Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience

by Victor Davis Hanson

  To nobles like Alcaeus in the Archaic Period, the spectacle of the armour and weapons they saw as they feasted could serve as a spur to

  fulfil their warlike undertakings:

  Brilliant the great hall shines

  with bronze, its ceiling dressed overall for the War God

  with gleaming helmets,

  down from which their white horse-hair crests are nodding,

  for warriors' heads

  glorious adornment. Bronze set on hidden pegs

  there shine suspended

  greaves, a defence against the force of arrows.

  New linen corslets

  and hollow shields lie heaped about below,

  with swords from Chalcis

  and beside them lie many belts and tunics.

  These we cannot forget

  Ever since we first undertook this labour.18

  To warriors less high-born but proud of the status their possession of arms gave them in the city, in Alcaeus' time and later, the spectacle of temples decorated within and outside with fine arms and armour could have been, for good or ill, a strong encouragement to fight when their city required them to do so, and one that would be all the more powerful for having begun to act on them from their childhood.

  DEDICATIONS AND BATTLE

  Others have analysed the main religious ceremonies that kept up the morale of hoplites as they marched out to war and were primed for battle.19 Besides helping (as just indicated) to lay the deep foundations of that morale, the sight and memory of past dedications, together with the prospect of winning new spoils for the gods, could before, throughout and after battle have been of some help in keeping the hoplites' fighting spirit and discipline both up to equal strength and in balance with each other.

  It is said that most of war is waiting, and, even if hoplites had to wait only hours between the muster and combat, the familiar displays at the temples of gods invoked to fight as their allies must often have prevented recurrent anxieties from wearing their nerves unduly. The report before Leuctra that Herakles' arms had disappeared from his temple, as if he were marching to join Epaminondas' Thebans and fight the Spartans with them, gives an idea of the encouragement that the temples of friendly gods could give (Ar. Vesp. 1081–5; Xen. Hell, 6.4.7). When inexperienced hoplites first saw the enemy phalanx, formidable in appearance and with its paean and war-cry, they could have been steadied by the memory of the lifeless and silent panoplies at home. This did not always work, at least against the Spartans. Thus, at Mantinea in 418 BC the Athenians, watching the unbroken and inexorable advance of the Spartans, did not all stand fast—despite the splendid memory of another less terrible Spartan shield line from Pylos in 425 BC adorning the Stoa Poikile, with its inspiring patriotic pictures (Thuc. 5.70–3; Paus. 1.15.4.). But where the odds were more favourable, such memories probably counted for more.

  To win new spoils for further dedications would be one hope and ambition of hoplite armies, and that in itself should have raised its spirits and discipline. But this encouragement would have grown all the greater, if before the battle formal vows were pronounced to win and dedicate fresh spoils, along with other prayers and ceremonies performed when the army set out for war and combat. To judge from Thucydides' great portrait of the departure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily or Xenophon's of the Ten Thousand preparing for their perilous march to the Euxine, such ceremonies were solemn and moving occasions as thousands uttered prayers and sang paeans together (Thuc. 6.32; Xen. An, 3–2.9). If among the vows of other victory thank-offerings, a solemn collective vow of spoils in the name

  of the army or the citizens was pronounced, that would further strengthen the confidence and esprit de corps of the men. They would feel more secure both as a united body and as individuals under the championship and protection of the gods to whom spoils were vowed, and more sure of a share in the glory of a victory which their vow had made more certain. Just as such a vow would encourage them to unleash all their hatred, aggression and violence against the enemy, so its collective character would remind them of the need for the discipline, which could make the difference between victory and defeat. The many records attesting collective dedications of spoils and other booty may well be proof that such vows often were made before battles, and perhaps also proof of their value.

  Further evidence for the content and character of vows of spoils, when they were made, can be found in Pritchett's study of military vows (War 3.230–7). He concludes that public vows of thank-offerings were commonly made before armies set out. To this, it may be added that offerings of captured arms and armour could have been included among them. They are not often directly mentioned, but this could well be because they need only have taken a few words to express and so historians busy with grander themes would omit them; even in Eteocles' prayer (see below) three lines at most are enough for them (Aesch. Sept. 277–8a). Historians very rarely mention specifically the indispensable animals routinely sacrificed on both sides before every hoplite battle (Hdt. 6.112.1; Thuc. 6.69–2; Xen. Hell. 4.2.20) because they normally produced favourable omens. A vow of spoils could equally have been part of the routine, as it would normally go with even fewer hitches than the usual animal sacrifice. When we do hear anything of them, it is when, as with Pausanias' disobliging animals at Plataea, the routine was somehow disturbed (Hdt. 9.61–2). Thus, we are told when Locri vowed one-ninth of the spoils, in order to outbid her enemy Croton, which had vowed the tenth of hers if she won the battle—which the pious Locrians in fact won (Just. Epit. 20.3).

  Aeschylus as a tragedian, with purposes different from those of historians, has occasion in the Seven against Thebes (265-78a) to display the resolute and warlike Eteocles steadying the frightened Chorus and invoking the gods with a vow of thank-offerings in the event of victory. Despite its poetic language and some textual problems, we may take it that Aeschylus' Athenian audience would have recognized it as such a vow, and as a whole and in detail it can be defended as not too far removed from reality.

  Now from the statues of the gods remove yourselves;

  Better to beg the gods to fight as our allies!

  When you have heard my prayers then in your turn you shall

  Raise like a paean women's cheerful sacred song,

  The Greeks' accustomed joyful chant at sacrifice

  That heartens friends. So will you banish fear of war.

  To all the gods I speak now that protect our state,

  Who watch over its fields or guard its market-place;

  Dirce's fountain I address and Ismenos' stream:

  If we prove victors with our city saved from foes,

  We shall with sacrificial sheep's blood stain their hearths

  And shall kill bulls in honour of the gods. I vow

  I shall plant trophies and the foes' apparel take

  As spear-torn spoils for the pure houses of the gods,

  And shall their temples with the foes' apparel crown.20

  To speak of the gods as allies (line 266) is not an example of especially tragic language. Similar expressions are found in Selinus' victory inscription and in comedy (Meiggs and Lewis 38; Ar. Vesp. 1085). Eteocles' order to the Chorus to sing a song like a paean after he has prayed recalls the paeans that followed vows and prayers before other military enterprises (Thuc. 6.32; Xen. An. 3.2.9). To invoke all the guardian gods before attacking invaders is only natural, and paralleled by the equally comprehensive list of gods and goddesses and other beings protecting the state of Dreros, and by whom that city's young men swore perpetual hostility to Lyttos, in Hellenistic Crete (SIC3 527 lines 10–36). These gods of Thebes he promises to honour at their temples with sacrifices. The trophies, if they are the standard battlefield ones, are the instant thank-offering to Zeus normally set up as soon as the enemy had fled,21 and the spoils are dedicated after the trophy and the sacrifices in a sequence which is perfectly natural. It is paralleled, so far as concerns the offering of spoils, by Jocasta's description of the trophies, sacr
ifices and dedications of spoils in Euripides' Phoenissae 571–6. It is unfortunate that lines 276 and 278a, and the second half of 277, are of very doubtful authority but the content of line 278, the offering of spoils, and its position at the end of the sequence, are beyond question. Even the idea of dedicating battle-damaged armour is not necessarily bombastic, for some armour found at Olympia and elsewhere shows what may well be battle-damage.22 If there is any value in the references to 'foes' apparel', and if it means not armour but clothes,

  Xenophon shows that in especially bitter battles, like those in civil war, tunics as well as armour were normally stripped from the dead enemy (Xen. Hell. 2.4.19). Eteocles might well seek this. We may in addition suppose that Aeschylus, like many in his audience, a hoplite and a veteran of Marathon, knew well—and meant to portray—vows like those he and they remembered, although in suitable language for a tragedy.

  However their courage and discipline were fortified, by vows of collective thank-offerings, by Spartan discipline and flute music, or by several swigs of wine and decades of hating an arrogant and oppressive neighbour or hegemon, hoplites would need all the courage and discipline they could command. One danger was the creation of gaps in the shield-line, and one cause of this in the early days of phalanx warfare could well have been sorties by lone warriors who, ambitious for their own glory, might spring forth in the old way to challenge, kill and despoil an enemy champion thus terrifying his comrades (cf. Hom. Il. 11.91–121).23 A city's nobles, inheriting a tradition of excelling in war and of asserting themselves whenever they could, produced more than one such individual, and the spoils they would especially seek would often be the fine arms of their social equals in the enemy phalanx. But if a collective vow of spoils (the best, of course) had been made beforehand in the interests of the gods, that would tactfully reduce the scope of these would-be champions and the danger they could cause to their comrades. The pattern of Hector's proposed duel with an Achaean champion, whose spoils he said he would dedicate to Apollo, could beneficially have been annexed from high-born individualists and extended over the phalanx as a whole.

  Even in the close-pressed heat of battle, when willpower, morale and emotional energy could sometimes count as much as sheer physical strength, men might think of vows and utter prayers, some of particular sincerity then as now (Hdt. 9.61–2; Thuc. 7.71; Xen. Cyr. 7.1.35).24 Thus perhaps finely equipped enemy hoplites in the first few ranks would get extra attention. Or if some close friend or kinsman fell dead or wounded, those around him might stand still firmer, or even push forward in front of him, for along with rage and grief they would want to save him and themselves from the shame, not just of losing his corpse and its armour to the spoilers, but of learning in defeat that his equipment was adorning the gloating enemy's temple (Xen. Hell 6.4.13–14; Plut. Ages. 18.3; Paus. 9.16.5; Hdt. 5.95).

  Once a battle seemed to be won, some might have the urge and the energy to get to such enemy dead as they could see and loot them, taking their armour and whatever other valuables they could find. Premature looting of this sort laid armies open to counterattacks, as Plato and Polybius remark (Pl Resp. 469 C-470 A; Polyb. 10.17.1–5). Only training and firm discipline could prevent this. But since the finer armour was among the best loot on the battlefield, if it had been marked down for possible dedication, the pickings that were available instead might sometimes have seemed not worth hurrying to get to, and the phalanx might preserve its order and so deter the enemy from trying to win at the last minute. The Spartans are said by some sources to have forbidden any despoiling of enemy dead; Lycurgus is said to have held that the Spartans were better off poor but in their ranks (Plut. Mor. 228 F-229 A; Ael. VH 6.6). They are said by better sources to have collected the spoils of the battlefields as others did (Hdt. 1.82.5; Thuc. 5.74.2) but there may be no real contradiction. For helot attendants could have been used instead of hoplites, or the latter might have been permitted to fall out and collect the spoils after the enemy was reported far enough away (Hdt.9.80).

  Thus, collective vows of spoils could sometimes have reinforced discipline and spurred the hoplites on even in battle itself, although their product, the dedications those same people had begun to understand since childhood, would probably have done more for their courage and discipline.

  Like the battlefield trophy set up by the victor, the collection of the spoils was a proof of victory, just as the enemy's request for the bodies of his dead was an admission of defeat (Hdt. 1.82.6). The dedication of armour stripped from the enemy dead was in principle entirely acceptable and only what the enemy would have done if he had won. Furthermore, it had a respectable ancestry, since Hector in proposing a duel to settle the Trojan War quickly, undertakes to return his opponent's body to the Achaeans if he wins, but states clearly that he will dedicate the spoils at the temple of Apollo in Troy, to whom he vowed them if he won (Il. 7.81–90). This bargain was accepted, as in Greece after Homer's time, by losers in wars that were much controlled by convention, and in battles that were more like duels, such as the Battle of the Champions between 300 Spartans and 300 Argives ca 546 BC, the taking of armour and its dedication was the accepted custom.

  But warfare and battles were not always so gentlemanly. In the Iliad to strip a dead opponent of his armour certainly inflicted shame on

  him and his runaway comrades, hence the bitter fights over fallen heroes (Il. 16.498–500). This feeling persisted in Archaic and Classical times (Thuc. 6.101.6–103.1; Xen. Hell. 6.4.13). As Xenophon shows, to leave a fallen enemy in his tunic was a conciliatory gesture, and so to remove it was to inflict shame as it was in the Iliad (Xen. Hell. 2.4.19; Il. 11.99–100; cf. Il. 2.258–64). Similarly, in Athens to beat up a fellow citizen and steal his cloak was an insult as well as an assault (Dem. 54.8–9).25 In the bitter wars between Greeks of the fifth century and later, the stripping and return of the dead would often have little of the old-fashioned conventions and basic respect for the loser about it. In a similar way, in 420 BC Sparta regarded as folly Argos' proposal that if either side wished it, the ownership of a district each of them claimed should be decided by a pitched battle, much as the Battle of the Champions had been intended to decide it over a century before (Thuc. 5.41). After especially savage battles at all times and also (as in the Peloponnesian War and later) when battles were savage and desperate, the dedications of spoils set up by the victors in their own temples—and sometimes still in certain panhellenic sanctuaries—would have been hard to stomach for the defeated. They would doubtless feel like the Corinthian hoplites who fought a drawn battle with the Athenians in 458 BC, but left the field for the latter to set up a trophy, as if they had won. The Corinthians were then jeered at by their elders; they endured this for about twelve days and then marched back to the battlefield and set up a trophy of their own (Thuc. 1.105.4–6). The Spartans too found trophies set up by their few conquerors a bitter humiliation, and they must have felt as sour as the defeated Athenians must have been encouraged by the spoils of Pylos in the Agora when Athens surrendered to them in April 404 BC (Xen. Hell. 4.5.10; 6.4.14).

  Sparta's charge that the spoils of her enemies were taken from cowards and so were unfit for the young to see or for dedication to the gods would, if it were current in the aftermath of victories like Mantinea, have some truth in it, as suggested here (Plut. Mor. 224 E). When a phalanx broke, many of the hoplites must have believed that the gods were against them, as well as their enemies. Some portion of any victor's haul would be equipment discarded in flight, especially when retreat took the losers over very rough ground, as the Athenians scrambling down from Epipolae at the cost of abandoning their shields vividly illustrated (Thuc. 7.45). Shields were the easiest armour to drop, and the most burdensome, and helmets could be untied and removed at a run. This may partly explain why helmets

  and shields are so common at Olympia, for to take greaves and corslets off would oblige the retreating hoplite to stop briefly. Whether the losers had really fled too soon or not, sneers from vic
tors that they had done so would render the offerings from their spoils all the more galling to the defeated. Thus, although one of the goals and prizes of victory, dedications of arms and armour could help Greek hoplites to win some battles, they would also have helped to provoke fresh wars. Their irritant or inflammatory character may, as will be argued below, help to explain why from the fifth century some panhellenic sanctuaries appear to have ceased accepting spoils of battles between Greeks.

  SPOILS TAKEN BY GREEKS FROM GREEKS

  When the victorious army came home amid rejoicing and grief, relatives of the dead and dying might have seen in the blood-stained spoils some proof that the gods had granted vengeance for their menfolk. Certainly, captured armour and even arms with the blood of citizens on it were not regarded as polluted, unless they were the arms of the sacrilegious (Diod. 16. 60.3; Pl. Resp. 469 E-470 A).26 To judge from Aeschylus, the dedication of the spoils could be the climax of triumphant thanksgiving celebrations (Aesch. Sept. 277-8a; Eur. Phoen. 571–6). Great glory and honour would be shed on all the hoplites who survived and on those whose families would still be in mourning, by this as by all the ceremonies. If the dedication was the fulfilment of a vow to the gods, that can only have increased its prestige and theirs, while if the vow, or decisions after victory, led to offerings at city and countryside shrines, that would help all the more to unite the state in triumph. When the mighty war-lord Pyrrhus of Epirus and his men died, trapped and butchered in the narrow streets of Argos in 272 BC, his shield adorned the temple of Demeter in the city, and his men's were doubtless proudly sent to shrines throughout the Argolid, like that of Enyalios near Mycenae (Paus. 2.21.4). Yet, even in the victors' own temples, the tone of votive verses and inscriptions rarely comes near the vulgar spite sometimes seen in jingoistic newspapers today. Some just name victor and vanquished, or point to the loser's hybris or boastfulness (Hdt. 5.77.4; Plut. Tim. 31.1; Paus. 1.13.3).27 But there is nothing like the systematic hatred of the Teian Curses or the Oath of Dreros (Meiggs and Lewis 30; SIG3 527).