Some of the nations of North America fought with bows, arrows, spears, and shields before the gun. The following is a story from Saukamappee of the Peigan or Piikani Nation in the northern Great Plains. He passed it to David Thompson the fur trader and surveyor who wintered in his lodge around 1787/8 (Thompson had lost track of the years by the time he wrote down his memories). Thompson thought that Saukamappee looked 75 or 80 years old, so he would have been sixteen around 1725 or 1730. Saukamappee said that at this time neither his people nor the Snake Indians had horses.
Detail of an early reproduction of the Darius Mosaic in Pompeii. This is in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. I doubt I will return to Russia anytime soon!
Twice in The Western Way of War (1989, my copy Oxford University Press 1990) Victor Davis Hanson makes similar statements:
In the fifth and fourth centuries, battle broke out in the Greek world nearly two out of every three years, so the chances were good that a man would have to leave his farm, take up his arms, fight in repeated engagements, and fall wounded or die one summer’s day in battle. (p. 31)
For the citizen of the fifth-century Greek city-state who saw battle of some type on an average of two out of three years, the changes were good that he would not die a natural death: in one of those years of his long service he would likely become one of the dead or wounded (p. 89)
A moment’s thought shows that this is incorrect. Even during the Peloponnesian Wars Athens or Sparta only fought a battle every few years, and not all Athenian hoplites or Spartiates fought in every battle. Plato’s Socrates was proud to have fought in one battle, a siege, and an expedition and he was an adult during intensive warfare (Plato, Apology, 28e, Symposium 219-221).1 What could Hanson have meant by the passages above?
An embossed bronze helmet from Crete around 650-600 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1989.281.50
Bret Devereaux recently published a strong post in his series on the hoplite wars. This was an especially strong post because it drew on his research focus. His current book creates financial and demographic models of the Roman Republic, Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms and argues that the Romans were able to get citizens and allies to contribute more military service, arms, and armour than their rivals, while some of their rivals had higher incomes in silver. Victor Davis Hanson and Hans van Wees also created detailed models of early Greek farms and how the men with panoplies (hoplites and horsemen) fit into ancient Greek societies: how many of them were there, how wealthy were they, and where did their incomes come from? Even in Athens the sources are not as good as Polybius and Livy on the Roman Republic, but Hans van Wees was able to believe in them because he came from Homeric studies where the evidence is even worse. van Wees has long suspected that there was no hoplite class, but a leisure class who could easily afford a panoply and a group of small farmers and shopkeepers who could afford it at the cost of suffering. This week I will go over some of the ideas in Devereaux’ post from a slightly different perspective and show where they lead me. This post has consumed two days of writing time and is not as polished as I wish it was.
The Bay Center, Victoria BC, December 2025. The building is misnamed because the Hudson’s Bay Company is bankrupt and seems unlikely to return.
While the cares of the world drew me away from my books, I had some time to read whole books in 2025.
Books vary widely in density and word count (and readers vary in how much attention they pay). I suspect that some people who claim to read very large numbers of books mostly skim them, and some definitely read novels and airport books which are designed for easy reading. Someone who reads a few things intensely is not necessarily reading less than someone with a novel-a-day habit. So I will not make a total, just a subtotal of each category. These posts are to help me remember the books of all sorts which I read in 2025, like Zotero helps me remember the academic articles I found.
I have noticed that in ancient world studies or arms and armour I read more chapters and articles, whereas I am more likely to read a whole book in something further from my areas of expertise.
