Tyrant: King of the Bosporus (57 page)
If you feel that you need a scorecard, consider visiting my website at
www.hippeis.com
where you can at least review the biographies of some of the main players. Wikipedia has full biographies on most of the players in the period, as well.
From a standpoint of purely military history, I’ve made some decisions that knowledgeable readers may find odd. For example, I no longer believe in the ‘linothorax’ or linen breastplate, and I’ve written it out of the novels. Nor do I believe that the Macedonian pike system – the sarissa armed phalanx – was really any ‘better’ than the old Greek hoplite system. In fact, I suspect it was worse – as the experience of early modern warfare suggests that the longer your pikes are, the less you trust your troops. Macedonian farm boys were not hoplites – they lacked the whole societal and cultural support system that created the hoplite. They were decisive in their day – but as to whether they were ‘better’ than the earlier system – well, as with much of military change, it was a cultural change, not really a technological one. Or so it seems to me.
Elephants were not tanks, nor were they a magical victory tool.
They could be very effective, or utterly ineffective. I’ve tried to show both situations.
The same can be said of horse-archery. On open ground, with endless remounts and a limitless arrow supply, a horse-archer army must have been a nightmare. But a few hundred horse-archers on the vast expanse of a Successor battlefield might only have been a nuisance.
Ultimately, though, I don’t believe in ‘military’ history. War is about economics, religion, art, society – war is inseparable from culture. You could not – in this period – train an Egyptian peasant to be a horse-archer without changing his way of life and his economy, his social status, perhaps his religion. Questions about military technology – ‘Why didn’t Alexander create an army of [insert technological wonder here]?’ – ignore the constraints imposed by the realities of the day: the culture of Macedon, which carried, it seems to me, the seeds of its own destruction from the first.
And then there is the problem of sources. In as much as we know
anything
about the world of the Diadochi, we owe that knowledge to a few authors, none of whom is actually contemporary. I used Diodorus Siculus throughout the writing of the
Tyrant
books; in most cases I prefer him to Arrian or Polybius, and in many cases he’s the sole source. I also admit to using (joyously!) any material that Plutarch could provide, even though I fully realise his moralising ways.
In this book, for instance, I have an entire campaign that receives only a few lines in Diodorus and no mention whatsoever anywhere else. The other day, much to my horror, I read an article suggesting it was all a fabrication. Perhaps. But the Greco-Scythian culture of the Euxine was real, and the Bosporon Kingdom was born and endured for hundreds of years – a good, long run that left an enduring mark on the region. For the novelist, it is sufficient to tell
a
story, perhaps not
the
story, of how that might have come about.
For anyone who wants to get a quick lesson in the difficulties of the sources for the period, I recommend visiting the website
www.livius.org
. The articles on the sources will, I hope, go a long way to demonstrating how little we know about Alexander and his successors.
Of course, as I’m a novelist and not an historian, sometimes the loopholes in the evidence – or even the vast gaps – are the very space in which my characters operate. Sometimes, a lack of knowledge is what creates the appeal. Either way, I hope that I have created a believable
version of the world after Alexander’s death. I hope that you enjoy this book, and the two – or three – to follow.
And as usual, I’m always happy to hear your comments – and even your criticisms – at the Online Agora on
www.hippeis.com
. See you there, I hope!
Christian Cameron
Toronto 2010
I am an author, not a linguist; a novelist, and not fully an historian. Despite this caveat, I do the best I can to research everything from clothing to phalanx formations as I go – and sometimes I disagree with the accepted wisdom of either academe or the armchair generals who write colorful coffee table books on these subjects.
And ultimately, errors are my fault. If you find a historical error, please let me know!
One thing I have tried to avoid is altering history as we know it to suit a timetable or plotline. The history of the Wars of the Successors is difficult enough without my altering it. In addition, as you write about a period you love (and I have fallen pretty hard for this one) you learn more. Once I learn more, words may change or change their usage. As an example, in
Tyrant
I used Xenophon’s
Cavalry Commander
as my guide to almost everything. Xenophon calls the ideal weapon a
machaira
. Subsequent study has revealed that Greeks were pretty lax about their sword nomenclature (actually, everyone is, except martial arts enthusiasts) and so Kineas’ Aegyptian
machaira
was probably called a
kopis
. So in the second book, I call it a
kopis
without apology. Other words may change – certainly, my notion of the internal mechanics of the
hoplite phalanx
has changed. The more you learn . . .
A note about history. I’m always amused when a fan (or a non-fan) writes to tell me that I got a campaign or battle ‘wrong’. Friends – and I hope we’re still friends when I say this – we know less about the wars of Alexander than we do about the surface of Mars, or the historical life of Jesus. I read Greek and I look at the evidence and then I make the call. I’ve been to most of these places, and I can read a map. While I’m deeply fallible, I am also a pretty good soldier and I’m prepared
to make my own decisions in light of the evidence about everything from numbers to the course of a battle. I may well be ‘wrong’, but unless someone produces a time-machine, there’s no proving it. Our only real source on Alexander lived five hundred years later . . . that’s like calling me an eye-witness of Agincourt. Be wary of reading a campaign history or an Osprey book and assuming from the confident prose that we
know
. We don’t know. We stumble around in the dark and make guesses.
And that said, military historians are, by and large, the poorest historians out there, by virtue of studying the violent reactions of cultures without studying the cultures themselves. War and military matters are cultural artifacts, just like religion and philosophy and fashion, and to try to take them out of context is impossible.
Hoplites
didn’t carry the
aspis
because it was the ideal technology for the
phalanx
. I’ll bet they carried it because it was the ideal technology for the culture, from the breeding of oxen to the making of the bowl to the way they stacked in wagons. Men only fight a few days a year, if that – but they live and breathe and run and forage and gamble and get dysentery 365 days a year, and their kit has to be good on all those days, too.
Finally, yes, I kill a lot of characters. War kills. Violence and lives of violence have consequences, then as now. And despite the drama of war, childbirth probably killed women of warrior age about twice as fast as it killed active warriors – so when we get right down to who’s tough . . .
Enjoy!
I’m always sorry to finish a historical novel, because writing them is the best job in the world and researching them is more fun than anything I can imagine. I approach every historical era with a basket full of questions – How did they eat? What did they wear? How does that weapon work? This time, my questions have driven me to start recreating the period. The world’s Classical re-enactors have been an enormous resource to me while writing, both with details of costume and armour and food, and as a fountain of inspiration. In that regard I’d like to thank Craig Sitch and Cheryl Fuhlbohm of Manning Imperial, who make some of the finest recreations of material culture from Classical antiquity in the world (
www.manningimperial.com
), as well as Joe Piela of Lonely Mountain Forge for helping recreate equipment on tight schedules. I’d also like to thank Paul McDonnell-Staff, Paul Bardunias, and Giannis Kadoglou for their depth of knowledge and constant willingness to answer questions – as well as the members of various ancient Greek re-enactment societies all over the world, from Spain to Australia. Thanks most of all to the members of my own group, Hoplologia and the Taxeis Plataea, for being the guinea pigs on a great deal of material culture and martial arts experimentation, and to Guy Windsor (who wrote
The Swordsman’s Companion
and
The Duelist’s Companion
and is an actual master swordsman himself ) for advice on martial arts.
Speaking of re-enactors, my friend Steven Sandford draws the maps for these books, and he deserves a special word of thanks; and my friend Rebecca Jordan works tirelessly at the website and the various web spin-offs like the Agora, and deserves a great deal more praise than she receives.
Speaking of friends, I owe a debt or gratitude to Christine Szego,
who provides daily criticisms and support from her store, Bakka Phoenix, in Toronto. Thanks, Christine!
Kineas and his world began with my desire to write a book that would allow me to discuss the serious issues of war and politics that are around all of us today. I was returning to school and returning to my first love – Classical history. I am also an unashamed fan of Patrick O’Brian, and I wanted to write a series with depth and length that would allow me to explore the whole period, with the relationships that define men, and women, in war – not just one snippet. The combination – Classical history, the philosophy of war, and the ethics of the world of arête – gave rise to the volume you hold in your hand.
Along the way, I met Professor Wallace and Professor Young, both very learned men with long association to the University of Toronto. Professor Wallace answered any question that I asked him, providing me with sources and sources and sources, introducing me to the labyrinthine wonders of Diodorus Siculus, and finally, to TCuyler Young. Cuyler was kind enough to start my education on the Persian Empire of Alexander’s day, and to discuss the possibility that Alexander was not infallible, or even close to it. I wish to give my profoundest thanks and gratitude to these two men for their help in re-creating the world of fourth century BC Greece, and the theory of Alexander’s campaigns that underpins this series of novels. Any brilliant scholarship is theirs, and any errors of scholarship are certainly mine. I will never forget the pleasure of sitting in Professor Wallace’s office, nor in Cuyler’s living room, eating chocolate cake and debating the myth of Alexander’s invincibility. Both men have passed on now, since this book was written – but none of the Tyrant books would have been the same without them. They were great men, and great academics – the kind of scholars who keep civilization alive.
I’d also like to thank the staff of the University of Toronto’s Classics department for their support, and for reviving my dormant interest in Classical Greek, as well as the staffs of the University of Toronto and the Toronto Metro Reference Library for their dedication and interest. Libraries matter!
I’d like to thank my old friends Matt Heppe and Robert Sulentic for their support in reading the novel, commenting on it, and helping me avoid anachronisms. Both men have encyclopedic knowledge of Classical and Hellenistic military history and, again, any errors are
mine. I have added several new readers – Aurora Simmons and Jenny Carrier and Kate Boggs; all re-enactors, all well read, and all too capable of telling me when I’ve got the whole thing wrong.
In addition, I owe eight years of thanks to Tim Waller, the world’s finest copy-editor. And a few pints!
I couldn’t have approached so many Greek texts without the Perseus Project. This online resource, sponsored by Tufts University, gives online access to almost all classical texts in Greek and in English. Without it I would still be working on the second line of
Medea
, never mind the
Iliad
or the
Hymn to Demeter
.
I owe a debt of thanks to my excellent editor, Bill Massey, at Orion, for giving these books constant attention and a great deal of much needed flattery, for his good humor in the face of authorial dicta, and for his support at every stage. I’d also like to thank Shelley Power, my agent, for her unflagging efforts on my behalf, and for many excellent dinners, the most recent of which, at the world’s only Ancient Greek restaurant, Archeon Gefsis in Athens, resulted in some hasty culinary re-writing. Thanks, Shelley!
Finally, I would like to thank the muses of the Luna Café, who serve both coffee and good humor, and without whom there would certainly not have been a book. And all my thanks – a lifetime of them – for my wife, Sarah.
If you have any questions or you wish to see more or participate (want to be a hoplite at Marathon?) please come and visit
www.hippeis.com
.
Christian Cameron
Toronto, 2010
Christian Cameron is a writer and military historian. He is a veteran of the United States Navy, where he served as both an aviator and an intelligence officer. He lives in Toronto where he is currently writing the next novel in the TYRANT series while working on a Masters in Classics.
Visit the TYRANT website at