Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience

by Victor Davis Hanson

  It may be the case that advancing hoplites carried their spears in the underarm position, but it is unlikely (pace Hanson 1989:162ff.) that they delivered their first thrusts underarm, and then changed

  grip in the melée. More likely they brought their spears to the overarm position, before they came 'within spear-range', though it is difficult to see how this was done. The change, it must be remembered, involves not just raising the spear, but also turning the hand round on the spear-shaft, since when a thrust is underarm, the thumb is towards the point, but when overarm, towards the butt.

  The change-over could have been effected by sticking the spear in the ground, then picking it up again with the hand reversed. But this would have required a momentary halt—difficult when charging at the double, but perhaps possible for the Spartans, or any other troops who halted during the advance. Alternatively, a momentary shift of the spear to the left hand, gripping the strap or cord near the rim at the right of the shield, might have done the trick. More risky, but perhaps easier, would have been to lift the spear above the head, still with the underarm grip, then let it go for a moment, and catch it as it fell, with the grip reversed. Even lifting the spear from below the waist to above the shoulder would have been much easier if hoplites had not been standing shoulder to shoulder, let alone marching or running, and the difficulties would certainly have been compounded if the change was only made after battle had been joined. But somehow or other it seems to have been done.

  With spears probably held high, then, hoplites in at least the front rank, possibly the front two, thrust downwards, aiming for the face (Eur. Phoen. 1385), and presumably the throat or shoulders, over the rim of the shield, or for the chest through shield and cuirass (cf., for example, Tyrt. 12.25–6, 19.21; Eur. Heracl. 738). There was, however, no loosening of the close-packed formation, at this point, as some have suggested (e.g. Cawkwell 1978:150–3). Plato's Laches (182a-d) makes it clear that this only happened when one side or the other fled the field, and what would have been the point of each man seeking the protection of his right-hand neighbour's shield during the advance if they then parted company when battle was actually joined?

  The only evidence that the hoplite phalanx was at all fluid are the occasional references by the poets, from Tyrtaios to Pindar, to 'fore-fighters' (promachoi), usually with the implication that this is where a brave man would seek to take his place. Thus Tyrtaios cries (11.4), 'let each man direct his shield straight to the fore-fighters', and Pindar (Isthm. 7.49–50) talks about the 'throng of fore-fighters' where the best men fought. However, there would, presumably, have been ample opportunities for hoplites to display either their courage by pressing forward, as men fell in front of them, or their faint-hearted

  ness by holding back, and there is also a conventional note to what the poets say. It is noticeable that the historians do not use the word 'promacboi'. When, for example, Thucydides or Xenophon want to talk about 'front-rank men', they use the word 'protostates/ai' (e.g. Thuc 5.71.1; Xen. Cyr. 3.3.57, 6.3.24; LP 11.5).

  Euripides' description of the fight between Eteokles and Polyneikes (Phoen. 1382ff.), though a description of an imaginary duel, possibly allows us to glimpse something of the preliminary exchanges in a hoplite battle. The two antagonists keep their shields up, apparently eyeing each other through holes pierced in the rims of their shields (1386–7)—was this true, one wonders, of real battles? Then Eteokles turns his foot on a stone and exposes his thigh outside his shield. Immediately, Polyneikes thrusts and drives his spear through his brother's leg, but in so doing exposes his own shoulder to a counter-thrust.

  It was, presumably, in such an encounter that the Spartan king, Kleombrotos, got his mortal wound in the opening moments of Leuktra (Xen. Hell., 6.4.13). Eteokles and Polyneikes, however, survive this wounding, and go on to kill each other with swords (1404–13), and although they were heroes, it is alleged of the perfectly mortal Spartan, Kleonymos, that at Leuktra he fell three times, before finally being killed (Xen. Hell. 5.4.33), indicating that he was not yet shield to shield with the enemy. However, the Thessalian 'trick' which Eteokles finally uses to kill Polyneikes (Phoen. 1404–13), would not have been appropriate to a hoplite (pace Pritchett, War 4. 64). It involved taking a pace back, which would have been almost impossible for a man in the front rank of a phalanx (Hanson 1989:167).

  It was, perhaps, this preliminary stabbing and counter-stabbing that Tyrtaios had in mind when he talks about 'slogging it out' (aloièseumen—literally, 'we will be threshing': 19.16). Men probably still had breath to shout—Euripides, for example, imagines Athenians shouting 'Athens' and their opponents shouting for Argos (Heracl. 839). But the grimmest description of the sound of battle is Xenophon's of Second Koroneia (Ages. 2.12): 'There was no shouting, nor yet silence, but the kind of noise passion and battle are likely to produce.' Groans and screams (Tyrt. 19.20; Eur. Heracl. 833) no doubt mingled with the clash of spear on shield and of spear-shaft on spear-shaft. In Aischylos (Sept. 155) the 'spear-shaken air seethes', and in real battles indescribable confusion probably reigned. Thus in his account of the night attack on Epipolai, Thucydides says that even in

  daylight 'each man hardly knows anything except what is happening to himself (7.44.1), and in Euripides' Supplices (846–7) Theseus says one question he will not ask, in case he is laughed at, is who met whom in the battle. It is significant that there was obviously no clear tradition about how even Epameinondas met his end (cf. Plut. Ages. 35.1; Paus. 8.11.5–6).

  Far from this fighting bringing about any loosening of the phalanx, it was now that its cohesion mattered more than ever. At the beginning of the hoplite era, Tyrtaios adjures the Spartans to fight 'standing by one another' (10.15, 11.11), maintaining that 'fewer die' as a result (11.12), and that this was so is confirmed by Xenophon's description of a minor skirmish on Aigina in 388 BC (Hell. 5.1.12), and by many an occasion when hoplites in a difficult situation preserved themselves by maintaining their compact order (cf., for example, Thuc. 1.63.1, 3.108.3). As one of Plutarch's Sayings of the Spartans (Mor. 220a) puts it, a man carried a shield, unlike helmet and cuirass, 'for the sake of the whole line', and this was not just because of the protection one man's shield afforded to the man on his left, but because an unbroken shield-wall was virtually impregnable.

  If we imagine what it would have been like to stand in the front line of a phalanx, swapping thrusts with enemy spearmen only a few feet away, we can understand why Euripides' Amphitryon argues (HF 191–2) that if a hoplite finds himself ranged alongside cowards, he may be killed by his neighbours' faintheartedness. Demosthenes puts the other side of the case when he says that no one who flees from a battle, ever blames himself, but the general, his neighbours and everyone else. But, as he goes on, 'they are none the less, of course, defeated by all who flee, for it was open to the man who blames the others, to stand, and if each man did this, they would win' (3.17). As Brasidas says, 'those who have no line, may not be ashamed to give ground under pressure. Advance or retreat having the same good repute among them, their courage is never tested' (Thuc 4.126.5). For hoplites, leaving the line, even to challenge the enemy individually, as Aristodemos did at Plataia (Hdt. 9.71.3), was regarded as irresponsible folly, for, as Brasidas again puts it, 'independent action is always likely to give a man a good excuse for saving his own skin' (Thuc. 4. 126. 5).

  Sometimes, it appears, this fighting went on until both sides had virtually wiped each other out. At the Nemea, for example, 'the men of Pellene being opposite the Thespiaians, they each fought and fell in their places' (Xen.Hell. 4.2.20). There may also sometimes have been

  a certain ebb and flow in the struggle. In the imaginary battle in the Heracleidae, for example, Euripides has his messenger describe how 'at first the thrust of the Argive spear broke us, then they gave back' (834–5), and Xenophon argues that at Leuktra the Spartans must have been winning initially, since otherwise they would not have been able to carry their king, still living, from the field (Hell. 6.4.13). T
his also shows that it was possible to get a wounded man to the rear, even in the thronging turmoil of a hoplite battle, though one suspects that an ordinary hoplite who fell stood less chance than a king of Sparta. Even the Spartan second-in-command on Sphakteria, Hippagretas, was left lying among the dead (Thuc. 4.38.1).

  If neither side gave way in these preliminary exchanges, the pressure from the rear would sooner or later force the opposing front ranks to close right up to each other, shield to shield, and many sources mention the crash when this happened (Tyrt. 19.18; Aesch. Sept. 100, 103, 160; Eur. Heracl. 832, Supp. 699). Then the fighting would be as Euripides describes it in the second phase of his fictional battle, 'toe-to-toe, man to man' (Heracl. 836), or as Tyrtaios puts it, 'with foot set beside foot, pressing shield to shield, crest against crest, helmet against helmet, chest against chest' (11.31–2). Xenophon's description of the Spartans and Thebans at Second Koroneia, when 'crashing their shields together, they shoved, fought, slew and died' (Hell. 4.3.19), shows that the poets did not exaggerate.

  At such close quarters, it is difficult to see how spears 6 ft (1.8 m) and more in length could have been of much use, though one could, perhaps, have aimed for the men in the second and third ranks. It has been suggested (Hanson 1989:164) that most spears were broken at the first impact, and that swords were then used. But the evidence (e.g. Aesch. Ag. 64–6; Diod. 15.86.2) is not very good, and other passages (e.g. Hdt. 7.224.1; Eur. Phoen. 1382ff.) suggest that swords were only used after prolonged fighting. The spear was certainly the hoplite weapon par excellence. Archilochos' spear was his bread and wine and he drank leaning on it (2), and for Aischylos the typical Greek weapon, as opposed to the bow of the Persians, was the 'close-quarter spear' (Pers. 240). Euripides' Amphitryon, in his argument with Lykos over the respective merits of the hoplite and the archer (HF 159ff.), even declares that the former has only one means of defence—'having broken his spear, he has no means of warding death from his body' (193–4). This was, strictly speaking, untrue, but when Xenophon says that after Second Koroneia you could see swords 'bared of their sheaths, some on the ground, some in a body, some still

  in the hand' (Ages. 2.14), does he not imply that you would normally have expected to see them still in their sheaths? This battle, it must be remembered, 'like no other of those in our time,' as Xenophon says (Hell. 4.3.16), consisted of two separate encounters, and, as a result, it is likely that more spears were broken than in normal battles.

  There is another answer to how hoplites fought, once they were too close to the enemy to make effective use of their spears. Xenophon's description of the second encounter at Koroneia (Hell. 4.3.19) suggests that the opposing lines, having crashed into each other, shield to shield, literally started to shove, and shoving (othismos) evidently was a feature of many a battle. Herodotos, for example, says there was 'much shoving' over the body of Leonidas at Thermopylai (7.225.1) and that at Plataia the fighting was prolonged 'until they came to the shoving' (9.62.2); at Solygeia the Athenian and Karystian right wing 'with difficulty shoved the Corinthians back' (Thuc. 4.43.3); at Delion the engagement took the form of 'tough fighting and shoving of shields' (Thuc. 4.96.2); at Syracuse the Athenians and their Argive allies defeated both wings of the Syracusan army, by shoving (Thuc. 6.70.2), and at Leuktra, the Spartan right was 'shoved' back (Xen. Hell. 6.4.14).

  But what form did this 'shoving' actually take? We do not really know, but it is possible that hoplites in the rear ranks literally put their shields against the backs of those in front and pushed (Hanson 1989:174–5). Xenophon advocates that the best men should be placed in front and rear of a phalanx (Mem. 3.1.8) so that the worst men in the middle could be 'led by the former and shoved by the latter'. More directly, later writers talk about the men in the rear ranks of a Macedonian-style phalanx using the weight of their bodies to push those in front forwards (Polyb. 18.30.4; Asklep. 5.2; Arr. Tact. 12.10; Ael. Tact. 14.6), and it is arguable that this would be a fortiori true of a hoplite phalanx.

  None of the earlier sources gives any clear indication how the 'shoving' was accomplished, but Thucydides, in saying of the Thebans at Delion that 'they followed up little by little as they shoved', makes it sound very like the inexorable 'heave' of a well-drilled pack on a rugby football field. The famous story of Epameinondas' cry for 'one pace more' at Leuktra (Polyaenus 2.3.2) also sounds like the kind of thing the leader of a rugby 'pack' might shout. The story is late and one wonders whether many of Epameinondas' men could have heard him, but Thucydides' account of Sphakteria implies that Spartans normally expected to hear orders, when he says (4.34.3) that they

  were unable to hear them there because of the shouting of the enemy. One suspects that commanders often did call for a supreme effort, and even if they could only be heard by those immediately around them, word could rapidly have been passed to the rest.

  Of one thing we can be certain. Epameinondas would have been among his men. He was killed at Second Mantineia, and many another hoplite general also fell in battle—Pelopidas at Kynoskephalai (Plut. Pel. 32.7), Kleombrotos at Leuktra (Xen. Hell. 6.4.13), all three Athenian generals in a battle near Spartolos (Thuc. 2.79.7), Hippokrates at Delion (Thuc. 4.101.2), Kleon and Brasidas at Amphipolis (Thuc. 5.10.8–11), both Athenian generals at First Mantineia (Thuc. 5.74.3). There was sometimes criticism that generals took all the credit (cf. Eur. Andr. 693–8), but even an old cynic like Archilochos felt he could trust a commander who was 'short, bowlegged to look at, set squarely on his feet and full of heart' (114), and there was probably a natural camaraderie between hoplites and their commanders. After all, they belonged to the same class. Even in the Spartan army, men about to engage in or in the midst of a battle were not averse to shouting advice to their officers, king included (cf. Xen. Hell. 4.2.22; Thuc. 5.65.2).

  It is evident, too, that the depth of a phalanx was significant from at least the time of Marathon onwards (cf. Hdt. 6.111.3). Thus Xenophon says (Hell. 4.2.13) that before the Nemea there was some discussion amongst Sparta's opponents about what depth to adopt. Later he implies that it was decided to form up sixteen deep, though in the event the Boiotians ignored the agreement, and made their phalanx 'really deep' (4.2.18)—perhaps twenty-five, as at Delion (Thuc. 4.93–4). Xenophon's remarks here may suggest that 'really deep' formations were defensive, but the significance of the depth of a phalanx was surely not just the defensive strength it imparted. When Epameinondas made his phalanx 'fifty shields deep' at Leuktra, he was not thinking in terms of defence, but of 'crushing the head of the snake' (Polyaenus 2.3.15).

  It has also been suggested that the point of these 'really deep' phalanxes was to provide a reserve, which could be moved out to attack the flanks of an enemy phalanx, once its front was 'pinned' (Cawkwell 1978:154–5). But there is no evidence that the rear ranks of a hoplite phalanx were ever used in this way, and there must be some other explanation for the importance attached to depth. The most probable is that it was thought that the deeper the phalanx, the more likely it was to be able to win the 'shoving' and literally smash

  through the enemy line. Thus, at Second Mantineia, Xenophon says (Hell. 7.5.23), Epameinondas used his phalanx, deepened just before the advance, 'like a trireme bows on'.

  It may, finally, be of some significance that ancient authors occasionally imply that physical strength was a factor in winning hoplite battles. Herodotos, for example, remarks (9.62.3) that the Persians at Plataia were 'not inferior in spirit and strength'—it was only their lack of armour and expertise which let them down. Diodoros, too, several times alleges that the bodily strength of the Thebans gave them victory (12.70.3, 15.39.1, 87.1), and Plutarch even claims that their skill in wrestling helped to win Leuktra (Mor. 639f). This is treated seriously by some scholars (e.g. Pritchett, War 4.64), but it seems doubtful whether close-packed hoplites, with shields on their left arms and spears or swords in their right hands, could have wrestled with their opponents. When the Spartans were reduced to fighting with hands and teeth at Thermopylai
(Hdt. 7.225.3), it was because all their weapons had gone, and similarly when the Persians tried to grab the Greeks' spears at Plataia (Hdt. 9.62.2), it was presumably because their own spears were too short (cf. Hdt. 7.211.2).

  Physical strength would clearly have been important for the 'shoving', but in rugby football it is not necessarily the heaviest and strongest pack that wins—how the pressure is applied is also important. Hoplites needed to be strong, in any case, to stand up to prolonged fighting in the heat, burdened with heavy equipment. The way that men from Archilochos (5) onwards threw away their shields if they turned to run, shows that the shield was particularly burdensome, but the weight of hoplite equipment in general is often contrasted with that of other troops (e.g. Thuc. 3.98.2, 4.33.2). The physical exertion involved in hoplite fighting is perhaps most vividly brought out in a passage of Euripides (Tro. 1196ff.), where Hekuba draws attention to the stain on the rim of Hektor's shield, caused by the sweat from his face, 'as he endured the toils of battle'.

  Even if the rear ranks did not literally push against those in front, they could have added 'weight' in the general sense that the greater the number of men pressing forward, the greater the force of the attack, and they would also have made it impossible for those in front to turn and run. This is a point made by the later writers Polybios, Arrian and Aelian (see p.97), and Xenophon's Cyrus orders the commander of his rear-guard bid his men watch for any shirking amongst those in front (Cyr. 6.3.27). Again there may have been a