Early Greek Warfare: Horsemen and Chariots in the Homeric and Archaic Ages

First published in 1973, this is a study of the literary and archaeological developments in the warfare of early Greece. Dr Greenhalgh considers in particular the military history of the chariot and mounted horse, both as they were represented in poetry and art and as they were used in reality from about 1100 to 500BC. He finds the picture superficially presented by the sources incoherent and often incredible, and attempts a reconstruction which does justice to both tactical and technical possibilities and to the social and economic facts of life in the period. He shoes how the Homeric poems, for example, can be systematically misleading - in part misconceiving the character of the Mycenaean age, and in part conflating with this misconception the conditions of their own time. This illustrated study will be of value to archaeologists, historians of warfare and Homeric specialists; its wider implications will interest social and political historians.… (more)