The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000

(Brent) #1
Arms and Society in Antiquity^5

and places, division of resources between warfare and welfare^5 varied
indefinitely in antiquity as in more recent times.
Yet it seems correct to say that, regardless of the ends to which
resources were put, large-scale public action in antiquity was always
achieved by means of command. The ruler or his agent and sub­
ordinate issued an order and others obeyed. Human beings are prob­
ably fundamentally attuned to this mode of public management by
childhood experience, since parents routinely issue commands and
instructions which children are expected (and often compelled) to
obey. Parents know more and are physically stronger than children;
ancient kings also knew more because of superior access to informa­
tion relayed up and down the administrative hierarchy; and with the
help of professionalized soldiery they were also stronger than their
subjects. Sometimes they were also living gods, with access to still
another form of power.
The awkward element in the entire structure was long-distance
trade and the people who conducted it. Yet some imports from afar
were essential. For example, the tin needed to make bronze was usu­
ally unobtainable close by. Commands were incapable of compelling
populations to dig the ore, smelt it into ingots, and then carry it across
the sea and land to the place where kings and high priests wanted it.
Other scarce products were similarly recalcitrant to the straight­
forward methods of command mobilization. Rulers and men of power
had to learn to deal with possessors of such commodities more or less
as equals, substituting the manners and methods of diplomacy for
those of command.
The transition was, no doubt, slow and difficult. In very early times,
kings organized military expeditions to secure needed commodities
from afar. This, for example, is how Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (ca.
3000 B.C.?) prepared for a trip to get timber from distant cedar
forests:
“But I will put my hand to it
And will cut down the cedar.
An everlasting name I will establish for myself!
Orders, my friend, to the armorers I will give;
Weapons they shall cast in our presence.”
Orders to the armorers they gave.


  1. Propitiation of the gods through more splendid ceremonies, and assurance of
    immortality through more massive tombs, counted as welfare as much as canal and dike
    construction to extend the area of irrigated land. Such enterprises were all calculated to
    increase the harvest.

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