Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (6 page)

The military force in the early days had been in the hands of the great landowners in the form of cavalry; these include the primitive oligarchical militia in seventh- and sixth-century Chalkis and Eretria on Euboea.
²⁵
But such states lacked the egalitarian ethos and the rule of law that Grote associates with heavy infantry. He remarks on the Thessalians, “Breeding the finest horses in Greece, they were distinguished for their excellence as cavalry; but their infantry is little noticed, nor do the Thessalian cities seem to have possessed that congregation of free and tolerably equal citizens, each master of his own arms, out of whom the ranks of the hoplites were constituted.” On the other hand the rise of the polis saw the emergence of the independent farmer.

As a general rule, every Greek city-community included in its population, independent of bought slaves, the three elements above noticed,—considerable
land proprietors with rustic dependents, small self-working proprietors, and town-artisans,—the three elements being found everywhere in different proportions. But the progress of Greece, from the seventh century B.C. downwards, tended continually to elevate the comparative importance of the two latter, while in those early days the ascendency of the former was at its maximum, and altered only to decline.

The development of a new class of middling farmers led to the transformation of the political and social relations in the Greek world. “All the changes which we are able to trace in the Grecian communities tended to break up the close and exclusive oligarchies with which our first historical knowledge commences, and to conduct them either to oligarchies rather more open, embracing all men of a certain amount of property, or else to democracies. But the transition in both cases was usually attained through the interlude of the despot.”
²⁶

At Sparta, the transition to oligarchy came about through the reforms of Lycurgus. Grote attributed the superiority of the Spartan state to the superiority it obtained in warfare by the period 600–547. The arms of the Spartans did not differ from those of other Greek hoplites so much as the superior discipline that Lycurgus had instituted in the ninth century.
²⁷
“Her military force was at that time superior to that of any of the rest, in a degree much greater than it afterwards came to be; Athens in particular was far short of the height which she afterwards reached.”
²⁸
Their perfect training, individual and collective in the face of the discontent of its subject population, the perioikoi and helots, set the Spartans apart from the other Greeks.
²⁹
“It is in this universal schooling, training, and drilling, imposed alike upon boys and men, youths and virgins, rich and poor, that the distinctive attribute of Sparta is to be sought, —not in her laws or political constitution.” This emphasis is on the military reform. “Lykurgus (or the individual to whom this system is owing, whoever he was) is the founder of a warlike brotherhood rather than the lawgiver of a political community.”
³⁰

Grote denied that the Lykurgean system included a redistribution of land on principles of exact or approximate equality, and provisions for maintaining the number of distinct and equal lots. Instead, he attributes the egalitarian ethos of Sparta to, among other things, the training of its hoplites. “The Lykurgean discipline tended forcibly to suggest to men’s minds the
idea
of equality among the citizens.”
³¹
The connection of fighting tactics to the transformation of Greek values has been crucial to the hoplite narrative; in particular, the substitution of the Homeric goal of the individual striving for preeminence by the stress on warriors playing an equal role in battle.

In Athens, the essential powers of the state remained in the hands of the oligarchy after the reforms of Solon, “but the oligarchy which he established was very different from the unmitigated oligarchy which he found, so teeming with oppression and so destitute of redress.”
³²
Solon did not seek to overthrow the aristocrats but simply to check their power, and “it was he who first gave to the citizens of middling property and to the general mass, a
locus standi
against the eupatrids.”
³³
The hoplites broke the monopoly on political power that the aristocracy of birth had held.

The position of Grote on the transition from monarchy to oligarchy in the eighth century prefigures the hoplite orthodoxy of the twentieth century. He argued for a causal link between the emergence of the hoplite warrior of middling status and the rise of the Greek polis, and established the relevance of the Homeric Question for both ideas. Grote also made the connection between the early tyrants and the new form of heavy infantry. Furthermore, the concepts of citizenship and equality have their source in the new tactics as well.

In his book
Thucydides and the History of His Age
, published in 1911, Grundy discussed the Greek art of war in the fifth century in the light of the main historical sources of the period. For example, Herodotus (7.9) has the Persian general Mardonius explain the nature of hoplite warfare in a quip to the king Xerxes: “The Greeks are accustomed to wage wars in the most senseless way due to their ignorance and foolishness. When they have declared war against each other, they look for the fairest and most level ground, and then go there and fight, so that the victors depart with heavy casualties; I won’t even begin to speak about the losers, for they are completely wiped out.” These remarks indicate that the Greeks confined their battles to the flat alluvial plains of the country. In another passage, Herodotus (5.49) suggests both the Greek view of Persian warfare and how the Persians themselves fought; here Aristagoras, in his attempt to obtain help from Athens in the Ionian revolt, observed, “The Persians use neither the shield nor spear, and can be easily conquered.” Aristagoras’ comments suggest that light-armed troops played an insignificant role in classical Greek warfare. In fact, the success or failure of the hoplite force determined the fate of the battle.

The reliance on heavy infantry led Grundy to two paradoxes in the Greek art of war. First, whereas hoplites must fight on level ground, about four-fifths of the territory of Greece is mountainous and rugged. If one excludes the broad plains of Thessaly and Boeotia, the proportion of arable soil is even smaller. Grundy saw the issue complicated by the fact that the weight of the hoplite panoply was “very great.” “Even a single Greek hoplite would have found himself in great difficulties on such ground. As for a body of hoplites, its position would have been hopeless. Its efficiency was absolutely dependent upon the maintenance of a peculiarly close and precise formation, such as it could not possibly have maintained for an advance of even ten yards over such ground as this.” So, why did the Greeks choose a form of warfare ill suited for their country? Second, the strength of the natural positions of the country allowed states of all sizes to build nearly impregnable fortresses. Yet the Greek army was remarkably incapable of attacking such places. This was true of Sparta above all—a polis that dominated neighbors whose towns had an unassailable acropolis. How could the Greek state fail to advance the art of siege warfare against walled towns? And how could an enemy be confident that the citizens of the polis he invaded would march out to fight him in the alluvial plains, the only type of ground suited for hoplite tactics?

The answers to both questions are related. The system of fighting used until the last third of the fifth century could assume that invaded peoples would not retreat behind the absolute safety and security of their walls and defenses. This was a matter of pride and necessity. Of course the enemy could not operate upon the rugged land that made up most of the territory they had invaded, nor could they capture by assault
the impregnable sites. But, since just 22 percent of the land was cultivable, the destruction of cereals, vines, and olive trees could bring disaster.
³⁴
“The fruit and cereal crops must be saved at all costs, either by facing the enemy in the field or by prompt submission to his demands. The only other alternative was safety in the present, and starvation, or something like it in the near future.”
³⁵
The invaded polis had no choice but to place in the field hoplite against hoplite, because light-armed troops were useless under these circumstances. A negative example proves the rule. When Archidamus led the Peloponnesian army into Attica at the beginning of the Great War, the Spartans were certain that the Athenians had only two choices. They must either fight outside the walls and be destroyed, or have their fields devastated and be forced to surrender. The entire operation would take at most three years to succeed. Pericles’ decision to refuse battle and to allow the ravaging of the crops, trees, and vines not only marked a radical departure from the traditional system of fighting. The strategy, for which the Athenians heavily criticized Pericles in their humiliation at not engaging the enemy in a showdown battle, altered the evolution of the art of war in Greece.

What was this traditional way of fighting? In addition to the battle narratives in the historians of the fifth century, Grundy’s classic description of the nature of hoplite battle drew on the recent finds of weapons and armor. The pieces of equipment he examined, the helmet in particular, had impressed him with how heavy they were.
³⁶
This influenced the way in which Grundy understood close fighting in the phalanx. “The hoplite force relied on two qualities, solidity and weight. The men were placed very close together in the ranks, and that tendency which Thucydides notices for each man to shelter his right side under the shield of the man next to him would promote the closeness of the order in the phalanx. The aim was to present to the enemy an unbroken line of shields and breastplates.”
³⁷

Besides the importance of maintaining a close order of men, the phalanx depended for its effectiveness on the sheer weight and thrust it could bring to bear in its initial collision with the enemy. Here Grundy saw an analogy with a scrimmage in the Rugby game of football.

Under ordinary circumstances the hoplite force advanced into battle in a compact mass, probably at the slow step, breaking, it may be, into a run in the last few yards of advance. When it came into contact with the enemy, it relied in the first instance on shock tactics, that is to say, on the weight put into the first onset and developed in the subsequent thrust. The principle was very much the same as that followed by the forwards in a scrimmage at the Rugby game of football.
³⁸

The depth of the phalanx contributed to its overall weight and thrust. Thucydides (5.68) suggests that the ranks were usually eight men deep, but much deeper phalanxes were possible. For example, the Athenians at Delium used a phalanx eight men deep; however, the Thebans were in ranks twenty-five shields deep. In their first engagement at Syracuse (6.67), each of the two bodies of Athenian troops had a depth of eight ranks, whereas the Syracusans drew up sixteen rows of men. The idea in any event was to overwhelm and drive the enemy phalanx back or to break it apart.

On the other hand, a general might hesitate to stack his troops deeper than usual because he would fear that the enemy might outflank him. For instance, the fear of a flank attack caused the Athenians to extend their front at Marathon so as to equal that of the Persians, even though this meant having a depth of just a few rows in the center (6.111). At Mantinea, Agis took precautions against the Mantineans outflanking his left wing. “One thing is evident. The hoplite phalanx was regarded as peculiarly vulnerable on either flank. The first care of a general seems to have been to make his front at least equal in length to that of the enemy.”
³⁹
For this reason it seems that the Greek generals of the fifth century avoided using the flank attack as an offensive strategy of their own. Should a general detach a body of hoplites from the rest of the line to attack the flank of the enemy, he might expose the flanks of his own army. “The general theory governing the fighting of large armies seems to have been that the most effective way of defeating an enemy was to roll up his line from one or both wings, not by attack in flank, but by defeating one, or, if possible, both of the opposing wings.”
⁴⁰
Therefore, Greek tactics throughout the fifth century demanded that armies place their most efficient elements on the wings. The Spartans were especially adept at using their best troops on the right, with the intent of rolling up the enemy’s line from left to right. “The idea … seems to have been that the best troops should be on the right, with the intent to roll up the enemy’s line from left to right; but inasmuch as the enemy would be pretty certain to attempt the same design, the second best troops were placed on the left in order to prevent him from being successful in this manoeuvre.”
⁴¹

In addition to the nonemployment of a flank attack, Grundy found it remarkable that Greek generals at the time did not use a reserve force in battle. The only exception Thucydides mentions is when Nicias retained half his hoplite army for such use in the first engagement at Syracuse. Grundy explains, “It is probable that the theory prevailed that it was all-important to put as much weight as possible into the first charge: that it was on the effect of this that the battle was decided; and therefore that it was necessary to throw into it the weight of the whole available force.”
⁴²
This idea could motivate a general to run the risk of exposing his flanks by overloading one of his wings. At Leuctra, for example, the brilliant Theban general Epaminondas stacked his top fighters fifty deep on his own left; having defeated the best troops on the right wing of the enemy, he more easily rolled up the rest of the line.