t prponta tow kairow: The Historical
Reality of Ancient Battle Speeches

Kimberly Henoch

Let the historian look to the generals first of all, and if they have made some battle exhortation (ti parekelesato), let him have heard it[1]; thus does the second-century C.E. author Lucian advise the writer of history. Indeed, most ancient historians of both Greece and Rome quote, summarize, or mention motivational speeches given by generals to their troops before battle. However, modern scholars, led by Mogens H. Hansen, have recently questioned the plausibility of these battle exhortations. In particular, they argue that the logistical considera­tions of ancient warfare, such as rattling armor and battle line length, rule out the possibility that generals gave long speeches to their armies after the battle lines were deployed.[2] In view of these logistical con­cerns, Hansen analyzed the battle speech settings of Thucydides, the inventor of the genre, and accurately described two possible formats of battle speeches. These were given either as pre-deployment speeches delivered to an entire, assembled army or short encouragements shouted by the general while traveling or riding along the battle line after it had been deployed (Hansen 1993: 169).[3]  He proceeded to document the almost total absence of battle exhortations from preserved ancient works on rhetoric and to draw comparisons with medieval historio­graphy. He then concluded that this genre of speeches was a literary invention, not a type of speech that was ever given in reality, at least not in the form that the historians describe.[4] However, Hansens evidence does not make this conclusion inevitable, and when we consider the historians of the Roman republic and empire, we find evidence for the realism of battle speeches of both formats. In fact, these historians provide strategies for overcoming logistical problems and occasionally even record other events that result from the delivery of a battle speech. When added to Hansens analysis of battle speech settings in Greek historiography, this evidence shows that although some set­tings are unrealistic, we should not dismiss battle speeches as entirely fictional.

           The second-century B.C.E. historian Polybius, the late Republican historian Sallust, the late Republican author of commentarii Julius Caesar, the Augustan historian Livy, the imperial historian Tacitus, and the late Imperial historian Ammianus Marcellinus provide many examples of both pre- and post-deployment speeches. Most of these men had extensive military experience, as did Thucydides, and should therefore have been aware of what was possible or impossible for a general. In his monograph about the Catilinarian conspiracy, Sallust introduces Catilines final desperate battle exhortation to his soldiers with the words, after a meeting was called he gave a speech of this kind (contione advocata huiusce modi orationem habuit, 57.6). This is a pre-deployment speech, because the battle line is not arrayed until 59.1. In his commentary on the Civil War, Caesar introduces an exhor­tation to his army on the eve of the Italian invasion, Caesar held a meeting with his soldiers (Caesar apud milites contionatur, Caesar I.7.1). In this case, though the speech is intended to inspire the soldiers for war, it marks the beginning of a new endeavor, long before any bat­tle line is deployed. Overall, the pre-deployment format of battle speeches, given in an assembly either directly before a battle or as early as the start of a new campaign, is well attested by historians of Rome.[5]

           These historians also describe a variety of post-deployment set­tings, some of which correspond directly to Hansens theoretical model for battlefield exhortations. In his history of the Roman rise to domi­nance over the Mediterranean world, Polybius mentions a perfect exam­ple of a brief post-deployment exhortation before a battle in 220 B.C.E. between King Antiochus of Syria and the Persian Molon:

And after this [the deployment of the battle line in V.53.1-5], going along the line (piporeumenow) he [Antiochus] hastily said to his forces in encouragement the things that suited that moment (t prponta tow kairow). (Polybius V.53.6)

In his commentary on the Gallic Wars, Caesar reports the substance of another short battlefield exhortation. After realizing that a surprise attack by the Nervii was imminent and giving the necessary orders, he ran out to exhort the soldiers, to whatever region chance carried him, and came upon the tenth legion (ad cohortandos milites, quam partem fors obtulit, decucurrit et ad legionem decimam devenit, Caesar II.21.1). There follows one sentence of encouragement, and then the battle begins.[6]

           However, in these historians works we also occasionally find post-deployment speeches, the length and structure of which make their delivery in this setting implausible. Polybius records a pair of speeches of this sort given by Scipio and Hannibal before the battle of Zama (Polybius XV.10-11). Both generals travel along the battle line while exhorting (peporeeto, 10.1 and piporeumenow, 11.6), but the speeches that Polybius presents are too long to be easily shouted in their entirety over and over again to successive groups of listeners. In an even less plausible example, Livy records that before a battle with the Volscians, the Roman general Camillus gave a speech, before the stan­dards, riding between the ranks facing the battle line (ante signa obversus in aciem ordines interequitans, Livy VI.7.3). We cannot accept that Camillus delivered the long, unified speech that follows while riding through the army. In order to resolve the impossibility of this type of description, we might conclude that the historians have chosen to combine and elaborate on the shorter exhortations that a general could have given in these situations. At any rate, these few examples of implausibly long post-deployment speeches are not grounds for rejecting every battle speech description as false; most battle speech settings in these historians works match one of the two formats that Hansen deduced.

           In addition to affirming the theory of pre- and post-deployment formats, these historians works also address the logistical problems, such as those mentioned by Hansen, that weaken the plausibility of battle exhortations. One such problem is that the soldiers of one army might well have spoken many different languages. Thucydides does not address this problem while writing the history of a primarily Hellenic war, but Polybius shows awareness of this difficulty while writing about Carthaginian armies that contained many foreign mercenaries. When describing a mutiny at the end of the First Punic War, he first establishes the multilingual, multinational character of the army (Polybius I.67.4-8), and then comments:

For this reason neither was it possible to hold assembly, gathering all together in the same place (kklhsisai sunayrosanta pntaw mo), nor was it possible to find any other means by which to accom­plish this [an address to the soldiers]. For how could one do it? It was impossible that the general should know the language of each of the several groups, and to hold an assembly using many interpreters speak­ing about the same issue four and even five times, this was almost even more impossible, so to speak, than the previous idea. The remaining possibility was to make requests and encouragements through their leaders (di tn gemnvn poiesyai tw jiseiw ka notki paraklseiw) [i.e. the junior officers who belonged to the individual groups and could interpret]. (Polybius I.67.9-10)

Although the general Hanno struggles to communicate with a multilin­gual army during a mutiny in this case, the problem, and perhaps the solution as well, carries over logically into a battle situation. In fact, Polybius later describes Hannibal as employing the same method before the battle of Zama; the officers are given the main thread of Hannibals message and told to make speeches to prepare their men for battle (Polybius XV.11.4-6). Language problems are not specifically mentioned here, but Polybius again implies that the generals commu­nications are most easily carried down by the officers who command the smaller units due to the multinational character of the army.

           Polybius presents another logistical problem for battle speeches when he describes Philopoemen, a late third-century B.C.E. Pelopon­nesian leader, attempting to walk along the line and exhort his men. He states that:

Then it happened that most of what he said was unclear (saf . . . ggnesyai): for because of the mobs goodwill towards him and their trust in him, they came to such a great passion and eagerness that a similar response was made to his exhortation by the forces, who, in their enthusiasm, exhorted him to lead them out and have courage: however, he carefully tried to make this clear to them on the whole, whenever he got a chance, that the present danger was joined by the enemy for shame and disgraceful slavery, but by them for everlasting and glorious freedom. (Polybius XI.12.2-3)

Indeed later historians also record that the noise of the soldiers was a problem and it might be very difficult for a general making an exhorta­tion to be heard. In part of Livys description of the Roman-Samnite wars, the consul Publilius attempts to call his soldiers to a hasty pre-battle assembly, with the result that:

But although the soldiers ran together to the generals tent with great speed, yet because of the shouting of men demanding battle no word of the generals exhortation was heard (ita prae clamore poscentium pug­nam nulla adhortatio imperatoris audita est). (Livy IX.13.1)

This speech is given before deployment, when the general might have been able to arrange the soldiers in an assembly and address them all together at some length. Yet even in this situation, Livy suggests that the soldiers noisy enthusiasm made it impossible to hear the general.

           A third logistical problem for any pre- or post-deployment battle speech is timing. Students of ancient warfare have long accepted that the timing of events in ancient battles seems artificial when compared with our modern idea of war. We find the tendency especially incredi­ble for ancient armies to line up against one another and prepare for battle, waiting patiently within each others sight until the signal to engage is given. But even if we accept this practice, it is reasonable to question the realism of such battle speeches because the exhorting gen­eral and the listening troops would have provided their opponents with an opportunity to attack. During the speech, neither their armor, nor their command structure, nor, in the case of pre-deployment speeches, their battle line, was in place.

           The ancient historians also acknowledge the problem of timing in battle speeches, but, as with noise, such difficulties, even when acknowledged, seldom prevent a speech from occurring. In his commen­tary on the Gallic War, Caesar describes a situation in which he was hindered by the timing of an enemy attack from making a proper battle exhortation[7]:

At one time everything had to be done by Caesar: hanging the flag that was the signal when they were supposed to run together to arms, hav­ing the trumpet call sounded, calling the soldiers back from their work, summoning those who had gone out a bit further to seek [material] for the fortification, laying out the battle line, exhorting the soldiers (mil­ites cohortandi), giving the signal. The shortness of the time and the enemys attack impeded [his doing] the better part of these things (Quarum rerum magnam partem temporis brevitas et incursus hostium impediebat). (Caesar II.19.1)

This testimony that time pressure was a factor in making a battle speech is particularly valuable; because Caesar is talking about his own experience as a general, we can expect that he knew the historical reality of the situation. In this case, Caesar adapted to the timing problem by restricting his audience, running out to encourage whatever soldiers he might happen to encounter (Caesar II.20.1, quoted above).

           Indeed, ancient historians often record restricted audiences for bat­tle speeches, both because of the logistical constraints of a post-deploy­ment setting and for the reason that different audiences may require different exhortations or different advice. One such example is Poly­bius account of the battle of Raphia, which occurred during the war fought by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus the Great and King Ptolemy of Egypt over the territory of Coele-Syria in 217 B.C.E. Here he records audience restriction based on importance, as the kings focus their atten­tion on the phalanxes, and based on pragmatism, as two or three sub­ordinates are enlisted to exhort each phalanx, presumably in order to increase the number of soldiers who hear the message (Polybius V.83.1-3). At the battle of Zama, Polybius reports that Hannibal restricts his audience by nationality, causing specific encouragements to be given to the Carthaginians and to his own army of Italy. In each case, audi­ence restriction increases the likelihood that a general would have been able to vocally reach his desired audience.

           When they record that generals divided their audiences into smaller groups by giving speeches while walking or riding along the battle line, ancient historians display awareness that a deployed army was almost always too large to be able to hear a single, stationary bat­tle speech. In depicting the battle of Strasbourg, Ammianus Marcellinus goes so far as to say that:

And since neither the long extent of the field nor the density of the mul­titude gathered into one place allowed him [Julian] to address all at once (alloqui pariter omnes nec longitudo spatiorum extenta nec in unum coactae multitudinis permitteret crebritas) . . . heedless of his own safety, flying (praetervolans) past the weapons of the enemy, he inflamed known and unknown soldiers equally to brave action with these and similar speeches. (Ammianus Marcellinus XVI.12.29)

Here Ammianus Marcellinus admits that it would be impossible for a general to address an entire, deployed army and implies that in order to address his whole army, Julian was compelled to restrict his audi­ence by traversing the field.

           Thus on many occasions, these historians demonstrate an aware­ness of four main logistical problems that might cause us to question the reality of ancient battle speeches: language difference betwe0en general and army, noise created by soldiers in either a pre-deployment or post-deployment speech, timing concerns, and audience size for a post-deployment speech. We cannot deny that language barriers and timing concerns might have made battle speeches either before or after deployment difficult. However, based on the ancient historians descriptions we can conclude that language barriers were sometimes overcome by means of interpreters and that the sequence of events lead­ing up to an ancient battle often allowed time for battle speeches to be given on both sides. When these historians present the strategies of audience restriction and of speeches given to smaller units by subordi­nate officers, they also imply that the difficulties of soldiers noise and audience size could be overcome, even for a post-deployment speech. In general, the historians mention only on rare occasions that these logistical difficulties kept speeches from being given or heard; the implication is therefore that these problems were usually not insurmountable.

           Not only does the work of later historians support the plausibility of both pre- and post-deployment speeches, but on a few occasions it even includes historical narrative that depends on the fact that a speech had been given. Polybius records that the death of Antigonus Doson in 220 B.C.E. was due to the fact that in battle:

Employing exhortation and shouting (paraklsei ka kraug . . . xrhsmenow)with dangerous zeal, having burst some such structure for bloodflow [i.e. a blood vessel], after not much time in illness he died. (Polybius II.70.6)

Antigonus exhortation may have occurred before or during the battle (it was common practice for the general to continue making brief encouragements similar to those of the post-deployment speech throughout the battle), but in any case Polybius attributes his death, a historical fact, to the exertion of offering battle encouragement. A simi­larly helpful passage is found in Livys description of the Samnite wars, when a Samnite general is captured while riding along the line and exhorting his army:

They seized the general Staius Minatius, who was advancing and exhorting the ranks (adeuntem ordines hortantemque); when the horse­men who were with him scattered, they surrounded him and brought him, captured and settled on his horse, to the Roman consul. (Livy X.20.13)

In these two passages, the logical succession of events requires the com­mander to have given a battle exhortation.

           Thus for the most part, Hansens theoretical distinction between pre- and post-deployment formats of battle exhortations is well sup­ported by an analysis of battle speech settings by later ancient histor­ians, although some post-deployment speeches could not have occurred in the format suggested by the historians. These historians descrip­tions also expand upon and validate Hansens concerns for logistical difficulties in speech-giving. However, contrary to Hansens final con­clusion, their very awareness of these difficulties and the strategies they record for overcoming them, as well as their inclusion of historical events that depend on such exhortations, demonstrate the historical reality of battle speeches. Because the historians, many of them exper­ienced military men, acknowledge the logistical difficulties that may have prevented commanders from giving battle speeches and often describe them confronting and overcoming these problems, the log­ical conclusion must be that these difficulties did occur, and therefore that the speeches did as well.

References

Erhardt, C. T. H. R. 1995. Speeches Before Battle? Historia 44: 120.

Grant, Michael. 1995. Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinfor­mation. New York: Routledge.

Hansen, Mogens H. 1993. The Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography: Fact or Fiction? Historia 42: 162-175.

Hansen, Mogens H. 1998. The Little Grey HorseHenry Vs Speech at Agin­court and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography. Histos (4), elec­­tronic publication.

 


[1] Lucian, Pvw Dei Istorian Suggrafein, 49. I have given my own translation of this passage and of all other passages that I will cite.

[2]Hansen, Mogens H. The Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography: Fact or Fiction? Historia 42 (1993) 162-175. Michael Grant concurs, in the absence of loud speakers, generals just did not, and could not, address their whole armies. Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation. New York: Routledge, 1995, p. 45.

[3] In his 1993 article, Hansen dismissed the first type as battle orations, but not battlefield orations, and focused on the post-deployment format. In The Little Grey HorseHenry Vs Speech at Agincourt and the Battle Exhortation in Ancient Historiography Histos 4 (1998), electronic publication, Hansen gave four categories of battle speeches, subdividing pre-deployment exhortations by whether the officers or the whole army was the audience and categorizing post-deployment exhortations by whether the general gave a long speech from one place or many short encouragements while walking along the line. The basic pre- and post-deployment division, however, is clear.

[4] Hansen found only four brief references to battle exhortations in an extensive survey of ancient rhetorical textbooks and one such mention in a military trea­tise (Hansen 1993: 164-6). He analyzed five medieval battle speeches to show that based on the historical evidence, long speeches were not given to deployed armies in these cases (Hansen 1993: 174-9).

[5] Further examples of pre-deployment speeches are Polybius I.27, I.45, III.63, XI.31, Caesar Bellum Civile II.32, Livy 10.39, 36.17, and Tacitus Agricola 33-4.

[6] Additional brief post-deployment speeches are Sallust Bellum Iugurthinum 49, Livy 27.18, 33.8, Tacitus Annales 2.45, 3.45, 5.16, 14.35, and 18.23.

[7] This passage is cited as evidence that battle speeches are not a liter­ary fiction by C. T. H. R. Erhardt in Speeches before Battle? Historia 44 (1995) 120.