Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (8 page)

The first expression of the hoplite orthodoxy in English was the classic article by Lorimer in 1947.
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She dated the adoption of hoplite tactics and equipment in the most important poleis to the first half of the seventh century. The introduction of the new shield caused an immediate change in tactics.

The momentous change from the essentially long-range fighting of the eighth century involved a single structural alteration in the round shield slung on a telamon which was in vogue, an alteration designed to make it afford the maximum of protection to troops in close formation so long as they stood firm; in the case of flight it became a mere encumbrance and was fairly likely to be thrown away. The change consisted in the substitution for the single central hand-grip previously in use of a central arm-band of metal (
porpax
), through which the bearer thrust his arm up to the elbow, and a hand-grip (
antilabe
), at the end of the horizontal diameter and just within the rim, which he grasped with his left hand.
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Lorimer described the range of motion of the new shield as “extremely restricted” compared with the single-grip shield, which “unless exceptionally large” was “easily manoeuvrable,” and “could be used to cover practically any part of the owner’s body. The hoplite shield gave complete protection only to the left side of the trunk, with consequences when the phalanx went into action which Thucydides has made familiar to everyone.” She outlined the hoplite revolution, linking the arms, armor, and tactics together:

Hoplite equipment is inseparably linked with the phalanx and its tactics, whose whole object was to supersede long-range fighting by a hand-to-hand encounter waged by an unbreakable line uniformly armed. The essence of the change consisted for attack, in the substitution of the single heavy thrusting-spears and, for defence, in the adoption of the
porpax
shield with its powerful inducement to keep the line and not turn tail. Greaves extended protection
without being a serious encumbrance; the Corinthian helmet superseded, not quite universally, forms which might offer a hand-hold to an opponent in the now inevitable close-locked struggle. These items form a natural and logical combination, and they all appear on one of our earliest monuments, the Perachora aryballos.
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The finds of arms and armor made it possible to date the revolution. Mainland Greece made the transition to hoplite armor right after the enigmatic Lelantine War, to which its adoption is somehow related. The single-grip shield had been current in Attica in the late eighth century, but the Hymettus amphora demonstrated that hoplite equipment had superseded it before 675. This change coincided with the earliest established date in Athenian history, the beginning of the list of annual archons. “It would seem that the consummation of the political revolution and the reorganization of the army were approximately contemporary, as is natural enough.” In Sparta, the lead figurines of warriors from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia seemed to confirm her hypothesis. “That part of the series which runs concurrently with Laconian I pottery—i.e., from circa 700 to circa 635, in which they are pretty numerous—has almost without exception hoplite equipment so far as it can be checked.”
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Furthermore, in Corinth, the Protocorinthian aryballos from Perachora dated to the same period.

The famous Chigi vase offered the strongest case for the revolution in tactics (see
fig. 2-8
). This Protocorinthian olpe, or pitcher, of the finest period, which falls shortly after 650, “succeeds in depicting the hoplite phalanx going into action,” and furnishes “an indubitable representation of hoplite forces … the earliest reliable evidence for the new armature.”
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Lorimer explains:

Each side forms a hoplite phalanx, pure and unadulterated; every article of hoplite equipment is plainly represented and nothing alien to it, and the tactics—hand-to-hand fighting with the spear—are purely hoplite. Of the ranks on the point of engaging each man holds his spear above his head, nearly horizontal but with a slight downward tilt, poised ready, not for a throw, but for a thrust at the exposed throat of an opponent.
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Some of the essential points include the presence of hoplite equipment, the shield with the
porpax
and
antilabe
, the metal corselet and greaves, and the fighting style, close combat with a thrusting instead of a throwing spear. Both the equipment and fighting style mark off the hoplite from the previous Geometric warrior armed with a single-grip shield, leather corselet, no greaves, and a javelin. The flutist in his purple tunic is significant. For example, Thucydides mentions in his description of the battle of Mantinea (5.70) that the Spartans used a flute player to help maintain their formation as they marched into battle. But Lorimer denies that the warriors on the Chigi vase carry more than one spear; she claims that the five redundant spears above the men are either “ghost spears” or are meant to be thrown.

As the number of the ghost spears and of the combatants are the same, the artist presumably intended to indicate that each man had a second spear in reserve, carried by his servant, but at the same time to suggest by the extra spears
the presence of a larger body of troops than he could depict without marring the clarity of his composition, a device which is completely successful.
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The early and complete change in the foot soldier’s equipment, which produced a revolution in tactics and political change in the polis, transformed Greek art in the seventh century as well. Yet the transformation in art was more gradual and reveals itself in stages from the Perachora aryballos to the Chigi olpe.

The transformation from Geometric art marks the rise of the individual, which one may see on the Perachora aryballos. “There too struggling to assert itself against it [the individual], was the consciousness, equally foreign to Geometric art, that the battle engaged was between two organized fronts, in which the individual was merged in the fighting force of his
polis
. On the Berlin aryballos and in the relevant zone of the Chigi olpe the heroic motive is wholly discarded in favour of an exaltation of contemporary life, perhaps the glorification of the hoplite class.” Lorimer posits that the tyrants such as Cypselus found the most reliable support of their power in the hoplite class. “What exportable monument could be better fitted than the olpe to spread the impression of Corinthian military power in the highest circles abroad?”
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The link with the tyrants places Lorimer in the tradition of Grote and Nilsson.

Like Grote, Lorimer saw the revolution in hoplite tactics and the related political changes as sudden and dramatic. They marked not only a change in warfare and political structures but also the rise of the individual and a transformation of the Homeric ethos. The key element is the substitution of the single- for the double-grip shield, which required a close formation. She placed her confidence in dating the changes to the representations in Greek vase painting, the Chigi vase above all.

The modern textbook description of how the early Greek state emerged in the wake of a hoplite revolution took shape in the decade following Lorimer’s work. This is evident in the work of Adcock and Andrewes. For his part Adcock built on the earlier work of Grundy, as well as Lorimer; he connected the Greek art of war in the seventh century with the social and political culture of the early polis. “We can see, as Aristotle saw, that it [the art of war] is in part a cause, and in part an effect, of the political development of the city-state.”
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It is unclear how the art was attained, but the epic tradition showed the historical Greeks that war had become something far different from fighting in the heroic age. War for the polis in the seventh century “meant the uniting of the armed men of the community to fight shoulder to shoulder, with an orderly, integrated valour.”
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Adcock disregards those parts of Greece which were not poleis; they not only had different forms of political organization; they also had different ways of fighting. Absent are the clashes of heroes or aristocrats. Instead of striving for individual glory, the hoplite must identify his interests with those of the polis. “This [the characteristic political form of the Greeks and its characteristic method of waging war] was to place in the field as its one dominant arm a phalanx of hoplites. I use phalanx as a convenient word to describe a body of infantry drawn up in close order in several ranks which are also close together.”
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Adcock emphasizes the importance of the shield for hoplites: “the character and use of their shields were of
the essence of their fighting in battle.” The aim of battle was to achieve a decisive victory through a contest of heavy infantry.

The effectiveness of the phalanx depends in part on skill in fighting by those in the front rank, and in part on the physical and moral support of the lines behind them. The two opposing phalanxes meet each other with clash of shield on shield and blow of spear against spear. Their momentum is increased by the impetus of the charge that precedes their meeting. If the first clash is not decisive by the superior weight and thrust of the one phalanx over the other, the fighting goes on. The later ranks supply fighters as those before them fall. At last one side gains the upper hand. Then the other phalanx breaks and takes to flight and the battle is won and lost.

Hoplite battles depend on the shock collision of heavy infantry, exclude light-armed and missile troops, follow certain “rules” of engagement, tend to be fought by farmers over farmland, and are limited in extent and decisive. “The normal battle between hoplite armies ends, after a severe clash and some fighting at close quarters, in the rout of one side or the other. Pursuit is limited; the victor remains in possession of the battlefield, as though that was what he was fighting to possess. The vanquished accepts defeat: he is given his dead to bury: the victor sets up a trophy to mark his success.” This account of hoplite strategy and tactics and the “rules” for the seventh century recalls that of Grundy for the fifth.

The recipe for victory is to have more
or
better, or more
and
better, hoplites than the opponent. Except for the successful exploitation of an advantage on the right wing—and this requires more tactical control than most generals could apply—the battle is a head-on collision all along the line. It would seem to follow that it is almost irrational to engage in battle unless the hoplite strength of the two sides approaches parity.
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Adcock lays out the simplicity and economy of the hoplite art of war. “It is hard to conceive of a method of warfare that, in peace, made a more limited call on the time and effort of most citizens of most communities.” The ritual of hoplite warfare made it possible for those who could provide their own shields to fight on equal terms with the elite of the polis. “It did not suit the ideas of an early aristocracy to provide equipment for men who could not afford to provide it for themselves, or to train such men to fight on an equality with their betters.”
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In general, the economy of hoplite warfare served the needs of the middling farmers.

Campaigns were brief. The armies, operating in the summer, wished to be home again for the harvest and the gathering of the grapes and olives. And one battle nearly always settled the business. The losses of a defeated army were almost invariably greater than those of the victors, even though pursuit, after the hard exertion of the combat, was not prolonged…. The battle was, as it were, a mass “duel,”
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a trial of strength; and the verdict of the trial was accepted. It would have seemed to the Greeks of this age folly not to know you were beaten….
Nor did they wish to press matters to the arduous task of besieging the enemy city. And so states passed from war to peace as easily, or more easily, than from peace to war.
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This version of fighting in the archaic polis contains all the essential elements that make up the orthodoxy on hoplite strategy and tactics. Adcock’s account applies to the two hundred years prior to the battle of Marathon much of what Grundy had said about the art of war in the fifth century.

In his 1956 landmark study,
The Greek Tyrants
, Andrewes emphasized the hoplite as a basic factor to explain “the age of tyrants” in Greece; he covers the period from the usurpation of Cypselus of Corinth in about 650 to the expulsion of the Peisistratids from Athens in 510. Andrewes builds on the idea of a hoplite revolution, which scholars had established during the previous century. The age of the tyrants marked the turning point in the political development of Greece, namely, the breakdown of the old political order of oppressive or inadequate aristocracies of the early seventh century; these regimes gave way before the establishment of more broadly based oligarchies. This change coincides with the introduction of new tactics in war. “At the beginning of the seventh century the Greeks changed their style of fighting and began to use the mass formation of heavy-armed infantry called hoplites…. The essential features of the change concern the type of shield, the use of the spear, and the training of a formation instead of individual fighters.”
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The tactical and ideological underpinnings of the orthodoxy espoused by Andrewes are essentially the same since Grote more than a century earlier. The hoplite marked the transition from the javelin warrior who was lightly armed and fought at close quarters with a single-grip shield and sword. “The outstanding difference between the two systems is that hoplites can only fight in formation.” The revolution in weapons and tactics, moreover, transformed Greek values and notions of
arete
. “Defensively it is clear from the nature of the shield just described that the hoplite’s safety depends on the line holding fast. This is what produces the characteristic Greek conception of courage, the picture shown to us by Tyrtaeus and Plato of the good man who keeps his place and does not give ground.”