Hoplite warfare in classical Greece was characterized by the phalanx formation, where heavily armored infantrymen (hoplites) fought in dense ranks using large round shields (hoplons) and spears. The hoplite class consisted primarily of farmers who could afford their own equipment, representing a significant political force in Greek city-states. Warfare typically followed a pattern where one city would ravage another's territory, provoking the defenders to meet in open battle, with the loser suffering disproportionately higher casualties. While hoplite equipment was designed for phalanx fighting, Greeks also employed other tactics including raiding and naval operations, and the hoplite system was not as rigidly confined to phalanx combat as traditionally assumed.
Hoplites and Warfare in Classical Greece - Athens and SpartaAñadido:
Hello there. Today it's about a week since Athens and Sparta, the rivalry that shaped the Greek world. Or I'm sorry, I never quite remember the subtitle of my own books. Usually because as in this case, it isn't one that I came up with. It's something the publishers have worked on and how they feel best presents the book. So it's out in the UK now and Commonwealth. It should be getting there. It'll be released in the United States in I think about 10 days time. around about the time of this video being posted 10 days or so from when I'm making it, the basic books edition should be coming out in the United States and um it'll be available to buy there. It's exactly the same book apart from uh the you know the the title pages and who's listed as actually publishing it. So, I wanted to talk a bit more about the book for the American release and rather like the video I did for the British release instead of doing another broad summary of what I'm trying to do with it and the aim of covering a long fifth century BC looking at the relationship between Athens and Sparta who are allies against the Persians and then become rivals, bitter enemies later on in the fifth century, barely a generation on. And not only that, but they're looking for Persian money to fight each other. Um, is a strange uh twist of fate. That's the story on which the book hangs. And through that, I want to be able to talk more. And the aim is to present an introduction to classical Greece and classical Greek history. to give an idea of who the Greeks were, what citystates were like, what sort of size they were, and particularly the rival systems in Athens and Sparta, and how these made them strong, but also gave them weaknesses as well. So, that's the broad theme of the book, and I'll be popping up on all sorts of podcasts and YouTube channels and the like, and hopefully there'll be some reviews as time goes on.
And you always hope the reviewer will get this the point of what the book's about rather than wanting it to be about something completely different. But again, it's a free country and people do what they like. Today, I thought I'd talk about warfare. Now, I talked about navies and the tri in the last video.
We're going to talk mainly about land warfare today, although the naval aspect will come into it quite a few times because this is Greece and you can't really ignore that. I'm not today going to go into immense detail about the mechanics of hoplight battles. We will touch on that a little bit, but that's something I'll leave for the future and we will deal with in more detail and the whole question of the whether or not theos the um the pushing the shove um whether that was real or uh more rhetorical in the descriptions or somewhere between the two um and whether the various models for this have worked or not. Now, thanks for um the comment that put um mentioned the French experiment of a year or so ago where they managed to get 400 reenactors to look at the breakup of a fallank and the route and how things work. That looks fascinating. I haven't had a chance to go through that at length, but um I hadn't noticed it before. I just wasn't aware of it. So, that'll be very interesting to look at, go through and brush off my school boy French and see how well I can understand. But, as I say, today we're not so much looking at that. We're more looking at how warfare worked, what the goals were, what the means were, particularly in the fifth century BC that we're going to be dealing with in the book in more detail.
But also, I want to try and again, as I do in the the story, go back and say, well, how did we get there? Why are things like that? To what extent are the Greeks doing things in a way that is culturally specific to them? They're doing this because they're Greeks rather than they're doing this because this simply makes sense in all warfare, particularly all warfare with the technologies of the time.
So, we really have to go back and closely tied up with the city state is the hotlight. Now, again, although the word crops up in the ancient sources, the modern use is much more precise than um ancient authors tend to use it. This is based on the um hoplon which was one of the names for the round distinctive shield used by many though not quite all. There was some still using the archive shield which was um less concave and had sections out of either side. Uh certainly in the earlier periods and judging from the vase paintings in archaic grease this is quite common as well. Because it's not metal it doesn't survive. So unless we see it artistically we're very unlikely to find one and haven't so far. whereas you do get the bronze plates from the front of shields and very occasionally traces of the wood.
But to be honest, the the most common um word for shield in Greek is aspis. Um so it's we call a hoplight a hoplight and then we mean something very specifically. But the Greek sources can talk about Persian and other and Egyptian hoplights that aren't Greek that don't have all the associations that we impose on them from the modern perspective. But you can see these representations here. You've got the Neriad monument which is 4th century BC Asia Minor, not by a Greek people, but by those who have been influenced by and in turn influenced the Greeks. No one's quite sure of the origin of the specific bits we consider of hoplight equipment, but essentially when we're talking about a hoplight, we're talking about a man wearing bronze helmet usually often.
Look a bit more at this later on. Uh one of these like a Corinthian type which covers most of the head, leaves relatively small uh eye slots open and some for breathing but covers the ears completely back of the head. Um there were other types but that something of variation very similar designs that are um do enclose most of the head and do restrict both visibility and particularly hearing quite considerably are there from early on and last through though by the latter part of the fifth century and particularly into the fourth century those become less common to simpler types that leave more of the face exposed.
you have some form of curass very often if you could afford it a bronze curass.
You might have greavves on the lower legs. Uh again, usually bronze. Um there were other pieces of armor. There were arm guards, wrist guards, there were thigh guards. These are much rarer in the archaeological record and tend to be earlier. They're more 7th century uh and sixth rather than into the the fifth century BC. Um then of course the shield itself which is the the big deal the round shield that is concave that depending on your interpretation allows you um to push and also be pushed from behind without doing yourself a mischief.
Again that's coming into the very much the mechanic side of things which we'll we'll mostly leave but we need to to mention a little bit. And this is held by distinctive grip with um your hand grasping near the rim a hand grip and then going back and near the elbow there is a a loop through which means so you're spreading the weight of what's a pretty large these are about 3T in diameter um potentially very heavy but it does rather depend on the type of wood used and the thickness of wood used. The bronze covering is much more decorative, though it did add some flexibility. Did have did have some defensive um capacity, but it wasn't primarily the main strength of the shield. The main strength comes from the wood. You could also rest it on your shoulder and take some of the weight that way, press from it.
You might have a sword. In fact, you almost certainly would of some sort if you could afford it. But that's your secondary weapon to a spear or in the earlier archaic period, spears. Uh, two seemed very very common in the early vase paintings. Um, and things like the cheeky vase that we'll we'll look at a little bit later on.
That's your main weapon. The spear is held onehanded. It's around about 8t long. It has a usually by the later periods an iron head that is reasonably large but not huge. It has at the back the the lizard killer the um counterwe it allows you to stick the spear in the ground and it stands upright while you're not holding it all the time. Um there is a theory that the spear is is balanced so that um the midpoint is actually although the sort of medium point for weight wise is quite back towards the the rear part of the spear. Therefore more of it projects beyond giving you more reach. Um makes sense uh difficult to prove but it does make sense. Um you have something that is reasonably light but gives the hoplight a reach for stabbing.
Um when there are two spears there is at least some are depicted with throwing loops which suggests that early on at least some are designed for throwing.
The later spear that becomes more typical and seems to be often used on its own. You could throw but then you've thrown away your main arm. It could also break which means you either use the butt spike as a replacement but obviously it's going to be a lot stubbier by then or you're drawing your sword then um which are either the fairly curved type we tend to call the cppus or you've got the straighter um relatively short. They're not using particularly long slashing swords um even when they are used for slashing they're not huge blades.
So you have this for a Greek hoplight.
Again, there is simply not enough archaeological evidence from burials, from skeletal evidence to be absolutely sure, but estimates about the average height for a Greek man in classical Greece range from about 5'4 to 5'7.
So, a 3-ft shield on somebody that size is their main protection. This is offering an awful lot of protection to the man himself. um because it projects a little bit either side, there is also at least a sense of security or depending on how close you're standing, some security to man to a man standing on either side. Now, one of the first things people tend to learn about hoplights and fallances is the belief that every man felt that his own right side, where he's holding his spear, was more vulnerable than the left that was fully protected, but his shield that way was projecting a bit to the left, and therefore tended to edge a bit to the right to get under the left side of the man next to him's shield to get some protection from that. and that as a result the entire fallank had a tendency as it advanced to drift to the right as everybody was doing this. It makes a lot of sense. It sounds reasonable. It is worth emphasizing that that comes from one passage of Thusidities. It is not mentioned anywhere else in ancient literature. So we're basing an awful lot on one observation. On the other hand, Thusidities was a shrewd chap, a contemporary, knew something about warfare. So, you know, the odds are it's right, but it's one of those things. It again reminds us of how flimsy the supports for many of our theories tend to be.
So, that's a little bit about what the hoplight looked like. But the question is, who is he? That is more important to us at the moment. And the hoplight in the Greek city states from the archaic period onwards is a man who has provided his own equipment. So he is a man who is able to infor a afford this paniply which at its bare minimum you could have a shield and a spear but you'd probably want a helmet next because your head is obviously vulnerable and above the shield and then all the other bits are very helpful to have and you'd like if you possibly could. So it's not ruinously expensive but it is not cheap either. And if you go for the full sort of Gucci look with um the arm guards, the the thigh guards as well as your greaves and everything and even sometimes uh protection for your feet.
Then with everything else that's getting pretty expensive, especially as the many of the curasses, the bronze ones in particular, the greavves, they are really designed to fit one person. So they will be terribly uncomfortable and not necessarily as effective if it wasn't made for you. Um, so this is a significant investment, but it is not exclusive in the sense that only a fabulously wealthy aristocrat could afford it. in the sense you get that if you go back to Homer and the Iliad, now you can argue about how closely this is reflecting reality and if so when uh the reality of what period, then um your hero needs to turn up not just with his spectacular armor, helmet, shield, spears, swords, but his chariot as well and the horses and the chariot here as well as you know his coming ships and all this.
The emphasis in the Iliad and to an extent in the Odyssey is in the is on the aristocratic warrior. Now the others are there. You've got Achilles and his Mermadons. You have references to Netor and others instructing how the the Greeks should marshall their their wider forces. And you have to be a little bit careful because it's a bit like a movie today in that you'll get your grand battle scene and setup, but then the camera will increasingly focus on your heroes, your main characters doing their stuff, and you've got very little idea of what's going on elsewhere. The Iliad is rather like that. It's telling you about what happens to the important people in the battles. The argument is then over whether the masses that are described as forming up in close order. So close in fact that later in later centuries Palibius will cite the Iliad as the best way to describe how closely formed a pike fallank should be. He can see a connection between the two. Are these mass formations going forward clashing with each other and playing an important perhaps even decisive role in the battle? Or is it really all down to our heroes who basically run a muck? You know, somebody goes on a killing spree, kills lots of of oneliners, these characters who are just introduced as uh so and so from, you know, the proud tamer of horses and but even that didn't save him from the Darden Lance of Stalwood Hector, whatever it might be.
you know, you're basically there as cannon fod or the people that Clint Eastwood would mose down in a spaghetti western uh to prove that he's good and then later on you'll clash with the big baddy or the big hero and then things might get more serious and it might get dangerous for you. But most of them can go and kill lots of also rans amongst the the hero class, the basilus um without running much risk.
But hoblights from the start are something different. there are much more of them and they are not such um so wealthy so much of an elite. There is however a political connection that even people like Aristotle were talking about in the 4th century BC looking back and saw the a close connection between changes in the political systems of cities and with warfare and in the rise of the hoplight and the fax and then later on would connect this to the importance of the fleet at Athens that made Athens much more of a democracy because it meant that um your rowers the lowest class their vote really mattered because they were an important part of the city's strength when it came to warfare and projecting its power.
Lots of people have debated where hoplights come from and where the fax formation that again is something where scholars use a Greek term rather more rigidly and specifically than the Greeks tend to themselves because the idea is that hoplights have to fight according to some scholars in this dense formation because they're worried about this you know your exposed right side that talks about and the argument is we'll come back to that the equipment is so heavy, so cumbersome that you need the support of all your mates around you um because otherwise you are simply too vulnerable.
This is then tied up to the idea that hoplights need to appear in numbers that they are there to fight in a mass fallank.
So there's this connection with numbers with political importance because the idea is and it's way it's presented is sometimes a sort of chicken and egg situation in that hoplights become important in warfare because the way to beat an enemy falank is to have a fallank of your own with lots of hoplights in it and the more hoplights you've got the better they are the more chance you've got of winning. If people are going to fight on behalf of the state then they will want a stake in running that state. So they will want the vote. they will want more influence, the ability to serve as magistrates at least in some capacity. And the idea is that you've had all sorts of theories.
One was that tyrants relied on popular support from the hoplight class.
Therefore, they made hoplights more important. Um you even have you have the extreme um idea that well somebody comes along invents the hoplight shield this way of fighting this distinctive equipment and from that suddenly these people are good and important on the battlefield therefore they demand a say in politics.
The other way of looking at it which seems to make more sense you know rather than somebody sitting in their their workshop one day and thinking haha you know if I made a shield like that I could change society. um it doesn't really ring true. The odds are that you're making equipment for a type of warfare that's already developed or that you can already see as making sense and will fit with what goes on and that this is a better way of doing it rather than trying to prevent invent something from scratch.
So you have this becomes available, more people use it, the hoplights become more important.
But it may also be a reflection that you have as cities grow in size as they become more stable which has happened since about 800 BC the recovery from the collapse of the masonian system centuries before the Greek dark ages as they're sometimes termed although again like the the early medieval dark ages the terms not so fashionable these days a period about which we know very little where it's very clear that population settlement size drops off dramatically there's no trace of literacy So you have this this period where things seem a lot more primitive, a lot more locally focused, a lot smaller scale. As cities start to develop, cities grow bigger, their populations grow bigger, people within those cities grow wealthier, you have more that are capable of affording this sort of equipment. or perhaps before that, fighting and being willing to try fighting in a more conspicuous way, keeping up with the heroes, keeping up with the few individuals have been able to dominate warfare in a home style. And that therefore this group a starts to think, well, I'd like to buy something that would equip myself better for this, but also simply becomes more important. And whether it's through revolution, whether it's through backing a tyrant who uses his group, or simply that an aristocracy that begins as a small aristocracy keeps getting bigger because more and more people are wealthy enough to fight in a way that matters.
And that your 20 or so really good aristocrats can't stand up to the enemy city's army of a couple of hundred people who are not individually as good, but fight collectively and are determined and are motivated.
some sort of mixture is probably um the most plausible interpretation of how this hoplight revolution occurs. Many scholars connect the hoplights equipment, particularly the shields, so closely with falance fighting, which is often then defined in a very narrow way, in a very specific way. Um, to do with a masked formation that might well shove, literally shove the enemy out the way and see the equipment as not useful for anything else. that you have this sense in a lot of accounts of a very quick revolution, this very sudden appearance and suddenly if you want to fight war on a serious scale, if you're going to go into a land battle, you need hoplights, you need a fallax, which means you need a bigger city. You need this political revolution that's accompanied by this military revolution.
Again, the problem as with so much of ancient history and this large chunk of Greek history is that the sources are appalling. And much of this relies on assumptions about the tactics and the equipment involved and the belief that this is only good in fighting in one particular way that our hoplight. Let's have a look at there's a a nice Peter Connelly picture here again. He's this supposed to be a Spartan of around about 500 BC in a in a fairly good idea of a fairly full paniply. In his case, he's got a shield on his back. Um that somebody encumbered with all this gear is not going to be too nimble, too quick to move around and therefore relies on his comrades. Comes back to this idea.
You have to fight as a group because if you fight as an individual, you're very vulnerable because you can't see a darn thing that's going on and you can't hear any instructions or warnings. and that the nimble skirmisher might well be able to nibble away at you, throw missiles at you, shoot bows at you, or creep up behind you and bang you on the back of the head.
There are some problems with this in that clearly, again, it makes more sense if the equipment is developed to match a style of fighting that is already in existence or well underway. It might not have reached the ultimate expression of that form of fighting, but it's unlikely to be something that is just invented.
um you know you don't sit down the tank is created in the first world war to solve a problem of how do you get across no man's land across barbed wire into the enemy trenches without getting machine gunned um it isn't just whilst you had HD wells and people like that before the war talking about land ships and you know imagining these giant machines dominating future battlefields on the whole people don't sit down and build something where there isn't an obvious use for it so particularly in an economy like this where you're spending quite quite a lot of resources and there's considerable skill gone in the the shaping of helmets like this or the greaves or the armor as well as the cost of the materials themselves then you're only going to do that if you feel it is worthwhile and you're unlikely to take the plunge with somebody having this really bright idea that hey we could do this. So small developments in shape, design, how you try to use things. Yes, that makes sense. That can develop fairly um organically and people can innovate in that respect. But the basic pattern tends to be there. One thing you can say for certain, all of this becomes possible because during the archaic period, the Greek cities become better off, more prosperous, and ultimately the development of civilization and urban life, although revival of it in a sense because you've had something different, but nevertheless quite organized in the masonian period. It is made possible by the fact that you are producing sufficiently large surpluses of food and all the basic staples of life that a significant proportion of your population doesn't have to work on the land or in the production of these these essentials that you have people who can start to trade more who can start to spend time in politics and who can afford equipment like this. So so many aspects of the flourishing of Greek culture comes because of this economic um underpinning essentially that people are producing enough food that you can trade in it. You can support it. People can have luxuries.
You can trade it for other things. You can afford other goods. You can afford to spend your time doing more than simply keeping farming at subsistence level. Now, this is something that although most scholars do understand in a basic way that sometimes when they analyze how much could be produced by what they might consider the typical farm owned by a hoplight or how much you would need, how large an area of land and what you would need to produce to be wealthy enough to be a hoplight. They often tend to have these very minimalist assumptions as to what land can produce.
Largely because most scholars have never done anything practical. And you know, I'm not a farmer. I can't claim to uh have done all these things directly but I do at least understand all that there are far more variables than we tend to allow in how productive somewhere will be and that the uncertainty of it all in that rain on the wrong day or whether it's too early or too late can cause all sorts of problems. high wind storms, too much heat, too much um dust in the air, all sorts of things can cause problems that even within a small area, the microclimate can affect what happens.
And the individual events, again, we tend to talk very easily about climate and how it smooths out. Seen from a higher perspective that on the whole this period is warmer, is colder, but if you're actually living there, you don't experience climate, you experience weather in a more personal and direct way. That's what happens every day. And even in periods like the early middle ages when things were warmer um or the the 17th century, the the sort of early modern period when it goes colder for for centuries and end in Europe, you get cold winters and you get mild winters, you get hot summers and you get cool summers in just the same way we do. The climate is the overall balance as to how often these things are likely to happen.
But even then you know some people can beat the odds whether for good or bad in what actually they experience. So underlying it all and this comes back to this sense of hoplights being men who can afford to provide their own equipment and overwhelmingly they are farmers. So hoplights are very much tied in with the agricultural system with the exploitation of the land and again I'm sorry I don't know where the microphone will be picking up the church bells that started. There's uh a church just across the road and I think they've got an event on um an open day or something today and they're doing some bell ringing. So, we might get some of that uh on and off. Um for those interested in their their Second World War history, I I can't remember whether I've said this or not before, but it's it's the church where Guy Gibson, the the leader of the Dam Busters, got married. Um so, you know, that's one of the local connections.
Anyway, um Bell's there in the background. I I can't do anything about them, but hopefully they're not too bad.
And um for all those who've been having a go at the uh the microphone I've been using, this is a new one, so we'll see how we go now and whether this this pleases people more. Uh the odd thing is with one of the other ones I've using is that you get this feedback only when you watch it on certain sources. Um which I don't quite know how that that works or not. But then, as I've explained many times, this thing is all done on a shoestring. When I've got the spare time to do it and do videos, so it is always going to be a little bit basic. Um, and I'll try my best. But when I can see a way of making things better, I will try to do it. And hopefully the lighting is now better than it used to be, less dependent on it being sunny outside, which ironically enough, uh, when I thought, I better do a video this afternoon, it's actually a gorgeous day.
So, um I'll be fighting the my usual long- winded instinct with the other instinct, thinking that actually it'd be really nice just to go for a walk cuz I've got uh So, we'll see how long this video lasts. But, uh knowing me, don't hold your breath.
There is this close connection between hoplights and the agricultural year, the agricultural system. The majority of hoplights are farmers. Now in you go back to the Iliad, the majority of the heroes are land owners or their princes or their kings. They are people who live off the the fat of the land, get the best fruits because they protect their community or they scare the living daylights out of their community or possibly both. And they protect that community from raiders, from attacks, from war. And because they are willing to fight amongst the promcoy, the men who go first, the front fighters, they fight in a conspicuously impressive and dangerous way. So they don't just take risks, they are very good at fighting.
And that is what is supposed to justify their prominence in society. As we come into the hoplight era, what you have are men who own sufficient property to have a stake in wanting the state to do well and also in wanting to protect that property and are willing to fight and um if necessary get wounded and die to protect that as a community. There is a great emphasis on a community which is much um that's really appears later. It isn't really there in Homer in the same way where it's all very much individual pride, individual reputation. After all, if you think the Iliad's all about Achilles feeling that he's been slighted by Agamemnon and shamed in a sense and that he fights too well to do that. So um well if you get to the poet Titus in the 7th century the Spartan poet one of only two known uh Spartan poets whose work only survives in fragments. It is a fair thing for a good man to fall and die fighting in the van for his native land. Whereas to leave his city and his rich fields and go a begging is of all things the most miserable. Wandering with mother dear and aged father with little children and wedded wife. For hateful shall such a one be amongst all those whom to whom he shall come in bondage to want and loath some penury.
Dust shame his lineage bely his noble beauty followed by all evil and dishonor. Now if so little thought be taken of a wander and so little honor, respect or pity, let us fight with a will for this land and die for our children and never spare our lives.
Titus wrote to inspire the Spartans to courage in battle. He doesn't assume that it's going to be easy. He assumes that battle is damn dangerous and you're risking getting killed, getting wounded, but that it's worth it because if you lose the war, then you lose your home.
Now, there's an irony here in that the Spartans obviously remember themselves as Dorian immigrants to the Pelpineese conquerors who have conquered the Greeks who live there already and turned them into the survile class, the surf class, the Hellets um in the main and some of other uh status as allies of Perryoi, their neighbors. Um but the majority of the Hellets who work land for their Spartan overlords give half of what they produce. Das talks about to um their basically their owner and their landlord and then he doesn't have to work. He can train to be to fight. He can train to be a good citizen. He can participate in communal life. There is a great emphasis in Sparta on the community. But it's very strong in Tatas this sense that you are not fighting just for yourself and your own personal honor though the consequences of losing will be bad for you personally. There's an irony in a sense the Spartans talking about well you know what happens if you lose and in a sense they could be referring to any of those hellets from that community that didn't stay that fled and went off as vagrants to other countries.
So he wants the young men to fight shoulderto-shoulder.
Uh begin not foul flight nor yet be afraid. Make the heart in your breast both great and stout. Never shrink when you fight the foe. and the elder sort whose knees are no longer nimble do not fly um to leave them fallen to earth.
But it's a foul thing for an elder to fall in the van. So for the youngsters to run away and while the younger uh flees the old man, his head white, his beard hory, breathing forth his stout soul in the dust with his This is a very archaic translation I found on Perseus or something like that online. It's private. So basically it talks about man being thrust through the groin or into the um you know the genital area um and dying with his his guts and all his other stuff um bleeding into the the dust um flesh naked while and young man who's you know good-looking long as noble bloom of youth I marvel be he for men to behold so he's saying even if you're young and you look good yes life is great but um and men envy you women want to sleep with you um Nevertheless, you're honored. It's better for you to die and leave a good reputation than flee and be shamed. But it is, while there is the individual element, how does each one of us cope? It is all for the community. If we stick together, we'll win. We'll do better. Um, so let every man hold his shield straight towards the the front. Uh, making life his enemy, black spirits of death, dear as the rays of the sun. So, you know, imagine yourself already dead and then you'll you'll fight better at that sort of mentality. Um you uh let's see. So we'll skip on go through this. You tasted both of the fleeing and pursuing lads and had more than your fill of either. Those who abiding shoulder go shoulderto-shoulder it should be go with a will into the melee and the van. And of these if he's also arguing if you go forward, if you stick together as a group and you go forward and fight, far fewer are killed um than people afterwards. For it's those that run away. If you give into fear and your courage collapses, then it's you're running and you are much more vulnerable for at the end. For it pleasant it is in dreadful warfare to pierce the midriff of a flying man.
Disgraced is the dead that lith in the dust with a spear point in his back. So let each man bite his lip and abide firm set a stride upon the ground, covering with the belly of his broad buckler his shield, thighs and legs below, and breast and shoulders above. Let him brandish the Massie spear in his right hand. Let him wave the dire crest upon his head. Let him learn how to fight by doing douty deeds. Not stand shield in hand beyond the missiles. Nay, let each man close the foe with his lone long spear, or else with his sword, wound and take an enemy, setting foot beside foot, resting shield against shield, crest beside crest, helm beside helm. Fight his man breast to best with sword or long spear in hand. And you also, you light armed, crouch you on either side beneath the shield and fling your great hurlstones and throw against them your smooth javelins in your place beside the men of heavier armament.
So we go back to earlier. He talks about how much more likely you are to get killed if you run away because if you expose your back, the enem is encouraged and you're vulnerable. You're not protecting yourself. This of course fits with one of the basic truths of ancient warfare and indeed battle in a lot of periods, but particularly in the ancient world. The loser always suffers diff disproportionately higher losses than the victor because most people who die in ancient battles die when they've the army's broken and when they're running away. That's when it's much easier to kill the enemy. It's probably also when many people are more willing to kill the enemy than when the enemy is coming straight at them. Uh you know, it's a little bit like the uh never turn your back on a a dog that's aggressive. If you can uh keep looking at him, there's less chance of him attacking. If you turn your back, then that seems to be inviting. uh them to pounce and it's true with a lot of other uh carnivorous animals as well. That sense that it's you know you you can still be backing down and showing a degree of submission which will satisfy him but you're looking you're showing that you're also weary as well.
So before we move on from Titus the um there's the classic passage of you know setting foot against foot shield against shield crest against crest helmet against helmet. Notice though, we'll come back to this when we look at the mechanics of Hoplight Battle. He still emphasizes fighting. This isn't He's not talking about shoving, pushing as your main thing. He's talking about fighting.
Even if you are pressing the shield against the other, that's not the main thing you're doing. It's part of going close and fighting your enemy face to face. Anyway, we'll come back to that another time because various people have interpreted that in different ways.
He also however titus is talking about hoplights in the main encouraging them to go further forward. You know, don't let the young ones run away because they feel they're too pretty to die and abandon the poor old BS who get killed then and die in particularly gruesome fashion. He also interestingly talks about the light arm, the skirmishers, the ones who haven't got the expensive hoplight equipment and talks about them crouching behind the shield perhaps of the hoplight or their own in the same way you get um in the Iliad. You will have an archer crouching sometimes behind the the shield of the the main warrior. Um you sometimes get this depicted in art. Um and throw your stones, hurl your javelins in your place beside the men of heavier armor. Now again, you can interpret that more than one way as scholars have done.
Some would see it as largely figurative in the sense that yes, you your light armed troops support the hoplights and the fallank, but they don't do it in the middle of the fallank. they're not literally crouching a bit behind the shield or sheltering behind the wellprotected hoplight and then nipping out to throw things at um similar opponents that you have the fallank in the center and then your skirmishes are out on either side or around the back um doing their thing which does seem to be the pattern in later battles which um when we do get descriptions at least is how you how it's easiest to interpret those passages. Um others would see it as more literal. They would argue that as you can see in the Nerad monument here again you've got an archer crouching behind or covered by a hoplight and shooting forward.
One interesting thing before we move on is that that makes it clear that when Tatus is writing in the 7th century, probably during the final subjugation of Msinia, this area to the west of the the mountain range by Sparta, that there are Spartans out there, citizens who are worth encouraging who are not of the hotlight class, who don't have that equipment, and who fight, as the poorer tend to do in any period of Greek history, fight a skirmishes.
Those don't appear again afterwards. And it may be that once Msinia was finally conquered and more land was available to distribute that basically all Spartan citizens got sufficiently large-sized plot of land to become hoplights and fight in that capacity because from then on that's how all Spartans seem to operate.
So you have your hoplight class and it's associated with the land. In the Spartan case, it's indirect. You don't actually work your farm. You are given your farm.
Depending on how you interpret how Spartans actually live, you may not even see it very often, though I'm a little bit skeptical about that. Um, and others do the work. They provide the food which they give to you that allows you to pay your way in the communal mess of other Spark and citizens and have the equipment, have the leisure to train your body and train more specifically for war so that when the state calls on you to go off and fight, you are very good at it and you are better prepared, better trained than anybody from any of the other Greek states, hence the dominance of the Spartans for so long.
Um, it would it's it's worth mentioning that some of the stories about the training of Spartan youngsters emphasizes stealth and nighttime operations as much as face to face slamming away and slugging away at the enemy. So, we'll come back to that in a little bit. But there there might be other types of warfare as well going on.
So, um, oh, the other one is finally with Tatus before we finish with him. There's one last quote where he goes through um all the the attributes that nobility um elsewhere tend to celebrate that it's natural for a Greek aristocrat to think as good. So talking about being good at at in a race, athletics, wrestling, um you have the strength and stature of a cyclops, the swiftness of the Thracian north wind, uh if you're better looking than famously handsome man, richer than Midas, uh you're greater king than Pelop son of Tantalus, uh were very convincing in your speech, very smooth. um all that fame is fine, but if you don't have warlike strength, if you're not good at fighting, and that fighting means fighting for the community as a whole, then I don't value any of that. So all the things that everyone says are really great and that every Greek man, particularly wealthy man, would like to be like, then that doesn't matter according to Tutus, unless you're actually good. Unless you've endured the sight of bloody slaughter, stood nigh and reached forth to strike the foe.
This is prowess. This is the noblest prize and the fairest for a lad to win in the world. A common good this both for the city and all her people. When a man standeth firm in the forefront without ceasing, making heart and soul to abide, forgetth foul flight altogether, and hotens the words to him that standeth by. Such a man is good in war. He quickly turns the savage host of the enemy, stems the wave of battle with a will, and he that falls in the van and loses life. fighting in this way is a glory to his city and his countrymen and his father with many a frontwise wound through the breast and breastplate through his shield. Um he's lamented he's bewailed by the young and the old lamented by the city in general by the community his grave his children conspicuous among men and uh the line his name is persisted he gets this reputation. So although he might be dead, the reputation lives forever more.
Um, so it's this idea that you have this honor, but it's honor as judged by the community. It's far less the individual prowess of the heroes in Homer.
It's much more this is someone belonging to a city state with his fellow citizens, how they should behave. And it's however many talents you may have, if you're not good in war, if you're not brave, none of them count.
And if you die, you will be well remembered. But if you escape, and if you survive, you'll have the honor of all, young as well as old. Uh come to your death after much happiness. Um you'll stand out among your people. Uh none that will do you any hurt in honor or in right. They'll yield a place to you, the young and the peers. So each man should this day aspire to never relaxing from war. So Tatus is trying to emphasize the most important thing, the thing the community needs most and should value the most is the man who will go forth, risk his life, maybe even lose his life, but fight on the behalf of the community and fight with others like him. Again, it's not that you've got to go and stand out ahead of everybody else. It's that as many as possible, if you go out, do this together, and you all go and fight.
Spartans would sing Tatus's poems in preparation for battle. And as you know, communal singing is a big deal in Sparta. It is very interesting that he never assumes that men are brave. He always thinks they need this urging.
They need to convince himself. He he knows that battle's nasty and that this is dangerous, that the instincts are telling you not to do this, but that is important that you go on because the price of victory is um sorry, the price of defeat is so terrible that you have to win.
So with Sparta you have landlords rather than direct farmers. In other cities you have men who tend to own enough land that they can provide the equipment to equip themselves as hoplights. Now various arguments there's some very good stuff by Hans Vanes about Athens looking at the different classes established by Solon in the sixth century and trying to say well if they own this much property again it comes back to this estimate of how much could that land produce how wealthy could they be? how many would be be actually hoplights uh which were the classes that formed this group.
There's so much conjecture within this because we simply don't know and as I say scholars are often a little bit impractical.
Most have no sense at all of how any form of business or or commerce occurs uh other than in the abstract and the real world isn't isn't like that. So um you have to be quite careful before being dogmatic. There is a good chance that in the majority of Greek cities, those who were formally recognized and expected to serve as hoplights were a minority of the citizen male population, but probably a very substantial minority. So, you know, you might be talking 30 40% perhaps even more.
What's harder to know is whether as a regular thing, other people who didn't have that status would go along, provide themselves with the basic, get the spear, get the shield, maybe a a helmet, even if it was leather or something like that, some basic protection, and turn up as well, perhaps finding themselves more in the rear ranks than in the front. Um there is still an emphasis and you get this on tombstones in Athens and elsewhere on being one of the proccoy being one of the front fighters invoking this sort of old heroic term from Homer's day that um and that might start to refer to the ones who are in the front rank or two and also the ones that when they're fighting are aggressive enough to hack their way or carve their way into the the enemy falank and keep pushing forward. And in some cases, since we see this on their tombstone, they might not uh make it through because obviously this is risky.
So there is a link between farmers and hoplights and most hoplights are farmers. Not all because the bigger the city gets somewhere like Athens, you'll have lots of people with sufficient property who are no longer directly connected with the land and working on it. But the majority will still be farmers.
that then translates into a type of warfare that again comes back to this connection with the agricultural year.
Other than the Spartans, most people are part-time soldiers who serve out of duty to the state, out of obligation to the state and to prove that they should be valued by the state to justify the fact that they get the vote, that they matter, they are people of significance.
Again, go back to Titus. I know it's slightly different with the Spartans where he's talking about if you gain a good reputation in war, you will be respected because you're fighting with your alongside your neighbors, your relatives. Um, people know how you behave and honor or dishonor you accordingly.
If you're a farmer who needs to be busy on the land and who while you probably have slaves and perhaps hired labor as well, nevertheless, you do at least some of the work and you supervise most of it closely.
You're not someone who can afford to go off to war for long periods of time, for months on end, let alone years on end.
You need to be busy. You need to keep working your land to stay in existence, support your family, support yourself, maintain your status.
So what you have is the stereotype that gets reflected in passages like this in Heroditus where Greek warfare takes on this distinct seasonal pattern when it's a war fought between cities where they muster their hoplights the whoever's the aggressor whoever decided they've got a grudge against another city marches towards the uh other city which might not be very far away. is probably at most a couple of days away, but sometimes might be even closer than that, especially in the case of many of the smaller communities. But, you know, remember Plataya, longtime enemy of thieves, is 8 miles away from thieves.
And the surprise assault theans launched that that um precipitates the Pelpeneisian war rather earlier than the Spartans had planned um and in a way that they didn't like that occurs overnight. You know, it's it's a matter of hours to get to the enemy. Okay, that's special circumstance you're rushing. But nevertheless, there are a lot of cases where these are you're not having to go very far to find your enemy. But Heroditus presents a a Persian view of this gives the words to a Persian commander advising um Xerxes before the invasion. You have Bardonius telling yet wars the Greeks do wage and as I learn most sensously they do it in their wrong-headedness and folly. When they've declared war against each other, they come down to the fairest and most level ground that they can find. And there they fight. So the victors come not off without great harm. And of the vanquished, I say no uh not so much as a word, for they are utterly destroyed.
Yet speaking as they do the same language, they should end their disputes by the means of heralds and messengers, and by any way, rather than fighting, or if needs must that they war against each other, they should each dis they should discover each way his strongest defense lies, and there make his attempt. This Greek custom, then is not a good one.
That's very much a caricature of how Greeks like to see how they fought because there's an element of pride in it as well that we do things in a straightforward way. We meet in open battle and you know we prove who's best, who's right by a very quick clash of arms.
in a sense the standard and for a long time the the the orthodoxy and it's still to a significant extent true though not quite as simple as this I think in the opinion of most now is that you had this pattern of Greek warfare where there would become a grudge between two cities or perhaps alliances one would decide to muster an army march across to the other's territory once there they would begin to devastate the farms Um now uh Victor Davis Hansen's warfare and agriculture in classical Greece um which I think was based on his his doctoral thesis and was probably his first book looked at this in detail and came to the conclusion based on the difficulty as you know the experience of farming in California of how stubborn a lot of trees can be and how difficult it is to get rid of vines. um worked out how in practical terms a how long it takes to damage many of the most important aspects of the farms of Greece in this period. You know, to start to cut down the olive trees, the vine trees, um looked at how difficult it is. You've got to if you're going to damage grain, if you've got wheat or barley growing, it'll burn, but it'll only really burn for a fairly short time just before the harvest. Otherwise, it doesn't burn readily. You could turn up and harvest it and take it away from the owners that way. But all of these things require considerable manpower, time, and effort to do. And what seems to happen in the Greek case is that the enemy turn up, start devastating the lands, as it's described, start spreading ruin. Within a matter of days, if not even in the same day, the defenders come out from behind their city walls and form their own fallanks up, challenge the attackers to battle. The attackers agree in sort of almost a a mutually accepted area.
They tend the battles tend to occur in similar places in fairly level uh open territory because there's not too much of that in a lot of Greece. Therefore, there there was a tendency for battles to occur in the same place or much the same place time after time. It's rather like, you know, poor old Belgium and the low countries. It's just there on the invasion route between whoever's to the east, whoever's to the west. Um, so it gets caught up in so many conflicts, willing or not, and that then they fight a fall battle.
Each side forms up its fall. There's very little maneuvering beforehand. They form up. They charge towards each other.
The two fallances clash. Might be a hard slog, might be a quick victory, but eventually one side or the other breaks.
The victors pursue them a bit, kill quite a few of them as they're running away, but they don't really have cavalry in any numbers, fresh reserves, fresh troops to go and hunt the enemy down and kill lots of them. So, it's bad for the losers, but it's not always as catastrophic. It's certainly not as catastrophic as uh this passage of Heroditus is suggesting. And then the victors march home having proved their point whether it's back to the city if they were the defenders or back to the wherever they've attacked and that's it.
There would be some negotiation to retrieve your own dead something again you need to do quickly because if this is occurring late summer or in the summer in the heat of um Greece those bodies are going to decompose very very quickly. So going and asking the enemy could we have our dead back that was an acknowledgement that you've lost and was widely seen as such. The victors would erect a monument a trophy on the battlefield. They're having granted permission for the uh the losers to collect their dead and then it would have proved a point but beyond that sometimes the losers might lose a bit of territory and that might be occupied but more often than not it was more a question of pride and prestige. Um though again there are cases when you know the Athenians in the early stage of the democracy cross over to Yuboa and Chalkis and they confiscate a large amount of territory and give it to Athenian settlers. So you could lose stuff you could lose territory and many of the disputes between all cities tend to be over border areas. So again, we don't know many details, but there's been this long running on andoff conflict with between Athens and Maggara over the island of Salamus and um you have things like this that seem to go on generation after generation or give that impression and are not and even when finally one side wins the others might still dream of getting it back.
So this in a sense is the the simple view of hoplight warfare that hoplights are predominantly farmers. They are people who cannot afford to go on campaign for a long time. So they don't really want to fight a long war of maneuver. There's also something else.
There is an argument over precisely when most Greek cities acquire city walls.
Some seem to get them in the archaic period, others later on. The majority do seem to fortify to at least some extent fairly early on. It seems to be built fairly quickly.
Sparta is of course an exception and you know they will maintain we don't need walls because we've got our army and our army is better than anyone else. So we'll just fight any attacker out in the open before they get anywhere near our homes.
But for most other cities they do acquire walls fairly early on. As I say, um there is debate over aspects of this.
Besieging an enemy city is a big project. It takes time. If you're going to try and blockade them into submission, you've got to stay there and surround them for a very long time. If you're going to assault them directly, that's blooming dangerous. Um but it also takes effort in that you need to build at the very least you need to make ladders or something. Try and get yourself over the wall. um or you need to build siege ramps. Siege technology is fairly basic in the Greek world through the fifth century. You have these few innovations later on at the time of the Pelpeneisian war. Uh but they're fairly rare. On the whole, it's very hard to capture an enemy city, hostile city, unless you can find a faction within that'll let you injure it through the back door during the night.
And as the example of Patty in 41 uh 431 shows, even then if the defenders actually don't panic, don't surrender and suddenly start counting how few of attackers there are, then they can turn on them and drive them out as happened there.
You've got this again from the Neriad monument, these uh depictions of cities under siege and hoplights climbing a ladder, this type of thing. But generally speaking, most states are not capable or willing to risk uh a major expedition like that against the enemy city itself.
So hence there is a an element of everyone understanding the rules of the game in how this is conducted with the idea that you go to enemy territory, you start to devastate their fields, but actually devastate is a a gross exaggeration.
You could say that there might be if you're really unlucky and it's your farm rather than everybody else's that tends to bear most of the enemy's attention that this could be pretty bad. And again remember as in any small business and particularly with the precariousness of agriculture where you are so dependent on things you cannot control like the weather then um this could cause the ruin of one or two individuals or serious harm to them. you were never going to inflict sufficient damage that it would force the city to collapse, that it would starve it out. That they basically Hansen's conclusion is that the defending city doesn't have to send its men out to fight in the open. It chooses to do so because this is considered to be serious provocation.
It's not doing it because if it doesn't do it, it will be economically ruined and will starve. It's doing it because it will be humiliated.
And this is very much part of this ongoing competition for prestige within the Greek world and more widely in the ancient world. If you get the reputation that you can't look after yourself, then other bullies are going to come along and kick down more of your um your backyard uh your farms. They'll do more damage. They will attack you more often.
They will treat you with scorn. They will demand things from you. They will not accord you the respect that you feel you deserve. So the risk if you don't fight at all then you are humiliated.
There are some exceptions to that. If the enemy is overwhelmingly stronger in numbers just as in Homer a hero could decide that no it's a bit too dangerous for me to go forward now. I can't face all of you or you're just better than me so I can't do that. I am outmatched.
That's acceptable though again you've accepted that you are outmatched.
However, if it's someone who didn't have such a huge advantage, if you don't go out, you will be humiliated, dishonored, which means other people will treat you accordingly. So, you go out to fight not because you have to in um as I say an economic sense, but because the consequences, the price of the humiliation you would suffer by accepting that be anybody can do this to your lands. That's a humiliation that is is far too costly because it invites further attack. That's always the problem. If you're perceived to be weak, everyone will treat you accordingly and they'll think you are vulnerable and therefore they will be more inclined to be aggressive.
So you come out to fight and risk this battle which does mean again remember your hoplike class or your voting class.
Even in the cities that are more aristocratic than democratic, nevertheless the hoplight class becomes very significant. these people matter and they're the ones who are putting their lives on the line um to fight and some of them will die even when you win.
Quite a lot might die if you lose, but at least you've made the point. So there is a a price to be paid in your dignity in losing a battle, but at least the fact that you fought is admired. It's I mean perhaps an analogy. It's a little bit crude, but is to think of if somebody came into your back garden or your backyard and started kicking down your greenhouse, then you would normally go out and at the very least yell at them to, you know, get off your land, stop doing this, I'm going to call the police, or depending on which country you're in, if you have the means of self-defense, you might do that.
if you just accept it and call the police. Well, again, you might do that because say you're 93 years old and they're um there are 10 of them and they're all much younger, much bigger, much more likely to be violent or heavily armed. Um but remember in Greece there is no police to call. You might have an allied city, an allied friend who might come to help you sometime, but again that's then showing that they're far more powerful than you. And why should they if you won't protect yourself? So it's not about if somebody kicks down your greenhouse, you are probably not going to starve, but it is a humiliation and your instinct is your human instinct is not to let them do that. So you've got to feed in a bit of that as well. It's more than simply this is the Greek honor system. There is a basic thing that nobody likes being pushed around. And um from you know the schoolyard up, you learn to show at least enough uh willingness to defend yourself. Otherwise, again, you are inviting more bullying. And well, yes, there might be authorities trying to stop this, but there's an element of it comes down to that personal thing of how much will you accept and how much do you feel, well, no, I've got to stand up for myself.
In most Greek cities, people know the rules. So a lot of warfare is perceived to be this story that the cities start arguing with each other. One decides to attack, busters the army, ravages the land, the others come out, meets the challenge to battle, the battle is fought, the war is decided, and maybe they sign a treaty afterwards or agree a treaty than signing it.
That's a reflection of a lot of Greek warfare. But we've got to be a bit cautious because at every period there's more to it than that. So you come back to one of the big problems about studying ancient history comes back to sources because people have studied hoplight warfare very much as um a type of warfare distinct in itself and aspects of it do seem to you know work that way.
There is a tendency nearly all the best information for how hoplights fought. It comes from Heroditus. It comes through fusidities. It comes from Zenifan. It comes from comparatively late. If you look at the Pelpeneisian war, there are very few situations like the the ones we've just talked about where you must do your hoplight army. It goes off, challenges the enemy to battle by ravaging its land. The enemy comes out, you fight a battle. Now there are only about four big battles in the entire Pelpeneisian war period and some of those are not actually in the formal war itself. The Spartans keep doing this.
They come and provoke the Athenians in the traditional way. So it shows that people understand that language of provocation. But because the Athenians have built the long walls connecting the city to the Pereus harbor, they're secure to bring in supplies from outside. They can abandon their farmlands. Let the Spartans kick down their greenhouse. And while it clearly causes discontent particularly amongst the country folk who've come in and are hiding behind the city walls and of course encourages fosters the plague when that occurs, this Periclean strategy of avoiding battle because we're not as good at the Spartans in battle, but we're better at naval warfare and other things. We'll win the war elsewhere.
That's breaking the rules, but it shows the rules were already there. But it highlights the problem that our sources come from a time when this what's considered to be this simple pattern of warfare is no longer the case where things are much more complicated.
We get far more raiding and you get far more one-sided fighting. You get attempts to capture cities. They're not always successful. You also, of course, because the Athenians involved, you have an awful lot of squadrons of ships cruising along the coastline and landing, raiding parties that lead to smaller actions.
and nothing quite so simple as just coming in and you know doing some token damage to provoke the the defenders to come out and that's even more true when you get into the 4th century BC though there are quite a lot of pitch battles then that Denan talks about.
So can we safely assume that actually the simple stereotype is right for earlier and things have changed because Athens has got so big, Athens has become this naval superpower and um the rules no longer apply. Therefore it disrupts the whole system. The answer to that is maybe but we have to be careful because we simply don't have detailed accounts of these earlier wars. So when for instance the Athenians defend themselves from um groups coming from Yuboa coming from thieves um the Spartan army is turned away in the immediate aftermath of the creation of Athenian democracy.
They see off these different threats.
The Athenians win victories and they commemorate their triumphs over men from Buosia and from Yuboa but they don't tell us anything about the nature of the victories.
Is this a fallank on falance encounter?
Yes, you've rushed to meet the enemy that have invaded you from an unexpected direction, but when you get there, you both form, you form up in your fank, they form up in theirs, and it's a standard battle. Many of the other wars we hear about, we don't really know. We hear about battles, we don't know the details. Some of the ones that happen do suggest rather more spread out fighting, things a little bit more complicated. Some actions seem to occur over more than one day. And of course you have Plataya the big land battle of the um Persian war which is very spread out where the groups seem to fight quite separately.
So there is a danger and we will come back to this when we look in much more detail at the mechanics of hoplight battle that we've oversimplified Greek warfare and that things might be more complicated.
There's the other action in that while we have our hoplights presented as designed to fight against a fallax of similar hoplights and yes they discover as it comes along turns out we're good at fighting Persians as well hoplights often fight other people you know we think about the Persian wars as the big encounters but if you consider Greek colonization around the Black Sea North Africa Masilia Marles southern France into Spain Sicily Italy there you were fighting with people who will fight in a whole range of different ways. Some of which might be quite similar to Valance fighting but others will not be.
And yet the Greeks seem to be quite good at doing this and enough colonies successful militarily to survive. So apart from that if you end up fighting against Thracians people like that you have again from Thusidities description of how differently they fight and they don't consider formation so important.
They're not bothered about running away as long as they come back. Different types of warfare. Hoplights can be turned to fight in different circumstances. So we have to be a little bit careful about the idea that everything makes them so rigid. So let's just at the end um consider a couple of things that just make us wonder a bit.
Um so let's just look at again something that's often forgotten about the Heroditus account of the Mes being so roughly handled. They were then withdrawn from the fight and the Persians, whom the king called immortals, attacked in their turn, led by Hadane.
It was thought that they at least would make short and easy work of the Greeks.
But when they joined battle, they fared neither better nor worse than the Median soldiers, fighting as they were in a narrow space and with shorter spears than the Greeks, where they could make no use of their numbers. But the Lacademonians that the Spartans fought memorably, they were skilled warriors against unskilled. Okay, that all sounds familiar. And it was among their many feats of arms that they would turn their backs and feain flight, seeing which the foreigners would pursue them, pursue after them with shouting and noise. But when the Lacodonians were likely like to be overtaken, they turned upon the foreigners, so rallying overthrew the Persians innumerable, wherein some few of the Spartans themselves were slain.
So when the Persians, attacking by companies in every other fashion, could yet gain no inch of their approach, they drew out of the fight.
It's an odd thing there that that is not the stereotype for densely packed falls where everybody has to keep together that we're getting here. Instead, the Spartans are doing the tactic we associate more with skirmishers or with cavalry. You know, William the Conqueror and the the Normans doing the fain flight at Hastings.
So, it might be that even the Hoplight battle is a little bit more complicated.
But if you think back, this is a wider context. There are more circumstances where Greeks are called upon to fight than simply the pitched battle. And some of the Greeks involved in this fighting will be hoplights. So there will be men who have the same equipment.
So in Homer, a big thing is the raid, the cattle raid in particular. Go in, steal the enemy's cattle, sheep, goats, bring the herds back and humiliate them and you know uh literally live off the fat of the land.
And whether it was leading one of those and being successful or catching the enemy who launched one against your territory and punishing them to show them that they couldn't do this again, that's a big deal. Raiding does seem very common in the ancient world in general and it crops up a lot in the Pelpeneisian War and subsequently earlier on much harder to say because again we don't really know what's going on. But it might be that the the sort of classic hoplight war we've talked about is actually part of a bigger picture and a very important part. Now so many Greek states live so close to each other that raiding your neighbor is going to be easy to do but also something that will they will know about. They'll know who did it fairly quickly. If you go by sea, if you're one of these aristocrats that owns whether a pentacon or one of the early trimes, you can go off like the homeriic heroes, land, raid, load up with booty, and sail away before they can catch you.
That's a different thing. And that's perhaps something you can particularly do the further away you get from the heartland of southern Greece where people are paying less attention to what's going on and where people like Miltides's father and others carve out these little sort of barrenes for themselves. Um there might be more of that sort of raiding warfare going on. That's well within the period when all the hopl equipment has appeared.
When you have naval battles later on, there are men, younger ones generally, who fight as hoplights with at least some of the equipment on deck, other marines that will storm the enemy ship or defend against an attempt to board you. Um, it always looks very precarious when you you see any sort of illustration what this might look like, but nevertheless, that's what seems to be going on. So, we have something of a danger. A, we sometimes ignore the bits that don't fit the neat pattern. And perhaps it's no coincidence that the aristocracy or one of the groups of aristocracy in so many cities are referred to as hippes, as cavalrymen, knights. And these are men who can afford horses. And there still seems to be amongst many aristocratic groups a fondness for horses that might express itself in chariot racing for the Olympic Games and other competitions like that.
But also you have Kimon, son of Miltades, famously with some friends, aristocratic chums, goes up to the Acropolis, dedicates his bridal and attack from his horse and then this is before Salamus marches down to the harbor to show that he's willing to serve as deck crew on a ship as a marine fighting that that I'm not going to be a cavalryman. But the fact you have those cavalrymen, those horses that are well suited to raiding or chasing raiders that have come towards you, depending on the scale of things, so there might be some smaller scale fighting going on.
The hoplight fallank, that conventional battle as we see it, that stereotype pattern of campaigning is almost in a sense this is the nuclear button for a city. This is if you provoke a city enough by you keep on nibbling away at it, then the danger is that they will say, "Right, we've had enough of you lot over there. We're going to form the army. We're going to attack you. We're going to come in, ravage your terrain, and then you'll be shamed into fighting us, and we're pretty confident we've win. We're going to win in any way. This is risky for you as it is for us." So a lot of that could be deterred a lot of the raiding a lot of the smaller scale stuff by that threat by the presence that if you are perceived to have a lot of hoplights and a strong fanax then people are going to think twice before they push you too far making it again more attractive to go off on longer um sort of basically go a Viking uh go off further a field go off to areas where they're less likely to retaliate and perhaps a bit less Greek as well and you can go and ravage and raid those as well. So, it could be that even earlier on things have been less neat.
It's also probably a mistake to be too rigid about our hoplight equipment and just assume that it's all you can do in it. So, I'll just quickly do this to muzz up my hair. There we go. You know, this is obviously very good protection.
Now, you probably didn't hear that properly, so I'll put back my specs. Um, which of course doesn't help me speak better, but nevertheless, there we go.
down there as well. Um, that's a modern, it's more of a, you know, it's a fancy, it's a nice movie prop, but it's basically a movie prop, uh, for reenactment purposes. Um, it's a bit bigger as well because it's designed for modern people's heads. And I suppose you didn't want to be cited in various lawsuits. You know, I did have when I first tried it on this this terrible thought, this image of myself going to go into accident emergency in a hospital and say, "I've got a Corinthian helmet stuck on my head. Could you help me get it off?" Um, so that one comes off and on more easily and is a bit bigger than the the original ones, but again, I'm a bit bigger than your average Greek probably um of the fifth century.
Anyway, um there is this assumption that hoplight equipment is good for a falank designed entirely for this close order falank fighting and not good for anything else.
Some of this depends upon what you consider to be the likely weight of the equipment. Now, one of the problems is that when there have been tests, for instance, done of students running to try and represent the run at marathon, how far could you go with hoplight equipment?
All sorts of physical activity tends to be very specific. Fitness is designed to do a particular thing. and just getting a lot of youngsters, even very fit, athletic ones, suddenly to carry unfamiliar equipment, um they're not going to perform in anything like the way even of the amateur part-time soldiers of um the hoplights of the Greek world. And you know, I remember being in the the OTC at Oxford that you very gradually you adapt, you work out how to wear your webbing, how to wear your kit, how to make things comfortable, how to have your pack on a march. Um, it takes a while. Initially, everything seems really awkward, really heavy, but you get used to it. And it's partly as you're training up to do that and you're getting used, but it's also the ways around it. Now, obviously, hoplights, it would depend how much time they devoted to preparing for war. A city that went to war pretty often, then you could have a lot of experienced people. And again, it's um Jim Lacy's book on Marathon emphasizes the Athenians are very experienced in that generation. It's no wonder they did so well cuz they fought a lot. Um, and they've won a lot as well. Um, it's rather like the various patriot militias in the Revolutionary War, War of Independence, where if you look at the Minutemen at Concord, Lexington, they perform superbly well in the role that many of them have already practiced for train for experience because they've been in the French and Indian Wars. They've been on the frontier. Uh, that sort of skirmishing thing. When you get militia in other states at other times, try and form them up in a close order formation in line and go toe-to-toe with red coats, it's not necessarily what they're so good at, and they're not necessarily as well practiced. The the groups in Massachusetts were particularly experienced at that time. So, they're all militia, but not all militia are equal at every stage and equal to every task.
Hoplights, again, it will vary, but bear in mind, you are putting your life on your line. So there is the incentive to prepare yourself for the better off those who could spend time in the gymnasium. A lot of the training there was designed to give you the strength to um fight well. But um there's a difference then and there's the whole debate about the those weapons instructors that started to appear these professionals that claimed they could teach you how to fight and that this wasn't really worth it that you should you should learn yourself or from your family um or by you know by experience.
Um, again, different issues. We'll come back to a lot of that when we get into the the real detail of um, fall fighting at some point in the future.
The overall weight and burden of hoplight equipment, the full paniply does depend on what it consists of, how it's actually made. uh reconstructions have varied considerably in the weight of particularly shields depending on how you construct it, type of wood, thickness of wood. Um wearing the curass again it depends what sort of how that is made. Um there are a lot of variables. So some people see this as incredibly heavy, you know, very very heavy equipment that you would only want to wear for a short time. Others actually see this as something more adaptable. Heroditus is suggesting your Spartans. Now, obviously, these are highly trained, picked Spartans, but men of middle age. They're supposed to be men who've already got uh sons to follow them. Um they can be very agile. They can act in a way that we would rather associate with skirmishers.
One of the big problems that affects all these debates is that it's extraordinarily hard to represent a hoplight battle on a vase painting or a sculpture. So we don't get many depictions of mass combat at all.
There's relatively few of them. And there's then the question of what they're trying to show. So um look at this famous one of the cheeky vase um which is 7th century and um it is normally um interpreted as showing this this shows clearly fully developed falank fighting at this stage. So by 650 BC if not before the Greeks are already doing this in the way we consider to be typical. Um it shows how difficult it is to show each one that the Greeks are shown fighting with the hot lights shown fighting but they're in a a single rank.
Now you could argue that some of the spear points that are popping up behind are there as shorthand to represent an extra rank behind or others are the is the distance between the um rank that's actually engaged with their counterparts and the one that's coming up to support on either side. Is that to represent waves of single lines coming in? Is it to represent uh some form of reserves? um are we in fact getting because you've got men right over on the the far side who are arming and um getting ready for battle.
So it might be that the the piper who's playing is basically sounding the alarm because later on Thusidities tells us it's only the Spartans who advance to music and in step. So you know bit odd to find that somebody else doing that much earlier on.
The men who are arming themselves each have two spears, one significantly shorter than the other. Both are depicted with throwing loops which suggest there was at least the option of throwing them. So here in what is often considered to be the best depiction of falank battle hoplights fighting on mass against each other, it's nowhere near as simple what it's meant to be and what's going on. And the impression is that there would be some exchange of missiles at a distance that it wasn't all about just going with a thrusting spear straight to the enemy. Um there is an argument when you show an overhand grip which is very common particularly in archaic vasees. Are you showing someone about to throw rather than thrusting overarm? Depends again on how the spear was used, how much force you can generate um from either uh others would see the underarm as less likely and something you can only do as an individual.
Greek artists depict the heroes of Homer dressed like hoplights fighting in very sort of athletic almost bletic um individual jewels and encounters to represent the stories that were so famous. Is that the same sort of misunderstanding as nowadays you have you know everybody uh in any historical thing now carries a firearm with it the butt up in the shoulder uh even if it's a musket for goodness sake um which is absolutely wrong that's a very recent thing that's come in with assault rifles and the training of the last 50 years or so um wasn't the way you were taught and just look at the pictures of the second world war first war and you'll see people do not do that uh they tend to carry more at the hip and advance with the weapon they hip and fire from the hip rather than the and bring it up to the shoulder to aim and shoot. That was not how they were trained. Um but now we you can depict even accurate um the weapons, the uniform and this sort of thing, but because modern assumptions about how you should use them, actors are depicted and extras depicted doing things that they wouldn't have done at the time uh in reality. So there's a lot more to be said. There's a lot more to be understood about Greek warfare.
And about falank fighting and the role of hoplights, there is quite a lot of evidence that rather suggests that actually you can do quite a lot. The idea that you could only fight in a falank with this equipment is I think wrong. Um because people did fight under other circumstances. You also then have the question in the small encounters that clearly did occur. How many hoplights do you need to make a fall?
you know, there's this traditional off-pat um thing which I've repeated as well that the the standard fallank was about eight ranks deep. Um it's not based on a lot of evidence actually the more you come to look at it, but it's something that's gone into orthodoxy and keeps getting repeated as I say including by me. Um but if you've got 20 men, you're presumably not going to form them up in in a ranks deep in a very narrow frontage unless that's the only place where you can fight. Um, if you've only got 20, do you just form up a couple of ranks deep or even in a single line?
Depends who you're fighting, what the situation is. Um, yet you could, there are encounters between these small groups.
While yes, there might be situations where a man who had hoplight equipment would not necessarily have dawned it all or used it all um, while he's fighting in a different situation.
Nevertheless, there are others where he could. It is interesting that as has been pointed out in a sense hawklight equipment is not incompatible with what Homer gives to his heroes. It's broadly within the same sort of thing. Now obviously the description is nowhere near as specific. So it could be that Homer imagined something completely different had something in mind. Um you've also got to remember come back to this Corinthian helmet. Yes, there's the great emphasis on well, all you really need to see is tunnel vision go straight forward and you can't hear much. You can't see anything to the sides. Um, on the other hand, this is offering very good all round protection. Now, obviously, helmets tend to be like that. You don't just have a front piece and forget about the back. And even in the mass fighting, if somebody gets killed next to you and the opponent steps into his place, then you can start to get attacked in the rear. So you want some protection, but it also means that this is something where if you're an individual fighting alone, it does offer you good protection. If you're fighting against somebody else who's similarly encumbered, then um you're both like it.
You've both got the restricted vision.
If you're attack if you're fighting against somebody who is lightly armed and perhaps faster than you, that might be a problem. But on the other hand, it's still going to be very difficult for them to hurt you without getting close enough for you to do something unpleasant to them as well. So it's a little bit like if you think of the great helm that medieval knights would wear. The design is similar. The restrictions are similar in many respects.
And yet knights could fight on mass but could also fight as individuals.
And I think we're just too rigid. We tend to think of Greeks only doing a single thing. And there is a lot to be said for, as I say, almost the nuclear option, the biggest, most honorable form of warfare, at least up until the Pelpeneisian War, is muster your army, lead it off, form up your falank, ravage the enemy's territory, challenge him to battle, and either if he won't come out, say, "Well, you know, he doesn't he's not up to much, is he? He's a coward."
Um, or when he comes out, you fight him in battle, and it's over, it's decided with quickly, and everybody can go back to bring him the harvest. There is a lot to be said for that as an important central component of warfare in this period that starts to come under a little bit of stress in the pelpeneisian war but that's because of the peculiar nature of Athens and again Hansen's book was it a war like no other on the pelpeneian war emphasizing the the innovations the um almost degradation as well the way things get worse during the pelpeneisian war as traditional patterns of fighting um aren't working therefore people get more desperate. They strike out in different ways and tends to get more vicious, more more destructive.
I suspect there's an element of exaggeration that the Greek warfare hadn't ever been solely about the traditional pattern of hoplight battles, but that it had been dominated by that. There would be situations where fighting occurred in other ways, but again comes back to the point if you provoke someone with smaller scale attacks, raids, um harassment, then ultimately they're going to get nasty and they're going to lead their army to you and you're going to be faced with the fence battle. Uh so and the the ether you've got to risk that or you've got to suffer the humiliation of not doing it. So that's central to warfare. It's a big part of warfare. precisely how the fallaxes conducted themselves we'll come back to as I I keep saying but it's important but it is worth remembering even before we get to the point where we can see very clearly from the pelpeneisian war and afterwards where there are lots of other types of fighting and perhaps far more devastation of entire communities that get caught up in this wider struggle between the two great powers and also of course the importance of naval fighting that until the early fifth century really until the Persian war had not been such a big deal for the Greek communities themselves, but starts to develop because Athens creates this massive navy from so quickly and then maintains it, uses it that basically anything it can reach, anywhere it can get to, anywhere it can land and reach to. But again, the Athenian Navy doesn't fight too many naval battles and the ones in the Pelpeneisian war come all focused in those last few years once the Spartans have acquired a fleet with Persian money.
But the Athenian fleet is very busy. It goes out, it lands people, you know, anywhere where the coast is open, the Athenians can land. And that then leads to different types of warfare where they are blockading cities, where they are launching surprise attacks, where they are launching raids and able to inflict rather more damage on the country even if it's still many of the restrictions talked about earlier would still apply.
So Greek warfare isn't quite as simple as the stereotype would suggest at any period, but that doesn't mean that you've got to chuck the stereotype out.
There's still a lot of insight in that, a lot that's basically true. It's just that other things are happening elsewhere. And it would be marvelous if we had more information. It would be particularly interesting to have more accounts of just how warfare was conducted when some of these colonizing forces go out, how they interact with the locals, how hoplights come to fight in those conditions. You get little glimpses now and again, but on the whole, we just don't know. And just what these earlier battles and wars were like. And it's not just um the 6th century and before, it's even the period between the Persian War and the Pelpeneisian War. The Spartans we know are fighting quite a lot of campaigns.
They are fighting what we think to be battles uh in the Pelpines against various opponents, but we know next to nothing about them other than that the Spartans are winning. So it would be lovely to know more and it would be lovely to know more of the just what went on to provoke one side or the other to conflict. What at which point did you sort of say, "Right, fair enough. That's it. We're calling out the fallanks.
We're going to go and invade you." Um, how much provocation was acceptable?
Again, probably there isn't a simple answer to that. It would vary on who you were, what the level of provocation was, what your options were, and who was doing it. So, there's a lot more to it. And the naval aspect added an extra level of complication, not just in transporting people around, but in making different types of lower level harassing warfare rather than the quickly decisive war nature of a hotlight battle where basically when your fallances clashed, you knew very clearly who had won. And even if neither side had done quite so well basically in the aftermath of who got to set up a trophy, who asked for permission to get their dead back, that proved to people. And even though there were attempts to manipulate that sometimes, basically speaking, that showed who'd won.
That's all there. That's an important part of it.
I think again this is something that Hansen did very, very well. There is a great danger when you look at hoplight warfare and you start to depict it as almost sort of ritualized and having these very clear conventions of rules.
Oops, sorry. You start to think that actually well it's not too harmful, it's not too costly. Again, look at the western way and war and the other words you'll see that actually these battles are very very nasty indeed. And remember, even though the loser suffers far more than the victor, if the victor suffers 5% casualties, which seems to be quite common judging from the relatively few uh figures we've got, out of your citizen population, of your property class that's formed the bulk of your fallax and particularly out of the men, if you're the winning army, the ones who die are most likely to be the ones who are in the front and who are going first and who've got killed.
you've lost a lot of your boldest and a lot of people of prestige and importance within the community. So these are costly wars. This is not all a sham fight. Um this is very serious.
It's just that at times they can do it that way. At other times you get different types of fighting as well. So as is my want. This was not quite what I was thinking about yesterday when I thought, "Oh, I know. I'll do a video tomorrow." It's changed a little bit, but hopefully we've talked about some of the issues surrounding warfare and hoplights that have perhaps informed those who hadn't really looked at the period before, but have maybe suggested some alternative ways of thinking about some parts of it to those who who do know it already. So anyway, that was the aim for today. Just a reminder, Athens and Sparta is um now out in the United States as well as in Britain and the Commonwealth. Uh there are translations coming in due course.
Uh the audio book's out there. The uh it's on Kindle and ebook and all that sort of thing as well should be available. I think the in fact I think the ebook is has been available in America for some time almost since the British release. So a little bit prematurely. But um I've tried to give people an introduction to the Greek world, the politics, the warfare, the society in the book. Today we've gone into rather more detail into certain aspects of that in a slightly sort of tangental way as is again as is my tendency. But the books out there I hope if you know stuff about the period again it makes you think a fresh about some aspects of it and that if you haven't really looked at the Greeks before this will be a good pathway into classical Greek history. So that's the aim of it and um I hope people enjoy it.
But more than that that's it for today.
Thanks for watching.
Videos Relacionados
They Said Flight Was Impossible—Then Two Bicycle Mechanics Changed Everything#wrightbrothers
umars997
526 views•2026-05-30
#SeamansAct1915 #MaritimeHistory #LifeAtSea #BoatShitCrazyX #SaferWorkEnvironment
BoatShitCrazyX
859 views•2026-06-01
The British Crown Was a Death Sentence
BritanniaAftermath
699 views•2026-05-31
The Aztecs Paid Taxes With CHOCOLATE 🍫👑
historical_club
899 views•2026-05-30
How a Letter Changed History #Shorts
SleepingHistoryDreams
213 views•2026-05-31
Black Women Were Banned From White Suffrage Groups
Peoplediduknow
782 views•2026-05-31
The Mystery of Kuldhara – India's Ghost Village
tracktheworld8050
129 views•2026-06-02
Born into slavery in Beaufort
RoadsanRoots
613 views•2026-05-31
