Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (4 page)

Gregory Viggiano contests the idea that any argument put forth in recent years is reason to push down the traditional date for the origin of the polis or to reject the hoplite orthodoxy. He states the basic elements of the theory that have their beginnings in Aristotle’s
Politics
, and then tests their merit against revisionist claims. Viggiano finds unconvincing the notion that the Greeks would have invented equipment such as the double-grip shield and Corinthian helmet for a purpose that contradicted their design. The change in fighting style and tactics provides the best explanation for the transformation in Greek values from the epic poetry of Homer to the martial elegies of Tyrtaeus, as well as the rise of the early tyrants. Viggiano contests the recent claims that the evidence of survey archaeology has disproved the existence of a substantial class of middling farmers in the late eighth and seventh centuries. He argues
that, despite gaps in the evidence, a clear picture of how the polis emerged can be made without omitting or contradicting any of the evidence from the literary sources, archaeology, and inscriptions.

Peter Krentz takes aim at
The Western Way of War’s
highly influential and popular conception of how hoplites fought. He critiques the orthodox view—especially the version of Hanson—concerning the actual weight of the hoplite panoply, which he argues was far lighter than the traditional estimate of about seventy pounds. Krentz proposes a different interpretation of the various stages of hoplite battle, such as the hoplite charge into battle. In his view, the evidence supports neither the picture of a mass collision between armies nor the concept of a mass pushing of troops or the account of the
othismos
as a rugby scrum. Revisionists such as van Wees deny that hoplites fought in tight formation until the phalanx of the fifth century. But instead Krentz contends that the phalanx did not consist exclusively of hoplites before Marathon. He suggests, however, that even in the fifth century hoplites never actually fought in a cohesive formation.

Adam Schwartz places the equipment of the hoplite in a very different light than Krentz. The defining elements of the hoplite were the spear and, above all, the double-grip shield. Other items of the panoply were subject to much change and innovation over the centuries, but the shield and spear remained essentially unaltered throughout the entire hoplite era. Schwartz reasons that the Greeks maintained the shield’s original design—circular, concave, and about one meter in diameter—because it was preeminently suited for a specific purpose, fighting in tight formation in a phalanx. He gives a detailed analysis of the Etruscan Bomarzo shield, one of the few hoplite type shields to survive more or less intact from antiquity; and he assesses a number of key sources bearing out the burden and cumbersomeness of the hoplite shield, to conclude that its weight, shape, and sheer size in terms of surface area made the shield particularly unwieldy. Schwartz’s discussion of comparable body shields used until recently by the riot squad of the Danish police adds a new dimension to the debate over tactics and the handling of shields in combat. He also points out that skeletal remains from Greek antiquity demonstrate that hoplites were significantly smaller in relation to their equipment than modern Western men, which has consequences for the tacit assumption that they are fully comparable.

John Hale disagrees with the two main theories proposed for the context within which hoplite warfare emerged. For Hale neither the leisured class of aristocrats who vied for high social and political status within the polis nor the middling citizen soldiers who defended their farmland provide the origins of archaic Greek arms and tactics. Instead he suggests looking for the first hoplites fighting as mercenaries in the service of Eastern monarchs in areas such as Syria, Egypt, and Babylon. These soldiers of fortune fought in search of gain and glory, not to defend a civic ideology or ethos. Hale finds evidence for his thesis in lyric poetry and in inscriptions, pottery, and the remains of hoplite armor discovered outside Greece. He calls mercenary service the “Main Event” of Greek military history in the seventh century, in contrast to the sporadic battles between poleis. The nearest historical parallel to the soldiers of fortune of the archaic period are the Viking armies of the ninth and tenth centuries AD. The
Greek raiders and mercenaries not only fought for hard-won riches but also created new communities around the Mediterranean world.

A major part of the debate regarding the rise of the polis turns on whether scholars believe a substantial class of small middling farmers emerged by the late eighth century. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Hanson has emphasized the rise of small independent farmers, who could afford hoplite arms and thereby serve in the phalanx and demand a greater share of political power. On the other hand, van Wees places the evolution of the phalanx and the emergence of the “middling” farmer-hoplite in the late sixth century; before that date, he argues, only members of the wealthy elite served as hoplites, and they fought alongside less well-off light infantry in open and fluid battle order. A recent approach to this question has been the study of the Greek landscape through archaeological survey, a technique that has been developing over the past thirty years. We invited Lin Foxhall to consider what site survey might reveal about the appearance of a new class of small farmers in archaic Greece. Foxhall gives a brief history of the discipline and explains the strengths and limitations of using its findings for historical analysis. Her study of eight survey projects across Greece, including Boeotia, the Argolid, Laconia, and Pylos, focuses on data for the Geometric through the Hellenistic periods. She suggests that the archaeology tells us a different story than the historical record of citizens, soldiers, and property owners. The survey data show the rise of a densely populated countryside of small-scale farmers neither in the eighth century nor, universally, in the sixth century.

Hans van Wees critiques the grand narrative of
The Other Greeks
and argues that it is wrong in important respects. Hanson presents the social and economic changes in the eighth century that took place with the rise of the independent yeoman farmer and his culture of agrarianism as the driving force behind the political and military history of Greece. But van Wees believes that something like the rise of small farmers occurred about two centuries later than Hanson relates. However, from the middle of the eighth century there was a class of elite leisured landowners that did not work the land themselves but supervised the toil of a large lower class of hired laborers and slaves. This era of gentlemen farmers who comprised the top 15–20 percent of society and competed with each other for status lasted for about two centuries. When the yeomen farmers emerged after the mid-sixth century, they joined the leisure class in the hoplite militia. Van Wees doubts that the small farmers brought about a revolution when they joined the phalanx, but, if they did effect political changes, it was in conjunction with the rise of the trireme rowers.

Victor Hanson defends the orthodoxy in light of the various attempts to revise it over the past twenty years, especially those of Krentz and van Wees. He points out the inherent difficulties in studying the origins and nature of hoplite battle since there are few prose accounts of set battles before Marathon. For example, the material the scholar must use includes Homer and lyric poetry, which makes it difficult to distinguish realistic portrayal from metaphorical expression. On the other hand, scenes painted on vases are hard to date and make it nearly impossible to depict a phalanx in proper perspective. Nevertheless, over the last two centuries of classical scholarship the “grand hoplite narrative” has emerged in most histories of Greece. Hanson suggests that the success of the
orthodoxy is due to the fact that it best reflects the evidence for phalanx fighting and the larger social, economic, and political role of the hoplite. He responds to the recent attacks on the view that hoplites formed a distinct middle class, the claims that hoplites fought in an open and fluid formation, and that the phalanx was a late development. In addition, he examines the debate over the weight of hoplite equipment and key elements of the traditional battle narrative such as the attack on the run, the shock collision, and the role of mass and density in deciding hoplite contests.

The editors of this volume do not expect the following essays to end the debate over hoplite arms, tactics, and their relationship to the rise of the polis and the larger issues of Greek culture. On the contrary, the idea behind the conference was to determine how well the orthodoxy holds up in light of recent research and criticism. Second, we wanted to challenge revisionists to clarify their position with a view to offering a coherent paradigm as a more plausible alternative, if possible. In that respect, the objective is to initiate a debate that should result in either a restatement of the traditional narrative or nothing short of rewriting the history of the early Greek polis.

Notes

    
1
 The term Dark Age has itself become controversial, and some scholars prefer Early Iron Age instead.

    
2
 The phrase “middle stratum” is perhaps preferable to the word “class” as in “middle class,” which has unfortunate anachronistic connotations. Nonetheless, “middle” or “middling” class is used frequently and need not cause difficulty as long as the ancient context is understood.

    
3
 See the preface.

    
4
 The following is a brief sketch of the history of the hoplite orthodoxy.
Chapter 1
contains a much more extensive and detailed treatment of the issues debated in this volume;
chapter 2
gives a discussion of the iconography.

    
5
 Helbig in 1911 was the first historian to show and discuss the Chigi vase in connection with the phalanx.

    
6
 Subsequent work has indicated that the lead figurines do not date to the eighth century, or even the earlier seventh century (although Nilsson and Lorimer did not know that). Boardman down-dated the complex stratigraphy of the site in 1963 (J. Boardman, 1963, “Artemis Orthia and Chronology,”
BSA
58:1–7), and this down-dating is generally accepted. Critically, he notes that none of the lead figurines of warriors is earlier than the middle of the seventh century (Boardman 1963:7). The hoplite warriors appear in Lead I, II, and III, some found below, but most found above the sand level (probably representing a major flood on the site) dated by Boardman to 570/560 BCE (A. Wace, 1929, The lead figurines, pp. 249–84 in R. M. Dawkins, “The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia,”
JHS
Suppl. 5, London). This means that the vast majority of the “hoplite” figurines are probably to be dated to the sixth century BCE. Also scholars using these warriors as early evidence for hoplites should note that there are also archers (e.g., Dawkins 1929: pl. CLXXXIII.16, 17) and light armed soldiers (e.g., Dawkins 1929: pl. CLXXXIII.18, 26) among the leads, even as early as Lead I, and continuing through the whole sequence.

    
7
 NB Sylvia Benton, 1953,
BSA
48:340, pointed out that certain blazons on the front of a shield had to be shown one way and only one way—the right way—up, which implied an unalterable grip on the shield.

CHAPTER 1

The Hoplite Debate

DONALD KAGAN AND GREGORY F. VIGGIANO

The study of war has not only interested military historians from the ancient world to the modern day; many scholars have held that the way in which societies organize for and fight war lies at the foundation of civilization itself. Cultural historian Lewis Mumford has remarked:

War was not a mere residue of more common primitive forms of aggression…. In all its typical aspects, its discipline, its drill, its handling of large masses of men as units, in its destructive assaults en masse, in its heroic sacrifices, its final destructions, exterminations, seizures, enslavements, war was rather the special invention of civilization: its ultimate drama.
¹