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HOPLITES
There are numerous books on ancient Greek warfare which focus on tactical and strategic problems. This book, however, concentrates on the experiences of the soliders who did the fighting, not on their generals, nor on logistics, tactics, or strategy, which were, after all, for much of Greek history deliberately secondary considerations.
The essays comprising Hoplites explore the pragmatic concerns of Greek infantry. In part two, 'The Men and their Equipment,' for example, three essays discuss the problems of wearing bronze arms and armour in battle conditions: why was the spear alone the favoured weapon of attack? How were armoured corpses identified, stripped, and returned? How did infantry maintain the great weight of the three-foot hoplite shield? In part three, 'The Environment of Battle,' scholars address the actual mechanics of phalanx advance and retreat, the atmospherics and role of battle music, and the place and activity of the hoplite commander. The fourth part, 'Hoplite Tradition and Practice,' covers fortification in Greek battle and the peculiar absence of artillery siegecraft. The dedication of spoils—and the effect of such trophies on the soldiers themselves—is treated in detail, as is animal sacrifice in the graphic context of the battlefield.
Hoplites is an important book, the first to give this topic comprehensive scholarly treatment.
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HOPLITES
The Classical Greek Battle Experience
Edited by
Victor Davis Hanson
London and New York
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First published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
First published in paperback 1993
© 1991, 1993 Victor Davis Hanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-203-42363-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-62911-6 (MP PDA Format)
ISBN 0-415-09816-5 (Print Edition)
Copyright © 2002/2003 Mobipocket.com. All rights reserved.
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* * *
To
John Keegan
for
The Face of Battle
* * *
It is wickedness to clothe
Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
Hidden in music, like a queen
That in a garden of glory walks,
Till good men love the thing they loathe
Art thou hast many infamies,
But not an infamy like this.
O stop the fife and still the drum,
And show the monster as she is.
Richard Le Gallienne
(1866–1947)
* * *
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
List of major Greek battles
The contributors
Preface
Part I Introduction
THE IDEOLOGY OF HOPLITE BATTLE, ANCIENT AND MODERN
Victor Davis Hanson
Part II The men and their equipment
1 HOPLITE WEAPONS AND OFFENSIVE ARMS
J.K.Anderson
2 THE IDENTIFICATION AND RETRIEVAL OF THE HOPLITE BATTLE-DEAD
Pamela Vaughn
3 HOPLITE TECHNOLOGY IN PHALANX BATTLE
Victor Davis Hanson
Part III The environment of battle
4 THE KILLING ZONE
John Lazenby
5 THE SALPINX IN GREEK BATTLE
Peter Krentz
6 THE GENERAL AS HOPLITE
Everett L.Wheeler
Part IV The rules of the game: hoplite tradition and practice
7 HOPLITES AND OBSTACLES
Josiah Ober
8 SACRIFICE BEFORE BATTLE
Michael H.Jameson
9 HOPLITES AND THE GODS: THE DEDICATION OF CAPTURED ARMS AND ARMOUR
A.H.Jackson
Part V Epilogue
THE FUTURE OF GREEK MILITARY HISTORY
Victor Davis Hanson
Bibliography
Indices
* * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. The sacrifice before battle. Fragment of a red-figured kylix: warrior slaying a ram, Greek, Attic, early fifth century BC (CVA 26.242. Pl.37.1, Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P.Allen Fund, Cleveland, Ohio)
2. Corinthian helmet nailed to a stake (Drawing by R.Clark)
3. Artist's impression of spoils displayed in a temple precinct (Drawing by N.Farrell)
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MAJOR GREEK BATTLES
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THE CONTRIBUTORS
J.K.Anderson is well known as a classicist, historian and archaeologist and holds the Chair of Classical Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. Besides numerous journal articles on Greek art and history, Professor Anderson has written several books on topics as diverse as warfare, ancient horsemanship, hunting, and Xenophon. He is perhaps best known to military historians for his classic Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (California, 1970).
Victor Davis Hanson teaches Greek and Latin as a Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno, and farms near Selma, California. He is the author of Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Pisa, 1983), The Western Way of War. Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York, 1989), and articles concerning Greek history.
Alistar H.Jackson, archaeologist and historian, teaches Ancient History at the University of Manchester. He has published various articles on Greek military history, piracy, the economics of warfare, and Greek arms and armor.
Michael H.Jameson, classicist, historian and archaeologist is Edward Clark Crossett Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. The dis-coverer of the "Themistocles Decree," he has written a wide variety of articles on Greek religion, history, agriculture, and epigraphy. Professor Jameson directed the excavations at Halieis for the University of Pennsylvania and initiated the Argolid Exploration Project.
Peter Krentz has written articles on Greek military, diplomatic, and political history in addition to Greek epigraphy. He is the author of The Thirty at Athens (Cornell, 1982), an editor of Xenophon's Hellenika I–II.3.10 (Warminster, England, 1989), and is currently an Associate Professor of Ancient History at Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina.
John Lazenby, after taking "Greats" at Oxford in 1956, spent the better part of three years in Greece, researching on prehistoric topography, but also indulging his love of battlefields. In 1959 he was appointed Le
cturer in Ancient History in what is now the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and is currently Reader in Ancient History and Head of the School of Humanities. In addition to numerous articles, he is co-author of The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970), and author of Hannibal's War (Warminster, England, 1978) and The Spartan Army (Warminster, England, 1985).
Josiah Ober is a Professor of Ancient History at Princeton University. He has written Fortress Attica (Leiden, 1985), Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989) and is co-author of The Anatomy of Error (New York, 1990). In addition to numerous articles and reviews on Greek history, archaeology and topography, he has conducted extensive surveys of forts and other fortifications in the Greek countryside.
Pamela Vaughn received her Ph.D. in Classics in 1988 from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of Classics at California State University, Fresno, where she directs the Classical Studies Program.
Everett L.Wheeler teaches Classics and Ancient History at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. The author of articles on Greek and Roman history, strategy, terrorism, and various entries on ancient tacticians in The International Military Encyclopedia, he has also written Stratagem and the Vocabulary of Military Trickery (Leiden, 1988). Along with Walter J.Renfroe, he has translated three volumes of Hans Delbrück's The History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History (Westport, Conn., 1980–85).
* * *
PREFACE
Over twenty years ago Le Centre de Recherches comparées sur les Sociétés anciennes published a collection of seventeen essays on Greek warfare under the direction of Jean-Pierre Vernant, entitled Problèmes de la guerre en Grèce ancienne. This present volume on hoplites differs in at least three fundamental ways from that earlier important study. First, our collection focuses primarily on the Archaic and Classical Periods, the great age of hoplite battle between 650 and 338 BC; Mycenaean, Dark Age and Hellenistic warfare are therefore excluded entirely. Those battles were among Greeks, and often in Greece, but otherwise they were quite different phenomena. Moreover, we have also deliberately ignored all types of conflict other than purely infantry battle; there is little here concerning cavalry, chariots, naval warfare, artillery, archers, or other missile troops. All such fighting presupposed specialized skills, where mastery of technology, rather than muscular strength and unshakeable nerve, was essential, not incidental, for military success. Lastly, whereas the former book studied Greek warfare from a variety of approaches—tactical, strategic, religious, and sociological—we have, as the title of this book suggests, a very narrow angle of vision: the view of fighting from the eyes of the Greeks who did the actual killing and dying. Our volume, then, is not merely an English updated version of earlier work; only by narrowing the confines of our military history can we hope to widen understanding of the true nature of Greek warfare.
Yet, it is also quite different from a number of recent illustrated accounts and anthologies published in the United Kingdom, France, and America, and primarily aimed at the so-called (and elusive) general audience. While we hope these essays are enjoyable for scholar and non-scholar alike, they seek to incorporate research found primarily in academic journals and especially in ancient sources—literary, iconographic, epigraphic, and archaeological—not always accessible to most readers. Consequently, the success or failure of these articles will depend not only on their ability to interest the uninitiated in a legacy of the Greeks often either unknown or forgotten, but also in turning scholarly discussion on to the killing field itself.
My editorial intervention has been reasonably limited, mostly restricted to setting limits upon length, standard methods of citation, and the more mundane task of collecting the essays before a publisher's deadline. While I have selected the contributors, assigned the broad areas of investigation, read carefully these essays and made suggestions, all chose their own precise topics and exercised control over the final product. My chief contribution has been a plea at each stage to direct all investigation from the vantage point of the hoplite infantrymen; how else could there be justification for yet another study of Greek warfare? I have also provided an introduction, the notes on the contributors, a select bibliography of Greek battle, indices, and a brief epilogue. Citations in parentheses in the text or in the notes may refer to the secondary works listed in full in the bibliography by name (and date) alone; otherwise we have followed the stylistic guidelines present in the American Journal of Archaeology. Abbreviations of Greek and Roman authors and their works follow those found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (second edition). Greek words and quotations have nearly all been translated and are not found in Greek script. No effort has been made to impose on the contributors consistency in the spelling of Greek names and places.
Following Part I, my brief introduction, the nine essays have been grouped into three thematic and sequential parts. J.K.Anderson introduces Part II, 'The men and their equipment', by reviewing various offensive arms in an effort to imagine how hoplite weapons were worn and employed under the actual conditions of shock battle. P.Vaughn follows, but now reverses the angle of vision: given the nature of such edged instruments, and the protective cover of bronze armor, wounds to the head were sometimes so hideous that the very identification of the dead—crucial to the Greeks—must have been difficult and therefore deserving of inquiry. I conclude with a description of the shield and butt-spike, suggesting that the unique attributes of the hoplite panoply for massed fighting must be seen as a technological response to improving preexisting phalanx tactics.
In Part III, 'The environment of battle,' J.Lazenby provides a proper introduction to the section (and, in some sense, the book) with a synopsis of a 'typical' hoplite battle. He leads us from the initial charge to the final burial, but more from the viewpoint of those who actually fought than from a strategic or tactical approach. P.Krentz narrows that focus considerably, concentrating on the acoustics of the killing field—specifically, the use of the trumpet in battle and thus the nature of its usage in command and communication. E.L.Wheeler complements the previous two essays with a long and extensive account of generalship in battle. He does not, as is often done, trace the tactical vision of a few notables, but rather for the first time describes the situation that all the hoplite commanders were faced with and attempts to refine considerably the notion—argued by myself and others—that hoplite commanders customarily exercised leadership only through example.
The fourth section, 'The rules of the game,'despite its title, is really not a deviation from our stated intention of focusing on actual battle. J.Ober, for example, explains the peculiarly limited role of obstacles, fortifications, and siegecraft itself in set battle, but through a pragmatic understanding of the hoplite agonistic tradition. M.H. Jameson similarly discusses in explicit detail the mechanics of another rite, the prebattle sacrifice, its practical ramifications—and difficulty—for the armed men of the battlefield who were waiting to fight. A.H. Jackson concludes the section with an essay on dedications, not merely their visual spectacle, but the emotional and inspirational power of such symbols as well—understandable only through the minds of the hoplites who experienced the combat ordeal.
I should like to thank Richard Stoneman of Routledge. His initial interest in and real enthusiasm for the project made this volume possible. Professors Mark Edwards and Michael Jameson of Stanford University freely offered their characteristically valuable advice to a former student. I owe special gratitude to my four more established colleagues in this endeavor, Professors Anderson, Jackson, Jameson, and Lazenby, who all graciously allowed a junior scholar, one with less expertise and experience than they, to act as general editor. In a collective sense, all scholars of Greek military history owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor W.K.Pritchett; his five-volume study of the Greek State at War—as frequent references in this book illustrate—is now the cornerstone of all research concerning Greek warfare. Jennifer Heyne—now of Unive
rsity of California, Santa Cruz—and Kathleen Page of California State University, Fresno both helped with typographical responsibilities. My wife, Cara, read all the essays and assured our three children, ages 3, 7, and 9, of the 'importance' of this work. Perhaps, it might seem presumptuous for an editor to offer an anthology to a specific individual, inasmuch as my own contribution has been so small. However, I believe that John Keegan's The Face of Battle has affected all classical military historians; it has taught us to look at Greek warfare in a novel and far more rewarding fashion. To his ingenuity, then, I offer this book as very small thanks.
V.D.H.
Selma, California
January 1, 1990
* * *
Part I
INTRODUCTION
[War is] a sweet thing to him who does not know it, but to him who has made trial of it, it is a thing of fear
Pindar
* * *
THE IDEOLOGY OF HOPLITE BATTLE, ANCIENT AND MODERN
Victor Davis Hanson
Here is a volume of essays about classical Greek battle, rather than warfare, a view of combat seen largely from the vantage point of the hoplite infantrymen who did the actual fighting. This approach is entirely sensible for three reasons, one of incidental importance, the other two fundamental to our very understanding of the Greeks. In the first place, few previous scholarly studies have been devoted exclusively to the military experience of the hoplite, the feel of armor, the manner of inflicting and receiving wounds, the occurrence of the atypical and bizarre in battle, the look of the dead, the pragmatics of hoplite sacrifice and commemoration. Thus, the essays in this book (none of them published previously) raise new questions and bring in fresh evidence. Secondly and more importantly, it is essential to remember that conflict between the classical Greek city-states for over two centuries (ca 650–431 BC) usually focused—at least on land—on one encounter, a day's collision between phalanxes of heavily armed infantry. It was a single battle, then, not war as we know it, and was so recognized by the Greeks themselves—thus 'battle' rather than 'war' in this book's title reflects more than the mere contents of the collection. Finally, no military history should ever avoid the human element: it is men, after all, who fight, wound, kill, and die; it is men alone who deserve our attention, incite our imagination, earn our empathy. True, often in classical scholarship—the nature of its evidence usually being fragmentary and circumstantial—there is a tendency to identify and then elevate a particular trend into 'The Trend,' Study of Greek battle, emphasis on the infantrymen who fought and the environment of their struggle, however, is not trendy and surely avoids that danger: battle is not a mere truism of military history, but its central, its only truth.
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