One
The Study of Attic Fortifications
The Nature of The Evidence and the Nature of the Problem
In a lesson on generalship, Sokrates quizzes the younger Perikles on his knowledge of subjects that should be familiar to him: "Well, have you considered this, Perikles, that great mountains reaching Boiotia protect our country, through which the passes are narrow and steep, and that the interior of our country is divided by sheer mountains?" The point is conceded by Perikles, and Sokrates goes on: "Don't you think, then, that young Athenians armed with light weapons and occupying the mountains that protect our country could do injury to our enemies while providing a strong bulwark of defense to our citizens in the countryside?" (Xenophon Memorabilia 3.5.25-27). Elsewhere in the same dialogue, the young Glaukon, hopeful of becoming a leading statesman, is embarrassed when Sokrates shows him to have no real understanding of the importance of watchposts and the relative strengths of their garrisons in the countryside (3.6.10-11). Clearly, according to Sokrates (or, more properly to Xenophon, the author of these passages), such subjects should be thoroughly familiar to generals and statesmen alike.
Similar advice is given by Aristotle. Ideally, the territory of a state should be formed so that it is difficult for enemies to invade yet easy for its inhabitants to set forth from. It should also be easy to keep under surveillance (
), for a territory that is easily watched is easily defended. With all of these objects in mind, the advice of professional military men () should be consulted (Politics 1326b-1327a). Yet not just generals, but anyone who would take an active role as an orator in directing the affairs of state, must be familiar with the lay of the land and the positions and respective strengths of watchposts in the countryside (Rhetoric 1360a). Aristotle's advice, and
that of Xenophon as well, is not merely expository but derives from contemporary experience; for in their days the Athenians charged one of their ten annually elected generals with the defense of the countryside (
) and required that issues concerned with the defense of the countryside () be introduced for discussion in each of the ten annual mandatory meetings of the assembly ().[1]
From the middle decades of the fourth century onward, when our evidence (including the foregoing passages) becomes abundant, territorial defense emerges as an institutionalized concern of the highest order among the Athenians. Its importance in the
ranked along with discussion of the grain supply.[2] Athenian youths, the ephebes, upon enrollment and verification of their citizenship following their eighteenth birthday, entered a two-year course of military training that included garrison duty in Peiraieus and in the fortresses of the countryside.[3] The defense of Attica was, in a literal sense, the first duty of all Athenian citizens, and it was a recurrent issue in public debates.
At a certain level, such responsibility of citizens for the defense of the territory of their state was, and is, axiomatic and is therefore unremarkable. But when viewed in their historical context, the institutions of territorial defense attested among the Athenians of the fourth century do seem remarkably developed, especially by contrast with earlier practices as they may be deduced from the experiences of the fifth century.[4] Reviewing the conditions of warfare in Greece on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, when Attica would experience the fire and ax of Peloponnesian invaders, A. W. Gomme was compelled to ask, "Why were not the
strategy and the tactics of mountain warfare by light-armed troops developed in order to prevent the invasion reaching the plains?"[5] Xenophon, in the passage from the Memorabilia quoted above, seems to have anticipated Gomme's querying observation, and the Athenians of his day appear to have adopted measures to render Attica less vulnerable than it had been in the days of Perikles. But what, we must ask, was the full nature of those measures, and more important, what concrete effects did they have on the conduct of war and diplomacy by Athens in the fourth century?
Such questions should be easily resolved by a review of the abundant literary and epigraphic sources for Athens in the fourth century. Yet the answers are surprisingly elusive. Despite a great many texts that describe aspects of, or refer in passing to, the institutions of territorial defense, we have no ancient account that explicitly and comprehensively presents the methods and goals or general effects of the Athenian
Our sources take much for granted, and the gulf between us and them should not be underestimated. What we lack, most of all, are not facts about the deployment and armaments of men but an appreciation of what men and their armaments were meant to do.
Despite the absence of precise statistics, we are reasonably well informed about the normal deployment and armaments of men in defense of the countryside. Armaments, discussed in chapters 2, 4, and 5, are standard and, broadly speaking, predictable. Deployment, on the other hand, depends entirely upon local conditions and circumstances. Here the principal source of evidence is the archaeological remains of fortifications found throughout Attica. Defense is an art of waiting and watching and of making preparations in advance of the enemy. Since an attacker generally commands greater numbers and chooses the moment, an essential feature of the defender's routine preparation is the construction of fortifications to assure that those watching and waiting will be secure when the attack occurs. The mass, extent, and elaboration of various works of fortification are gross indicators of their relative importance in terms of what they protected and roughly determine the numbers of men committed to them under normal circumstances. By these indicators, the fortifications of the Athens-Peiraieus complex, some 29.5 kilometers of walls, demonstrate the vastly preponderant defensive importance of this urban complex over that of the garrison forts, none of which is even a twentieth the size of the Athens-Peiraieus complex.[6]
Outside of Athens and Peiraieus, the garrison forts of Attica dominated the defensive priorities of the Athenians. The locations of these
Map 1.
Attica, classical and Hellenistic forts and garrisons
forts establish the pattern of routine deployment of men engaged in the defense of the countryside. Patrols, the peripoloi , regularly made their way cross-country between these garrisons.[7] Smaller outposts and lookout stations were sometimes manned in addition to the major garrisons, but the garrisons of the permanent forts of Attica represented the chief commitment of manpower and resources in the
. The remains of these forts are therefore primary evidence in the process of recovering the defensive priorities and activities of the Athenians. For an appraisal of the issues of concern here, a brief survey of the classical garrison forts of Attica is in order.
Eleusis was the largest and clearly the most important of the Attic garrison forts. Lying close to the Megarian frontier, Eleusis was already substantially fortified in the late sixth century, and its circuit was rebuilt and enlarged in both the fifth and the fourth centuries, when it reached a perimeter of 1.35 kilometers (see figure 1).[8] Eleusis was a regular assembly point for expeditionary forces bound both for Boiotia and the Peloponnese (e.g., Thucydides 4.68.5, Xenophon Hellenika 7.5.15, Demosthenes On the Crown 177, 184). When, in the fourth century, war threatened Attica by land, Eleusis was likely to have been the regular headquarters of the general in charge of the countryside (
). By the third century this was certainly the case, for the dudes of the were then divided between a coastal command () and a frontier command, designated as .[9]
Dependent upon Eleusis in the command structure of the third century, Panakton (with a circuit of 480 meters) was the most important garrison fort on the northwestern frontier. This fortress overlooking the Skourta plain, a mountain-bound plateau between Parnes and Kithairon, was built in the mid fifth century, and although partially destroyed during the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 5.3.5, 39.3), it was rebuilt and garrisoned more or less continuously for almost two centuries (figure 2). When, in the 340s, tensions were high along the much-disputed frontier with Boiotia, Panakton was the headquarters of a general, certainly the
, and the base for an expanded citizen levy called out to guard the frontier (Demosthenes On the Embassy 326, Against Konon 3-5).[10]
Near to Panakton, and possibly even older, the fortress at the deme of Oinoe (with a circuit of approximately 560 meters) was an important garrison post also on the northwestern frontier (Thucydides 2.18.2; cf.
Herodotos 5.74.2). Oinoe lay in another upland plain below Kithairon, along the main ancient road from Athens and Eleusis to Thebes (figure 3). The fortress was garrisoned by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War, but like Panakton, it fell to the Boiotians (Thucydides 8.98). Literary and epigraphic sources are strangely silent about Oinoe thereafter, but it is likely to have had a history very much like that of Panakton. It certainly returned to Athenian hands not long after the Peloponnesian War, and its walls show clear evidence of substantial rebuilding, probably within the fourth century.[11]
Further to the west, near, or even within, Boiotia itself was Eleutherai. An Athenian dependency since the late sixth century, Eleutherai was not fortified until the fourth century.[12] The impressive and well-preserved walls of this fortress (a circuit of 860 meters), standing above the ancient (and modern) road to Thebes as it enters the Kithairon pass, have seemed to many to be the perfect embodiment of the defensive planning of the fourth-century Athenians (figure 4). Ironically, as with Oinoe, we know nothing of the history of this fortress in the fourth century. The obscurity of the fortress at Eleutherai has led some to doubt the identity of these remains (sometimes referred to by their modern name, Gyphtokastro) as Eleutherai and caused them to place here the name of one or another of the better-known forts of Attica. In the early nineteenth century, when the fourth-century date of its walls was not yet clearly established, Leake championed the view that this was Oinoe, besieged by Archidamos at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.[13] By the early twentieth century, Beloch developed the view, still held by some, that this fortress was Panakton, whose long use by the Athenians is well attested.[14] When the urge to identify imposing walls with a well-known
fortress is set aside, the evidence unambiguously indicates that this fortress bore the name of Eleutherai.[15] Pausanias, who traveled this road from Attica to Boiotia in the second century A.D ., explicitly refers to the fortress of Eleutherai standing a little above the plain, in Kithairon, on the road to Boiotia (1.38.9; cf. 9.2.3). The walls of abandoned Eleutherai clearly impressed him as they have modern travelers, for they are the only fortifications he mentions in the Attic countryside.
Southeast of Panakton, within the folds of Mount Parries, lay the fortress at Phyle (figure 5). The way through Phyle from Thebes to Athens was made famous by the march of Thrasyboulos at the end of the fifth century. The natural stronghold (
, Xenophon Hellenika 2.4.2) occupied by Thrasyboulos and his men might have been the site of the later fortress, although it could just as well have been another of the many naturally defensible eminences in the area. It is certain, at any rate, that the small but well-built fortress at Phyle (perimeter of 260 meters) did not yet exist in his day but was a product of Athenian concerns for territorial defense sometime in the fourth century.[16]
Between Parnes and the coast of the Euripos facing Euboia, the town of Oropos provided a stronghold for the Athenians whenever Oropos was controlled by Athens.[17] Otherwise, by contrast with the northwest, the fortifications of this portion of the frontier with Boiotia seem slight. Only at Aphidna, where the prominent hill now known as Kotroni preserves slight remains of an ancient circuit wall (perimeter approximately 300 meters), is there evidence of an Athenian garrison post, although
good evidence is lacking for the date of this fort (figure 6).[18] Remains at Dekeleia, Katsimidi, and Ayia Paraskevi have been identified as Athenian forts, but for various reasons none of these identifications is plausible.[19]
The only other regular garrison post on this frontier lay well to the east at Rhamnous, on the northeastern coast of Attica (figure 7). The acropolis of this deme was fortified at least by the time of the Peloponnesian War, when it must have been one of the coastal garrisons main-rained by the Athenians during the period of the Spartan occupation of Dekeleia. The fortress at Rhamnous was substantially enlarged in the fourth century (to a perimeter of 940 meters), and its importance as a garrison post endured well into the Hellenistic era, as attested by the numerous garrison decrees that have been found there.[20]
The coastal fortress at Sounion (perimeter 790 meters) had a history similar to that at Rhamnous. Its establishment in the time of the Dekeleian War is attested by Thucydides (8.4), and like Rhamnous, it remained an important garrison post well into the Hellenistic era (figure 8). In both cases, the close connection between these fortresses and vital roadsteads on the sea lanes serving Athens accounts for the importance of these places.[21] Similarly, a maritime fort was established on the
Ayios Nikolaos peninsula at Thorikos (perimeter 850 meters) a little to the northeast of Sounion during the Dekeleian War (Xenophon Hellenika 1.2.1).[22] The use of this and another fort at Anaphlystos northwest of Sounion is noted briefly by Xenophon in the middle of the fourth century (Poroi 4.43). While perhaps not all of these maritime fortresses were continuously garrisoned in the fourth century, they would have been manned when war threatened the Attic seaboard. Likewise in the Hellenistic era, the maritime forts at Koroni, Vouliagmeni, and Kynosoura at Marathon played important roles in particular episodes, although these and certain other fortifications in Attica were more ephemeral in nature and not part of the garrison system of the fourth century.[23]
Other works of fortification, both enduring and ephemeral, were part of the defenses of Attica in the fourth century. The most remarkable of these is the barrier wall in the Aigaleos-Parnes gap, which is known by its modern Greek name, the Dema (
, "the link"), since it joins Aigaleos to Parnes (see figure 9). The ancient name of this wall (if it was not also , or ) is unknown to us, and the occasion of its construction is unrecorded in any extant sources. Although study within the past generation has considerably narrowed the range of speculation about its date, its uniqueness has given rise to wide-ranging speculation on the subject. Robert Scranton described it as "the most ancient known extant example of the art of fortification as practiced by the Classical Greeks."[24] His advocacy of a date in the eighth or seventh century, in the belief that it was a frontier defense of Athens against an independent Eleusis, was consonant with the opinions of many scholars in the first half of this century who felt that this peculiar work must predate the era of the Attic garrison forts of the fifth and fourth centuries.[25] Yet, for various reasons, the high antiquity of this wall did not seem supportable to others familiar with the arts of classical Greek fortification, and consequently, a great variety of dates and occasions have been suggested for the wall, ranging from Kleomenes' invasion of Attica in 506 to the time
of the Gallic invasion of Greece in the early third century.[26] The wall has also captured the imagination of those who live near it, who speak of it as a work of Theodoros Kolokotronis during the modern Greek War of Independence. As will emerge later in this work, there is more to this unstudied claim than patriotic boasting.
For those who have seen it, the Dema wall demands an explanation. It is a monumental work, "as ambitious a project, in its way, as the Long Walls," according to Scranton.[27] After walking its length (4.36 kilometers overall) and coming to appreciate the care in planning and workmanship that went into the wall, one is inclined to agree with Scranton on that point. Yet since no ancient reference to it survives, its place in history remains unknown, and we are unable to appreciate the conditions, the motives, and the means that brought it into existence, nor can we appreciate its effectiveness once it was built. Historians of Greek military architecture have noticed the Dema for the many peculiarities in its design, but otherwise it has remained historically insignificant by force of its obscurity.
That the Dema wall belongs to the era of the classical garrison forts of Attica was established by the fundamental study by J. E. Jones, L. H. Sackett, and C. W. J. Eliot, published in 1957. After a careful survey of the archaeological and historical evidence, they concluded that it was built within the fourth century, and they advanced 337 as the most probable date for its construction.[28] James McCredie, in his study of military camps in Attica published in 1966, suggested that the Dema wall could instead be associated with the Chremonidean War of 268-262.[29] These
two studies have provided the foundations for the common view of the Dema wall, which is summarized by C. W. J. Eliot in his article "Dema Pass," in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (1976):
The date of the Dema's construction cannot as yet be determined with any precision. What little evidence there is might seem to favor a date in the second half of the 4th c., but a date in the first half of the 3d must also be considered a possibility . . .. Without new evidence a choice between this or that event is probably unjustified.
Since the evidence indicates that the Dema wall belongs to a well-documented period of Greek history, there is no reason to believe that the event which occasioned this monumental undertaking is unknown to us. Rather, as Eliot observes, the evidence has seemed ambiguous as to which event it was. The arguments that have so far been advanced in favor of one event or another have by no means exhausted the historical possibilities, so it is possible to introduce a good deal of circumstantial evidence not previously considered, as well as new evidence of a more tangible sort. The site of the Dema tower, adjacent to the wall and demonstrably part of the same defensive scheme, has now been excavated, and finds there provide significant evidence for the date of the Dema wall. There is reason, therefore, to believe that a thorough review of the available evidence, both new and old, can in fact establish the place of the Dema wall in Athenian history.
Why is it important to do so? The Dema wall is a barrier wall, designed to close a pass against an invader. Unlike the circuit walls of garrison forts, it was not a regular post for a garrison. It was not, in other words, part of the routine defensive establishment of Attica represented by the garrison forts. It had some other purpose in the scheme of the
. Like the proverbial exception that proves the rule, the Dema wall holds the promise of illustrating, when it is properly understood, the purpose and functional limitations of its more numerous contemporary works of fortification, the garrison forts of Attica. Only then can we comment on the relationship between territorial defense and the conduct of war and diplomacy by the fourth-century Athenians.
The fundamental difference between a defensive barrier like the Dema wall and circuit walls, whether of the city or of forts in the countryside, is emphasized in a comment by Plato, writing, in the Laws , close to the middle of the fourth century. Speaking of his ideally constituted state, which shares certain features with Sparta but many more with Plato's own Athens, Plato's Athenian remarks:
Concerning [city] walls, Megillos, I am of the same mind as Sparta. I would let walls sleep in the ground and not wake them, for these reasons. First of all, as the poet's verse so aptly puts it, walls ought to be of bronze and iron, and not of stone. Secondly, our practice would be justly ridiculed when each year we sent out our young men into the countryside to block an enemy's path by ditches, entrenchments, and various constructions, all in order to keep the foe from crossing our borders, while at the same time we surrounded ourselves with a wall, which . . . invites the inhabitants to seek refuge within it, and not to ward off the enemy.[30]
By "various constructions" (
), Plato refers to barrier walls like the Dema, although he carefully avoids calling them "walls" () because this is the usual term for the circuit wall of the city, whose employment he eschews. The important point here is the opposition clearly drawn between the effects of barriers in the countryside and circuit walls. To Plato, barrier walls and entrenchments are emblems of a laudable determination to resist an enemy in the open, while circuit walls pander to the craven instinct to fly for shelter in the face of an enemy. Plato is specifically discussing the circuit wall of the city, but here, as in every other instance in Greek literature where the defense of the city is contrasted with the defense of the countryside, the circuit walls of garrison forts do not form a separate, third category in the operations of the . Forts are commonly referred to as ,"walls," and as such they are clearly classified with city circuits in this dichotomy.[31]
Here we have a paradox. For the evidence we have considered indicates that the garrison forts of Attica were the most important elements of the institutions of territorial defense, yet at the same time they are functionally never distinguished from the walls of the city; and reliance on city walls means, in some sense, that territorial defense has been abandoned. This was in fact the case in Attica during the Peloponnesian War. For then the Athenians, under the leadership of Perikles, evacuated the Attic countryside and withdrew to the walls of the Athens-Peiraieus complex during enemy invasions and occupations of Attica, while keeping their fortresses in the countryside fully garrisoned. The Athenian cavalry, meanwhile, bravely skirmished with the overwhelming forces of the Peloponnesian army in an effort to limit their depredations, but no one could say that the Athenians were fully committed to the defense of their countryside.[32] What was
and did the Athenians of the fourth century construe it differently from Perikles?
The Dema wall is one clue leading toward the resolution of this paradox. But before we turn to a detailed examination of that wall and its function, we require a fuller understanding of the use of the garrison forts of Attica than that provided by the brief survey of forts and their chief testimonia above. We may usefully begin by considering modern views on the subject. Not that we will thereby find the matter readily clarified, for as will emerge, most modern treatments of the subject have introduced suppositions about the functions of fortifications that are not reflected in our ancient sources. We must inquire, therefore, as we follow the evidence, whether such modern interpretations are justified or whether our sources indicate some other interpretation that has not yet been generally apprehended.
Closing the Gates of Attica?
A salient characteristic of the fortresses of Attica is the fact that they came into existence at various times. Several already existed before the Peloponnesian War, a few were built during it, and a few were built after
that war. It is possible to explain this proliferation of fortresses as the evolution of a homogeneous system, the objectives and functions of which were essentially the same at the end of the classical era as they had been at its beginning. If this was the case, then the functions of these fortifications must be equally intelligible early on, when there were few fortresses in the Attic countryside, and later, when they were more numerous. Modern investigators, however, have often explained the origins of the fortifications of Attica in terms of their ultimate dispositions, when, to all appearances, these fortresses guarded all of the important routes and passes crossing the land frontier of Attica. Such an explanation involves the awkward assumption that the earliest garrison forts of Attica were built as elements of a system of frontier defense that did not become comprehensive until the final generation of fortresses was built more than a century later.
The introduction to Lilian Chandler's 1926 article on the northwest frontier of Attica embraces such an assumption:
Of all states in ancient Greece, Attica seems to have had the most interesting and complete system of land defences. A chain of important fortresses, of most of which there are still considerable remains, follows the line of the Kithairon-Parnes range: Eleutherai, Oinoe, Panakton, Phyle, Dekeleia, Aphidna and Rhamnous. It may appear at first that this series of strongholds was designed expressly to mark off Athenian territory, but whilst incidentally and in large measure they served this end, in origin they were intended rather to defend the various roads from Attica into Boeotia.[33]
The assertion that forts were intended to defend roads is a modern deduction, supported by no ancient authority. Yet the seemingly systematic arrangement of forts along the roads leading into Attica is, to many observers, evidence enough that defense of roads and passes was not only the ultimate, but, as Chandler stresses, the original , purpose of these fortifications. Chandler was not the first to reach this conclusion. The system evident in the fortifications of Attica that Chandler goes on to describe had been outlined more than thirty years earlier by a Prussian military cartographer, Captain Winterberger, who had surveyed portions of the northwestern frontier of Attica for Curtius and Kaupert's Karten yon Attika . Winterberger's summary description of a "planmässiges System der Grenzvertheidigung" was reflected in Arthur Milch-hoefer's extensive commentary on the Karten yon Attika , which in turn provided the basis for Chandler's survey of the subject in English.[34]
Winterberger's description was itself the logical outgrowth of observations previously made at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Colonel (then Captain) William Leake in his influential work on Attic topography. Leake, whose classical studies were pursued while gathering military intelligence in Turkish Greece, was sufficiently impressed by the disposition of Attic border forts along the passes to Boiotia that he was ready to suppose the existence of remains of further forts completing the system where none actually existed. So, for example, he associates the classical place-name Melainai with medieval remains around the Byzantine monastery of Hosios Meletios on the southern slopes of Kithairon-Pastra, and he speaks of the place "as a castle on the frontier, for this situation would exactly serve to complete a chain of fortresses defending the passes of the Attic mountains towards Boeotia, of which the other links were Oenoë, Harma, Phyle, Deceleia and Sphendale."[35] George Finlay, a British philhellene, historian, and contemporary of Leake, turned classical topography to modern strategy in his history of the Greek War of Independence when he wrote that the Greeks might have cut off the Turks besieging Athens in 1826-27 "by a line of posts, extending from Megara to Eleutherae, Phyle, Deceleia, and Rhamnus."[36] It seems beyond a doubt that considerations of contemporary military strategy had a profound influence on the interpretation of Attic fortifications by nineteenth-century classicists.
Although the thesis that the Attic forts were intended to guard, or in some sense, to control, the roads leading into Attica has not been universally accepted, it has remained the most influential explanation of their purpose.[37] So, for instance, in his study of Greek fortifications published in 1971, F. E. Winter states:
In Attica the fortresses of Phyle and Gyphtokastro [Eleutherai] are both in a position to exercise complete control over their respective passes. Only a large army would have any chance of capturing them by direct assault, and then only at the cost of heavy casualties. Yet even the largest army
could ill afford to pass them by, leaving them free to harry its rear and sever its lines of communication.[38]
If complete control of passes were in fact the object of Attic garrison forts, this goal could not have been achieved until the fourth century, since they manifestly failed to control passes during the Peloponnesian War. A superficial view of the evidence makes this interpretation seem plausible, since it was only after the Peloponnesian War that the Attic border fort system achieved its most complete form, with the addition of the two fortresses named above; and between the Peloponnesian War and the beginning of Macedonian domination in 322 Attica was invaded only once, by the Spartans under Sphodrias at the beginning of the Boiotian War in 378. Whether or not the Attic border forts were from the first intended to guard roads, as Chandler and others have claimed, a circumstantial case can thus be made that this was their function in the fourth century.
A closer look at the sources, however, raises suspicions about the cogency of such circumstantial evidence. For instance, according to Plato's priorities for defensive works,
(Laws 778e), garrison forts would deserve special mention alongside, or even before, barrier walls if they had served this purpose in the fourth century. Had Plato's prejudices against circuit walls so completely blinded him to their usefulness? Or was he merely ignorant of recent innovations in the arts of defense? Before these questions can be answered, we must consider whether such an explanation of the Attic garrison forts is inherently plausible.
We can readily take the first step in this process by reviewing the most thorough exposition of this approach to Attic fortifications, presented by Josiah Ober in his thesis, published as Fortress Attica in 1985. According to Ober, in the fourth century the border forts of Attica were employed, for the first time, as elements in a system of preclusive frontier defense based on the control of all major routes into Attica. The forts enabled the Athenians to maintain troops on the frontiers of Attica year-round, so that, in the event of an invasion, they could harass and detain the enemy until the arrival of the main force from Athens, promptly summoned by signals via appropriately placed signal towers.[39] Ober schematizes the operation of the system in the following terms:
Even if the enemy forces had succeeded in forcing the pass, until they had taken the fortress that guarded it they would not be able to advance into Attica, since they could hardly afford to leave a significant garrison intact
which could attack their baggage train as it marched past. Furthermore, the fortress threatened the enemy line of retreat; if the invasion should fail, the possibility arose of being trapped between the main Athenian army and the garrison. The invading army would have to turn aside and attempt to reduce the fort before proceeding. The relief forces from Athens were therefore granted as much time as it would take the enemy to capture the fortress . . . . [The relief forces] would then proceed to attack the invaders at or near the fortress . . . in the borderlands. Attica and its vital economic resources would therefore be protected.[40]
Here we must note again the absence of any textual support for such an interpretation of garrison forts. No fortified circuit held by a regular garrison is ever said to have been an obstacle to an invading army. There were many occasions when bodies of troops were posted at passes to prevent the passage of enemy forces, but in all cases these were extraordinary forces assembled ad hoc. Never is the presence or absence of a garrison fort circuit said to affect the defensibility of a route, and never was a perennial garrison, a regular element of the
, in Attica or elsewhere expected to prevent or delay the general invasion of a region.[41]
The archaeological evidence likewise provides no support for this interpretation, for garrison forts were situated according to criteria other than the defense of passes. The first criterion was the natural defensibility of the location of the fort itself; it ought to be a strong place (
, or ), well suited by nature to be difficult to seize by assault. The second criterion, which often actually had priority over the first, was inhabitability, as determined chiefly by the availability of water.[42] A location that met these criteria was often attractive for civilian habitation as well, and so garrison forts were frequently situated on or immediately adjacent to civilian settlements (as at Eleusis, Rhamnous, Aphidna, Oinoe, and Eleutherai). Garrison forts and their associated settlements were of course served by roads, but the placement of forts with reference to roads was secondary to the above criteria. As to actual passes or strategic narrows along roads, only one fortress stood in close proximity to a pass on the Attic land frontier (pace Winter above), and that was Eleutherai. Yet not even the fortress at Eleutherai (nor any garrison fort elsewhere in Greece, to my knowledge) physically obstructed passage along a major route.
No one denies, therefore, that an invading army could walk right past a fort, whether its garrison was confined within it or was partly out skirmishing on the mountainsides. In either event, a numerically insignificant garrison force could do little more than momentarily annoy a passing army.[43] Therefore, in order for forts to have had their preclusive effect, they must, it is argued, have compelled the invader to stop and attack them.
This is the heart of the thesis on the fourth-century approach to the defense of Attica as recognized by Winter and elaborated by Ober. It depended absolutely upon an invading commander's decision to stop and attack a fort before proceeding. The defenders of Attica, once they had built a fort and allotted a garrison to it, had no further control over that decision. Could that decision have been as inevitable as Ober must needs argue it was?
He, like Winter, appeals to the vulnerability of baggage trains and lines of retreat if forts were left intact along the way. As to baggage trains, only in the case of Eleutherai in the Kithairon pass does a road come so close to a fortress that a train could be struck by missiles from it. Since the Eleutherai pass is easily circumvented by other routes, including the nearby Dryos Kephalai pass, there is no reason to believe that an invading commander would have had to delay his advance in order to attack Eleutherai or any other Attic fort.[44] As to lines of retreat and how they might have affected a decision to invade, an invading commander would proceed only if he had confidence in his ability to overcome the enemy wherever they might appear in strength. He would therefore regard garrison forts as no more a threat to his eventual withdrawal than a hindrance to his advance.
This conclusion is amply supported by the testimony of Xenophon, who, writing shortly before the middle of the fourth century, on two occasions discusses the hypothetical consequences of an invasion of Attica. In his treatise on the Athenian cavalry commander, Xenophon considers the following scenario:
If the enemy invades Athenian territory, in the first place, he will certainly not fail to bring with him other cavalry besides his own and infantry in
addition, whose numbers he reckons to be more than a match for all the Athenians put together. Now provided that the whole of the city's levies turn out against such a host in defence of their country, the prospects are good. For our cavalrymen, God helping, will be better, if proper care is taken of them, and our heavy infantry will not be inferior in numbers, and I may add, they will be in as good condition and will show the keener spirit, if only, with God's help, they are trained on the right lines. And, remember, the Athenians are quite as proud of their ancestry as the Boeotians. But if the city falls back on her navy, and is content to keep her walls intact, as in the days when the Lacedaemonians invaded us with all the Greeks to help them, and if she expects her cavalry to protect all that lies outside the walls, and to take its chance unaided against the foes,—why then, I suppose, we need first the strong arm of the gods to aid us, and in the second place it is essential that our cavalry commander should be masterly. For much sagacity is called for in coping with a greatly superior force, and an abundance of courage when the call comes.[45]
While the thesis espoused by Ober would have us expect to find new strategies reflected in a fourth-century source, Xenophon's scenario is surprisingly consonant with the Periklean approach to the defense of Attica. The options for the Athenians, in the event of an invasion from Boiotia, are either to attempt to match forces with the enemy in open battle or to avoid battle with a powerful enemy in Attica and to withdraw within walls, while relying on the navy to strike against the enemy's homes and calling upon the cavalry to harry the invader and limit his depredations by preventing him from dispersing his forces to devastate or plunder. There is no hint that forts along the borders prevented, or even delayed, the arrival of the invader outside the walls of Athens.[46]
Xenophon addresses different concerns in his treatise on the revenues of Athens, but his reflections on the strategic situation of Attica under invasion are entirely consonant with the previous passage. In speaking of enhancing the revenues of the state from the silver mines of southern Attica, Xenophon discusses how minimal the effects of an invasion would be on this resource:
I reckon that, even in the event of war, it would not be necessary to abandon the silver mines. There are, of course, two fortresses in the mining district, one at Anaphlystos on the south side, the other at Thorikos on the north. The distance between them is about sixty stades [just under twelve kilometers]. Now if there were to be a third stronghold between them on the highest point of Besa, the works would then be linked to one or another of the fortresses, and at the first sign of a hostile movement, every man would have just a short distance to go in order to reach safety. If the enemy came in force, they would certainly carry away any grain, wine, or livestock that they found outside; but the silver ore, if they were to seize it, would be of no more use to them than so many stones. And how could an enemy ever invade the mining district? The distance between Megara, the nearest city, and the silver mines, is of course much more than five hundred stades [about 100 kilometers]; and Thebes, which is the next nearest, lies at a distance of much more than six hundred stades [over 120 kilometers]. If, then, the enemy is marching on the mines from some such point, they are bound to pass Athens. And if their numbers are small, they are likely to be destroyed by our cavalry and our patrols. On the other hand, it would be hard for the enemy to march with a large force, leaving their own property unprotected. For when they arrived in the mining district, the city of Athens would be much nearer to their own states than they themselves would be. But even supposing that they should come, how could they stay without supplies? To send part of their forces in search of food would endanger both the foraging party and their overall objectives, while if the whole force is continually foraging it will sooner find itself besieged than besieging.[47]
In this passage, the function of rural forts during an invasion is discussed, though they are the forts along the northern edge of the mining district, not on the borders of Attica. Xenophon points out that there would be little to fear in the mining district from a raiding party entering Attica, for such a small force would likely be destroyed before its arrival in this distant corner of Attica by the combination of the quickly deployed cavalry and the already deployed patrols, the peripoloi . A major invasion force, however, would certainly be able to range and plunder at will throughout Attica. What would protect the mining district in that event would be the fact that everything vital (especially the miners themselves) could be readily withdrawn to the safety of convenient forts, while the silver ore left behind would be of no immediate value to the enemy and would be too cumbersome to move. As a consequence, there would be no point to an invasion of the mining district, especially since such a course would leave the enemy's own territory undefended; and being at the end of a long march, it would force the enemy to disperse and possibly lose manpower in foraging for supplies while achieving no useful offensive purpose. Here Xenophon assumes that an invading army would outman the Athenians and would have no difficulty moving anywhere in Attica. There is a conspicuous lack of any reference to border forts in a context that would, according to Ober's thesis, be most appropriate for their discussion.
These two passages from Xenophon, the first written perhaps before 362 and the second in the later 350s, are the only explicit discussions in fourth-century literature of the potential Athenian responses to an invasion of Attica.[48] Xenophon made these observations during the very period in which Ober claims that the system of border forts and towers was being perfected, having been under the guidance of a "coherent and ongoing program of defensive preparations" for some time.[49] Yet there is not the slightest trace of the system described by Ober in the writing of Xenophon.
Indeed, although Ober must assume that the policy of preclusive border defense was implemented by the Athenians through a process of
ongoing public debate, he is embarrassed by the absolute silence of even the orators on the subject. He attempts to explain it away by asserting that "discussions of border defenses probably tended to make for rather dull orations, . . . and speeches concerned with the technicalities of the fortification system were not chosen for copying and preservation."[50] This is special pleading. For in laying the foundations for his interpretation of the border defenses of Attica, Ober argues that the collective Athenian psyche was in the grip of a "defensive mentality" to such an extent that "the fourth-century Athenian lived in terror of enemy invasion and wanted desperately to be allowed to go about his business in peace and safety."[51] There is no doubt, as has been pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, that the Athenians valued highly the security of Attica. But if there were any radically new departure embodied in the fourth-century approach to
, and if, as Ober argues, that approach was sometimes at odds with such factors as financial constraints on the one hand and opposing policies, such as the imperialism of 395-387 or the aggressive foreign policy of Demosthenes on the other hand, then the subject of border defenses would have been ripe for declamatory pyrotechnics. In fact, forts are mentioned in speeches, as are various other preparations for war, and the ideal of defending the homeland is brought up often enough in fourth-century Athenian rhetoric. Yet nowhere is there any hint that the Athenians had created, or thought that they had created, an impermeable barrier of fortresses and watchposts around Attica.[52]
Arguments from silence are never, by themselves, fully convincing. There is a passage from Demosthenes, however, which appeals to the common knowledge of his audience about the nature of defensive preparations and is more telling than most about the full range of Athenian measures. Not only is this passage silent about a preclusive barrier of frontier fortresses, but it absolutely excludes the possibility of such a defensive policy. In his speech On the Naval Boards , delivered in 354, Demosthenes advocates practical measures the Athenians could take to strengthen their military preparedness. His specific advice is introduced after the following prefatory remarks:
If indeed there were one kind of force suitable for defence against Persians and another for defence against Greeks, then we might reasonably
be suspected of marshalling ourselves against the King; but when all preparation for war is on the same lines [italics added] and the main objects of an armed force are the same—to be strong enough to repel the enemy, to assist one's allies, and to preserve one's own possessions—why, having open enemies enough [in Greece], must we be looking out for another? Let us make our preparations against them [i.e., Greeks], and then we shall defend ourselves against him too, if he ventures to molest us.[53]
By defense against Greeks, Demosthenes particularly has in mind defense against the Thebans (as he makes explicit in On the Naval Boards 33-34), who dwell on the very borders of Attica. The policy that Demosthenes goes on to advocate is a revision of the procedures for financing naval operations, designed to make it easier to man the fleet. The premise of these prefatory remarks, epitomized in the italicized portion above,
, would be manifestly false if the Athenians, as Ober argues, had labored to create a unique frontier defense system.
Given the inherent implausibility of the hypothetical system together with the silence of the orators, the silence of Xenophon, the silence of Plato, and of all other sources, we must conclude that Ober and his predecessors have created e silentio a fabulous structure. Ober's "preclusive defense system" never existed except as a modern figment.
The discussion of forts in the passage from Xenophon's treatise on revenues quoted above points the way toward an understanding of Attic garrison forts that is well-grounded in literary and epigraphic sources. In a state as large as Attica, forts in the outlying regions were needed as surrogates for the fortified urban center. Hence, as noted above in the case of Plato and other sources, forts and the urban center are comprehended together as fortified positions,
, the concerns of which are always distinguished from the military affairs of the , the open countryside.[54]
The direct relationship between rural forts and city defenses is explicitly described in a decree found in the text of Demosthenes' oration On the Crown , 37-38. By Demosthenes' own account, the decree enacted the evacuation of the Attic countryside as part of a general mobilization for war in 346. The original decree, however, was not recorded in the text of Demosthenes. Like all such decrees in this speech, the text that has come down to us is the invention of a Hellenistic editor, inserted to provide verisimilitude to the reading of this masterpiece of rhetoric. Specific details, therefore, cannot be trusted as accurate references to the events of 346, but there is no reason to doubt that the role of rural forts has been accurately represented:
Kallisthenes . . . proposed that no Athenian be allowed upon any pretext whatsoever to pass the night in the country, but only in the city and Peiraieus, except those stationed in the garrisons; that the latter keep each the post assigned to him, leaving it neither by day nor by night . . . . All property in the country shall be immediately removed, if within a radius of 120 stades, to the city and Peiraieus; if outside of this radius, to Eleusis and Phyle and Aphidna and Rhamnous and Sounion.[55]
Although the urban center, ultimately, was the proper refuge for the population of Attica, garrison forts were essential for the protection of both property and populace in outlying areas. Hence their locations were dictated primarily by the presence of both sizable communities and significant economic resources. So, in addition to the agricultural resources local to Eleusis, Oinoe, Aphidna, and Rhamnous, the agricultural and pastoral resources of Parnes and the Skourta plain were protected by Phyle and Panakton, and the capital resources in the mining district, as discussed by Xenophon, were secured by the forts there. The
maritime forts of Attica, by safeguarding the sea lanes that brought essential goods to Athens, also conform to these criteria, with the understanding that their strategic importance to the Athenians differed from that of inland forts just as the importance of imported goods differed from that of local resources. It would be a mistake, however, to attempt to explain the protective value of these fortifications in purely economic terms. The social and political importance, for the cohesion of the state, of protecting the property of its individual citizens irrespective of the strategic and economic value of that property was the overriding criterion for the establishment especially of the inland forts.
In the face of the main force of the enemy in wartime, the safety provided by garrison forts consisted in their security as points of refuge. They were, in effect, independent nodes of local security, not links in any chain of regional defense. The invasion of an enemy in force, however, was at most a periodic or occasional event. A more prevalent condition of wartime was the threat posed by small raiding parties and freebooters. Under such conditions, forts near the frontiers could serve the defensive interests of the greater territory of Attica by the ability of their garrisons to sound a warning and, in some cases, to challenge and repel such raiders. It is certainly significant, however, that Xenophon regards the city itself as the primary base for troops to repel even small parties of the invading enemy (Poroi 4.47). Too often, the garrisons of small towns and forts were ambushed and destroyed when lured out by raiding parties, so that restraint and caution, even against apparently minor incursions, must have always been urged as the wisest policy to garrison commanders. Their first and foremost duty was to hold their post and to remain, like the fortified city itself, impervious to the storms of war that might rage outside the walls. Their fundamental passivity rendered urban and rural forts alike anathema to the principles of manly resistance embraced by Plato in his formulations of an idealized state. But given the ease with which the devices and strategems of an attacker could deceive or overwhelm a defender who regularly sallied forth in response to an attack, the prudent defender had to rely at least as much on circuit walls as on upright virtue in planning his response. In a territorially extensive state such as Attica, if defensive forces concentrated in the urban center could not always march to the defense of any threatened quarter, then it was necessary to fortify and garrison strong points wherever communities and resources in outlying areas were most vulnerable. Rural forts thus were essential to the preservation of the territorial integrity of a large state during war and to the restoration and maintenance of economic integrity and civil authority after war.
The garrisons of Attica exercised their protective
on two levels, corresponding to the routines of peacetime and the emergencies of wartime. Since standing forces represented preparedness for war at all
times, their duties in times of peace and in times of war were by no means mutually exclusive. Warlike actions could occur in what were nominally times of peace, and likewise peaceable activities went on in wartime. At all times, then, the responsibilities and activities of garrisons in the countryside could and did range across a spectrum of conditions between the two extremes of peace and war.
Garrisons and patrols routinely provided a local armed presence to protect the citizenry against animal theft or other forms of raiding or brigandage that might be attempted at any time in remote areas.[56] In practical terms, these functions became indistinguishable from civil police duties, which were concerned with disputes of the sort likely to arise between fellow citizens as well as between neighbors across a state boundary. Hence Aristotle associates
, "watchposts," often a term for garrison forts in the countryside (e.g., AthPol . 42.4), with the seats of , "forest-wardens," and , "field-wardens," who exercise their (Politics 1331b). More strikingly, Plato identifies his , the "garrison commanders" who lead young citizens in patrolling the countryside and building defensive barriers, as , "field-wardens," and most of the routine duties he assigns to these officers and their charges are best described as police and civil engineering duties (Laws 760a-763c; cf. 842e-846c).
It is not certain that such complete civil service normally fell within the purview of Athenian garrison commanders and their men, although it is clear that, in voting honors to the ephebic and mercenary garrisons of Attica in the later fourth and third centuries, the communities in which they were posted commended them in general terms for their civic spirit and good citizenship, reflecting something more than just keeping watchful eyes open while posted on the battlements and patrolling the countryside.[57] In a real sense, these men brought civic order to
the countryside, and by enforcing the laws of the state among their own citizens and offering them its protection against would-be despoilers, especially those dwelling just across borders, they sought to protect the state as a whole against the consequences of unchecked feuds or property disputes, "whence the deadliest hostilities ensue" (Plato Laws 843a). Plato and Aristotle, and the Athenians generally, were well aware of the potentially inflammatory nature of such purely local matters when they arose in the context of interstate relations (Plato Republic 373d-e, Laws 955b-c; Aristotle Politics 1330a; Demosthenes For the Megalopolitans 11, On the Embassy 326; Plutarch Phokion 9.4).
The distinction between conditions of war and the state of peace as they affected a rural populace in outlying areas was often irrelevant in the context of encounters with strangers (potential brigands) and foreign neighbors (potential foes). Aeneas Tacticus describes the reaction of a city to news of a robbers' conspiracy in the countryside (
), which differs in no way from a military operation in wartime (23.7-11; cf. 15.1-10). Except as regulated by explicit conventions, the Greek ideals of autonomy and independence implied a potential or actual state of war with all who were not members of the community or state. Despite the proliferation of treaties and the elaboration of the conventions of what came to be called the Common Peace () during the fourth century, this potential state of war applied as much to Attica as to any other part of the classical Greek world, especially during times of uncertain relations and open hostilities with the Boiotians. So Xenophon's advice about the utility of light-armed Athenians protecting countrymen and avenging themselves on foemen (Memorabilia 3.5.25-27, quoted at the beginning of this chapter) has the Boiotians particularly in mind and ignores the distinction between peace and war. It is modeled, as Xenophon admits, upon the practices of the Mysians and Pisidians, who freely plundered lands belonging to the Persian king while maintaining their independence within their mountain fastnesses (cf. Xenophon Anabasis 1.1.11, 1.2.1, 1.6.7, 1.9.14, esp. 3.2.23;
Hellenika 3.1.13; cf. also Isokrates Panegyrikos 161, 163). Similarly, Xenophon mingles Greek and alien experience in his imaginary account of the war of mutual raids (
) carried out between the neighboring Armenians and Chaldaians, which Cyrus brought to a close by establishing a garrison in a strategically placed fort (Cyropaedia 3.2.1-3.4). The blurred distinction between the hostilities of wartime and potential robberies of peacetime, and the relationship of a standing armed force in the countryside to both conditions, is exemplified in another of Xenophon's epideictic fantasies, his Hieron :
If therefore the first duty enjoined on the mercenaries [hired as the bodyguard of a benevolent despot] were to act as the bodyguard of the whole community and render help to all . . . the citizens would know that this is one service rendered to them by the mercenaries . . . . For naturally the mercenaries would also be able to give fearlessness and security in the fullest measure to the labourers and cattle in the country, and the benefit would not be confined to your own estates [i.e., those of the despot], but would be felt up and down the countryside. Again, they are competent to afford the citizens leisure for attending to their private affairs by guarding the vital positions [
]. Besides, should an enemy plan a secret and sudden attack, what handier agents can be found for detecting or preventing their design than a standing force, armed and organized? Or once more, when the citizens go campaigning, what is more useful to them than mercenaries? For these are, as a matter of course, the readiest to bear the brunt of toil and danger and watching. And must not those who possess a standing force impose on border states a strong desire for peace? For nothing equals an organized body of men, whether for protecting the property of friends or for thwarting the plans of enemies. Further, when the citizens get it into their heads that these troops do no harm to the innocent and hold the would-be malefactor in check, come to the rescue of the wronged, care for the citizens and shield them from danger, surely they are bound to pay the cost of them with a right goodwill. At all events they keep guards in their homes for less important objects than these.[58]
Athenian practices are best documented at those times when war threatened Attica, and although we lack detailed information even then, their practices generally conformed to those recorded in handbooks such as that of Aeneas Tacticus and in philosophical treatises such as the works of Plato and Aristotle that have been cited above. When war loomed on the borders of Attica, the garrison forts were the first recourse of the local populace as a refuge for both themselves and their movable property, as with the forts of the mining district described by Xenophon (Poroi 4.43-44). This was mostly an emergency function,
however, for whenever war was foreseen, the evacuation of the rural populace to the city was the normal procedure (as it was in the pseudo-decree from Demosthenes On the Crown 37-38 quoted above; the large slave population of the mining district posed a special problem, which Xenophon addressed by his proposal for the employment of another fort in Poroi 4.43-44).[59] Likewise, while the garrison forts were readied for war, the rural populace moved to Athens in 431 (Thucydides 2.13.2, 14, 16, 17, 18.2), in 346 (Demosthenes On the Crown 36-38, On the Embassy 86, 125; Aischines On the Embassy 139, Against Ktesiphon 80), in 338 (Lykourgos Against Leokrates 16), and in 335 ([Demades] On the Twelve Years 14; Arrian Anabasis 1.10.2).
Even at such times, under martial law, as long as the enemy was not on the move in the vicinity, citizens could work in the countryside during the day, at which time the augmented garrisons, patrols, and lookouts were responsible for providing protection against raids.[60] Such protection is envisioned by Xenophon when he describes the destruction of a small hostile force by the cavalry and the peripoloi (Poroi 4.47). Moreover, forces based in the forts, including the cavalry wherever feasible, were expected to carry out raids against enemy forces and neighboring hostile territory, as they had during the Peloponnesian War.[61] Perhaps the most important function of the rural garrisons of Attica, both in times of open war and of nominal peace, was to assure that no fortress should fall into the hands of the enemy and thus become an outpost for hostile operations against Attica, an epiteichismos , as the Peloponnesian fort at Dekeleia had been and, furthermore, constitute a loss of Athenian territory. That commitment was solemnified in the oath of Athenian ephebes to stand to their posts and not to allow the fatherland to be diminished. The commitment was made vivid and tangible by the appearance of "the
boundaries of the fatherland" and the chief produce of Attic land, "wheat, barley, vines, olives, figs," among the witnesses to the oath.[62]
Territorial Defense and History
The study of Attic forts, and of rural Greek forts in general, is most properly concerned with the history of the settlement and exploitation of outlying regions and with the changing relationships of these regions to the state as a whole. Garrison forts played only a limited role in the strategies for territorial defense. against an imminent general invasion. That role was essentially no different from that of the urban enceinte on a smaller scale, and the historical evolution of rural forts therefore parallels the history of urban fortifications. Herein lies the resolution of the paradox noted above, in which fortresses were shown to be fundamental to the defensive institutions and concerns of a state yet, under the threat of invasion, to be primarily passive centers of resistance.
Misconceptions have long clouded the assessment of these functions and concerns, usually in the form of ascribing a more specialized and potent historical role to fortresses than our sources support. Those who have hesitated to accept such assumptions have, on the other hand, generally been reluctant to discuss the subject of the historical role of rural fortifications in detail. Uncertainties about dates and functions have seemed to obviate the possibility of any but the most generalized comments. Yvon Garlan warned of the pitfalls awaiting those who would inevitably be drawn to the challenge of recovering history from the abundant remains of fortifications in the Greek countryside. He illustrates the situation by reference to Attica in particular:
Les fortifications de l'Attique ont été étudiées avec plus de soin et d'esprit critique, bien que, faute d'avoir été systématiquement et soigneusement fouillées, elles soient encore loin d'offrir à l'historien le "butin" qu'il en attend.[63]
It is indeed inevitable that historians turn to the archaeological wealth of the Greek countryside in search of fragments and aspects of history that are not fully represented in literary sources. Among these vestiges attention comes, first and foremost, to the substantial remains of garrison forts. But these remains have for the most part eluded attempts by
historians and archaeologists to associate them with precise historical moments. This is to be expected, since as the foregoing discussion has demonstrated, such fortifications represented generic responses to perennial conditions. Only rarely do archaeological remains occur in a form that allows a direct and demonstrable correspondence with historical episodes. Such exceptions do exist in the realm of rural fortifications, in the Attic countryside and elsewhere. In every case, unlike regular garrison forts, these fortifications represent specific and even unique responses to special conditions.[64] The Dema wall is chief among these special measures in classical Attica, and an understanding of this fortification promises to show how the Athenians of the fourth century reacted differently from Perikles and his contemporaries to the threat of an invasion of Attica.