Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (15 page)

The discussion of tactics in Xenophon’s
Constitution of the Spartans
, especially the description of the Spartan countermarch and the thinning of the ranks, suggests that hoplite phalanxes were “flexible on the field of battle.” Cawkwell finds it “very hard to conceive of a hoplite using his weapons at all effectively in the crowded space orthodoxy assigns him,” aside from using the spear in an overhand motion or the sword solely to cut.
¹⁹⁴

In the use of weapons as in all games that involve the delivery and avoidance of blows, it is footwork that is all important. Hoplites may have been heavily armed, but they would surely duck and dodge in the way that Plato would have had them train (
Laws
815a). One cannot do that, if one’s neighbour gets in the way. Likewise the delivery of blows would require some freedom of movement. Of course, they may have fought in a highly constricted way and very ineffectively and longed for a chance for single combat where their real skills could be exploited, but if the evidence lends any encouragement to the view that hoplites fought, as opposed to advanced or followed up, in open order, one should take the possibility most seriously.
¹⁹⁵

On the other hand, Cawkwell points out, “Variations of formation could be, and indeed were on occasion, made in the course of a battle, but this is far from disproving that normally hoplites fought as Thucydides made them advance, i.e. as close as
possible to each other to secure the partial protection of the shield of the man on the right.”
¹⁹⁶

Another area that Cawkwell addresses is the iconography. He confines his comments to scenes representing rows of fighters going into combat.

In most scenes that I am aware of, the shield is held not across the body but is extended forwards and at an angle, as if the hoplite was using his shield to give a ‘straight left’. (Indeed if they did not use it in this way, their shields would have been unnecessarily wide.) In those few scenes where the shield is held directly in front, it is held well forward to leave the hoplite free to use his legs, but the Chigi vase is the typical scene, and in it hoplites, with spears held high ready to strike, all have their shields on their left and their right legs forward, the very posture necessary for the effective use of the spear. Was this how the fighting in line was conducted?

Based on the depictions of vases Cawkwell believes that hoplites fought in open order. “If one is to take seriously the archaeological evidence, it is plainly the case that hoplites did not fight as Thucydides made them advance.” One concern is for safety: “If the man on one’s right is fighting with left leg forward and with shield advanced to ward off his opponent’s spear, the closer one got to him the greater the danger of his opponent’s spear sliding off one’s neighbor’s shield and damaging oneself. Another concern would be tactical: “Common prudence would require that there be some space between one and one’s neighbor. Such space would give the hoplite room to move and make good use of his weapons. Nor was there need to fear that he would be attacked on his open right side. He had the man behind him to defend him.”
¹⁹⁷

An open formation, he suggests, is the best way to imagine a hoplite having the room to employ the type of skills Plato (
Laws
815a) mentions. “He was still in line, fighting man beside man, still dependent on his neighbor’s courage, but had enough room to do more than just make ineffectual jabs.”
¹⁹⁸

Before looking at the arguments of van Wees, it is critical to examine in detail the enormous impact that Homeric studies have had on the way scholars understand early Greek warfare.

Homer and the Hoplite Phalanx

Lorimer’s view of Homeric warfare is in its essentials similar to that of Grote a century earlier.
¹⁹⁹
The fighting takes place at long range and privileges the actions of heroic champions over those of the mass of common soldiers; the picture of warfare in the
Iliad
predates the invention of the hoplite phalanx. Like Grote, she appears to assume a written text composed by Homer in the eighth century. Her ideas on late passages and interpolations are consistent with the types of debates that took place in the nineteenth century.
²⁰⁰
For example, she points out that a reference to the plate corselet occurs only twice in the poem within a short space (13.371–72; 397–98), which indicates it is an interpolation. She treats the apparent reference to the
hoplite phalanx in a similar manner. “Corslets are called
neosmektoi
[newly cleaned] in a passage (13.339–44), which can only be an attempt, unique in the poem, to describe hoplite formation, and is therefore an interpolation, presumably of the seventh century.” Homer’s diction might indicate the weapons and armor of a hoplite as well. “The emphatic
makreis
[long] marks the spears as the heavy thrusting weapon, while
neosmektoi
can only apply to a corslet of metal.”
²⁰¹
The main differences in her reading of the epic seem to depend on the archaeological evidence to which Grote did not have access.

In the 1970s Snodgrass and Latacz developed two of the most influential approaches to the Homeric poems as sources for early Greek warfare. Their theories respond to the problem of Homeric society that Finley stated in
The World of Odysseus
.

The serious problem for the historian is to determine whether, and to what extent, there is anything in the poems that relates to social and historical reality; how much, in other words, of the world of Odysseus existed only in the poet’s head and how much outside, in space and time. The prior question is whence the poet took his picture of that world and its wars and its heroes’ private lives.
²⁰²

In the light of the work of Parry and Lord on oral composition and oral traditions, certain key ideas have impacted all subsequent work on this subject. The first recognizes that the bard or singer composes his epic during his performance of it. The second emphasizes the importance of the interaction between the poet and his audience in shaping the content of his narrative. The result is that the poet seeks consistency in providing his audience with a coherent view of society that might appear remote or “heroic,” but, to be intelligible, must resemble their shared experience. For ancient warfare, therefore, the description in the
Iliad
must represent a fighting style familiar to the audience in order to be realistic and compelling.

Snodgrass answered an unequivocal no to the question whether Homer presents an historical society in the
Iliad
and
Odyssey
.
²⁰³
Yet he finds that Homer combines and conflates features from different eras. The Homeric description of fighting and equipment does not derive from one single period of history, but “is composite and shows internal inconsistency.” Cartledge agrees on this point: “The problems of interpreting ‘Homer’ (i.e. our Homer) as history are legion, but for my limited purposes the most important is whether it is possible to locate a coherent Homeric ‘world’ or ‘society’ in space and time. To avoid multiplying references, I need only cite Snodgrass, with whose negative I am in complete agreement, against e.g. M. I. Finley.”
²⁰⁴
But in a more recent work, Cartledge discusses the problems that face the historian who wishes to make use of the epics for evidence.

They were the products of a centuries-long oral tradition unconstrained by properly historical attention to accuracy, authenticity, and consistency—indeed, of a tradition constrained rather to mutate and evolve in accordance with the changing circumstances and expectations of the poets’ audiences. If it is indeed the case that no imaginative poet can be expected to be as consistent
and authentically realistic as the historian might wish or demand, then this is true to the ultimate degree of the poets of the Homeric tradition of oral epic.
²⁰⁵

However, the revisionists, Latacz first of all, have shown that the common soldier in the
Iliad
plays a critical role in the fighting. Indeed, Latacz and scholars since have argued persuasively that mass action, not individual combat between heroic champions, is decisive in most Homeric battles.
²⁰⁶

For his part Hans van Wees accepts that phalanx-style fighting is already widely—not just occasionally—detectable in Homer’s
Iliad
, which he dates to the early seventh century. But he does not see a clear-cut break between the Homeric and hoplite styles of fighting. For example, Homeric heroes use spears as weapons far more frequently than warriors depicted on Geometric vases. On the other hand Geometric warriors use bows and arrows about three times more often than epic heroes; and swords, the least mentioned weapon in Homer, are the most used weapon in the paintings.
²⁰⁷
He concludes that “the usage of weapons in the
Iliad
corresponds, not to Geometric, but to early seventh-century practice.” Van Wees summarizes his findings:

In the eighth century, warriors are armed with a pair of spears, which they use primarily as missiles: hence the prominence of the sword in Geometric scenes of close combat. In the seventh century, and in the
Iliad
, men are armed with either one or two spears, which they use for both thrusting and throwing, with roughly equal frequency: the
Iliad
features 87 spear casts (52.4%) and 79 spear-thrusts (47.6%). By the classical period, warriors are without exception equipped with a single large spear used exclusively as a thrusting weapon.
²⁰⁸

The old view saw a dramatic break between the fighting styles of heroic soloists and that of hoplites; the new consensus led by Latacz proposed that the masses play as decisive a role in Homer as they do in the phalanx. Van Wees suggests a compromise. He agrees on the importance of the masses in both styles of fighting but sees no increased participation of the masses in warfare from the eighth to the seventh century; therefore there was no change in the balance of power between aristocrats and commoners. On the other hand he notes development in the evolution of warfare from Geometric, through Homeric, to hoplite fighting, whereas Latacz does not. For example, there is a shift from the sword to the spear as the main weapon of close combat; a gradual disappearance of chariots from the battlefield; light-armed troops become differentiated from heavy-armed warriors and lose status; and, “most importantly, there is a marked development of cooperation, coordination, and central leadership.”
²⁰⁹
This process culminates in the increasing uniformity, equality, and solidarity associated with the rise of the phalanx.

But van Wees’s conclusions differ from the traditional narrative. Mass combat did not lead to political changes. Not only was the process drawn out over several generations or more; “it is doubtful whether without the crucial ingredient of the introduction of mass combat the remaining changes would have had much effect on relations between aristocracy and commoners.” The rise of the phalanx simply reduced further the elite’s claim on political power. “By reducing individual mobility and finally
excluding chariots and horses from the battlefield, the phalanx made it even harder than it had previously been for anyone to stand out in the melee, and even more obvious that the course of battle was never really determined by noble champions.”
²¹⁰

Van Wees employs his understanding of “mass fighting, but not in dense or regular order” in the
Iliad
to develop perhaps the most ambitious thesis of the revisionists.

Latacz had suggested that Homeric warriors wear the equivalent of hoplite panoplies because they fight in the close formation of a phalanx. For van Wees, however, not only is Homeric armament similar to that of hoplites, but it is also “by no means incompatible with mobile, open-formation.”
²¹¹
He explains the apparent contradiction between the combat of champions (
promachoi
) and mass fighting in the epic (13.576–655).

The situation is clear: the fighting takes place among the
promachoi
, while behind them a mass of
hetairoi
are in relative safety. A man picks an adversary and moves as near to him as is necessary to shoot an arrow, cast a spear or stone, or stab with spear or sword. Unless killed in combat, he then falls back upon the mass. The pattern recurs in every battle. Warriors go “through the
promachoi
” and “run” or “jump” at their opponents before they fight. All kinds of weapon, including arrows and stones, are used simultaneously. The spear, either thrown as a javelin or thrust as a lance, is by far the most commonly mentioned. Men may come close to their target to strike, or to retrieve their spear, or, if they have killed, to try to take spoils, but in each case they will quickly retreat to safer surroundings. This style of fighting presupposes that individual combatants are separated by a considerable distance from one another as well as from the enemy.
²¹²

In sum, either common fighters or heroic champions may fight among the
promachoi
. “This is depicted quite consistently, so it would appear that the poet had a clear vision of what battles in heroic times were supposed to be like.”
²¹³