governors), and even the Athenians themselves, had been using mercenaries for two or three decades before 400.
The Peloponnesian War also brought changes in the methods of fighting. The traditional Greek infantry technique was hoplite fighting, which
required heavy and relatively expensive armour, but during the Peloponnesian War we hear for the first time of experiments with lighter-
armed troops (peltasts, named from their shields); they became fashionable partly because of their greater flexibility and partly because a
peltast cost less to kit out. Although the peltast never replaced the hoplite in classical Greek warfare (most of the great set battles of the fourth
century were hoplite affairs), the combination of heavy and light armed was specially formidable. The social effects of a diminished
dependence on hoplites, who had tended to be citizens of the states they were fighting for, and of the increased use of peltasts and
mercenaries, was to weaken the link between the polis and the men who fought to defend it. The numbers, and potential for damage, of the
rootless 'men without a city' may have been exaggerated by the fourth-century writer Isocrates, who is a spokesman for the propertied class;
but the problem certainly got worse as a result of the Peloponnesian War, if only because after 404 there was no single leading power to
impose its own political order as Sparta and Athens had done at different times. This led to a general increase in political instability "with
violence. Hence the exiles of whom Isocrates complained.
Sea warfare and siege techniques also developed more quickly after 431. By contrasting the accounts of Athenian naval techniques in Books 1
and 2 of Thucydides we see that in just a year or so the Athenians under Phormio have acquired the courage and skill to manoeuvre in the
open sea. In siege warfare, the agent of change in the late fifth century was not the Peloponnesian War, but the contemporaneous warfare in
Sicily against the Carthaginians: this led to the invention of non-torsion catapults about 400 B.C. (to be followed by torsion catapults,
perfected - apparently in Thessaly - about 350). Though the defenders of cities were quick to adapt, with new kinds of wall circuit and more
effective fortifications, it was now possible to take fortified cities by storm. Alexander in the 330s succeeded in Western Asia, where the
Spartan king Agesilaus in the 390s had failed, largely because of the presence in the Macedonian army of Thessalian siege engineers recruited
by Alexander's father Philip.
Departure Scene on an Athenian vase of about 450 BC. A hoplite warrior clasps the hand of his father, while his wife or mother stands with a
jug and phiale cup for the ritual libation of farewell. These poignant scenes are characteristic of Classical art and a similar mood is
expressed on the later grave reliefs.
Strategic thinking was the slowest department of classical Greek warfare to change, even under the strain of the Great Peloponnesian War. In
tactics, the generals of most Greek states continued to be the servants of the political assemblies, who were reluctant to grant them more than
the minimum of formal powers. But there were changes even here: at the battle of Delium in 424 we hear for the first time of a deepened file