80 Conquest
seized the Stenyklaros plain in Messenia, they were prepared to exclude even
the native-born.
A Military Revolution
Inclusion by way of exclusion—this is what defines a political community,
and by the end of the eighth century, as the story of the Partheníaı makes clear,
Lacedaemon had achieved definition. In the course of conquering Laconia
and of seizing Cynouria and the upper reaches of the Pamisos valley, the Agiad
and Eurypontid kings and their Dorian followers were forced to pose to them-
selves a question: who is to share in the spoils, and who is to be left out? And
this in turn required that they ask another question: who is to decide?
In the beginning, these questions were no doubt easily answered, and
though the Heraclid kings, like warrior chieftains in other places and times,
must have had considerable latitude in the disposing of loot, they were pre-
sumably constrained in one particular. As the dispute that arose between Ag-
amemnon and Achilles in the first book of Homer’s Iliad reminds us, captains
of this sort have to satisfy those who do the fighting, and particular attention
has to be paid to those warriors who prove to be indispensable.^43
This task must have become more complicated, however, as time passed—
for, in the first half of the seventh century, a military revolution took place in
Hellas that altered the political playing field. We do not know with any cer-
tainty how fighting was conducted in the century preceding this revolution.
But the odds are good that, for the most part, it looked something like the
fighting said in the Iliad to have taken place in the open plain before the city
o f Tr oy.
Of course, Homer’s account of open-field combat leaves something to be
desired. He is evidently aware that, in Bronze Age Greece and Asia, chariots
were deployed. But he has almost no clue as to the manner in which (in Asia,
if not also in the Balkans) they were then employed in combat—by the Achae-
ans and, of course, by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites—as
platforms from which to confront chariots from the opposing side and to fire
arrows, throw javelins, and bear down on an infantry line in disarray. And so
he depicts the Achaean, Argive, and Danaan warriors at Troy as having used
them almost solely, in the manner of limousines, as prestige vehicles for get-
ting to and from the field of battle.^44
Once they have arrived at the scene of conflict, Homer’s heroes almost