Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians

Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology in the Greek Historians. By Peter Hunt. New York: Cambirdge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-58429-9. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 246. $59.95.

Greek warfare of the classical period has been aptly compared to American football: tight phalanxes of hoplites meeting on a level field in a "shove" or othisnlos. Naval warfare used comparable rudimentary tactics and obeyed similar protocols. Moreover, just as college football fans consider the bona fide student status of athletes essential to a proper game, the Hellenes prized the citizen status of their warriors. War was not an all-out fight between whole populations, but the symbolically expressive test of select groups.

Peter Hunt, however, argues, in this revised Stanford dissertation, that slaves played a major role in warfare...