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  • 15 - War and society

  • from Part II - The Hellenistic World and the Roman Republic
    • By J. Lendon, Professor of History, University of Virginia
  • Edited by Philip Sabin, King's College London, Hans van Wees, University College London, Michael Whitby, University of Warwick
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    06 December 2007, pp 498-516

  • Summary

    In the Peloponnesian War Athens is found hiring barbarian specialists, light infantry from Thrace. The conception of warfare as a collation of crafts had, it is attractive to suppose, a number of historical consequences. Military excellence as craft could also undermine civic harmony by reducing the dependence of the rich citizen upon his neighbours. By the third century Rome was a full member of the Hellenistic cosmos, trading and treating and fighting with Greece, the Hellenistic kingdoms and the Hellenized maritime power of Carthage. The Roman cult of virtus manifests itself in the degree to which Roman society was adapted to the making of war. For war held a different place in Roman than in Hellenistic culture. If the Romans were like the shark, the Greeks were like the dolphin: both ravening predators, but the one morose and single-minded, the other playful and inquisitive.