Western Mediterranean Military Koine ?

[Erpingham]

I confess that I wonder, not about the Western Mediterranean Military Koine but the Eastern 

Were the Aetolians Western or Eastern? And what about the Thracians and those in Asia minor like the Phrygians and Lydians etc.

You have posed the same question I raised on another thread this morning, only you have done so more succinctly.

The same question was posed in the original WMWW debate. The borders of the whole scheme were rather arbitrary - I remember pressing Paul on this, as I thought it was quite important in  determining the "unique" nature of WMWW.  Exactly which Celts it applied to was also confusing.

[Duncan Head]

I confess that I wonder, not about the Western Mediterranean Military Koine but the Eastern 

Were the Aetolians Western or Eastern? And what about the Thracians and those in Asia minor like the Phrygians and Lydians etc.

If there is an EMWW, and if it's built around hoplites, then you'd have to accept that the EM is studded with mountain-dwelling groups, from the Aitolians to the Pisidians, who have neither the terrain for phalanx tactics nor the wealth for the panoply. Either your EMWW includes both lowland hoplite powers and tribal hill-bandits, or it is a more limited concept.

(Thracians I barely regard as a Mediterranean people anyway, they're inland Europeans whose southern periphery reaches the Aegean.)

[Cantabrigian]

If there is an EMWW, and if it's built around hoplites, then you'd have to accept that the EM is studded with mountain-dwelling groups, from the Aitolians to the Pisidians, who have neither the terrain for phalanx tactics nor the wealth for the panoply. Either your EMWW includes both lowland hoplite powers and tribal hill-bandits, or it is a more limited concept.

I doubt anyone would support the idea of some sort of strict border where you had to hand in your panoply if you wanted to cross.

I guess the thing that interests me is whether there were broad categories of fighting style that most, but not all, armies could be fitted into?  And in that case, what broad category do early Republican armies fall into.  Do we have archeological evidence for them using the panoply?

[Duncan Head]

I doubt anyone would support the idea of some sort of strict border where you had to hand in your panoply if you wanted to cross.

Some of the critics of the original WMWW seemed to do just that.

[Andreas Johansson]

If there is an EMWW, and if it's built around hoplites, then you'd have to accept that the EM is studded with mountain-dwelling groups, from the Aitolians to the Pisidians, who have neither the terrain for phalanx tactics nor the wealth for the panoply. Either your EMWW includes both lowland hoplite powers and tribal hill-bandits, or it is a more limited concept.

Even on what passes for plains in Greece, you get thureophoroi from the 3rd century, who look suspiciously "western" with oblong shields and (in at least some cases) javelins.

But if there's a hoplite-centric way of war, it's surely more Aegean than Eastern Mediterranean, as it never seems to take proper hold in Egypt or the Levant. It's not until the Hellenistic age with its pike phalanges that there's something like a common military style around the eastern Med, methinks.

[RichT]

But if there's a hoplite-centric way of war, it's surely more Aegean than Eastern Mediterranean, as it never seems to take proper hold in Egypt or the Levant. It's not until the Hellenistic age with its pike phalanges that there's something like a common military style around the eastern Med, methinks.

Although Xenophon at least seems to think Egyptians are hoplites in an EMWW sense. Though this may just prove ancients found it just as hard to classify and categorise as we do.

[Jim Webster]

I confess that I wonder, not about the Western Mediterranean Military Koine but the Eastern 

Were the Aetolians Western or Eastern? And what about the Thracians and those in Asia minor like the Phrygians and Lydians etc.

You have posed the same question I raised on another thread this morning, only you have done so more succinctly.

Yes I think we have both come to the same question, separately and at the same time 

[Jim Webster]

I am beginning to suspect that EMWW is more Aegean. I agree about the Thracians, but we have the Carians who might even have been some of the early adopters/inventors.

[Mark G]

Why are you all persisting in dignifying this nonsense theory by quibbling around its fringes.

The whole thing is horse shit, let it die

[Duncan Head]

I am beginning to suspect that EMWW is more Aegean. I agree about the Thracians, but we have the Carians who might even have been some of the early adopters/inventors.

Aegean-Anatolian, maybe. Compare our Editor's suggestion in his Greek Hoplite Phalanx book that the Greek hoplites weren't all that different from other heavy infantry. The point here, I think, is that there's little or nothing really unique about the Greeks. But any "wider hoplite environment" may not extend far enough to constitute an EMWW, which was only ever an afterthought, really, as the opposite of the WMWW hypothesis. 

[nikgaukroger]

(Thracians I barely regard as a Mediterranean people anyway, they're inland Europeans whose southern periphery reaches the Aegean.)

An Inland European Way of War?

[Imperial Dave]

 

[Jim Webster]

I am beginning to suspect that EMWW is more Aegean. I agree about the Thracians, but we have the Carians who might even have been some of the early adopters/inventors.

Aegean-Anatolian, maybe. Compare our Editor's suggestion in his Greek Hoplite Phalanx book that the Greek hoplites weren't all that different from other heavy infantry. The point here, I think, is that there's little or nothing really unique about the Greeks. But any "wider hoplite environment" may not extend far enough to constitute an EMWW, which was only ever an afterthought, really, as the opposite of the WMWW hypothesis. 

I confess it always struck me as strange, defining something against WMWW which a lot of people claimed was wrong 

But with regard to Egyptians, at his version of the Battle of Thymbra

"The Egyptians, however, had the advantage both in numbers and in weapons; for the spears that they use even unto this day are long and powerful, and their shields cover their bodies much more effectually than corselets and targets, and as they rest against the shoulder they are a help in shoving. So, locking their shields together, they advanced....."

Obviously did Egyptians really do this, or is it Xenophon making them into Hoplites?
Alternatively when did they do this, because he might have got news of Egyptian infantry much later in life with men he knew who went with Agesilaus to Egypt

[Erpingham]

An Inland European Way of War?

Where warriors either fought with long shields and throwing spears like WMWW or spears and round shields like EMWW or a mixture of both?   

[Keraunos]

(Thracians I barely regard as a Mediterranean people anyway, they're inland Europeans whose southern periphery reaches the Aegean.)

An Inland European Way of War?

The acronym seems to sum that idea up, IEWW!