Hoplite Warfare & Spartan Invincibility Part 2

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In Part 1 of this piece, I looked at how I see a typical hoplite battle developing (in the archaic period 650-480 BCE, especially the late archaic, ie up to and including Xerxes invasion) between evenly matched sides. This blog will take a look both at how battles involving the Spartans could be very different and at some of the realities behind the myth of Spartan invincibility.

It’s been a long time coming but your proud city state of Polopolis and its allies can take no more Spartan provocation. So, today, you’re going to be doing battle with the Spartans. But in truth, your fear of facing the Phlebans is nothing compared to what you’re feeling now.

You’ve young enough to have never even seen a Spartan before but you know they’re very different from you. They’ve weirdly got two kings. They have slave helots do all the work so they spend all their time training for war. TRAINING! You’ve heard that all they do is prepare for battle. The philosophers at the agora never seem to stop reminding you of how superior the Spartans are because our city has forgotten the virtues of its past.

But all that is mere rhetoric as you advance to battle with a quickening step and shouted war cries. You look up and in the distance the Spartans are just standing their combing their hair! Apart from the sound of their flutes, they’re silent. Are they even human?

Your phalanx pauses about 200 metres away from the Spartans and after some effort the front lines are redressed. Then, with many loud shouts, the phalanx begins the hastened walk that constitutes its charge. 

As you approach the enemy, you begin to hide your unprotected right arm behind your cousin Hippolyte's shield and Telemon, the hoplite to your left, is doing the same behind your shield. The whole phalanx is unconsciously hedging to the right which is exposing more and more of its left flank to the Spartans opposite. 

The Spartans still aren’t moving. In fact they’re taking the time to make a sacrifice!  They’re less than 100m away and your ranks are becoming ragged. 

It’s only now, still silent, they begin to advance, actually moving in formation as if they are one creature.

Now the two phalanxes are but metres apart and with a shout, you and your fellow front rankers surge towards the Spartans as they do the same. Around you spears and shields clash. Though you can really only see what's happening close around you, you know that your ragged front rank has been hit by a solid wall of Spartiates.

You notice that the men in your rear ranks haven't followed behind you as they should. You glance around to see them streaming away. Sod it all, you aren’t hanging around either! Soon it’s a rout with barely a fight. 

Luckily, the Spartans barely pursued and your casualties were light. You later find out that the Spartans had rallied behind you and began to roll up your entire army, phalanx by phalanx. It was a complete disaster for Polopolis and its allies.

[All of the incredible things the Spartans do in this fictitious battle, like calmly making a sacrifice as the enemy approaches, are attested to in Greek sources]

I am of the view that Psychology is an entirely underrated aspect of hoplite warfare and that’s how I think Sparta’s reputation was formed. They were very different from other Greek cultures, they were Other and that caused its own fear. Everyone knew the Spartans existed to fight (and fight they could - they were very proactive in maintaining hegemony in their own backyard). Their reputation preceded them and the opposition could be psychologically cowed before the battle even began.

Further, in a hoplite battle armies universally placed their the best troops on the right flank of the phalanx while the left flank was traditionally the place of second honour. This meant that the Spartiates rarely faced off against the strongest of the opposition’s fighters, automatically skewing the battle in their favour from the start. If, as expected, they defeated their opposite numbers the opposing army was at a distinct tactical and psychological disadvantage.

It’s a stretch to say the Spartans ran a PR campaign but that’s in effect what their reputation did for them. The Spartans were considered to be the masters of land warfare by other Greeks; Pericles advised Athens to avoid open land battle with the Spartans.

The Spartans were very politically conservative and inclined to be insular and inwardly focused. Sparta often declined to send actual help to their allies. For example during the Persian wars, their first instinct was to just defend the Peloponnese. 

In fact, the Spartans deployed a range of reasons for not sending troops. They often professed fears of a helot uprising (which were actually very rare) or turned up late - as at Marathon, or in too few numbers - as at Thermopylae. 

Perhaps the Spartan reputation arose partly because they very much chose when to get involved.  Better for others to buy into a story of invincibility than to have to prove it in battle. It seems to have worked, other Greek states often deferred to the them in decision making.

When they did enter battle, especially as the later Peloponnesian War developed and Sparta was involved in an increasing number of battles, did their armies defeat all before them? Well, no. Have a look here for a list of Spartan victories and defeats:

List of Spartan Defeats

But strangely their fearsome reputation seems to have covered over their setbacks. Even the infamous and unprecedented surrender of 120 elite Spartiates at Spacteria in 425 BC doesn’t provoke much criticism from Thucydides. 

It took up until the battles of Leuctra in 371 BCE and Manitinaea, 362 BCE, for the Thebans under Epaminondas to put the nail in the coffin of Spartan invincibility. And Epaminondas did this by clever use of psychology of his own. 

He had his best troops, the elite Sacred band, actually face off against the Spartiates themselves. But to ensure they had the requisite confidence in battle, they fought in a 50 deep column that boosted the morale of their own front ranks. The Spartans were soundly defeated and their reputation never really recovered.

The Spartans were effectively professionals fighting amateurs but they weren’t superhuman or invincible. But who can resist buying into a slice of the myth that has lasted 2,500 years by having a Spartan army in their collection? Not me.

Further Reading: 

Spartan Invincibility - Ancient Warfare Magazine podcast 74

The Nature of Hoplite Battle - Peter Krentz

Hoplite Warfare & Spartan Invincibility Part 1

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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.