The caltrop, a weapon to be reckoned with

A caltrop is a little-known gadget used over the centuries by many armies as an effective and unnerving weapon. Basically, it is made up of two or more sharp nails or metal contraptions arranged in such a way that one of the “legs” always points upward. In antiquity, it was an effective means to slow down enemy soldiers, their horses, and elephants. The upward nails would injure and impair the infantry soldier who stepped on them. The caltrop would also seriously hurt the feet of the unshod horses and the sensitive soles of the elephants’ feet.

[Roman caltrop at Westfälisches Museum für Archäologie, Herne, Germany]

It is not known who actually invented the caltrops or even who used them first. Caltrops are hardly mentioned in our historical records. In weaponry, it is clear that our attention goes to the protective outfit of the soldiers and to their apparent weapons like swords and lances, and the kind. 

The caltrops may have measured about 5 or 6 cm. They were easy to make, easy to transport, and easy to sew around.

The very first recorded use of the caltrop happened in Gaugamela, where the Persians had thrown plenty of so-called crow’s feet on the ground in front of the army. They must have caused Alexander some headaches. Firstly, to discover and locate these weapons, which were often partially hidden or entirely buried; secondly, to avoid them as the troops rushed forward to attack the Persians. In any case, he managed to bypass the trap as he cleared many of these crowfeet and otherwise safely maneuvered around the devices. His infantry, as well as his cavalry, successfully penetrated the enemy lines.

It is still to be determined whether the Greeks were familiar with the caltrops or saw them for the first time on the Battlefield of Gaugamela. Whatever the case, their effectiveness did not go unnoticed, as Alexander’s successors used them repeatedly in their later combats.

At the Battle of Gaza in 312 BC, Ptolemy and Seleucos threw these spiked caltrops in front of their lines to annihilate Demetrios’ elephants. The trick worked perfectly, and after shooting down the mahouts, the elephants were captured by the joint forces of Ptolemy and Seleucos.

A few years earlier, in 318 BC, caltrops or iron spikes were used to stop Polyperchon’s elephants at the siege of Megalopolis. In this case, they were driven in heavy wooden frames connected by chains and thrown in front of the elephants - spikes up. Eventually, Megalopolis did not accept the old general as the new Regent of Macedonia and chose to side with Cassander and Antigonus Monophthalmus. Unfortunately, the siege of Polyperchon failed.

The Romans, who learned a lot from Macedonian warfare, were also quick to implement the caltrop, although nothing is mentioned about Julius Caesar using them. He probably was the exception, for the Romans used the caltrops effectively in their war against the Parthians in 217 AD and again against the Sassanids in 637 AD. 

The caltrop was used throughout the Middle Ages, from Europe to North Africa and Asia - including China! The “fashion” did not die, and caltrops were again used during the Korean War. The principle of the caltrop is still effectively implemented today by the military and police to block vehicles.

The Histories by Polybius, A new translation by Robin Waterfield

The Histories by Polybius (ISBN 978-0199534708) are far less known than, for instance, The Histories by Herodotus and cover an entirely different period. As a result, the author and his book merit being put in a well-deserved spotlight.

Few people have ever heard of Polybius, and it may be useful to introduce him with a short biography. Polybius was born ca. 200 BC, probably in Megalopolis, the capital of the Achaean League (a federal organization of the Peloponnesus). His father played a leading political role, and Polybius, at the age of thirty, was elected deputy leader of the League. But his life changed dramatically when Macedonia lost its independence at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC. This had far-reaching consequences for the rest of Greece. The Achaean leaders were deported to Rome, including Polybius, who spent seventeen years in the capital.

However, as a highly educated Greek, he soon befriended Scipio Aemilianus, one of the most powerful men in Rome at that time. He also became friends with Prince Demetrius, held hostage in Rome, and managed to arrange his escape from the city in 162 BC in order to reclaim his place on the Seleucid throne.

Polybius accompanied Scipio during his campaign in Spain and went to Numidia, modern Tunisia. He tells us how he walked in the footsteps of Hannibal from Spain to Italy. In 149 BC, he was summoned to Carthage, where, using his diplomatic skills brought the Carthaginians to comply with the demands of Rome. Not for long, though, as two years later, Polybius joined Scipio again in his siege of Carthage. When that city fell, he traveled beyond Gibraltar to explore the coast of western Africa. For reasons that could not be determined, Achaea revolted against Rome in 146 BC and lost the battle; as a result, the League was dismantled, and proud Corinth was destroyed. Polybius apparently played an important role in the reconstruction of Greece, a gesture that was widely appreciated, as Pausanias tells us that many cities of the Peloponnesus erected statues in honor of their fellow countryman.

It is clear that Polybius led a very active life as a politician, general, and even as an explorer, and it makes one wonder when and how he found the time to write. Besides his Histories, he left us a study on tactics, a treatise on the habitability of the equatorial region, about the war of Rome against Numantia in Spain, and a biography of Philopoemen, a famous and skilled strategos of Achaea. Unfortunately, the largest part of his works has not survived.

Polybius’ Histories treat the rise of the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean in the period from 220 to 146 BC – a colossal job filling forty books of which only five have survived. Books 1 and 2 are basically an introduction to his work, leading to the battle for power between Rome and Carthage, which spills over into Book 3 with the victory of Hannibal in 216 BC. In Books 4 and 5, Polybius turns to the situation in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean before that same date in order to match the chronology in which he likes to report events. Of the following books, which are not necessarily straight history and treat, for instance of geography in Book 34, substantial excerpts also exist. From what transpires, he took the trouble to make a summary of his work in Book 40. So much precious information has, unfortunately, been lost over the centuries!

In his effort to explain what kind of constitutional structure Rome applied to conquer the world, it appears that in Book 6, Polybius developed a highly interesting theory about the recurrent cycle of government in which monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy alternate. In the same book, he described the constitution of Rome at length, giving us a unique insight into the great organizational skills of the Romans.

What makes Polybius stand out is his overall chronology reporting the events as they develop simultaneously in the eastern and western ends of the Mediterranean. It truly is a rare horizontal history and, what’s more, he is the only historian from the Hellenistic period whose work survived to such an extent.

Since the Punic Wars are treated in detail, I found this the best history I ever read without getting lost or confused one way or another in those repeated conflicts that lasted on and off for 118 years. To keep track of time, the year in which the events took place is handily quoted in the margin.

The translation made by Robin Waterfield is superb and reads with the clarity that is characteristic of him (see: Dividing the Spoils).

The book has a great Introduction without which the Histories would be very hard to understand. It also includes a handy chronology of the events covered in the book and a set of three maps, one of the Mediterranean and a detailed one for both Greece and Italy.

Greek theaters had moveable stages!

We thought that by now we knew everything about Greek theatres – well, not so!

Recent architectural research has led to believe that there was a moveable wooden stage in ancient Greek theatres. This has been determined in three separate theatres in the Greek Peloponnese: first in Messene, and later also at Megalopolis and Sparta.

Skanotheke plan of the Messene Theatre (scale 1 : 500), Inset: Skanotheke of east parodos. Adapted from R. Yoshitake, The Movable Stage in Hellenistic Greek Theatres. New Documentation form Messene and Comparisons with Sparta and Megalopolis, AA, 2016/2, p. 120, fig. 1 and 2. Credit: Associate Professor Ryuichi Yoshitake

Ancient Greek theatres were bowl shaped with seating around the circular orchestra and at the open end an open stage. After 31 BC, under Roman influence, the stage was elevated and decorated with columns and statues and all sorts of reliefs. Romans often reused and refurbished original Greek theatres but also built the semi-circular model of their own where this back stage was automatically attached to the seating area.

After excavations started in 2007, the research team from Komamoto University discovered three stone rows and a kind of storage room beside the stage of Messene’s theatre. When a similar feature was found in Megalopolis and Sparta as well, they started questioning the function of these elements. Their conclusion was that the stone rows would have supported wooden background picture panels that could be wheeled into place and that the storage room would have held them when not in use.

This image shows the reconstruction of the wheeled wooden skene of the Messene Theatre. The wooden stage building (front) is drawn by solid lines, and the hypothetical scene building (back) by gray lines. Adapted from R. Yoshitake, The Movable Stage in Hellenistic Greek Theatres. New Documentation form Messene and Comparisons with Sparta and Megalopolis, AA, 2016/2, p. 123, fig. 6. (drawing by K. Oyama). Credit: Associate Professor Ryuichi Yoshitake & K. Oyama

The Greek theatres had a proskenion, i.e. a one-story building placed on the stage and that functioned as a stage background. Behind this proskenion was a two-story skene that was used as a dressing room for the actors but also as an extra stage background. Now the question arose whether these buildings were made of stone and fixed or made of wood and moveable. They opted for the latest and since moving the massive construction of proskenion and attached skene is highly improbable, they concluded that each building was rolled out separately, each using its own set of two stone rows to move along in and out of the storage room.

Ancient literature indeed mentions rotating devices, but the finds at Messene seem to confirm that they existed as early as the Hellenistic period although we still don’t know what they really looked like.

The research team of Komamoto University in Japan has even come up with two drawings explaining their theory – see above.