:08:45.880 comes about i personally can speculate about why it comes about uh because i think it has to do with

00:08:54.280 um the evolution of greek warfare to create uh to make it into a more perfect composite competition

00:09:03.100 uh and one of the things that this system does is it very clearly indicates winners and losers of

00:09:08.660 battles which of course no other um no other society has been quite as efficient as coming up with a way

00:09:15.440 in which right after the battle the loser admits that they lose so that there's no question about

00:09:20.560 who won uh i mean it's really an astonishing uh it's in many ways an astonishing human achievement

00:09:26.400 if it's very important for you to have a clear uh indication of who won and lost and it is important

00:09:33.540 to the greeks because not only do they compete individually between each other as as as people

00:09:39.680 but their city states are fully anthropomorphized and compete as um and compete with each other as

00:09:47.320 if they were people and when two greek armies fight it's two city states fighting and you want

00:09:54.440 and just as you want to know very clearly who is the most brave soldier so clearly you want to know

00:10:00.580 very clearly which is the most brave city state uh and therefore you evolve methods of making

00:10:06.420 creating a clear victor and a clear defeated so you yeah this isn't right so you talked throughout

00:10:12.080 the book about this competitive drive the greeks had they wanted to be the best and like what

00:10:19.000 erite right excellence i mean where did this drive come from and did did other ancient cultures have

00:10:25.500 the same desire for competition the ancient greeks had um we cannot tell exactly where it comes from

00:10:32.920 it seems to exist very clearly in um in the homeric poems which is the earliest greek evidence we have

00:10:39.140 uh and also more or less and more or less contemporaneously uh he said points out the

00:10:45.380 problems with it um uh because it creates strife and civil war and various other things so

00:10:51.280 uh the greeks already knew that it wasn't great um what i would say to that is that what sets the

00:10:58.140 greeks aside is their eagerness to compete in every possible realm um the people i know about

00:11:05.180 most of course are the other people i know about most of the romans and they compete in war uh and

00:11:12.200 in being heroic in war and in politics uh and in certain other limited realms which we'll be talking

00:11:19.280 about um but it would never strike the romans to consider for example bird interpretation as a

00:11:26.920 competitive enterprise or um or the or abusing people as a competitive enterprise as it appears

00:11:35.140 in the iliad or steering a ship as a competitive enterprise uh the thing about the greeks is that

00:11:42.160 they they elaborate this so that there's nothing nothing is left cooperative everything is made

00:11:49.000 competitive um and if you wish to get uh five ancient greeks to cooperate with each other

00:11:55.000 the best way to do so is simply to announce the fact that you're going to have a competition

00:11:59.640 in being cooperative um otherwise uh it really it really won't work uh they um they do not develop

00:12:08.940 uh some people think they develop later i don't frankly um but they but they really do not develop

00:12:16.280 um cooperative virtues and um they organize a society which is carefully based

00:12:24.600 based on uh exploiting competitive virtues uh so that for just for example in classical athens

00:12:31.200 uh they don't have taxes um what they do is they ask the richest people in the in the society to

00:12:39.280 cook to contribute to the great expenses of the society um to keep to creating warships and and

00:12:47.180 organizing um plays and things like that but it's intensely competitive uh the best warship of the

00:12:53.640 year gets a prize the best play of the year gets a prize we know that about all the tragedies right

00:12:59.060 that some of them win and some of them don't um but that's how they um that's how they fund their

00:13:05.560 entire state uh essentially by creating a series of competitions among the richest people uh and

00:13:12.780 letting the poor people um who are perceived to be perhaps either less competitive or less useful 0.55

00:13:18.340 in this sort of respect mostly um have a free ride it's interesting so let's go back to the title

00:13:25.220 of your book it's soldiers and ghosts and you argue uh throughout the book that both the greeks and the

00:13:30.380 romans particularly the greeks they were haunted by the ghost of their past and that the way the

00:13:36.200 innovations they made uh in warfare were was directed by this tradition and for the greeks it came from

00:13:44.060 the ilia the homeric epics um so let's talk about some of this this the rules that the greeks got

00:13:50.820 from the homeric epics on what made a good battle a good battle right so like for example they were

00:13:57.880 the greeks were particularly concerned about glory and honor in battle and you see this in in the

00:14:03.820 homeric epics so you talk about some of the the weird customs or rules about you know the governance of

00:14:10.160 you know who got glory and honor and who didn't and how this was inspired by the iliad

00:14:15.060 yes um i the uh the greeks do look back continuously uh and um one of the things that i particularly got

00:14:26.580 interested in uh is um the way in which although in around 500 um among the persian wars in the in the

00:14:37.300 in the uh in 480 479 um there seemed to be quite a lot of archers in greece uh that is to say archers

00:14:45.280 a normal part of greek armies or at least the athenian army um that by the fourth century bc

00:14:52.700 archers seem to have disappeared and um that's very odd you'd think because this is a effective

00:15:00.480 technology um there's nothing wrong with the bows that they use there's no technical technological

00:15:06.200 reason for this um and what's even more surprising is that they tend to be replaced uh by a type of

00:15:14.540 light infantry who throw javelins and when they run out of javelins throw rocks and you think wow you

00:15:21.380 know that's that's peculiar now greek has greece has a lot of rocks but there aren't a lot of other um

00:15:27.540 there aren't a lot of other armies of which i know which have institutionalized the throwing of rocks

00:15:33.620 as it were or have preferred systematically have made the choice to prefer javelins which of course

00:15:40.140 have a very short range uh to arrows which have a much longer range and um so this seems to be a case

00:15:47.100 of actually technological devolution and my thinking on it is that um javelins or the throwing of spears

00:15:55.960 specifically is unquestionably heroic in the uh in the iliad there's no question that every hero

00:16:03.700 that's one of the ways you fight you stab with your spear but you also throw your spear uh and there's

00:16:09.680 never any criticism of that that's regarded as as as firmly heroic on the same is true of throwing rocks

00:16:15.760 but archery is regarded in the poem as dubiously heroic there were at least two different ways of

00:16:22.660 looking at it the actual archers uh people like pandarus for example think what they do is heroic

00:16:29.680 but the a lot of other people basically say no archery is not heroic if you want to be a true hero

00:16:35.660 you must stand face to face to the enemy with the enemy and fight him close in and that is probably

00:16:41.860 the probably more people say that than uh in the iliad than praise archery it's interesting so there's

00:16:49.460 this idea like the archery was kind of wussy was yeah archery was kind of wussy and my and my argument

00:16:55.580 my my way of thinking is that it is this influence um that spear throwing is clearly heroic while archery

00:17:02.640 is dubiously heroic which operating on time over time in the minds of the greeks finally drives archery

00:17:09.820 out of their way of fighting and replaces it with with spear throwing and so the other aspect that

00:17:16.240 the greeks look to um to the to the iliad the homeric epics was this idea of one-on-one battle

00:17:23.060 single combat right you see in the iliad instances where there's sort of like this battle going on but

00:17:27.900 then homer calls out two fighters hector and achilles and they fight one-on-one um what did the greeks do

00:17:35.360 to i don't know some in a way replicate or give homage to that idea of you know single combat while still

00:17:43.360 fighting as a unit well for a very long time they simply still do single combat i mean we have long

00:17:49.780 lists of people this is mostly before 500 uh we have long lists of of single combat victors uh that

00:17:57.140 they still had the custom of actual challenge before battle and some guy would come out and say you know

00:18:04.060 i am such and such i challenge you uh i challenge anyone from your army to come out and fight you and

00:18:08.820 indeed there's an athenian we know by the name of sophonies who were told uh defeated numerous

00:18:14.220 opponents in this way and he's still alive at the battle of plataea so this is a this is a um this is

00:18:21.900 something they're still doing just before the lights come up uh on on greek history but my my view is

00:18:29.920 that uh the problem with single combat in reality is that it produces very confused battlefields

00:18:36.820 uh and if you have groups at the one hand fighting and single people fighting uh it's very difficult

00:18:44.040 to tell it's very difficult to tell who has been heroic and who has not and so um in my view what

00:18:52.900 the greeks did um was remove in order to keep the heroic quality of combat in order to keep it uh

00:19:01.160 competitive uh they they removed they removed themselves withdrew from from the mixed combat

00:19:07.820 of uh of of the iliad and instead said okay we're going to compete in one thing uh and we're going

00:19:15.780 to compete in one thing that is very easily judged and that one thing is standing your ground

00:19:21.800 uh because if you're sort of placed in a matrix it's fairly clear to everyone around you whether

00:19:27.040 you stand your ground or don't uh and that is what i think the phalanx is ultimately uh the the mass

00:19:35.060 formation of the classical greeks um in which but the heavy-armed hoplite fights it's a way of testing 0.99

00:19:42.580 uh individual soldiers to see who is the bravest by who can stand his ground the longest but since the

00:19:51.260 phalanx also represents the city it's a way of testing the city state uh to see which city state

00:19:57.840 has the same sort of courage um one of one of the things that makes it so useful to the greeks is that

00:20:04.000 is that it's not it is the perfect analogy in that you test the same thing at both levels uh and that's

00:20:10.820 what they want to do they want to test they want the bravest man to whom they can give an award which

00:20:16.140 they do do after the battle sometimes second and third place too um but they also want to know which

00:20:22.300 city is bravest so they come up with this somewhat unhomeric or at least only or at least debated in

00:20:30.380 homer a form of heroism which is standing your ground they make that the primary form um and um

00:20:38.640 they organize a system of fighting around it um so that they can tell uh who is going who in the

00:20:45.680 real world who is the bravest whilst if you actually try to do if you try to replicate homeric 1.00

00:20:51.280 fighting in the real world it's incredibly confusing and chaotic and you're not going to be able to tell

00:20:56.540 who the bravest is right so this is interesting so and i thought was interesting too as you argue that

00:21:01.220 you know the phalanx it's not i mean it's not a really effective way of warfare i mean a more

00:21:05.620 effective way would be sort of guerrilla tactics right but as you said this allows the city states and

00:21:11.760 individual greeks to know who's the best so it's off i mean it really is phalanx battle is like a

00:21:16.940 football game in a lot of ways yeah i mean it's it's it's highly rules bound in ways i mean not

00:21:24.300 only in in respect we've already talked about what happens after battle but before battle um there's a

00:21:31.060 there's also a series of things that sort of has to happen um everybody lines up uh you don't actually

00:21:37.020 agree on a time to fight but in practice you tend to wait for the other guys to to to be lined up

00:21:43.000 um you advance um you sing a hymn to the god apollo called the peon um there you there are sacrifices

00:21:51.180 to make sure that the gods are on your side um you uh you sing um there's a special magic shout to

00:21:59.240 aries the ene alios shout uh and so forth and this is all again very um of course it's religious

00:22:05.660 and therefore has a certain degree and independence um uh from from pure military considerations but

00:22:13.620 the fact that everyone employs exactly the same religious ritual or very similar religious ritual

00:22:18.080 before a battle and up to the point of contact uh suggests again a very high degree of ritualization

00:22:25.220 and and precisely as you say that we're talking here about something which they conceive to be very

00:22:30.540 much to they conceive to be what we would call a sport they of course have sports too

00:22:35.500 um but the greeks have a particular genius for um for generating rules uh from generating

00:22:43.580 competitive rules uh which is why of course they have the olympics and um they have organized

00:22:50.380 athletics in a world uh where that is not particularly common um or at least much less prominent

00:22:57.540 uh to the greeks organized athletics are one of the major things uh that interests them and this

00:23:03.240 what this tells us is that they have this genius for coming up with rules uh to make things fair so

00:23:09.420 that you can tell who is the best so going back to this idea of standing your ground this is

00:23:13.920 interesting because this was um a way the greeks were inspired by the homeric epics of displaying 0.95

00:23:21.380 courage but because they couldn't uh do it in single combat they they evolved it they changed it a bit

00:23:28.760 where they changed courage to mean stand your ground um i mean are there particular battles or instances

00:23:35.140 where this idea of courage meaning stand your ground um really comes into play um well yes absolutely

00:23:43.200 let me begin simply by saying that that standing your ground is kind of like archery it is an

00:23:49.400 equivocal virtue in um in the iliad you've got some people saying we're big heroes we have to stand

00:23:55.720 our ground and you've got other people saying we don't actually have to do this if it's going to

00:24:00.200 get us killed and then you've got other people who clearly simply don't stand their ground whatever

00:24:04.600 they think about it uh so homeric warfare is is much more fluid with people going back and forth

00:24:11.060 and famously you know people notice the way in which you're allowed to leave the battlefield if you

00:24:17.000 want a drink or a meal uh you can hang around in the tents for as long as you want um have long

00:24:24.180 discussions um which are reproduced by homer with your friends uh and then go back to the battle so

00:24:30.140 it's it's it's all very relaxed compared to um uh to later greek warfare um but um the uh when you

00:24:40.000 get into the later period they have made a clear decision that the homeric poems did not that standing

00:24:45.160 your ground is heroic and specifically that it is the most heroic thing um that you can do that they're

00:24:52.800 going to define heroism quite narrowly um in in terms of standing your ground uh and then if you

00:25:00.180 want to uh get a sense of its importance uh you'll remember the stand of the 300 spartans at thermopylai

00:25:06.920 uh when the persians attack this is in 480 bc uh and they basically fight and they fight and they fight

00:25:14.760 um uh until um they are all killed uh standing that heroically standing their ground and the poet

00:25:23.420 simonides uh writes this the famous epitaph which uh which we all know a stranger go tell the spartans

00:25:31.720 uh that we lie here according to their laws um and the law is the law to stand your ground

00:25:38.380 um and so um since that since that is the spartan law um they all die there and of course the

00:25:44.960 strangers needed to go tell the spartans because they're all dead and they can none of them can do

00:25:50.220 it themselves so let's shift gears here we were talking about the ancient greeks um let's talk about

00:25:55.500 the ancient romans so the greeks had the iliad to guide them in their approach to war that's the

00:26:00.760 tradition they look to what guided the romans in their development of their war-like ethos

00:26:07.100 that's an interesting question because of course the romans start only start writing at least as far

00:26:13.160 as we know the things that survived to us around 200 bc and their city is founded um you know according

00:26:21.600 to legend uh in 753 bc and so they've had a very they have a very very long period which is essentially

00:26:29.740 unhistorical to us um but they clearly have legends uh and much of the early material we have

00:26:37.000 is about their legends and um it's always been said or but not always been said but it's always been

00:26:42.880 said that history even their mythical history uh their own mythical history is the iliad and the

00:26:49.420 odyssey to the romans and so they basically um uh they basically preserve a series of stories about

00:26:57.860 um their early leaders and about how things were in the old days and that they model themselves

00:27:03.680 uh on on those on those particular individual people but without it being shall we say canonized

00:27:12.140 in epic poetry these are stories that are handed down in families and told a mother to child and

00:27:17.340 things and things like that an oral tradition which of course is like um exactly like the iliad and the

00:27:23.120 odyssey which are oral poems for a very long time but they're the property of professional

00:27:27.800 bards who memorize them and recite them and that that doesn't seem to be the case of the old roman 0.80

00:27:34.740 legends about about their doings in early time so let's talk about how the romans fought um so the

00:27:41.920 greeks had the phalanx and the romans eventually adopted the phalanx but how did the romans fight in

00:27:47.200 the early days of of rome or the republic well i mean before the romans adopt the phalanx we really

00:27:54.280 don't know um because uh we don't have any useful records uh or useful archaeological information

00:28:00.840 we have a few hints uh there's a very early temple to castor and pollux um which who are um

00:28:08.820 who are of course borrowed from greeks got the two greek uh the two greek brother gods um but they

00:28:15.940 are closely associated both in the greek and latin tradition with cavalry um so there might have been

00:28:21.680 some fighting on horseback uh but the truth is we really cannot we simply cannot in honesty tell

00:28:28.120 uh how they fought before they adopted the greek phalanx um but what we can tell is that the greek

00:28:36.820 phalanx did not agree with them uh because by the time we see them clearly they've abandoned the greek

00:28:42.180 phalanx and or not exactly abandoned it but collapsed it in such a fashion that individual roman soldiers

00:28:50.100 can fight as as heroic here as as heroic individuals much like people fight in the

00:28:56.960 iliad so that rather than like the greeks deciding we're not the iliad method of single combat doesn't

00:29:03.800 really work so we're going to do the phalanx the romans take the phalanx and they adapt it

00:29:08.620 to allow for uh individual uh individual fighting particularly before battle uh in which the young

00:29:17.940 men uh in the first rank in the velites are competing with one another um to um uh to challenge the

00:29:26.400 enemy uh this is also true of the cavalry which is made up of the um the most noble of the young men

00:29:31.980 the richest um they're they're challenging each other to into single combats uh and the whole system

00:29:39.420 rather than being a block uh is is uh much more messy uh because it's intended to allow for the for

00:29:49.520 single combats to develop uh and that is to my mind how you get from the phalanx which we know they

00:29:57.240 used uh to the classical republican form of uh of of roman fighting which is in the so-called manipular

00:30:04.700 legion in which the very in which the in which the army is divided up uh into small clumps of men

00:30:11.140 uh rather than simply in an enormous block like the phalanx of old and were the romans like the greeks

00:30:19.640 leery of technological advances because it would somehow rob them of honor and glory in battle

00:30:26.000 yeah i mean you don't um you will notice that um the romans much like the greeks never make archery 0.95

00:30:37.300 a significant part of their um their military thing uh and this is true even under the roman empire

00:30:45.540 um they uh they disliked both the romans and the greeks disliked the random factor and i think they

00:30:55.320 particularly associated archery and the fact that you know you've got a bunch of people you know

00:31:00.460 in a swarm who shoot off a bunch of arrows and they um you cannot tell whose arrow has hit anybody

00:31:09.220 so you cannot tell who the heroic person was who shot the arrow and the arrows strike randomly

00:31:15.140 uh and uh and they will strike equally brave and and cowardly uh and that's that won't do i mean

00:31:23.280 the point is that however you organize the fighting it has to distinguish between the brave and the

00:31:27.420 cowardly so that the brave will prevail or at least die heroically not being shot by an arrow

00:31:33.360 uh and so that the um so that the cowards will be shown to be cowards and archery just doesn't do that

00:31:40.740 very well okay so uh also within the romans you talk about these two competing ethoses these ideas of

00:31:48.960 weertus and disciplina ah you could you could tell you've had a classical education because you

00:31:54.680 pronounce you pronounce it weertus which is how a uh a classicist would pronounce it of course it

00:31:59.680 begins with a v and a boring old historian like me tends to pronounce it virtus all it means of course

00:32:05.800 is manliness um and uh it becomes the the word for um uh it becomes the word for courage or starts

00:32:14.400 with the word for courage i should point out that this is true both in greek and latin

00:32:17.760 that they don't make a linguistic distinction between manliness and courage so in latin you have

00:32:23.520 virtus manliness in greek you have andrea which also means manliness and courage at the same time

00:32:30.080 uh they don't seem they don't they don't need or feel they need a linguistic distinction between the

00:32:37.380 two qualities um something which uh your something which your magazine should contemplate and be

00:32:44.520 delighted by um but um uh yeah i mean what what to my mind happens is that you have um a very old

00:32:57.500 you have a very old culture of single combat at rome um that certainly is what if if the records mean

00:33:05.000 anything that's that is suggested um but that makes it it makes fighting information of any sort very

00:33:13.880 difficult and um so my argument is that the romans also developed this countervailing ethos disciplina

00:33:23.040 um which of course translates into discipline in english but also means things like you know hard work

00:33:30.480 so if you're asked to dig a ditch that's a question of disciplina um uh and um that whilst the individual

00:33:38.980 soldiers compete in the one in in in virtus the um uh the officers the leaders compete in disciplina

00:33:47.960 to try to keep order among all these young men who wish to fight um in uh who wish to fight in

00:33:55.460 individual combat and uh the result of this conflict is ultimately um the manipular legion but it's a

00:34:04.160 it's a happy conflict in that it it manages to uh keep the romans sufficiently organized so that they

00:34:10.880 can win battles on the big scale that's what that's disciplina uh but also allow them uh to uh fight

00:34:18.600 individually in a heroic fashion on the small scale uh that's virtus um which makes them incredibly

00:34:24.880 ferocious individually uh yeah i mean you talk about how far the romans took this disciplina how

00:34:31.620 serious they took i think you mentioned uh instance where a general killed his own son executed his own

00:34:37.380 son for cowardice because he didn't show disciplina well it's not for cowardice he's he's too brave um

00:34:43.440 this is this is a it's it's a war in which this is this is manlius torquatus um and uh who himself

00:34:51.340 early early in life manlius torquatus uh is challenged uh to a single combat uh by an enormous

00:34:59.160 gaul and uh is gets permission and goes out and fights it kills the gaul and takes his necklace his

00:35:05.380 torque which is why he is thereafter called manlius torquatus manlius the torque good guy right

00:35:11.960 so he gets older and um there is another war but this is a war not against gauls but but against

00:35:19.320 latins that is to say people who are linguistically and culturally the same as the romans and that

00:35:24.540 produces the possibility of severe confusion uh if there is single combat so the general manlius

00:35:31.380 torquatus on this one occasion forbids single combat uh but his son um who wishes to be proven as

00:35:38.940 brave as his father goes out and and ignores the rule and participates in single combat uh and then

00:35:45.880 brings the spoils the armor back and lays them before his father and says look father i'm just as

00:35:51.400 glorious as you were and then his father has him uh has him executed uh for the violation of disciplina

00:35:59.940 uh and um so yes you've got you've got that's a that's the that's sort of test case uh for the

00:36:07.360 two things in conflict uh it is of interest that this becomes a a sort of gross tradition uh in the

00:36:14.960 house of the manlii torquati and this is not the only one of their own sons that they execute uh they 0.58

00:36:21.780 develop a custom of doing this uh and uh either uh execute a number of their sons in in in subsequent

00:36:29.300 years or those sons knowing that they are going to be executed uh commit honorable suicide

00:36:34.560 wow yeah so they take it really serious um and how did the the these two conflicting ethoses

00:36:43.260 develop or evolve as rome changed transition from a republic to an empire was there a degradation of

00:36:51.080 the two or did one take precedent over the over the other well i mean the uh the romans clearly think

00:36:58.900 that both have to be kept going really very strongly and um that is what they want to do

00:37:07.000 uh and um the the the peril is that when you have a professional army uh they're going to become

00:37:14.180 better at disciplina because of course under the empire the romans do have a sort of the world's first

00:37:20.420 uh long service professional army with soldiers serving for 25 years and things like that

00:37:25.900 uh paid salaries um there's always a peril uh that they that things are going to flop over to the

00:37:32.700 disciplina side uh and that although they will be you know that they will be well trained and well

00:37:38.640 disciplined they will not be as brave and so the romans actually work very hard uh at keeping the the

00:37:46.880 the virtuos side going uh partially it's their system of uh of military decorations uh they have the

00:37:54.760 first we uh system of which we know of a military decoration the greek give the greeks give prizes

00:38:00.200 for being the best um but the romans just give prizes for doing various heroic things like um

00:38:06.620 uh say the life of another soldier and things like that much more like our system uh but their particular

00:38:13.320 technique is simply because the romans ultimately the greeks think the greeks think you can teach

00:38:20.160 courage um and uh this is of course debated in plato at considerable length but that basically seems

00:38:27.440 to be their view uh the romans don't really think you can teach courage and if they see if they think

00:38:34.540 that they're getting people without the right courage uh to be soldiers they will simply search

00:38:40.100 until they find people who have who are brought up right or who have the right courage in their blood

00:38:45.460 and so what you tend to get is the fact that they start recruiting um people from wilder and wilder

00:38:52.540 areas of the empire as the empire becomes more civilized the italians cease to want to fight

00:38:58.580 but then you've got all these gauls who maintain a military tradition and who have lots of virtues

00:39:03.760 you can give them disciplina you cannot give them virtues so the recruiters first go out into the

00:39:10.500 gaulic provinces and then in later years into spain um and then after that particularly uh onto the

00:39:19.080 german frontier uh and uh onto the balkan frontier and although they would not probably publicly say

00:39:26.420 it a lot of these people who are actually joining the roman army are probably really barbarians from

00:39:31.580 over the border uh who are taken in because they are really really brave uh and the romans know that

00:39:37.840 they can discipline them but they cannot generate bravery um over time it seems to me you can argue

00:39:45.640 uh that a practical distinction develops between uh the the roman soldier troops um rather the roman

00:39:53.460 citizen troops the legions uh who seem to um uh be be prized uh particularly for things like

00:40:01.620 engineering uh and the non-roman citizen troops who are who tend to be um uh from wilder areas uh these

00:40:09.880 are the so-called auxiliaries uh and uh they seem to be prized more for actual fighting uh because they

00:40:17.140 have more virtues than the legions and we can see this reflected in tacitus but we can also see it

00:40:24.060 particularly in trajan's column uh where if you count up the fights all the way up the column you

00:40:29.760 realize that most of the fighting is being done by the auxiliaries and surprisingly little of the

00:40:35.900 fighting is being done by the roman citizen legionaries who are instead depicted building

00:40:41.720 um cutting making roads cutting down forests uh and i mean they they appear a lot but they appear

00:40:48.460 mostly in uh engineering or parading capacities very interesting so ted you argue in the book that the

00:40:57.900 greeks um like like the greeks the romans reverenced the past uh but you argue that while the greek

00:41:04.180 reverence for their past made greek armies better rome's reverence for their military past made their

00:41:10.180 armies worse how so well my argument is vast um the greek greek military history is a series of

00:41:21.260 experiments to try to recreate the homeric ethics um the phalanx which we've always talked we already 0.99

00:41:27.040 talked about is one of those things but actually things get they get better at this as things go on

00:41:33.060 and philip the second um the king of macedonia the father of alexander uh produces another set of

00:41:40.500 experiments uh based at least we're told on various passages in the iliad uh which which make a far more

00:41:48.580 effective army uh than the greeks had previously he then of course defeats the greeks and goes at his

00:41:56.140 side and he is murdered uh and then his son um briefly defeats the greeks again but then goes off

00:42:03.440 and creates this incredible world empire uh so alexander is is phenomenally successful and he is

00:42:10.720 successful with an army that his father created uh on the basis of um of looking back uh at at the

00:42:18.320 iliad and also because his own soldiers coming from macedonia um have not been civilianized in the way

00:42:25.160 that the that a lot of the rest of the greek um greeks have been at are in fact in fact sort of

00:42:31.800 much more homeric in their outlook so if they're homeric in their outlook and they're fighting in a

00:42:37.220 homeric way or think they are um this makes for a very effective thing very interesting um my argument

00:42:44.280 about the romans is that um they lose confidence in that because particularly in um the late second

00:42:54.520 and third century they start having military setbacks and the third century is of course terrible not only

00:43:01.440 with multiple invasions by barbarians but also by a lot of civil war and economic collapse and general

00:43:07.940 misery um that they lose confidence in their own military tradition uh and in in the ways they

00:43:16.500 have been fighting over a very very long time uh because it doesn't seem to be effective anymore

00:43:21.340 and uh but they are of course because they're an ancient people they're still very past-minded

00:43:26.980 and um so what they do uh is is decide okay well our own traditions aren't helping us here uh let's

00:43:36.480 use the greek traditions uh and so what you see in the fourth century a.d is the revival of what is

00:43:44.840 essentially a phalanx army uh that is to say that the romans go back to um an army which would have

00:43:53.400 been which is recognized particularly among the infantry recognizably the same in equipment uh and

00:44:00.600 in tactics uh as the um as the greeks in the fifth century would have been that's to say even before

00:44:07.320 philip the second now there's a certain weird logic to this because um as as one author says well

00:44:14.900 um the only the only folk among us of the westerners who have ever defeated the persians 0.99

00:44:21.440 were the greeks so if we're gonna and if we're now losing to the persians we should naturally fight 1.00

00:44:27.820 like the greeks did and you know we think well that's very odd logic but if you revere the past 0.84

00:44:32.580 as much as the as the romans and the greeks did that makes sense uh so what you end up with is a

00:44:39.340 a roman army which is a throwback not to roman military tradition but to greek military tradition

00:44:45.660 uh and um which is as a result somewhat inflexible uh and brittle uh in the way that the roman army 0.81

00:44:54.960 had not been before uh that is to say in the in the earlier centuries in the republican in the earlier

00:45:01.040 empire uh and it seems to me that you can make a case that this is in fact um although it is a

00:45:08.500 historical recreation it's not a good historical recreation unlike philip the seconds who made a

00:45:15.700 better army with a historical recreation um the romans make a worse army um because the phalanx is

00:45:22.580 simply um just not as effective as the way the romans themselves used to fight uh something had the

00:45:29.020 romans thought about it they should have been able to tell because of course they had defeated

00:45:32.560 themselves the people with their own methods of warfare um that fought in these ways but they

00:45:39.260 were in a desperate situation they they knew they needed to make some change they had no confidence in

00:45:45.200 their own tradition uh and so they adopt this greek this this ancient greek way of fighting which proves

00:45:51.180 to be less effective very interesting well ted this has been a great conversation where can people

00:45:56.460 learn more about your work and your book uh soldiers and ghosts well um the easiest way is

00:46:02.520 to go to the library and um uh and and read it uh in fact that's uh in practice uh the best way to

00:46:10.080 proceed um uh the um uh there are there are of course various various book reviews and things like

00:46:18.720 that but the book is now quite old um and so uh it's it's still universally available um but um putting

00:46:27.680 your hands on an old review would be uh would be quite tricky um again i just say ultimately people

00:46:33.840 should probably um read the thing uh it's read it's what's written for people who are not academics

00:46:40.380 that is to say uh it is read it is written to be interesting um to people other than college

00:46:46.000 professors try to i try to write in a lively style uh and um so you will not be a reader will not be

00:46:53.360 overwhelmed with boredom and horror uh as a normal reader is when faced with an academic book

00:46:59.280 well i can concur i can i can vouch that this is true it's it's a highly engaging very readable book

00:47:04.720 well ted thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure well thank you brett for uh having me on

00:47:10.340 the show i'm extremely grateful my guest today was ted linden or j.e linden he's the author of the

00:47:15.060 book soldiers and ghosts available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also check out the

00:47:19.560 show notes for more information about what we talked about today at aom.is slash linden

00:47:24.300 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:47:39.240 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:47:42.960 the show and have got something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes

00:47:46.140 or stitcher helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and until next time

00:47:49.960 this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 01, 2016

#231： How the Ghosts of Tradition Inspired Ancient Military Might

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