Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (65 page)

Equally importantly, middleness itself is reflected as a ubiquitous sociological ideal in Greek literature (e.g., cf. Phocylides: “Much good is there to the middle-ones; I wish to be midmost [
mesos
] in a city” [fr. 7.1–2]; cf. Euripides
Suppliants
, “the ones in the middle” [
hoi mesoi
”] are the “salvation of the city” [238–42]). Such generic idealization of the in-between is often naturally connected to the hoplite ranks that on the battlefield are framed at both ends by the mounted wealthy and the poorer lightly armed troops. In the rural sociology of the polis, they remain distinct from both the wealthy horse owners and the landless poor.
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Farmland is sometimes in Greek literature assessed by its potential to produce hoplites, emphasizing the natural generalized connection between those citizens who farm their own plots and those who fight in the phalanx. A variety of passages in classical authors equate farmers with hoplites and define them as the true measure of the city-states, as well as the generally held notion that the catalysts for most wars were disputes over borderlands among rival property-holding citizenries. The Spartan exception of having helots do much of their agricultural labor emphasizes the normal Greek belief that elsewhere farmers and hoplites were nearly synonymous: “Not by caring for our fields,” the singular Spartans brag, “but rather by caring for ourselves did we acquire those fields (Plut.
Mor
. 214a72).
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There is also the more practical argument of demography and landscape. Take Athens—generally not associated as a major hoplite power—where rough estimates of the citizen population, average farm size, and total arable land make it likely that there were nearly twenty thousand middling farm owners, about the accustomed number of the hoplite class. That hoplites may have been a minority of the resident citizens within the city-state does not negate either the fact that they formed a middling group, or that Greek city-states could field hoplite armies in the many thousands.

In contrast, if we were to believe that “the model hoplite was not the working man whose fitness for war derived from hard labor, but the man of leisure who owed his fitness to dedicated physical and mental training,” then we would have to assume that rather sizable numbers of the Greek citizenry—compare the some forty thousand hoplites who fought together at battles like Nemea—had enough capital not to work
physically and the leisure to train for battle. Likewise there would be no reason for the constant references in (elite) classical literature to the connection between hard physical work on the farm or in the countryside and the readiness to fight.
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Was Greek Warfare Rare?

The common assumption of the hoplite narrative that Greek warfare was a relatively common event has been challenged recently on the odd basis that it is supposedly a fallacy hinging on a misreading of a single, though famous, passage in Plato’s
Laws
to the effect that all Greeks are engaged in continuous war against those of other city-states.
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At one point in Plato’s dialogue, Cleinias, a Cretan, quotes an anonymous Cretan lawgiver: “What most people call ‘peace’ is nothing but a word, and in fact every city-state is at all times, by nature in a condition of undeclared war (
akêrutos polemos
) with every other city-state” (
Laws
626a).

The orthodox interpretation usually cites the passage as further evidence of the Greeks’ philosophical acceptance that periodic outbreaks of hostility were more to be expected than long periods of peace. Here the Athenian stranger and Cleinias are discussing the Cretan constitution—specifically, why the custom arose for group messes and the need for constant preparedness, given the perception of near-constant war. The explanation of a condition of undeclared war is not, as revisionists sometimes argue, followed by a sneer against the masses that are unaware of it, or an implication that ceaseless fighting was only a rarified theory. Instead the thought serves as a necessary explanation of why the anonymous Cretan lawgiver—as an authority responsible for the safety of the Cretan community—"established every one of our institutions, both in the public sphere and private, with an eye on war.”
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But more importantly, there are plenty of other abstract observations, across a wide chronological spectrum, that reflect a similar Hellenic view of war as a near-constant and natural state of affairs. Most famously, Heraclitus remarked: “War is both father and king of all, some he has shown forth as gods and others as men. Some he has made slaves and others free.” And in another—less often quoted—fragment, he reiterated that view of war as a natural state of affairs: “It should be understood that war is the common condition (
xunon
), that strife is justice, and that all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife” (frgs. 53, 80). It would be hard to imagine philosophers referring to war as “common” if it were felt to be a somewhat rare occurrence.

The point of these observations, which, again, cover a large chronological continuum, is that generic conflict is seen by abstract Greek thinkers as almost natural—a ceaseless, omnipresent state that at any time can alter even the very status of the citizen and slave. In Xenophon’s
Hellenica
(6.3.15), for example, the Athenian envoy, Callistratus, matter-of-factly remarks in candid terms to his Spartan audience, “Moreover, we all know that wars are forever breaking out and being concluded, and that we—if not now, still at some future time—shall desire peace again.”

Given that there were probably over a thousand city-states without a unified federal state, but with poorly demarcated borderlands, and plenty of contentious
landowners who could both vote and bear arms, the observations of Heraclitus, Plato, and Xenophon seem quite natural.

The Tragic Acceptance of War

There is a certain Hellenic resignation—perhaps even cynicism—that the state of war among the city-states is something commonplace and that men should accept it as inevitable. The particular allegiances between the city-states that for a time might deter a war pale in comparison to the larger bellicosity of the poleis, and indeed of human nature itself, that ensure wars of some sort are near constant. War was seen either as Xenophon’s natural state, or Plato’s undeclared reality, or Heraclitus’s king and father—or, in Thucydides’s words, a “violent teacher” (5.82), or in Pindar’s (fr. 15) formulation “a thing of fear.”

Again, these reflections seem natural given the absence of a Panhellenic federal state, the sheer number of rival city-states, the limited amount of arable land in Greece, and the geography of small habitable enclaves set off from one another by hills and mountains that form convenient borders—and given especially a pretechnological age among a relatively small population in which wars of massive annihilation were largely unknown. To take a modern example, while warfare between the three North American nations—Canada, Mexico, and the United States—broke out in the last two centuries on only two or three occasions, one might imagine a very different, European-like scenario had there been fifty different contiguous American sovereign countries, rather than unified states of a single nation.

While it is easy to suggest the classical Athenian experience of near-constant warring is either atypical of its own history or that of other poleis, it is nonetheless probably true that Athens warred three out of four years in the fifth century, and perhaps two out of three over a longer continuum. Likewise, the fourth-century Spartan state suffered severe social dislocations, given its almost nonstop deployment of its officers abroad in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War. The ubiquity of martial scenes in ceramic art and on temple friezes and pediments emphasizes the general Greek sense that war was a near-natural state of affairs—born out in literary genres from Homeric epic to the Greek historians that are devoted to an explication of war.
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The Greeks accepted the tragic notion that while war was impossible to legislate away, outlaw, or prevent from ever again breaking out, there were nonetheless ways to prevent individual wars and to mitigate their severity—through deterrence, a balance of power, the creation of coalitions, constant preparedness, eternal vigilance, and, when fighting broke out, acknowledgment of certain limitations on hoplite combat. This acceptance of inherent bellicosity is well illustrated in the Theban general Pagondas’s speech before the hoplite battle of Delium (Thuc. 4.92) in which he outlined the need for constant vigilance against his Athenian neighbors, who were likely to be aggressive when they sensed weakness: “As between neighbors generally, freedom means simply a determination to hold one’s own,” and further: “People who, like the Athenians in the present instance, are tempted by pride of strength
to attack their neighbors, usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers.”
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Again, this tragic acceptance of armed conflict is not an endorsement of war’s utility; nevertheless, it is antithetical to the modernist notion that human nature can be altered sufficiently—through greater education, training, and freedom from want—to ensure that war might be outlawed or eliminated entirely.

Fluid Fighting?

Some have advanced a different scenario of battle in which hoplites along the battle line fought at some distance from each other, in more fluid fashion, and in formations in which there was neither an initial collision nor a subsequent pushing to achieve a breakthrough.
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But once again there are general reasons to doubt this revisionism of the hoplite narrative, even as we concede that individual prowess in arms and bodily strength were highly desirable, and that matchups along the front ranks were frequent as both sides sought to fight their way into and break apart enemy formations. Being pushed often into an enemy line, while keeping the shield chest high to protect both oneself and the man on the left, does not preclude individual battle skill in stabbing the enemy, keeping one’s balance, and avoiding incoming blows. In collisions of massed ranks, inevitably hoplites often fought individual hoplites.

That said, there is a rich Greek vocabulary for a “breaking” of the ranks, a “storm” of spears, and a literal “push”—images of collective efforts used to describe hoplite battles in a wide variety of authors. It is hard to accept that the repeated references to the
ôthismos
(the “push”), or its more frequent verbal forms (
ôtheô
), are merely figurative. Often supplementary vocabulary stresses the value of “density” and “depth,” which is logical when both sides seek to use their mass to force an opponent off the battlefield. Emphasis is often placed on muscular strength and the superior physicality of one side over the other; likewise the Boeotian armies are distinguished both by their tendencies to stack unusually deep and by the logical corollary of the superior physicality of their hoplites.
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In a war of shock and pushing, one would expect hoplite battles to involve an initial advance by running, or at least by advancing in double-time, and a subsequent frequent breaking of spears—and that is often just what we read in our extant descriptions. Indeed, at most major classical battles, hoplites are specifically mentioned as approaching at some sort of double-time or trot—often in contrast to the Spartans, who were singled out as unique in marching in step to battle to the sound of pipes. In general, the need to keep close in rank and protect the man to the left is likewise emphasized and alone rewarded with formal commemoration. The shield is frequently praised as a defensive weapon, one used in unison with those along the battle line, and as the most common measurement of phalanx depth. Flinging down
the spear or sword is rarely seen as proof of cowardice; abandoning the shield always is—presumably because it imperils the integrity of the entire line of hoplites.
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If phalanx warfare were not a matter of shock and pushing, why then in a Mediterranean climate would skirmishing hoplites carry spears and large shields, and wear such heavy bronze armor—an ensemble not particularly suitable for more fluid individual combat—and not to my knowledge replicated with skirmishers in similar climates? And why, time after time, would Greek authors warn that such heavily armed soldiers could not fight well on rough terrain—given that gaps would appear in the ranks and files as infantrymen stumbled or tried to avoid obstacles on the battlefield? Would not gaps be natural and expected if battles involved little more than individual skirmishing?

If density of rank, shock of collision, and pushing were not critical to hoplite battle, would not hills and broken ground be welcomed as places where a less compact phalanx with its fluid-fighting men in armor might ambush and waylay others—or might not such terrain at least be considered largely irrelevant to the outcome? Thucydides’s famous statement of the night fighting above Syracuse, that even in daylight “each man hardly knows anything except what is occurring to himself “ (7.44.1) better fits the notion of heavily armored men in mass rather than fluid skirmishers.
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Note as well that commemoration for bravery and excellence in battle usually is awarded on the basis of group cohesion, and maintaining order. Prizes and awards are not accorded—as was true in more fluid fighting scenarios in regions such as Iberia, Scythia, or Thrace—to the number or nature of kills that individual warriors can tally. The impression we receive is that in hoplite battle it is either difficult or less important to record “kills,” but essential to preserve the integrity of the formation. That again is a reality hard to reconcile with the notion of armies grinding to a halt as they approached each other to allow individual warriors to battle and duel with an enemy of like kind.
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