Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (17 page)

    
55
. Grote (II, 106 n. 1) had also commented on the problematic nature of using to Tyrtaeus to date the introduction of the phalanx regarding both the content and language of his poems: “Tyrtaeus, in his military expressions, seems to conceive the Homeric mode of hurling the spear as still prevalent, — δóρυ δ ’εὐτóλμως βάλλοντες. Either he had his mind prepossessed with the Homeric array, or else the close order and conjunct spears of hoplites had not yet been introduced during the second Messenian war.”

    
56
. Nilsson, 243; See the note in the introduction on the Spartan dedications.

    
57
. Nilsson, 242.

    
58
. Nilsson, 244.

    
59
. Nilsson, 248.

    
60
. Nilsson, 245.

    
61
. Nilsson (248) discusses the analogous situation in Rome. “The story that in the year 432 the dictator A. Postumius Tubero had his son beheaded, because he leaped out from his assigned post (Diodorus XII, 64; Livius IV, 29), has by no means a legendary character…. On the contrary, it is an occurrence of the type that leaves a deep impression on the heart and memory
and therefore survives. It must only be understood in the circumstances of the time. It was not even long before that the hoplite tactic had been introduced, in which the gravest fault was to leave one’s place in the line; However, the old way of fighting, according to which the individual needed to prove his worth in single combat, had not yet been forgotten, and the young man had given way to his thirst for glory. The father had maintained and inculcated the hoplite discipline with ruthless severity. Such conflicts between the old and the new way of fighting must have taken place when the former was replaced by the latter, because the hoplite discipline is difficult to learn and the old way is deeply rooted in human nature. Such a tragic outcome as this remained unforgotten. For us, the story is valuable because it teaches us at which time the change took place.”

    
62
. Nilsson, 247.

    
63
. H. L. Lorimer, “The Hoplite Phalanx with Special Reference to the Poems of Archilochus and Tyrtaeus,”
The Annual of the British School at Athens
, 1947, 76–138.

    
64
. Lorimer, 76.

    
65
. Lorimer, 107; see illustrations for Perachora aryballos.

    
66
. Lorimer, 92; see note in introduction.

    
67
. Lorimer, 81.

    
68
. Lorimer, 82–83.

    
69
. Lorimer, 83.

    
70
. Lorimer, 105.

    
71
. F. E. Adcock,
The Greek and Macedonian Art of War
, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1957, 2, 3, and 4.

    
72
. Adcock, 2.

    
73
. Adcock (3 n. 5) points out, “the word [phalanx] was first generally applied to the famous Macedonian phalanx, which was a variant of the hoplite formation with special characteristics of its own.”

    
74
. Adcock, 14.

    
75
. Adcock, 5.

    
76
. W. Rüstow and H. Köchly,
Geschichte des griechischen Kriegswesens von der ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos
, 1852, 145;
Cambridge Ancient History
IV, 166.

    
77
. Adcock, 7–8.

    
78
. Andrewes,
The Greek Tyrants
, 1956, 31.

    
79
. Andrewes, 32.

    
80
. Andrewes, 32–33.

    
81
. Andrewes, 33.

    
82
. Andrewes, 34.

    
83
. Andrewes, 36.

    
84
. Andrewes, 36; note that “Similars” or “Peers” is a preferable translation for
Homoioi
.

    
85
. Andrewes, 37–38.

    
86
. Andrewes, 38.

    
87
. Other important examples include Oswyn Murray’s
Early Greece
(Harvard, 1978, 2nd edition 1993), John V. A. Fine’s
The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History
(Harvard, 1983), and more recently the second edition of Robin Osborne’s
Greece in the Making 1200–479 BC
(Routledge, 2009) and the popular textbook by Sarah B. Pomeroy et al.,
Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History
(Oxford, 2008), as well as Ian Morris and Barry B. Powell’s
The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society
(Pearson, 2nd edition 2010).

    
88
. Victor Davis Hanson,
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989, 2nd edition 1998.

    
89
. Hanson (1989, xvii); see below for the arguments to which Hanson is in part responding to here.

    
90
. Hanson (1989, xxviii).

    
91
. V. D. Hanson,
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
, Pisa, 1983.

    
92
. Hanson (1989, 4).

    
93
. Hanson (1989, 5).

    
94
. Hanson (1989, xxiv–xxv).

    
95
. Hanson (1989, 30–31).

    
96
. Hanson (1989, 4).

    
97
. Hanson (1989, xxiv).

    
98
. Hanson (1989, 9).

    
99
. Hanson (1989, xxv); for more in-depth discussion of the nature of terrain, geography, etc., see V. D. Hanson, “Hoplite Battle as Ancient Greek Warfare: When, Where and Why?” in H. van Wees,
War and Violence in Ancient Greece
, London, 2002, 167–200.

  
100
. Hanson (1989, xxviii).

  
101
. Hanson (1989, 22–23).

  
102
. Hanson (1989, 22–23).

  
103
. Hanson (1989, 24).

  
104
. Hanson (1989, 24); Y. Garlan,
La Guerre antique de Sumer a Rome
, Paris, 1973.

  
105
. John Keegan,
The Face of Battle
, New York, 1976.

  
106
. Hanson (1989, 25).

  
107
. Hanson (1989, xxvii).

  
108
. Hanson (1989, 56); See Krentz in this volume on the weight of hoplite armor.

  
109
. Hanson (1989, 57).

  
110
. Hanson (1989, 65–66).

  
111
. Hanson (1989, 71).

  
112
. Hanson (1989, 156–57); for the sake of comparison, Hanson (159) cites Oman’s detailed account of medieval warfare’s collision of a German phalanx and a square of Swiss pikemen: “The two bristling lines of pikes crossed, and the leading files were thrust upon each other’s weapons by the irresistible pressure from behind. Often the whole front rank of each phalanx went down in the first onset, but their comrades stepped forward over the bodies to continue the fight. When the masses had been for some time ‘pushing against each other,’ their order became confused and their pikes interlocked” (2.274).

  
113
. Hanson (1989, 157).

  
114
. Hanson (1989, 159) quotes Thucydides: “Large armies break their order just as they meet the enemy” (5.71.1).

  
115
. Hanson (1989, 159).

  
116
. Hanson (1989, 169–70) sees in Xenophon’s remark (
Hellenica
4.3.16) that Koroneia “proved to be such as none of the battles of our time” evidence of the anomaly that the two phalanxes locked together in slaughter without the expected advance.

  
117
. Hanson (1989, 172); Xenophon,
Hellenica
2.4.34; 6.4.14; 7.1.31;
Agesilaos
2.12;
Cyropaedia
7.1.33; Thucydides 4.96.2; 4.35.3; 6.70.2; Herodotus 7.224–25; 9.62.2; Polybius 18.30.4; Arrian,
Tactica
12.10.20; 14.16; Pausanias 4.7.7–8; 13; Plutarch,
Agesilaos
18.2.

  
118
. Hanson (1989, 172–73); Thucydides, 4.96.2.

  
119
. Hanson (1989, 174).

  
120
. Hanson (1989, 174–75); Polybius 18.30.4.

  
121
. Hanson (1989, 175).

  
122
. Hanson (1989, 35–36).

  
123
. Hanson (1989, 36–37).

  
124
. For an example of recent criticism and revisionism of Hanson’s overall thesis see Harry Sidebottom,
Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford, 2004). Sidebottom (preface) explains: “Some modern scholars have picked up on the classical cultures’ ideas of their distinctiveness in war-making and, linking this to classical influences on modern Western culture, have come up with the concept of a ‘Western Way of War’; a continuity of practices that they claim runs from ancient Greece to the modern West.” Sidebottom continues his critique, “the ‘Western Way of War’ is not so much an objective reality, a genuine continuity of practices, but more a strong ideology which since its creation by the Greeks has been, and still is, frequently reinvented, and changed with each reinvention. Those who subscribe to the ideology do not necessarily fight in a different way to others, it is just that often they genuinely think they do.”

  
125
. Many scholars have stressed the importance of a new commercial class in the eighth century that exploited settled conditions in Greece to generate a level of movable wealth that could rival the landed wealth of the traditional aristocracies. For example, Forrest suggested that safer conditions for travel, more stable markets, better goods, and the momentous effect colonization had had on trade resulted in a shake-up of the existing society that was the starting point of a political revolution. This led to a change in how commoners might view aristocrats and their power based on greater landed wealth and divine ancestry. The expanded economy allowed some to advance beyond their peers or even to surpass their betters. The physical dispersion of the Greeks created the psychological independence that made it possible for the new middle class to first question and then outright oppose their superiors. “It is at least certain that this new economy … provided the necessary conditions for the rise of the hoplite army (in a very loose sense); let us say for the first military adventures of a new middle-class” (94).

  
126
. Victor Davis Hanson,
The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization
, New York, 1995, 220, emphasis Hanson.

  
127
. Hanson (1995, 116).

  
128
. Emphasis Hanson (1995, 39).

  
129
. Hanson (1995, 237).

  
130
. Hanson (1995, 227).

  
131
. This argument was first put forth by J. Latacz,
Kampfparanese, Kampfdarstellung, und Kampfwirklichkeit in der Ilias, bei Kallinos und Tyrtaios
, Munich, 1977.

  
132
. Hanson (1995, 228).

  
133
. Hanson (1995, 29–30).

  
134
. Hanson (1995, 32).

  
135
. Hanson (1995, 33).

  
136
. Hanson (1995, 35).

  
137
. Hanson (1995, 35).

  
138
. Hanson (1995, 37).

  
139
. Hanson (1995, 38).

  
140
. Hanson (1995, 39).

  
141
. Hanson (1995, 39–40).

  
142
. Hanson (1995, 38).

  
143
. Hanson (1995, 41).

  
144
. Hanson (1995, 42–43).

  
145
. Hanson (1995, 173).

  
146
. Hanson (1995, p103, 106–7, 113).

  
147
. Hanson (1995, 113–15); Aristotle,
Politics
4.1318b7–15; 1295b40–1296a22.

  
148
. Hanson (1995, 119); see Aristotle,
Politics
2.1274b1–6; 2.1265b13–16; 2.1266a40–1266b6; cf. 2.1274a23–30.

  
149
. Hanson (1995, 192–93).

  
150
. Hanson (1995, 184, 186).

  
151
. Hanson (1995, 44).

  
152
. Hanson (1995, 199).

  
153
. R. Nierhaus,
Eine fruhgriechische Kampfform
,
Jdl
53 (1938), 90–113.

  
154
. A. M. Snodgrass, “The Hoplite Reform and History,”
JHS
85 (1965), 110–22, p. 110.

  
155
. Lorimer, 111.

  
156
. Nierhaus, 90ff.

  
157
. Lorimer, 107–8.

  
158
. Snodgrass (1965, 34, 115–16).

  
159
. Snodgrass (1965, 73, 89).

  
160
. Snodgrass (1965, 89–90).

  
161
. Paul Cartledge, “Hoplites and Heroes: Sparta’s Contribution to the Technique of Ancient Warfare,”
JHS
97 (1977), 11–27, pp. 20–21; reprinted 1986 in K. Christ, ed.,
Sparta
, in a German translation with new addenda) strongly denies this point on the grounds that wealthy nonaristocrats would be keen to enlist to defend their own substantial plots—warfare at this point being largely a matter of defending crops.

  
162
. Snodgrass (1965, 115).

  
163
. Snodgrass (1965, 122).

  
164
. Snodgrass (1965, 198).

  
165
. Snodgrass (1965, 204).

  
166
. Cartledge, 20.

  
167
. Cartledge (1977, 20 n. 71).

  
168
. Cartledge (1977, 21–22).

  
169
. Cartledge (1977, 23).

  
170
. Cartledge (1977, 23–24).

  
171
. John Salmon, “Political Hoplites?”
JHS
97 (1977), 84–101.

  
172
. Snodgrass (1965, 113).

  
173
. Salmon, 90.

  
174
. Salmon, 90–91.

  
175
. Salmon, 94.