Why Did Greeks/Romans Not Use Bows In Battle?

[LordLurch]

Good Afternoon,
I'm starting to get the impression that ancinet Greek and Roman armies realy had something against using bows in batle as opposed to javelins or slings. Does anyone have any information on why this seems to have been the case, or is this a misconception? The only thing I can think of right now is some sort of cultural taboo revolving around archery being considered a "cowardly" way to fight, which shows up in various forms as far back as the poems of Homer.
-LordLurch

[gyabo]

Maybe w/ their type of livelihood and occupation. Like Carthage/Phoenician are well know for there ship due sea trading and maritime is their livelihood. Huns/Steppe known for there cavalry due they mostly relied on their horse and herds for food.

Looking at Romans, Greeks, Macedonian and ancient armies they relied more on numbers in combat. This is how Romans and it's allies defeated Hannibal and Carthage purely on their high population. Romans can quickly build there armies even Hannibal destroyed them. Having archery in that army require time to develop a skill archer compared to a swordsman and a spearman.

[andrew881thebest]

Romans used archers (the well known syrian archers) in the form of auxiliary units since late Republic. Before that time for what I know they mainly relied on javelin throwers in the form of the young velites. Javelins had the advantage to have more mass so much more kinetic energy than a normal arrow (especially if thrown by muscolar and fit trained guys). This in a time where everyone carried a shields and armors could be the difference. If you have a shield (big enough) you are almost safe from arrows...not so safe from the big punch of a javelin thrown at close range. A heavy javelin could no doubt pierce a shield. Light javelins could in some circustances piece light Shields.

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[ImperatorAndreas]

I think the main reasons are probably training, cost of production, type of warfare and as you rightly said culture.
A sling or javelin are much easier to wield and use than a bow which requires a lot of training. Furthermore the hoplite warfare made it hard to use bows effectively as Andrew said; unless you surround your enemy completely or/and outnumber him, you will have a hard time killing a hoplite with a bow. Considering Greeks spent just as much time fighting each other rather than their neighbours, they would not use a (pretty much) useless weapon that had little effect against hoplites.
And the culture aspect that you mentioned is also very important, the Spartans probably being the best example.

For the Romans, I am not so sure, but for an empire that survived about 1500 years (counting from Augustus but you could probably start earlier) it undoubtedly changed through time. If you meant early Rome though I suppose it is similar to the Greeks.

[LordLurch]

I was referring to early Rome. I got the idea for this thread from viewing the in-game unit rosters and noticing that most of the Roman and Hellenistic factions do not have generic foot archer units, while the Barbarians and Persians do. I was wondering if this was largely due to historical reasons, or due to the need for the devs to create balance between the various factions. I'm starting to get the impression that this disparity is largely historically accurate. Would you say that that is an accurate assumption?

[Charerg]

Well, for the Greeks there were the famous Cretan archers. Other psiloi probably used the bow as well, but it's hard to tell how popular it was. In general, I'd say archers were a bit rarer than slingers or javelineers in the Greek world, but not nonexistent. The Athenians also used Scythian mercenaries as mounted archers during the Peloponnesian wars, so again, I wouldn't say that archery was nonexistant in Greek warfare. Also, Thucydides describes Athenian ships as including archers amongst the marine contingents, so they were definitely used in naval warfare as well.

The Romans on the other hand, apparently didn't use archers (except as Auxiliaries). This seems to be the trend in Western Europe during the Classical era. So far as I know, military archery was rare amongst the Celts as well.

[The Despondent Mind]

There seems to be a general rule, the more vast open spaces you get, the more favored are the ranged weapons and vice versa.

[LordLurch]

You're right! I totally forgot about the Scythians and the Cretans!

[Anna_Gein]

Archery was rarely used in warfare in West Mediterranean and Continental Europe until the Pincipate. In Greek area archery became more popular with the wide use of Cretan mercenaries by Hellenistic rulers, latter followed by "neo-cretan" mercenaries : men equipped with the cretan kit (bow+shield)

In Gaul archery was introduced by Caesar himself and imitated by the Gauls in an attempt to counter his bowmen. In his time Romans troops were almost exclusively legionaries (reequipped with lighter kit in case of need). Instead Rome made an even heavier use of allies for specialist role like cavalry or archery. Caesar had no roman cavalry and was forced to improvised a small escort with legionaries from the Legio X mount on Gallic horses when he met Ariovistus (he thought Romans would instill fear among the Germans)

[ImperatorAndreas]

Actually I also remember reading somewhere (take it with a pinch of salt) that in the west bows were less used because of the climate. For instance the Persian composite bow which was as its name suggest composed of different parts needed glue. At the time, the humid environments of Western Europe were far from ideal for using bows en masse. The bow would break, the string less resistant,... This is probably why the Western Roman Empire's military later on is not particularly famous for its use of archery unlike the Eastern Roman Empire that used them intensively.

[LordLurch]

I heard something similar to that on a History Channel docmentary years ago. According to them, Eastern-style composite bows don't do so well in rainy climates, which could have put archers at a disadvantage.

[Sar1n]

Hellenic and Roman nations never developed a significant archery tradition, I believe mostly due to enviromental factors. More humidity is a problem for bows, especially composite ones...although that can be overcome by proper bow covers and such. But it's still an obstacle for developing the archery tradition. The terrain of western Europe also played a role-most combat was led on ranges where javelin or sling could work just as well. That's why martial traditions in Europe drifted more toward javelins and melee, while bows had jsut a minor skirmishing role. It's important to note that they weren't totally extinct-those few familiar with usage of bow, like hunters, would often keep it when joining the army as their personal skirmishing weapon. But on their own they never developed a long range, area shooting methods like Persians or steppe tribes. A passage in Anabasis states quite plainly how Cretan archers were unfamiliar with Persian long range shooting methods, and only tried to imitate them later.

I keep mentioning archery culture, because it's important. Compared to other contemporary weapons, bows, especially composite ones, were difficult to use and care for. A good archer, like the Persians or mcuh later Welsh and English, had to be trained from early age. It's not like spear or crossbow, where grabbing a bunch of peasants and giving the few weeks of training could create at least moderately cost-effective bunch of troops.

[Charerg]

Well, the late Romans did train 1/3 of the soldiers in archery. Also, the Germanic tribes made use of archery. It's difficult to say how much, but if later Frankish laws from Carolingian times and bog finds of longbows are any indication, their use of archery was quite extensive. The Frankish levies were required to supply themselved with spear, shield and bow, and the very poorest were recommended to bring a bow to the muster if they couldn't afford the rest. So archery definitely was quite popular in "Dark Age" Europe well before the English longbowmen, although archers were low-status troops drawn from the poorer classes.

[decourcy]

Also, bow improvement is extremely complicated. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking the middle ages was just before classic Greece or Rome, but we are talking 1000-1500 years.
As an archaeologist we have studied early Greek, Egyptian and Scythian bows and they were all pulling at about 40lbs. British longbows pulled at between 100-150lbs, while the best bow, the 15th century Turkish composite bow pulled at 90-130lbs, but of course got more out of it's pull being composite. Archaeologists, bow experts etc, doubted the stories of 150lbs of pull before the Mary Rose longbow was found that pulled at near 150lbs.

As an example a modern hunting compound bow might pull at 62lbs or so and archers I have spoken with say there is no way they could fire a longbow more than once. But, the British longbowman was a professional who trained every week to be strong enough to pull the bow.
This is the true reason why the crossbow 'won', you simply cannot replace lost longbowmen.

So, yeah, an early bow with 40,50 60 lbs of pull is decent but hardly enough to get any real range or penetration, also draw forms and arrowheads developed over the centuries which exacerbates the weakness of early bows.

[Camryn64]

I was referring to early Rome. I got the idea for this thread from viewing the in-game unit rosters and noticing that most of the Roman and Hellenistic factions do not have generic foot archer units, while the Barbarians and Persians do. I was wondering if this was largely due to historical reasons, or due to the need for the devs to create balance between the various factions. I'm starting to get the impression that this disparity is largely historically accurate. Would you say that that is an accurate assumption?

what ever.. good idea.. to some extant its an accurate assumption..

[Charerg]

Also, bow improvement is extremely complicated. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking the middle ages was just before classic Greece or Rome, but we are talking 1000-1500 years.
As an archaeologist we have studied early Greek, Egyptian and Scythian bows and they were all pulling at about 40lbs. British longbows pulled at between 100-150lbs, while the best bow, the 15th century Turkish composite bow pulled at 90-130lbs, but of course got more out of it's pull being composite. Archaeologists, bow experts etc, doubted the stories of 150lbs of pull before the Mary Rose longbow was found that pulled at near 150lbs.

As an example a modern hunting compound bow might pull at 62lbs or so and archers I have spoken with say there is no way they could fire a longbow more than once. But, the British longbowman was a professional who trained every week to be strong enough to pull the bow.
This is the true reason why the crossbow 'won', you simply cannot replace lost longbowmen.

So, yeah, an early bow with 40,50 60 lbs of pull is decent but hardly enough to get any real range or penetration, also draw forms and arrowheads developed over the centuries which exacerbates the weakness of early bows.

I would add a little cautionary note to this, which is that basically no Greek, Egyptian or Scythian bows have survived into modern times, certainly not in a condition where it would be possible to measure the draw weights. Therefore the "40lbs" statements are not based on anything other than guesswork. Although it's possible that most archers of Antiquity used bows that were primarily intended for hunting (and therefore in the 40-60 lbs weight range), they could have had more powerful bows as well. For example, the Indians reportedly used bamboo bows between five and six feet long. According to the Cretan chronicler Nearchus, the archer had to rest the bow on the ground and brace it with his left foot, to be able to draw it full length. According to him, arrows fired from these bows could penetrate any armour (from the Great Armies of Antiquity).

Moreover, I would be wary of thinking that longbows were tremendously more powerful than any other bow. For example, look at Manchu archery (where good records exist of draw weights), by Professor Mark Elliott (from):

In regularly held contests, expertness might be demonstrated by accuracy of aim, length of shot, or strength in drawing. It was the last of these that occasioned the most detailed comments by supervising officers. Bows were graded by "strength" from three [40 pounds] to as high as eighteen [240 pounds], according to their stiffness. Ability at strength of six (probably a pull of about 80 pounds) was considered minimal for a grown man, and strength of ten (about 133 pounds) was required for participation in hunts. A 1736 report found that of 3,200 troops at the Hangzhou garrison about 2,200 were able to draw bows of strengths six to ten [80-133], and 80 could handle bow strengths of eleven to thirteen [147-173 pounds]… …In comparison, the 500 troops at the small Dezhou garrison acquitted themselves with honor, all of them being able to take a five-strength bow [67 pounds], 203 a six-strength [80 pounds], 137 a seven *strength [93 pounds], and 85 a ten-strength bow [133 pounds].

Note that those extreme draw weights were probably more for sportsmanship and "quality tests" of archers, the actual battlefield draw weights were probably a bit lower. Anyway, this gives you an idea about how much the draw weights could vary.