Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (44 page)

These extrapolations from a rather exiguous sample material have recently been confirmed in no small degree by the interesting findings from the survey of the expansive territory of Metaponto (ancient Metapontion) in southern Italy.
⁴⁹
In the course of this grand-scale survey, field examinations of the remarkably well-preserved necropolises at Pantanello, Saldone, and Sant’Angelo Vecchio were carried out.
⁵⁰
Here, Maciej and Renata Henneberg examined the skeletal remains of 272 individuals, 251
of which were excavated at Pantanello alone.
⁵¹
The Hennebergs’ work on these and other necropolises of Magna Graecia now comprises approximately 1,000 individuals, easily “the largest and most comprehensive study of the mortal remains of a population in the Greek world.”
⁵²
In addition, while the human remains excavated from the necropolis spanned a period of several centuries (from the sixth to the third centuries BC), the majority could be dated to well within the hoplite era.
⁵³

Metapontion was a largely rural settlement, focused primarily on agriculture, and with a population who were very likely predominantly farmers.
⁵⁴
Accordingly, its inhabitants would have been very similar to the average rural population in the rest of the Greek world with respect to—among other things—nourishment, growth, build, overall health, life expectancy, and general physiology.

Now, it is scarcely unreasonable to assume that, on average, more than 50 percent of the population in the Greek world as a whole were occupied with agriculture, arboriculture, and the production of foodstuffs in some capacity, if possibly sometimes in other activities than farming as such.
⁵⁵
If that is the case, most Greek hoplite armies, drawn from the male citizenry, would likely have displayed the same ratio of, at a minimum, 50 percent farmers (or, at the least, “agriculturalists”). The implications of this should be clear: the Metapontine necropolis not only furnishes a representative selection of a typical population occupied primarily in agriculture, the backbone of any hoplite citizen army who likely possessed the physical qualities most wanted in hoplites—toughness, stamina, strength, and resilience—but the amount of material in question is comprehensive enough to be statistically significant.
⁵⁶
The examined data revealed that the average height of adult males was between 162 and 165 cm, that of females between 153 and 156 cm (estimates vary according to the applied method of reconstruction), and with a body weight of approximately 60–65 kg for males and 50–55 kg for females: in other words, the findings of earlier examinations were soundly confirmed in this respect.
⁵⁷
Given this uncharacteristically ample, significant sample material, as well as its thoroughly agricultural setting, the Metapontion necropolis furnishes an excellent opportunity for assessing the physical characteristics of the average Greek hoplite.
⁵⁸

Greek men in antiquity—including Greek hoplites—were thus significantly smaller than modern Western men. For this reason alone, what may perhaps seem comparatively light or small to us as moderns may in fact have been considerably harder and more cumbersome for smaller men to bear. Offensive, and especially defensive, weapons and armor would have been even more uncomfortable, heavy, and unwieldy to men frequently more than 15 cm shorter than the modern Western average. The shield, above all, some 90 cm in diameter, would have been even larger for such men, normally no taller than 165 cm: in most cases, the shield’s diameter measured considerably more than half of the total body height. In fact, even the lightest of Greek panoplies would have been a much heavier burden to bear when compared to the physical norm of the average modern Western male. All this serves to underline the fact that hoplite weapons and armor were not, by any stretch of the imagination, easily or comfortably manipulated or worn.

It should also be kept in mind that polis armies were normally composed of citizens of all ages between eighteen and sixty.
⁵⁹
Owing to this tremendously long
obligation to perform military service, there must have been a great many older men in the phalanxes, perhaps even a majority.
⁶⁰
In the words of Victor Davis Hanson, “after all, thirty of forty-two age classes liable to military service were composed of men over thirty years of age.”
⁶¹
While this is a priori true, it should also be taken into consideration that these age groups would have been exponentially depleted of members because of the increasing mortality resulting from both natural causes and participation in more campaigns and battles. There is no shortage of sources attesting to older men taking their equal share of the grisly work in the rank and file;
⁶²
and all other things being equal, the burden of arms and armor must have been a great deal harder to shoulder for men pushing sixty.

The sources to a large degree bear this out. Personal servants (
hypaspistai
) frequently carried the hoplites’ weapons
⁶³
and supplies;
⁶⁴
at least this seems to have been the case with higher-ranking and wealthier persons. Even when hoplites did hold their own shields, and when supposedly ready for instant action, they normally would not pick them up until the
last possible moment
: the command θέσθαι (τὰ) ὅπλα means to extract the arm from the twin grips and set the shield (and probably spear) down on the ground, leaning against the knees and ready to be picked up again quickly when the order is given. The phrase is unusually common: it is found forty-three times in Herodotos, Thucydides, and Xenophon alone,
⁶⁵
and so well known was this “stand at ease” position that the Athenian general Chabrias, according to later historians, on one occasion could display his contempt for the advancing enemy simply by ordering his mercenaries to remain brazenly in this position as the enemy approached (δέχεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους καταπε φρονη κότως ἅμα καὶ ἐν τῇ τάξει μένοντας).
⁶⁶
We even find that the Phokians guarding the Anopaia pass at Thermopylae in 480—who, it must be supposed, should have been on maximum alert—only picked up their weapons
after
they saw the Persians approaching, surprising the advancing enemy with that strange sight: “Leaping to their feet, the Phokians were in the act of arming themselves when the enemy were upon them. The Persians were surprised at the sight of troops preparing to fight.”
⁶⁷
In fact, Herodotos’ choice of verb, ἐνέδυον (“put on,” rather than the expected ἀνέλαβον), implies that the Phokian hoplites did not even put on their
body
armor until the last possible moment—even in a “red alert” situation like this.
⁶⁸

In Euripides’ tragedy
Herakleidai
(datable to c. 430)
⁶⁹
the weight of a “full set of armour” (ὅπλων παντευχίαν) also seems to be a consideration. The old Iolaos, about to join battle, is advised by his servant to put his armor on in a hurry, since battle is near. All the same, the servant adds, “However, if you dread the weight of it, / go unarmed for the present, and when you reach the ranks / put all this on there. Meanwhile I’ll carry it.” With palpable relief, Iolaos quickly accepts (καλῶς ἔλεξας).
⁷⁰

Conclusion

The weight and completeness of armor was, if anything, reduced over the centuries, either by perfecting the metalwork techniques, by replacing bronze cuirasses with
corselets made of other materials, or simply by increasingly discarding items that were apparently no longer needed. It is interesting to note that the full set of hoplite weapons and equipment was at its heaviest and most cumbersome in its earlier stages of development; and it is equally interesting that Euripides suggests that even by 430—at a time when most defensive body armor was well on its way to becoming obsolete
⁷¹
—a set of armor was still considered a significant burden (albeit, in this case, to an elderly man). Reconstructions based on the surviving remains of shields suggest that they were in fact very heavy, as much as 8 kg not being an unrealistic assessment for a combat shield some 90 cm in diameter. Contemporary literary sources testify to the considerable size and perceived burden of hoplite shields, an aspect that was exacerbated by the shield’s ungainly shape and the double-grip system, which, although securing good support for the bearer, also drastically reduced his range with the shield when compared with a lighter, single-grip shield. A comparison with probably the only modern use of shields “in anger” reveals that a double-grip shield of roughly comparable size was deemed too heavy and awkward to be used for any sort of soloist fighting, despite the fact that the police shield in question weighs a little more than a third of a hoplite shield.

The tacit but widespread assumption that Greeks in antiquity were physically immediately comparable to ourselves is refuted by analyses of skeletal remains from the Archaic and Classical periods, revealing that the average height of Greek males was between 162 and 165 cm compared with the 179 cm of modern Western males. Obviously the burden of weapons, and especially shield and armor, would have been even greater for such smaller men. Exacerbating this even further is the fact that quite a few old men must have been present in the average phalanx, since men were required to serve until they were sixty years old.

All this serves to underline the importance of assessing the physical characteristics of the weapons themselves in the debate on how hoplites and phalanxes functioned in combat. Furthermore, it seems to me that the evidence, such as it is, points in the direction of a defensive, closed-order system intimately connected with and based on the weapons themselves. The evidence thus suggests that the debate on hoplite fighting, unlike the hoplite phalanx itself, is not closed at all.

Notes

I wish to thank Curtis Eastin, Gregory Viggiano, and Donald Kagan warmly for inviting me to participate in the Origins of the Greek Phalanx conference at Yale in April 2008. It should also be pointed out that, owing to circumstances entirely beyond my control, I found myself with a matter of mere days in which to prepare a paper for the conference. It, and consequently this article, therefore consisted largely of material drawn from my (then forthcoming) monograph,
Reinstating the Hoplite
(2009). However, I have endeavored, as far as at all possible, to rearrange it and add fresh material and new data for this chapter.

    
1
. Blyth (1982) 9, 13–14; Rieth (1964) 104–5; Cahn (1989) 15–16; Shear (1937) 347; Boardman (1980) 75; Millard (1994) 288–89.

    
2
. Kunze and Schleif (1942) 70–93; Mallwitz and Herrmann (1980) 106.

    
3
. The concavity of the shield is apparent also from a number of literary sources: Hdt. 4.200.2–3 (in which an inverted shield is used as a stethoscope to listen for enemy sapping underground, a procedure also recommended in Aen. Tact. 37.6–7); Thuc. 7.82.3 (where four upturned [ὑπτίας] shields serve as vessels for coins confiscated from Athenian prisoners of war); Xen.
Hell
. 5.4.17–18 (where hoplites weigh their shields down with stones to prevent them from blowing away during a storm on a mountain); Plut.
Mor
. 241f 16 (where the shield [again, presumably, inverted] is thought of as a possible stretcher, in the famous anecdote of a Spartan mother saying to her son “ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς”); cf. S Thuc. 2.39.1; Stob.
Flor
. 3.7.30 and Hammond [1979–80]). Several notable landmarks were called “the
Aspis
,” most famously perhaps a steep hill or slope near Argos with difficult access (ὀχυρὸς τόπος): “[Kleomenes] led his army by night up to the walls, occupied the region about the Aspis overlooking the theatre, a region which was rugged and hard to come at, and so terrified the inhabitants that not a man of them thought of defence” ([Κλεομένης] νυκτὸς πρὸς τὰ τείχη ἦγε τὸ στράτευμα, καὶ τὸν περὶ τὴν ᾿Ασπίδα τόπον καταλαβών ὑπὲρ τοῦ θεάτρου χαλεπὸν ὄντα καὶ δυσπρόσοδον οὕτως τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐξέπληξεν ὥστε μηδένα τράπεσθαι πρὸς ἀλκήν [trans. Perrin]): Plut.
Cleom
. 17.4–5, cf. 21.3,
Pyrrh
. 32.1–4.

    
4
. Blyth (1982) 9–12. A wooden core is also strongly suggested by Brasidas’ shield, which, when dropped from a ship, drifted ashore (Thuc. 4.12.1; cf. Diod. Sic. 12.62.4).

    
5
. Blyth (1982) 9, 13–14; Rieth (1964) 104–5; Cahn (1989) 15–16. There are adequate photographs in both Blyth’s and Rieth’s articles; but the best illustration of the Bomarzo shield remains Connolly’s drawing (Connolly [1998] 53).

    
6
. Plin.
NH
16.209: “The trees that have the coldest wood of all are all that grow in water; but the most flexible, and consequently the most suitable for making shields, are those in which an incision draws together at once and closes up its own wound, and which consequently is more obstinate in allowing steel to penetrate; this class contains the vine, agnus castus, willow, lime, birch, elder, and both kinds of poplar” (Frigidissima quaecumque aquatica, lentissima autem et ideo scutis faciendis aptissima quorum plaga contrahit se protinus cluditque suum vulnus et ob id contumacius tramittit ferrum, in quo sunt genere ficus, vitex, salix, tilia, betulla, sabucus, populus utraque [trans. Rackham]); cf. Franz (2002) 128–29.