Thucydides Roundtable, Book IV: General Demosthenes
Roisman notes in the general “an inclination to embrace ambitious goals combined with a willingness to give up when the campaigns failed to produce their projected results immediately.” You can see this in the backing down from Megara as well as his eagerness to stake everything on a single roll of the dice at Epipolae: a tendency, in Roisman’s words, “to approach military problems in terms of immediate and decisive success or failure.” I will not spell out the obvious lessons; Parts II and III of Demosthenes’ career do that quite well.
The nuanced intuition in Roisman’s analysis makes me wonder whether this alumnus of Tel Aviv University may have gained a certain Fingerspitzengefühl from a stint in the IDF. He has done other work on ancient military history, with a particular focus on Alexander the Great. I look forward to exploring that oeuvre; in the meanwhile, if you can get your hands on it, I recommend his Demosthenes monograph very highly.
[1] Roisman, Joseph. The General Demosthenes and His Use of Military Surprise. HISTORIA Einzelschriften 78, Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1993
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Neville Morley:
November 18th, 2016 at 7:42 am
I guess we can save the discussion until we get to Book 7, but my immediate reaction is that you’re incredibly unfair, albeit tongue in cheek, in saying that Demosthenes lost the war. He was in a deeply unenviable position, sent out to rescue an expedition that was misconceived in the first place and finding things worse than he’d expected; the night attack was a desperate gamble, but doing nothing (let alone doing the sensible thing and getting the hell out of there) not an option…
A. E.:
November 18th, 2016 at 3:46 pm
I was trying to be provocative — thanks for being provoked, Professor!
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I may change my mind by the time we reach Book 7.
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My impression is that by Book 5 the writing is on the wall for the Athenian Empire. Hence even if Demosthenes had managed to salvage the Sicilian expedition, the ultimate outcome would not have been much different. In that sense, you are right that it is unfair to blame him for losing the war. But I believe the spectacular disaster at Syracuse was a large and irretrievable step along the path to defeat that the Athenians actually followed. If D. was responsible for it, then he can fairly be said to have lost the war — in the way that it was lost, as distinct from other ways it might have been lost.
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Was D. responsible for the disaster? I think so. That he was in a very difficult position is true. That he could not afford to do nothing, as you say, is also true. But there was no necessity (outside his own cognitive and emotional blinkers) for him to throw away his forces so recklessly.
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What else might he have tried?
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Could he have attempted to retake the fort at Plemmyrium, greatly easing the Athenians’ logistics?
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Could he have taken time to build a local intelligence network that might have disclosed Syracusan vulnerabilities?
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Could he have started the attack on Epipolae shortly before dawn, using darkness for the surprise break-in but having the benefit of daylight by the time he encountered stiff resistance from the Boeotians, which is when everything started to go pear-shaped?
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Of course I am not in a good position to evaluate the opportunities he may have had. But I think I can say that nothing else he could have done would have been more disastrous than what he did.
Koit Rikson:
November 19th, 2016 at 1:17 am
I don’t really disagree with the above – while in mind to remind that we don’t know what we don’t know.
A general willing to try the unexpected and unconventional should be rated higher than their contemporaries; I don’t feel that not knowing how to organise a night attack without previously having tried one is a massive quality either.
At the same time, our source for the fact this is the first night attack is very uncertain. Very difficult overall to make a good judgement from this towards either the commanding officer or the defending officer. After all, perhaps the defence should always be counted to expect the possible steps of the offence? Accidental success is not necessarily a measure of skill.
zen:
November 20th, 2016 at 4:04 am
Demosthenes should have called an assembly in the Army in Sicily and moved that Nicias be removed from command at a time early enough to have avoided disaster. He would have faced trial for this back in Athens, but so would have the blundering Nicias and the remainder of the Athenian army would have been saved.