The Hoplite - What Made Him Special?

[RichT]

The history of the modern concept of othismos as mass pushing is interesting - Peter Krentz covers this in his chapter in Men in Bronze (which obviously inspired my article).

Edited highlights:


For all its prominence in modern discussions of Archaic battle... the word othismos occurs rarely in the battle narratives of the classical historians: twice in Herodotus (7.225.1, the struggle over Leonidas' body at Thermopylae, and 9.62.2, the end of the battle of Plataia), once in Thucydides (4.96, the battle of Delion), and never in Xenophon. The word for the great shoving contest supposed to be the essence of Greek battle, in other words, occurs once in a description of Greek fighting Greek.
...
Years ago, scholars did not take othismos to mean something like a rugby scrum on steroids. Look at how translators used to render Herodotus. George Rawlinson in 1858-60 was typical: "a fierce struggle" and "a hand to hand struggle". Commentators and lexicographers were no different. In the first American edition of A Greek Englisdh Lexicon (1848), Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott gave "a very hot, close fight" and "to come to close quarters".... As late as 1938 J. E. Powell's Lexicon to Herodotus translated othismos as "hand to hand combat".
...
The earliest use of the rugby analogy that I have found occurs in G. B. Grundy's Thucydides and the History of His Age, originally published in 1911:

"When [the hoplite phalanx] first came into contact with the enemy, it relied in the first instance on shock tactics, that is to say, on the weight put into the first onset and developed in the subsequent thrust. The principle as very much the same as that followed by the forwards in a scrummage at the Rugby game of football".
...
W.J. Woodhouse in his 1933 book King Agis III of Sparta... is the first clear statment I have found of what became the dominant view:

"a conflict of hoplites was in the main a matter of brawn, of shock of the mass developed instantaneously as a steady thrust with the whole weight of the file behind it - a literal shoving of the enemy off the ground on which he stood."

The context for this pasage is Woodhouse's peculiar discussion of Thucydides 5.71, where Thucydides says that each man kept close to his right hand neighbour's shield out of fear. Woodhouse labelled this "notion... to put it bluntly nothing but a fatuous delusion and stark nonsense"
...
Not surprisingly, the great commentator on Thucydides, A.W Gomme, objected:

"a Greek battle was not so simply 'a matter of brawn'... (did the back rows push the men in front?), as Professor Woodhouse supposes. It was not a scrummage."

The parenthetical remark drips with sarcasm... No publicity is bad publicity, however, and Gomme had mentioned the rugby scrum again.

The analogy caught on in spite of both Gomme and a short 1942 article by A.D Fraser called 'The Myth of the Phalanx Scrimmage', which takes as its point of departure the assumption that the rugby scrum model dominates the field, at least in England. 


So it's an early twentieth century concept that became widely accepted until Cawkwell, Krentz and others started to pull it apart in the 1980s.

Now I don't have time for all this any more and as we all can clearly see, some people already believe they have nothing to learn, so it feels too much like a frustrating waste of time. I hope others may find some of this stuff interesting, however.

[Mark G]

Sabin and Goldsworthy making an interpretation is always going to get my vote.

Adding an Edwardian historiography to the contentious point, even more convincing.
For those guys, a visually recognisable comparison with rugby would suffice to neuter further thought, so it doesn't surprise me that we are still having to undo that a century later.

Historical interpretations flow in fashion like anything else, and all they need is a passage able to be quoted to justify it against all other evidence.

[Patrick Waterson]

True, but the key point would seem to be: when it is related to hoplite combat, what does it mean?

Why does it mean something special in this case, except that Hanson believes it so?  Why does it not mean a particularly hard fought melee, as it seems to elsewhere?

Because there are other and better ways of expressing a particularly hard-fought melee.

Herodotus IX.63
"Where Mardonius was himself, riding a white horse in the battle and surrounded by a thousand picked men who were the flower of the Persians, there they pressed their adversaries hardest [tautē de kai malista tous enantious epiesan]. So long as Mardonius was alive the Persians stood their ground and defended themselves, overthrowing many Lacedaemonians [hoi de anteikhon kai amunomenoi kateballon pollous tōn Lakedaimoniōn]."

Herodotus IX.67
"All the rest of the Greeks who were on the king's side fought badly on purpose, but not so the Boeotians; they fought for a long time against the Athenians. For those Thebans who were on the Persian side had great enthusiasm in the battle, and did not want to fight in a cowardly manner."

Herodotus IX.70.2
"When the Athenians came up, however, the fight for the wall became intense [iskhurē] and lasted for a long time. In the end the Athenians, by valor and constant effort [de aretē te kai lipariē], scaled the wall and breached it."

These all relate to the battle of Plataea, yet 'othismos' is only mentioned in the final stage of the fight at the temple.   By Richard's measure, it should have been present in all of these instances, especially the crowded assault on the camp.

Is it?  What kind of 'collective offensive action' could "one more step" indicate if not one ... more ... actual ... step? 

I'm not the one arguing that it means more than one more step.  Scrum-othismos believers are arguing it actually means "push hard at the back".  It means "One more step..." Subtext "Get moving again, attack again.  They've got no more fight left, we have them".  The anecdote is about leadership and the moment, not the mechanics of hoplite battle, which I'm guessing is why Polyaenus uses for several great leaders.

Let us consider how 'one more step' could bring victory.  Gaining 2' 6" of ground (or less) is not, in most circumstances, going to win a battle.  If Epaminondas wanted to persuade his men the foe had no fight left in them (contrary to the evidence of their eyes and shield arms) one suspects he would have done so by saying so.  However he actually wanted to persuade them to take one more step, and said so, and this meant they had to generate the push to move the enemy back one more step.

Interestingly, Polyaenus has an almost identical incident involving Iphicrates - another noted hoplite commander, who understood how to get the most from his men on the battlefield.  The difference is that he arranged the effort in advance as opposed to demanding it on the spur of the moment.

I don't see the relevance of this anecdote to mass shoving, as I have already said in the previous thread. But if the incident needs explaining, here's one explanation, from Adrian Goldsworthy's The Othismos, Myths and Heresies: The Nature of Hoplite Battle. Adrian follows Phil Sabin's 'dynamic standoff model', in which fighting is punctuated by lulls, with the forces separated by a small distance. It's not important whether anyone buys into this model, this is just an example of one explanation (so don't waste time picking fault with it):

Do you agree with this explanation, or why air it?

For my part, it strikes me that we have three pretty full accounts of Leuctra in Xenophon, Diodorus and Plutarch, none of which make any reference to this supposedly decisive moment.

'Pretty full' or 'entirely complete'? Each account provides some details the others lack, so non-mention of Polynaeus' item is not proof of its non-existence.

Plus Polyaenus has a nearly identical anecdote for Iphicrates (he doesn't say at which battle this is supposed to have happened):

Polyaenus 3.9.27
Iphicrates told his men, that he would ensure that they were victorious, if at a given command, they would encourage each other and advance by only a single pace. At the crisis of the battle, when victory hung in the balance, he gave the signal; the army responded with a shout, after which they advanced a pace and defeated the enemy.

The Iphicrates incident is interesting because we can reasonably assume that Iphicrates is also commanding a hoplite army.  If anything, it emphasises the importance of a coordinated effort by the whole formation to displace the foe's formation by just one pace, which does something to that formation causing it to lose the battle.

You might also compare with this for Alexander:

Polyaenus 4.3.8
In his first action with the Persians, Alexander seeing the Macedonians give way, rode through the ranks, calling out to his men, "One effort more, my Macedonians, one glorious effort." Animated by their prince, they made a vigorous attack: and the enemy abandoned themselves to flight. Thus did that critical moment determine the victory.

But an 'effort' rather than a 'step', and Alexander would have been with his cavalry.  So why lump this together with exhortations of hoplite commanders to their infantry?  It would appear that the idea behind quoting these cases without distinction between them is not to seek what they may reveal but to blur them together as some kind of literary commonplace.

So it seems to be a commonplace that a general could demand one last effort from his men to win a victory, not needing any particular explanation.

*Raises eyebrow*

Perhaps it would be more sensible to examine each case in context rather than keep plugging away at evidential assassination, of which there are two basic methods:
1) If there is only one mention, try to present it as an exception which proves the rule.
2) If there are several mentions, try to present them as a topos.

Next case.

Polyaenus 7.14.3
Orontes, with ten thousand Greek hoplites, fought at Cyme against Autophradates, who advanced against him with the same number of cavalry. Orontes ordered his men to look around, and observe the extensiveness of the plain. He told them that, if they loosened their ranks, it would be impossible to withstand the charge of the enemy's cavalry. Accordingly, they kept their ranks compact and close, and received the cavalry upon their spears. When the cavalry found that they could make no impression on them, they retreated. Orontes ordered the Greeks, when the cavalry made a second attack upon them, to advance three paces forward to meet them. The cavalry supposed that they meant to charge them, and fled away from the battlefield.

Interesting, because it demonstrates how even mounted Persians had by this time developed a distinct fear of a hoplite charge, and Orontes was able to use this to his advantage.

Polyaenus 4.3.5
When Alexander advanced against Darius, he ordered the Macedonians, as soon as they drew near the Persians, to fall down on their hands and knees: and, as soon as ever the trumpet sounded the charge, to rise up and vigorously attack the enemy. They did so: and the Persians, considering it as an act of reverence, abated of their impetuosity, and their minds became softened towards the prostrate foe. Darius too was led to think, he had gained a victory without the hazard of a battle. When on sound of the trumpet, the Macedonians sprung up, and made such an impression on the enemy, that their centre was broken, and the Persians entirely defeated.


Or how about:


Polyaenus 2.2.9
When Clearchus's hoplites were being harassed by the enemy's cavalry, he formed his army eight deep, in a looser formation than the usual square. He ordered his men to lower their shields, and under cover of the shields to use their swords to dig ditches, as large as they could conveniently make them. As soon as this was finished, he advanced beyond the ditches into the plain which lay in front of them, and ordered his troops, as soon as they were pressed by the enemy, to retreat behind the ditches which they had recently made. The enemy's cavalry, charging eagerly after them, fell one over another into the ditches, and became easy victims to the troops of Clearchus.


Why do these anecdotes not get similar exposure?

Simple - How well are they known?  And how easy are they to reconcile with what we know of the conduct of the respective actions?

[Erpingham]

These all relate to the battle of Plataea, yet 'othismos' is only mentioned in the final stage of the fight at the temple. 

Maybe Herodotus didn't realise he was supposed to be defining a formal phase in some other author's schema, so used a variety of words for the same thing because he was a competent writer?  He wanted some emphasis on how hard fought this piece of battle was?  He wanted an emphasis on the Persians standing and fighting desperately and up close, not fighting in an effete Eastern manner?  So many reasons much more convincing than he had a formal phase of hoplite battle in mind.

Let us consider how 'one more step' could bring victory.  Gaining 2' 6" of ground (or less) is not, in most circumstances, going to win a battle.  ........  he actually wanted to persuade them to take one more step, and said so, and this meant they had to generate the push to move the enemy back one more step.

Gaining 2ft 6 " of ground isn't going to win a battle, so it doesn't matter if you push, walk, skip or jump.  He very clearly means a small effort now will bring victory - he is not literally saying they only have to go 2 1/2 feet.  It's heroic rhetoric, not a parade ground instruction.

Addendum : I strongly suspect it is time to move on beyond this element of hoplites and talk of something else - by this stage it is probably boring and infuriating equally to a dwindling band of readers.  There are many other questions, some already raised.  For example, why did hoplites go from two spear to one spear and did it fundamentally change them? Are non-Greeks equipped as hoplites hoplites (e.g. Etruscans, Carthaginian Sacred band?).  If not, why not?

[Patrick Waterson]

Addendum : I strongly suspect it is time to move on beyond this element of hoplites and talk of something else - by this stage it is probably boring and infuriating equally to a dwindling band of readers.  There are many other questions, some already raised.  For example, why did hoplites go from two spear to one spear and did it fundamentally change them?

Excellent idea.

The change from two spears to one appears to have been pioneered by the Spartans, who in the time of the poet Tyrtaeus (7th century BC) have one spear while everyone else has two.  This can probably be connected to the adoption of the Lycurgan constitution, not that living in barracks and eating black broth makes one incapable of carrying two spears, but that a new fighting style emphasising moving rapidly to close combat was beginning to give Sparta success on the battlefield.  (It was either that or the discovery and reburial of the bones of Orestes which allowed them to defeat their long-standing foes the Tegeans: take your pick.)

Combining shooting with closing to combat, especially when using short-ranged weapons, is something if a challenge and only the Romans seem to have got it right.  The basic problem is that when closing you can prepare for throwing or you can prepare for melee, but not both simultaneously.  hence, the faster you close, the more challenging it becomes to 'hurl on the run'.  And hence the more training that is required to make such a manoeuvre effective.  Once this goes beyond the 'cultural comfort' level, one needs to undertake extended training, extended service or professionalise in order to make it work, so given the limited availability of the average job-holding citizen hoplite for such additional commitment, there would have been a tendency to settle for doing one thing well - that which proved most effective in combat.

The key departure here may be the Athenian innovation of charging at the run, first employed at Marathon in 490 BC.  By First Mantinea in 418 BC, the Athenians, Argives and Mantineans - in fact all of Sparta's opponents - were attacking at the run, while Spartans - and hence their allies making up the rest of the army - continued to march, albeit swiftly, to the music of flutes.  (This incidentally prompted a misjudgement by Agis, the Spartan commander: used to Spartan tempos of advance, he thought he had time to adjust his line before the armies closed - but his faster-moving opponents caught him in mid-manoeuvre.)   By Cunaxa in 401 BC, the entire Greek contingent, Spartans included, were attacking at the run - and finding that their Asiatic opponents, with one exception (Tissaphernes' cavalry, opposed to the peltasts), failed to await their onset.

It looks as if the extra spear dropped out as the tempo of advancing picked up, with the advance perhaps also becoming more fluid and continuous (i.e. no pauses for dressing the line or shooting).  Hoplite warfare in the 5th century BC seems to have been faster then in the 6th century BC, and this appears to be reflected in lighter equipment.  In the 4th century BC, we find (younger) Spartan hoplites able to chase and catch peltasts, no mean achievement for a heavy infantryman, which suggests lightened equipment but also dedicated training for speed (I doubt that even Boucicault could have caught a peltast while wearing full armour).  Iphicrates' reforms appear aimed at lightening equipment still further, or at least redistributing the exisiting weight to favour offensive capability, a trend which ultimately resulted in the Macedonian phalanx.

Are non-Greeks equipped as hoplites hoplites (e.g. Etruscans, Carthaginian Sacred band?).  If not, why not?

A good question for someone else to opine upon.  Please feel free.

[Duncan Head]

Are non-Greeks equipped as hoplites hoplites (e.g. Etruscans, Carthaginian Sacred band?).  If not, why not?

The Greeks thought they were. Plutarch, Timoleon 27.2, of the Carthaginians at Krimeisos:

"and behind these ten thousand hoplites with white shields (hoplitais leukaspisi)"

[Erpingham]

Are non-Greeks equipped as hoplites hoplites (e.g. Etruscans, Carthaginian Sacred band?).  If not, why not?

The Greeks thought they were. Plutarch, Timoleon 27.2, of the Carthaginians at Krimeisos:

"and behind these ten thousand hoplites with white shields (hoplitais leukaspisi)"

Interesting in the light of the modern fashion for saying hoplites were special because of their Greek values, not their equipment or tactics.

[Duncan Head]

The Greeks happily apply the word hoplite to foreign heavy infantry who may not even be equipped in Greek style:

there came to their assistance Itamenes with his own force, and from Comania Assyrian hoplites ("hoplitai Assyrioi") and Hyrcanian horsemen—these also being mercenaries in the service of the King

But I am not sure that the use of the word as a generic for "heavy infantry" necessarily has any bearing on what might make Greek (and Carian?) hoplitai "special". To definitively say how far it was or was not the equipment that was decisive, we'd need a clear picture of how foreign infantry in Greek gear performed in battle both against Greek hoplites and against non-hoplite opposition.

[Patrick Waterson]

True.

In this respect the Carthaginians are rather disappointing, perhaps mainly on account of the absence of Punic records, though we do have the snippet from Diodorus covering Dionysius I's supply of hoplite equipment to the Illyrians in their war against the Molossians.

"While these events were taking place, in Sicily Dionysius, the tyrant of the Syracusans, resolved to plant cities on the Adriatic Sea. His idea in doing this was to get control of the Ionian Sea, in order that there he might make the route to Epeirus safe and have his own cities which could give haven to ships. For it was his intent to descend unexpectedly with great armaments upon the regions about Epeirus and to sack the temple at Delphi, which was filled with great wealth. 2 Consequently he made an alliance with the Illyrians with the help of Alcetas the Molossian, who was at the time an exile and spending his days in Syracuse. Since the Illyrians were at war, he dispatched to them an allied force of two thousand soldiers and five hundred suits of Greek armour. The Illyrians distributed the suits of armour among their best warriors and incorporated the soldiers among their own troops. 3 Now that they had gathered a large army, they invaded Epeirus and would have restored Alcetas to the kingship over the Molossians. But when no one paid any attention to him, they first ravaged the country, and after that, when the Molossians drew up against them, there followed a sharp battle in which the Illyrians were victorious and slew more than fifteen thousand Molossians. After such a disaster befell the inhabitants of Epeirus, the Lacedaemonians, as soon as they had learned the facts, sent a force to give aid to the Molossians, by means of which they curbed the barbarians' great audacity." - Diodorus XV.13.1-3

While it is easy to conclude that the supply of armour and 'allied' troops gave the Illyrians a decisive edge, the finer points of technology, tactics and techniques remain more elusive.