Follow this blog for more articles like this.
I saw a guy jogging past me the other day wearing a T-shirt advertising ‘Spartan Fitness’ and since I was busy putting the finishing touches on the very DBA Spartan army that is pictured in this post (Click here to see the full army post), I got to thinking about how the reputation of Sparta’s militaristic culture and its army has captured the imagination of peoples from ancient times to today.
Even in ancient times the Spartans conjured mystique. Herodotus relates how Xerxes was told that the Spartans would, “Stand at their post and there will conquer or die.” According to Plutarch when one of the soldiers at Thermopylae complained to Leonidas that “Because of the arrows of the barbarians it is impossible to see the sun.” To which Leonidas replied, “Won’t it be nice, then, if we have shade in which to fight them?”
Spartans mothers are reputed to have admonished their sons to bravery with the pithy, Come home with your shield or on it.” Even when well past their glory days, Roman tourists would visit Sparta to watch the Spartan agoge (training) in progress.
So I guess that it should come as no surprise that modern popular culture lionises the Spartans. In the movie 300, for example, Thermopylae was dramatically depicted as the heroic last stand of the thin red line. Modern organisations cloak themselves in Spartan tropes to project toughness. Spartans are the very definition of Laconic.
In the mind’s eye, most people visualise the Spartans in red uniforms marching in lockstep, shields emblazoned with the lambda, the invincible super-soldiers of their day who defeated all before them.
So is all this fanboy adulation justified? To answer that I’ll first take a quick side trip to how I think hoplite warfare in the archaic period 650-480 BCE (especially the late archaic, ie up to and including Xerxes invasion) operated.
Imagine yourself a typical, barely trained citizen hoplite from the proud city state of Polopolis lining up for battle against a Spartan host. Your last battle against the Phlebans went well. You and your fellow citizens advanced to the battlefield hyping yourselves up by singing the Paian. Being among your city’s fittest and strongest men, you were in the 1st rank of the 8 rank formation.
Only you and the men in the 2nd rank were really expected to do the fighting. Thankfully, the ranks behind you gave you the confidence you needed to fight. You could hear the grizzled veterans in the rear rank by turns cajole or threaten the middle rankers to do their duty and hold steady.
There, a few hundred metres ahead of you cresting a low hill, you could see the Phelbans. Fear was building in you so you started to hug a little closer behind the guy to your right’s shield. Everyone in the phalanx wished it over and done and began the charge about 200 metres from the foe. The steady paian changed into shouted war cries and even though your charge was really only a fast walk, the formation started to break up.
The Phlebans were charging as well. Neither side gave way and soon your ragged front lines met with loud shouts and began fencing at each other with your spears. Beside you Aristotle began to flinch but thankfully the rest of the phalanx had caught up just behind you so, with the battle line reformed, he had nowhere to go so fought on.
You stood shield to shield with your friends, shoving and stabbing at the Phlebans for a few minutes but both sides held. Then began a series of lulls where both sets of front ranks pulled back a couple of metres for a breather before a few brave hoplites would surge forward leading you back into the fray.
This back and forth went on for quite a while but the fighting around you began to go in your favour. A few of your men were down but more of them were. The Phlebans were becoming more hesitant and your front line gathered again for one big push.
You forced yourselves past their first ranks and into the unsteady and unwilling rear ranks of their formation. Suddenly, there’s a cry from the Phlebans and they’re running. In the helter-skelter of the Phleban rout, you and your fellow front rankers are causing heavy casualties. You’re too exhausted to follow up far but the battle is won!
So, this is how I believe an archaic hoplite battle went (minus whatever the skirmishers did in hoplite warfare - sources don’t mention them much). If the two sides were evenly matched the battle could pulse back and forth for a long time.
That hoplite warfare of this time was pretty static is evidenced by the apparent tactical innovation of the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. The sources of the time found the fact that the Athenians charged from a distance to close quickly with the Persians quite remarkable. Herodotus stating that, ‘These are the first Hellenes whom we know of to use running against the enemy’. Still, it must have been quite a singular occurrence, hard charging hoplite warfare certainly doesn’t appear to be in evidence at the Battle of Plataea.
Even in the 4th century, Xenophon bemoans the state of the average hoplite. According to him, hoplites didn't train at all until they were actually called up for service, struggled to form into line of battle and couldn't march forward.
So, if the usual hoplite phalanx wasn't a well trained machine, morale became the key. The rear ranks provided much needed support for the morale of the front couple of ranks but when the front ranks of a phalanx lost their will or ability to fight, the rear rankers couldn’t be expected to stand long. When they went, so did the whole phalanx.
In Part 2 of this piece I’ll take a look at how battles involving the Spartans could be very different to the one above.
No comments:
Post a Comment