Arms and Society in Antiquity 11of “feudal” states, in which a small elite of chariot warriors exercised
decisive military force and shared the practical exercise of sovereignty
with overlords whose commands were effective only when a majority
of the chariot-owning class concurred. As victorious bands of
charioteers spread out over conquered Middle Eastern lands, they
gathered into their own hands most of the available agricultural
surplus, either as plunder (in their initial onset) or as rents (when
exactions became somewhat more regular). The effect was to weaken
central authority, although in the Middle Eastern lands, where bu
reaucratic traditions of imperial government had already begun to
develop, it did not take long for revived central authorities to make
the new military technology their own. After 1520 B.C., for example,
the New Kingdom of Egypt used gold from Nubia to hire charioteers,
thus securing a standing, professional force that proved superior to all
rivals for several generations.
In China and India the arrival of chariotry signalled more drastic
change. In India, charioteers disrupted the older Indus civilization
about 1500 B.C., and a “dark age” lasting several centuries intervened
before a new pattern of civilized life began to emerge. In China, an
opposite transformation occurred, for a new chariot-using dynasty, the
Shang, presided over the development of a more sharply differen
tiated society than had previously existed in the valley of the Yellow
River. The enhanced levels of luxury and income commanded by the
noble class of Shang charioteers allowed several characteristic skills of
subsequent Chinese civilization to define themselves more clearly
than before.
In Europe, chariots seem to have mattered less. To be sure, the shift
from Minoan to Mycenaean hegemony in the Aegean region was ac
companied or swiftly followed by the arrival of chariots in Greece.
Within a few centuries chariots also appeared in distant Scandinavia
and remote Britain. But if what Homer tells us about Mycenaean
battle tactics is correct, the European warriors failed to use the
chariot’s combination of mobility and firepower to good effect. In
stead, Homer’s heroes dismounted from their chariots to fight on foot
with spears and other close-combat weapons, using their chariots for
show and as mere conveniences in coming and going from the field of
battle.^12
- See, for example, book 16, lines 426 ff. However absurd, Homer’s report may be
accurate. The tactics he describes may have been a function of numbers and terrain. To
succeed, a chariot charge required a critical mass—enough arrows and charging chariots
to break opposing infantry and persuade foot soldiers to flee. But in a land like Greece,