Threats or possibilities of that kind were very likely what required the Great Kings
of Ahhiya/Achaea to maintain sizeable chariotries during the LH IIIA and IIIB
periods. It has often been deduced that the Mycenaeans’ chariots could not have
been intended for use in battle because most of the Greek terrain was unsuitable
for chariot warfare. That deduction rests, however, on the false premise that Bronze
Age warfare was essentially the work of infantrymen, who could fight in all types
of terrain. It is certainly true that in much of the Greek (and Cretan) landscape
chariots would have been useless, but a Mycenaean king had no need to worry about
such parts of the landscape. Although “barbarians” in the hills may have occasion -
ally required retaliation by the king’s warriors on foot, such barbarians were a
nuisance rather than a lethal threat. Kingdoms worried about other kingdoms, and
a king had chariots in order to defend his realm against another king’s chariots.
Offensive infantries being still in the future, a Mycenaean king assumed with good
reason that if and when he would be required to fight a real battle, it would neces -
sarily be in a place where chariots could be deployed. Like other deterrents in other
times, the LH IIIA and IIIB chariots may seldom have been used. When at the end
of the Late Bronze Age great and unprecedented danger did finally come to the
Aegean, the Mycenaean chariotries were no more effective against hordes of raiding
“runners” than were the much larger chariotries of the Egyptian and Hittite kings.
No taxied infantrymen in Mycenaean Greece
We have plenty of evidence for heavily armored chariot crews in the Late Bronze
Age, but none—whether in the Near East or in Greece—for heavily armored
warriors who fought on the ground. In the Late Bronze Age there was not yet
anything like the Greek phalanx or the Roman legion of Classical times, nor even
like the Homeric stichos: a line of offensive infantrymen carrying shields
and wielding spears. Accordingly, we have no evidence—whether in the Near
East or in Greece—for chariots in the Late Bronze Age transporting heavily
armored infantrymen to a battle. In contrast, we have plenty of evidence that
in the Late Bronze Age chariots served as mobile platforms for archers who
shot their arrows against the opposing chariots. Nevertheless, on Homer’s authority
many specialists on the LH Aegean have believed that the Mycenaean palaces
kept several hundred chariots to serve as battle-taxis for several hundred heavily
armored infantrymen who are supposed to have fought against the enemy’s
heavily armored infantrymen.
That thesis was urged especially by Mary Littauer and Joost Crouwel. In their
objections to my reconstruction of Late Bronze Age warfare Littauer and Crouwel
argued that even in the Near East the chariot was of limited use, and that in Greece
the chariot appeared in the preliminaries to a battle but not in the battle itself.
Necessarily, Littauer and Crouwel went on to deny the importance of the bow in
Mycenaean warfare:
In Greece, there is no evidence for the association between the military chariot
and the bow so well documented in the Near East and Egypt. Instead, chariots188 Militarism in Greece