The Wars of Atlantis Read online

  Atlantean Javelinman. Less wealthy or lower-status troops served in the Atlantean army as skirmishers. Under competent commanders, these would protect the flanks of the heavy spear formations, screen against enemy light cavalry, and seize rough terrain that would have broken up close-order formations attempting to cross it. This individual has at least purchased or been issued with a good bronze helmet, possibly an heirloom from an earlier generation of heavy spearmen. His wicker shield is large but lightweight and quite flimsy.

  Atlantean Stone-Thrower. Although every man in the Atlantean army was supposed to be a fighting soldier, and a heavy pebble hurled by this burly peasant conscript could do real damage, his main function in the field was to act as a sapper or porter. Full-sized Atlantean armies had a lot of such troops, giving them extensive options for constructing temporary fortifications or just moving material around, but at the cost of severe supply problems. Hence, many armies on campaigns of conquest left most such men at home or garrisoning port cities.

  PROVINCIAL ARMIES

  As noted above, most of the nine subsidiary kings organized their armies on similar lines to the Emperor’s force, though none were as large, and some, being less wealthy, fielded markedly fewer chariots or even heavy spearmen. In theory, the full island empire could muster an army of millions, but that would have been a logistical nightmare; in practice, a force of a couple of hundred thousand men was considered large. Leadership could also be a problem when units came from more than one province, unless the Emperor was present (and happened to be competent, which surprisingly many were); none of the other nine kings were supposed to have precedence over each other, and too many emperors preferred to avoid letting any of them become too experienced as a war leader, in case that led to excessive ambition. Nonetheless, most troops on a given campaign would usually come from a single province, to avoid squabbling or clashes of wills, and some of the leaders did in fact become experienced – and ambitious, though these ambitions were usually directed towards foreign adventures rather than power grabs back home.

  Thanks to this traditional military system, Atlantean armies employed a good mix of chariots, cavalry, heavy spearmen, and light missile troops and skirmishers; some regions produced mostly archers rather than slingers or stone-throwers, so an army might include a fair few of those among the light troops. As Plato tells us, the island had many herds of elephants, so it would have been quite strange if the Atlanteans hadn’t employed a few war-elephants too, maintained by the inhabitants of some of the southern forest regions on a similar basis to chariots among the people of the plains.

  Atlantean elephants may have been of a smaller species or subspecies, akin to African forest elephants or North African elephants, but they could still have been very useful in warfare. War elephants have always been notoriously tricky to use effectively, being prone to panic and expensive to maintain, but competent commanders knew their uses – which were primarily to intimidate enemy irregulars and cavalry. (Horses who are unaccustomed to elephants will rarely go near them if they can help it.) The big trick was to keep them safe from enemy missile fire. Neither Plato nor Diodorus Siculus discuss the Atlantean elephant force, so it was probably a relatively small body; transporting elephants from the island to the mainland would have been difficult, after all. (The armies who eventually invaded Atlantis may thus have had rather more elephants to deal with than they had ever fought at home.) Opinions are divided as to whether such smaller elephants were able to carry protective ‘towers’ for their crews; more likely, each carried a couple of warriors riding astride, along with their driver. Other armies have favoured pairs made up of a spearman, to fend off any brave enemies who ventured close to attack the beast, and an archer, to provide some long-range combat capability; the Atlanteans most likely did the same.

  Ceremonial Bull Hunt In an Atlantean royal ceremony, a number of sacred bulls are set loose in the precincts of the temple of Poseidon, and the ten kings of the Empire must hunt them down with staves and lassos, capture one, drag it to a sacred pillar, cut its throat, dismember it, and burn its limbs. Note that the kings are wearing their traditional symbols of rank; simple fish-skin headbands, treated to glitter like metal. The kings were supposed to be left alone for this ceremony, but on this occasion, an audience has been allowed access to the temple; also, the kings do not appear to be cooperating very well. Hence, this particular scene may come from the late, decadent phase of Atlantean history.

  THE ATLANTEAN NAVY

  As an island power, Atlantis obviously needed a navy as part of its military strength, to project power overseas – and ultimately as a shield against invasion, although the arrogant Atlanteans never thought in those terms, which explains in the end why they failed to prevent the one great seaborne assault they ever faced. Plato speaks of ‘triremes’ in their harbours, and the number of crew per ship supplied by the military draft system – 200 – was in fact the same as the standard crew of a classical Greek trireme. However, their ships were not actually identical to triremes of Plato’s day.

  A difference was unavoidable. Greek warships were designed to operate in the relatively calm Mediterranean, and to cover comparatively short distances, being beached or docked at the end of almost every day. Hence, they could rely on oar propulsion, with just small auxiliary sails. Atlantean ships had to operate in the great, wide, wind-blown Atlantic, which has always been unforgiving of purely oar-powered ships, and were later used for long-range campaigns along the length of the Mediterranean. Things in the Atlantic were a little calmer (and a lot narrower) in those days, with the great island occupying a large part of the ocean, but even so, Atlantean ships needed robust construction, high sides to prevent too much sea coming in the oar-ports, and substantial sails as well as oars. They had fewer oarsmen than classical triremes, but carried as many crew to permit changes of shifts on long journeys and to handle the sails.

  They also needed plenty of deck and hold space, because for most of their history they served more as military transports than as battleships. Atlantis never faced a true naval rival until near the end of its history, but it needed to transport huge armies to Europe and Africa to carry out its plans of conquest. Even the significant naval assaults on Greece were mostly a matter of landing over-sized raiding parties.

  Hence, a typical Atlantean military ship had higher, rounder sides than a classical trireme, with a substantial mast for its large square sail, and oar-ports for only a part of its length – usually two rows, occupying perhaps half the length of the ship. The Atlanteans had centuries of shipbuilding experience, so these vessels were surprisingly fast and robust, and handled quite well, but they weren’t quite as well made as might have been expected, largely because major naval forces usually carried priests of the royal blood, who could petition Poseidon for calm seas and favourable winds.

  Some of these ships had small rams, but the design lacked the speed and agility for that mode of combat, and anyway Atlanteans fought few sea battles. When they did fight, with the number of troops they could carry, their best option was usually to grapple enemy vessels for boarding, using similar techniques to those they had evolved for storming enemy ports from the sea. Atlantean captains preferred to carry heavy infantry for this purpose; the few missile troops and very occasional siege engines found on board served simply to harass and weaken the enemy before the melee began.

  Atlantean Ship. Although Plato wrote about ‘triremes’, Atlantean vessels were in fact more versatile and robust than this term implies, being capable of operating in the open Atlantic Ocean. This is an exceptionally large, powerful ship, with two masts and more oars than most Atlantean craft; it also mounts a ram, suggesting that it is one of the Empire’s front-line combat vessels, and two ‘castles’ which may have served as firing platforms for missile troops, or which may as easily have been positions from which priest-aristocrats could supplicate their ancestor Poseidon for aid.

  CONSOLIDATION AND AMBITION

  Establishing and
stabilizing the Atlantean Empire had taken many generations – not all of the inhabitants of the island felt obliged to obey anyone just because he claimed to be descended from Poseidon – and after that, more generations were spent consolidating power and developing the island to the full. At times, the ten kings all seemed devoted to the arts of peace, playing highly competitive one-upmanship games with their sponsorship of architecture and urban construction. Inevitably, though, there came a time when some of them began to dream of more power – and with any ideas that might threaten the Emperor rendered risky by those sacred vows and the threat of Poseidon’s wrath, the only real options for expansion were overseas. And they had those huge armies, formed originally for defence and to ensure internal security, but fully capable of other uses.

  Hence, this dynamic, successful, and increasingly arrogant culture began to look outwards – and the first region which the Atlanteans considered was, inevitably, the nearest familiar land, meaning the coastal areas of southern Spain and north-west Africa. The descendants of Gadeirus led the discussions, as their lands faced that way and they had decent ports and naval forces of their own; their first overseas outpost may well have been ‘Gades’, on the site of modern Cádiz, where they transformed a haven for Atlantean trade ships into a full-scale town and subjugated the surrounding countryside. They followed up on this by planting similar colonies on the African coast, closer to the capital of Atlantis. Farms and quarries, initially created simply to support the maritime outposts, became profitable in their own right – and the age of Atlantean colonialism had begun.

  However, these lands, although sparsely populated, were not uninhabited. The colonists and permanent trading colonies would prove to need not only supplies but also defence against raids by local tribes, leading to the planting of permanent military garrisons; but equally, the locals could make valuable trade partners – or, once they were effectively overawed by the might of the Atlantean military, valuable subjects. To the lords of Atlantis, who thought of themselves as demigods, the latter seemed the natural and appropriate choice.

  Thus it was that the old Atlantean ideal, of building a perfect, orderly state on their home island under the precise laws laid down by Poseidon, was increasingly put aside in favour of a dream of imperial glory. Gold, once a fine decorative material, became a mark of success and a useful basis for bribery in dealings with local chiefs, and some contingents of the military levy became mercenaries, on duty all year round.

  Nevertheless, the first simple conquest phase soon came to an end, as the most obvious paths to empire brought the armies of Atlantis into conflict with opponents who could stand up to them. For a while, as this book will describe, they and their allies swept all before them; at its height, the Atlantean Empire would encompass everything in and around the Mediterranean as far as Tyrrhenia, in Italy, and Egypt, while their fleets and their Amazon allies were probing into Asia and Greece. The last was their crucial, fatal error, as it led in turn to the formation of a determined and capable alliance which was to bring them down. What the Greek-led coalition could not anticipate, however, was how catastrophically the war would end for everyone.

  Central American Pyramid. One of the few hints of Atlantean cultural influence found among the civilizations of the Americas lies in the design of the local sacred pyramids.

  THE FAR WESTERN CONTINENTS

  A substantial island in the middle of the North Atlantic, with a dynamic civilization with some tradition of seafaring, could be expected to represent a link to the American continents; Plato certainly said that Atlantis ‘was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent’. And indeed, some researchers claim that there was significant contact between Atlantis and the early civilizations of Central America, including a strong cultural influence. Some even claim that Atlantis inspired traditions of pyramid-building in both the Old and New Worlds, although the great American pyramid-builder cultures arose much later than those of Egypt.

  However, despite intensive scholarship out on the fringes of academic respectability, there is remarkably little evidence of Atlantean outposts in the Americas. Most Atlantean imperial efforts seem to have been directed towards Europe and North Africa, which were both closer and richer. In addition, the gods who founded and oversaw Atlantis found most of their worshippers in Europe, and may well have exerted a decisive influence in this regard.

  Atlantis had, at most, trading outposts and exploratory missions in the far western lands. The majority were sponsored by the descendants of Elasippus, who had been assigned the western coastlands of Atlantis; these princes sometimes tried to use the many skilled sailors they ruled to seek out and exploit new sources of wealth beyond the western horizon. Unfortunately, none of these projects ever made much profit, and their sponsors were unable to talk any other princes into helping to finance anything larger.

  These outposts had relatively little influence on local cultures in the Americas, and were too small and hygienically run to introduce European diseases to the area (so the inevitable great epidemiological disaster would only happen millennia later, after Columbus). Then, when Atlantean civilization fell, the outposts were too small and poor in resources to survive for more than a few months. They left very few remains – just some pavements in the Caribbean, and a legend of a blond god from across the ocean in the land that would one day become Mexico.

  Nor did the Atlanteans apparently say much to their European and African rivals about the Americas. Perhaps they regarded them as a moderately valuable trading secret; more likely, they saw them as trivial. Ironically, some later European explorers and geographers would wonder if the newly discovered Americas were Atlantis, but they mostly soon decided that this was not the case.

  RIVAL NATIONS

  Although Atlantis was the greatest power in the world in its time, it found itself facing serious competition, especially in the very areas into which it sought to expand. That was no coincidence; it never really wanted to build a truly colonial empire, exploiting previously lightly inhabited territory, but mostly sought the plunder, glory, and already-developed resources that could be acquired by conquering other nations. The Atlanteans did establish those colonial towns early on, in what are now Spain and North Africa, but soon found themselves fighting wars of conquest – and even making alliances, especially when some fights went unexpectedly against them.

  THE AMAZONS

  The first culture which Atlantis had to deal with whose citizens were seriously capable of challenging local Atlantean power were the Amazons, who at the time ruled a large part of north-west Africa. The Amazons had a strikingly feminist set of cultural traditions, going back into prehistory. Not only were they frequently, even usually, ruled by queens, but they actually required women as well as men to train as soldiers and to serve in the army for some years, in which time they were prohibited from marrying, and indeed had to remain virgins. This was particularly important because the Amazons were a militaristic and often expansionist nation; female soldiers were important and respected.

  As this implies, Amazon culture was a centralized monarchy. Although many Amazons were semi-nomadic herders roaming the plains of North Africa, their culture was based on a volcanic island named Hespera, which at that time lay just off the African coast, west of the Pillars of Hercules, where the High Atlas Mountains ran down to the sea in what is now Morocco. In fact, Hespera stood in the midst of a tidal salt-marsh called the Marsh Tritonis, at the mouth of a river called the Triton (possibly the modern Sous River).

  Hespera was a fertile island with many fruit trees, valuable gemstone mines, and a number of communities. When the Amazon monarchy had subsumed all of these except the sacred city of Menê (which lay near the active volcanic crater, which the Amazons regarded with superstitious dread), some time before they encountered the Atlanteans, they founded one new town, which they named Kherronesos, to serve as their capital. They then began expanding into neighbouring areas, obliging loca
l tribes to pay them tribute – which ultimately brought them into conflict with the Atlantean colony towns.

  Amazon Ambush This skirmish takes place during the early conflicts between Atlantis and the local Amazons in North Africa. A party of Amazon horse archers (some of them women, in the Amazon tradition) is engaging an Atlantean force, but they may have bitten off more than they can chew. They are firing on an Atlantean war-chariot and escorting infantry, and have done some damage, but an Atlantean war-elephant is already coming up in support. The Atlantean chariot warrior has made the mistake of favouring a long spear rather than the more usual javelins, which is little use in this engagement.

  EGYPT AND THE SHEMSU HOR

  Ancient Egypt was a nation defined by the River Nile, which brings water and fertile silt to both its long valley (‘Upper Egypt’) and its broad delta (‘Lower Egypt’). This was just as true in the Atlantean era as in historical ages, and in fact most of the major towns of that first era survived as major communities in classical times. Probably the greatest of these in the Atlantean age was Sais, in the western delta, a city then consisting mostly of temples, schools, and government buildings.

  Atlantean-era Egypt was a theocracy, ruled by a strange and possibly nonhuman priestly oligarchy, the Shemsu Hor (‘Companions of Horus’). The origin of this caste, or clan, or race, remains deeply obscure, and may be a secret older even than Atlantis. They were a secretive and exclusive group who were never seen with children, but who presumably produced such, because they didn’t appear to recruit outsiders either. Not even their most trusted servants or slaves were given access to the inner courts of their great communal temple-houses, so what happened within remains unknown.