Arms and Society in Antiquity 13Hillsmen and other barbarians living on the fringes of civilized
society profited most directly from the new cheapness of metal. In
such communities, moral solidarity between leaders and followers was
firm and easy, since a traditional and rudely egalitarian style of life
united the entire population. Charioteers could not afford to arm the
superior numbers of their subjects to match the newly formidable
metal-clad barbarians: that would merely assure local rebellion against
their power. Hence the chariot aristocracies, lacking firm support
from below, were overthrown by barbarian tribesmen whose shields
and helmets of iron protected them from charioteers’ arrows well
enough to make the formerly invincible chariot tactics ineffective in
battle.
In the Middle East, the diffusion of iron-working skills therefore
precipitated a new round of invasions and migrations between 1200
and 1000 B.C. New peoples—Hebrews, Persians, Dorians, and many
others—entered the historical record, inaugurating a barbarous and
much more egalitarian age. As the author of Judges says, at the close
of a bloody tale of violence and mayhem:
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone used to do as
he pleased.^13Yet egalitarianism and disorderly local violence proved evanescent.
Soon the superior value of professionalized troops became apparent.
Traditions of centralized government, surviving in Egypt and
Babylonia from before the chariot invasions, were available to ambi
tious state builders, like Saul and David and their various rivals. After
1000 B.C., therefore, bureaucratic monarchies again began to domi
nate the Middle East, each supported by a standing body of troops,
supplemented by militia levies in time of need. Since income to sup
port the military professionals came from taxation, the way was open
for the development of the kind of command structure that sustained
Xerxes’ vast empire.
Assyrian kings were the most successful practitioners of the art of
bureaucratic management of armed force in the early Iron Age. They
developed an army in which ascribed rank defined who should com
mand and who obey. Standard equipment, standard units, a ladder of
promotion open to talent: these familiar bureaucratic principles of
army management all appear to have been either introduced or made
standard by Assyrian rulers. A parallel civil bureaucracy proved itself
capable of assembling food stocks for a proposed campaign, of build-
- Judges 21:25 (Theophile J. Meek, trans.).