Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (40 page)

Notes

I am grateful to Gregory Viggiano and Donald Kagan for inviting me to participate in the 2008 conference at Yale University on the origins of the Greek phalanx. In revising my paper for publication, I have not tried to eradicate traces of its origin as an oral communication delivered to a diverse audience in a setting designed to provoke debate.

    
1
. Hanson 2000: xxvi, 37, 153, 221–22.

    
2
. See Krentz 2000, 2002; and Dayton 2006.

    
3
. Hanson 2000: 56.

    
4
. Rüstow and Köchly 1852: 44.

    
5
. First in
Die Perserkriege und die Burgunderkriege
(1887) and later in his multivolume
Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte
(3rd ed. 1920, translated as
History
of the Art of War
, vol. 1
Antiquity
, 1975), where he conceded that Rüstow and Köchly lacked evidence (1975: 86).

    
6
. Some authorities writing in English mention the specific figure of 72 lbs, probably misled or confused by the two kinds of lbs, the German and the avoirdupois. I confess to making this mistake myself until Kurt Raaflaub kindly corrected me during a conference break.

    
7
. Krentz 2010a: 45–50, and 2010b: 190–197.

    
8
. Based on his own experience exercising with replicas and his examination of spears in Greek art, Allen Pittman has argued that Greek spears were thinner than the one inch (25 mm) both scholars and reenactors have generally accepted; he suggests that 18 mm is a realistic estimate (2007: 66–69). As far as I know, no one has tested thinner, lighter spears to see whether they would in fact work better.

    
9
. Snodgrass 1964: 63–64.

  
10
. Xenophon
Anabasis
1.8.9; Arrian
Anabasis
1.6.2.

  
11
. Boardman 1983: 27–33; Franz 2002: 183–84; van Wees 2004: 50–52; Rawlings 2007: 57.

  
12
. The YouTube video “Boeotian Shield Usage” (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeKuy36OG_g&feature=player_embedded#at=10
) demonstrates the maneuverability of the shield.

  
13
. In this section I draw heavily on my paper “Marathon and the Development of the Exclusive Hoplite Phalanx,” forthcoming in Carey and Edwards 2011.

  
14
. The exception appears in Homer,
Iliad
6.6; Homer uses the plural about twenty times. The plural also occurs in Tyrtaios F 12 lines 21–22, where the good warrior “turns to flight the enemy’s rugged phalanges,” and Mimnermos F 13 line 3, where the warrior breaks “the massed phalanges of the Lydian horsemen.”

  
15
. Lazenby and Whitehead 1996: 32.

  
16
. Müller 1839: 85. Rüstow and Köchly 1852: 10 cite Polyainos 1.10.

  
17
. Grote 1869–70: 2. 462–63.

  
18
. Thucydides 5.70; Plutarch
Moralia
210F; Athenaios
Deipnosophistai
14.627D; Polyainos
Stratagems 1.10
,
Excerpts
18.1; Pausanias 3.17.5; Xenophon
Anabasis
6.1.11.

  
19
. Delbrück 1975: 58, a translation of the third German edition of 1920.

  
20
. Rüstow and Köchly 1852: 16–17. They included this great oval shield in their 36 kg total estimate discussed above.

  
21
. Helbig 1909: 66–67.

  
22
. Helbig 1911.

  
23
. Helbig 1879: 85–86.

  
24
. The Chigi olpe, for instance, was painted in Corinth about 640, from which Martin Nil-son concluded that “the Chigi vase gives the lower boundary; hoplite tactics were fully enacted in the second half of the seventh century” (1929: 240).

  
25
. Gomme 1945–56: 1.10; Lorimer 1947: 128; Andrewes 1956: 31–42; Detienne 1968: 140; Cartledge 1977 and 2001: 153–66; Hanson 1999: 222–42; Schwartz 2009.

  
26
. Kromayer in Kromayer and Veith 1928: 21; Nierhaus 1938: 90–113; Snodgrass 1965 and 1993; Greenhalgh 1973: 69–75; van Wees 2000 and 2004: 166–83; Krentz 2002; Wheeler 2007; Rawlings 2007: 54–59.

  
27
. For hoplites outside the phalanx, see Rawlings 2000.

  
28
. Schwartz 2009: 54.

  
29
. Schwartz 2009: 54.

  
30
. For the video, go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjjU6tSUp34&feature=player_embedded
. Pittman 2007: 70 says that adding the metal parts pushed the weight as high as 14 kg, so it isn’t surprising that he’s training with an unfaced wooden shield in the video. The Hoplite Association in London judges 14 lbs to be about the maximum manageable weight
(
http://www.4hoplites.com/Aspis.htm
). I would like to see reenactors practicing with lighter poplar and willow shields weighing a realistic 4–5 kg.

  
31
. Note, too, that the Lakedaimonians’ use of pipers was exceptional, was worthy of remark: Thucydides 5.70, Athenaios
Deipnosophistai
14.624D; Pausanias 3.17.5; Polyainos
Stratagems
1.10. Most armies did not use pipers to keep their advance slow and their formation intact.

  
32
. Pritchett 1971–91: 1.134–54.

  
33
. Pittman 2007: 70–72. More tentatively, he says that a man might have thrust his arm through his left-hand neighbor’s rope, then put his hand through his
porpax
, and finally grabbed both his loop and his right-hand neighbor’s rope, linking him both left and right. This idea strikes me as entirely unworkable.

  
34
. For the video “Hoplite Shield,” go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbPSvJt3ER0&feature=player_embedded#at=13
.

  
35
. Matthew 2009: 406.

  
36
. Polybios 18.29–30 with Pritchett 1971–91: 1.145, 151–54.

  
37
. Polybios 18.30.5–11. See Krentz 1985, 1994 (where “6 m” and “3 m” are misprints for “6 feet: and “3 feet”); van Wees 2000, 2004.

  
38
. Jameson 1991.

  
39
. Curiously, Rutherford 1995: 114 seems to think the dance was not included in military paeans. My thanks to my colleague Keyne Cheshire for suggesting that stomping feet and other movements would fit a prebattle context nicely. For a helpful review of recent work on paeans, see Furley and Bremer 2001: 1.84–91.

  
40
. Thucydides 4.43, 4.96.1; Xenophon,
Anabasis
4.3.29–31, 4.8.16, 5.2.13,
Hellenika
2.4.17.

  
41
. Hanson 2000: 141.

  
42
. Hanson 2000: 121, 140.

  
43
. Hanson 2000: 162–64; Matthew 2009: 400–406.

  
44
. Anderson 1991: 31.

  
45
. “Hoplite shield,” at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbPSvJt3ER0&feature=player_embedded#at=13
.

  
46
. Lazenby 1991: 92–93.

  
47
. Keegan 1976: 71.

  
48
. Hanson 2000: 156–57.

  
49
. Hanson 2000: 157–58.

  
50
. Wheeler 2007: 209.

  
51
. Goldsworthy 1997: 17.

  
52
. Hanson 2000: 68–69, 152–59, 171–84, 1999: 262; Anderson 1970: 175–76, 1984; Cart-ledge 1977: 15–16. Pritchett 1985: 65–73. Important recent advocates of this view include Lazenby 1991: 87–109; Luginbill 1994; Raaflaub 1999: 132–33; Eccheverría Rey 2011: 64–65.

  
53
. See also George Campbell Macauley in 1904 (“a great struggle” and “jostling”), Henry Cary in 1908 (“violent struggle” and “a close conflict”), and Alfred Denis Godley in the 1921 Loeb edition (“a great struggle” and “blows at close quarters”).

  
54
. Macan 1908: 730, commenting on 9.62.

  
55
. Powell 1938: 386.

  
56
. Delbrück 1975: 53, a translation of the 1920 third edition. The first edition was published in 1900.

  
57
. Delbrück 1975: 54.

  
58
. Grundy 1948: 1.268. I have not seen the 1911 first edition, but Grundy says in his preface that he made “only one change in respect to matter and a few minor changes in respect to form” (viii). I would not be surprised to find the rugby analogy somewhere earlier. William Mitford
may have anticipated Grundy’s view, without mentioning rugby. On Plataia, Mitford says that “the Tegeans, according to Herodotus, made the first impression; the Lacedaemonians then pushed forward, and confusion soon became general among the Persian infantry” (1823: 2.111). And on Delion: “The field was well disputed between the rest; in action so close, they joined opposing shields; and where weapons could not avail against the compact arrangement of defensive armor, they endevored [
sic
] to break each other’s line by force of pushing” (1823: 3.27). Mitford clearly has literal pushing in mind, but it is unclear whether he imagines the Greeks in the rear ranks pushing their own men ahead of them.

  
59
. Grundy 1948: 1.268–69.

  
60
. Kromayer and Veith 1928: 85.

  
61
. Woodhouse 1933: 78–79. He cites only Thucydides 4.96 and 6.70 in support of his view.

  
62
. Gomme 1937: 135.

  
63
. Pritchett 1971–91: 4.66 n. 200. Perhaps this dismissal is not quite fair. Fraser does say that the rugby model was founded on only three passages. But the ones he discusses are among those most frequently cited, and what he says can be applied to the rest. Fraser discusses the battle of Syracuse (Thucydides 6.70.2 [the reference is garbled in his text]), the “give me one more step” story from the battle of Leuktra (Polyainos 2.3.2), and the battle of Delion (Thucydides 4.96).

  
64
. To varying degrees, scholars skeptical of the mass shove and favoring individual action, sometimes including a push with the shield, include Cawkwell 1978, 1989; Krentz 1985, 1994; Goldsworthy 1997; van Wees 2004: 188–91, Rawlings 2007: 93–97, and Matthew 2009.

  
65
. Pritchett 1971–91: 4.29.

  
66
. Pritchett 1971–91: 4.29.

  
67
. Pritchett 1971–91: 4.15.

  
68
. Pritchett 1971–91: 4.29.

  
69
. Hornblower 1991–2008: 2.306.

  
70
. Keegan 1976: 100.

  
71
. Snodgrass 2006: 345.

  
72
. A Protocorinthian aryballos, c. 690–680, found at Lechaion (Corinth Museum CP 2096). See Eliot and Eliot 1968: plate 102, 2.

  
73
. See Hale (this volume). Fagan hints at this hypothesis when he comments that “the development of [the mixed early phalanx], perhaps not coincidentally, was more or less contemporaneous with the height of Assyrian military sophistication” (2010: 99 n. 51).

  
74
. See Krentz 2002: 35–37, 2011. Though he would not attribute such significance to Marathon, van Wees 2004 makes a case based on iconographic evidence that the exclusive phalanx developed only in the sixth or fifth century.

  
75
. Fagan 2010.

  
76
. Grote 1869: 3.30–31.

  
77
. On the role of the fleet in developing its rowers’ political consciousness, see Strauss 1996.

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