Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (50 page)

Notes

    
1
. Hanson 1999, p. 223. “Do these innovations in arms tell us how
geôrgoi
took land or influence away from entrenched landowners?”

    
2
. Hanson 1999, p. 224.

    
3
. Van Wees 2007, pp. 273–99.

    
4
. Mitchell 1996, pp. 98–101.

    
5
. Concerning the apparent absence of elaborate tactics in hoplite warfare, see Hanson 1989, pp. 19–26, a chapter titled “Not Strategy, Not Tactics.”

    
6
. Hanson 1999, p. 224.

    
7
. Van Wees 2004, p. 55.

    
8
. Tyrtaeus fr. 10, West.

    
9
. Herodotus 1.13 and 5.99; Thucydides 1.15. For a list of the opposing allies, see Murray 1993, p. 76.

  
10
. Pausanias 2.24.7.

  
11
. The fragmentary inscriptions that relate to this war between Paros and Naxos are presented in Gerber 1999, pp. 16–33.

  
12
. Zapheiropoulou 2006, pp. 262–65.

  
13
. Herodotus 7.9b, translated by de Sélincourt.

  
14
. Hanson 1999, p. 299.

  
15
. Hanson 1999, p. 300.

  
16
. Hornblower 2007, p. 22. See also Shipley 1993, p. 1.

  
17
. Archilochus fr. 5, Gerber. Translation by D. Mulroy.

  
18
. Skolion of Hybrias the Cretan, in Athenaeus 695f–696a (Page).

  
19
. Archilochus fr. 1, Gerber.

  
20
. Homer,
Odyssey
9.39–46 and 9.193–215.

  
21
. Archilochus fr. 2, Gerber. In his own translation for the Loeb edition of
Greek Iambic Poetry
(1999, p. 79), Gerber prefers to translate
en dorì
as “on board ship” or “under arms,” rather than the more common “on my spear.” The reference to campaigning is clear, regardless of which meaning is preferred.

  
22
. Van Wees 2004, pp. 40–43 and 71–76. On Greek mercenaries see also Hunt 2007, pp. 140–44.

  
23
. Van Wees 2004, p. 42.

  
24
. Van Wees 2004, p. 76.

  
25
. Luraghi 2006.

  
26
. Luraghi 2006, pp. 38–39.

  
27
. Luraghi 2006, pp. 40–42.

  
28
. Snodgrass 1964a, p. 66.

  
29
. For translations and detailed discussion of these Assyrian documents, see Luraghi 2006, pp. 31–33, and Niemeier 2001, p. 16.

  
30
. From the “Little Annals,” line 9; see Luraghi 2006, p. 31.

  
31
. Luraghi 2006, p. 33.

  
32
. Anderson 1970, pp. 22–25.

  
33
. Luraghi 2006, pp. 41–42.

  
34
. Parke 1933.

  
35
. Trundle 2004.

  
36
. Myres 1933, pp. 25–39.

  
37
. Luraghi 2006, p. 36.

  
38
. For Assyrian destruction of orchards as part of siege warfare, see Cole 1997, pp. 29–40.

  
39
. Luraghi 2006, p. 37, note 86.

  
40
. Snodgrass 1964b.

  
41
. Herodotus 2.152.

  
42
. Herodotus 2.163.

  
43
. Herodotus 2.30.

  
44
. Petrie 1888, pp. 47–96.

  
45
. Tod 1946, pp. 6–7.

  
46
. Woolley 1921, pp. 121–29 and figures 43–46, plates 21, 22, and 32.

  
47
. Alcaeus fr. 133 Edmonds.

  
48
. Van Wees 2004, p. 42.

  
49
. Herodotus 5.95.

  
50
. Snodgrass 1980, p. 110.

  
51
. For an overview of Viking arms and warfare, see Griffith 1995.

  
52
. Hanson 1999, p. 290.

  
53
. Osborne 1998, p. 268.

  
54
. Whitley 2001, p. 96.

  
55
. Alcaeus fr. 19, Edmonds (tr. D. Mulroy).

  
56
. Homer,
Odyssey
14.210–51, tr. Murray (rev. Dimmock).

  
57
. Polyaenus 3.9.63, tr. Krentz and Wheeler.

  
58
. Mimnernus fr. 13a, Gerber.

  
59
. Archilochus fr. 4, Gerber.

Bibliography

Anderson, J. K. 1970. “The Trojan Horse Again.”
Classical Journal
66:22–25.

Cole, Steven W. 1997. “The Destruction of Orchards in Assyrian Warfare,” in
ASSYRIA 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project
, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting. Helsinki.

Gerber, Douglas. 1999.
Greek Iambic Poetry
. Cambridge, Mass.

Griffith, Paddy. 1995.
The Viking Art of War
. London.

Hanson, Victor Davis. 1983.
Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece
. Pisa.

———. 1999.
The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civili-zation
, 2nd ed. Berkeley, Calif.

Hornblower, Simon. 2007. “Warfare in Ancient Literature: The Paradox of War,” in
The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
, vol. 1:
Greece, the Hellenistic World and the Rise of Rome
, ed. Philip Sabin, Hans van Wees, and Michael Whitby. Cambridge.

Hunt, Peter. 2007. “Military Forces,” in
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Greece, the Hellenistic World and the Rise of Rome
, ed. Philip Sabin, Hans van Wees, and Michael Whitby. Cambridge.

Luraghi, Nino. 2006. “Traders, Pirates, Warriors: The Proto-History of Greek Mercenary Soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
Phoenix
60.1: 21–47.

Mitchell, Stephen. 1996. “Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece,” in
Battle in Antiquity
, ed. Alan B. Lloyd. Swansea.

Niemeier, Wolf-Dietrich. 2001. “Archaic Greeks in the Orient: Textual and Archaeological Evidence.”
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
322:11–32.

Osborne, Robin. 1998. “Early Greek Colonization?” in
Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence
, ed. Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees. London.

Parke, H. W. 1933.
Greek Mercenary Soldiers: From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Issus
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Petrie, W. Flinders. 1888.
Nebesh and Defenneh
. London.

Snodgrass, Anthony. 1964a.
Early Greek Armour and Weapons
. Edinburgh.

———. 1964b. “Carian Armourers: The Growth of a Tradition.” in
Journal of Hellenic Studies
84:107–18.

———. 1967.
Arms and Armour of the Greeks
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———. 1980.
Archaic Greece: The Age of Experiment
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Tod, Marcus N. 1946.
A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions
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Trundle, Matthew. 2004.
Greek Mercenaries: From the Late Archaic Period to Alexander
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Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities
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———. 2007. “War and Society,” in
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CHAPTER 10

Can We See the “Hoplite Revolution” on the Ground? Archaeological Landscapes, Material Culture, and Social Status in Early Greece

LIN FOXHALL

Introduction: A Hoplite Revolution?

The issue of the emergence of hoplite phalanxes in early Greek communities offers a challenging case study for exploring the ways in which archaeological and historical data can be combined, or not, to address questions about social and political developments central to Archaic poleis. A hoplite is not just a material cultural assemblage, although at one level he is defined by scholars by the particular assemblage(s) of weaponry he wore and carried (van Wees 2005: 47–52). Hoplite equipment appears to have varied regionally, over time, and even between individuals, but the core elements were the spear and shield (van Wees 2005: 48; Giuliani 2010). Indeed, “a hoplite” is hardly the issue: it is the hoplite phalanx, the emergence of a group of men fighting together as a team (van Wees 2005: 166–68), that has most interested historians. Fundamentally, the historical debates have focused on the emergence of the hoplite phalanx as a tactic and its relationship to the phalanx as a sociopolitical group, generally believed to be synonymous with property owners (Hanson 1999: 69; 223–24; van Wees 2005: 55–57). The logic of the various arguments presented associates (1) the shared experience of being, almost literally, joined in battle with (2) the shared ideologies that (3) fed into the ideals of a shared political community, whose members (4) held a stake in the security (and sometimes expansion) of a territory they owned and farmed for a living, although not always in this order (Hanson 1999: 235–37).

Hanson (1999: 47–88) dates the social and political environment that generated the social group and political community of hoplites to the late eighth century. He takes Laertes as epitomizing the Zeitgeist of the phenomenon, “a representation of an entire new class of farmers” (Hanson 1999: 49). A key element in Hanson’s interpretation is Laertes’ permanent residence on his rural farmstead, rather than in a nucleated settlement (Hanson 1999: 51). For Hanson, these “middling” farmers, “independent moderate property owners,” served as hoplites to defend their farms and communities (Hanson 1999: 69, 87–88 and passim). Hanson (1999: 40, 50, 79–82)
also envisages this period as a time when farmers spread onto “
eschatiai
,” “marginal lands,” as a result, he postulates, of “population pressure and the scarcity of good bottom land” (Hanson 1999: 82). For the most part Hanson supports his argument for dispersed rural residence (in his terms, “homestead residence”) with evidence from contemporary (e.g., Homer’s
Odyssey
and Hesiod’s
Works and Days
; Hanson 1999: 443–45) and later (e.g., Thucydides, Ps-Aristotle,
Ath. Pol
.; Hanson 1999: 445–46) literary sources. However, he also invokes at a general level the discoveries of extensive and intensive archaeological survey and the excavation of farmhouses of the Classical period to support this argument (Hanson 1999: 51–53; 445–46).

Van Wees places both the development of the phalanx as a hoplite infantry force (van Wees 2005: 56) and the rise of hoplites as a political class in Athens (van Wees 2005: 177) in the sixth century BCE (see also van Wees, this volume). His argument for the development of the phalanx as a fighting tactic is based on a combination of early Greek poetry (especially Tyrtaeus), the archaeological evidence of preserved weapons, and the iconographic evidence, especially of Athenian and Corinthian vases (van Wees, this volume; 2005: 166–79). In contrast, his arguments about the enfranchisement of hoplites as a property-holding group are based primarily upon the, mostly later, historical sources relating to Solon’s property classes and the reforms of Kleisthenes. In his view, the early sixth-century “reforms” extended political participation and military service in the phalanx to the
zeugitai
, a group that was still part of the wealthy elite in Athens (van Wees, this volume; 2001; 2005: 55–56, 80–81; 2007: 276; Foxhall 1997). The political reorganization of Kleisthenes devolved military organization to the new political units of tribes and demes, although the generals, who held both political office and military command, were elected (van Wees 2005: 99). For van Wees (2001), the key feature is that hoplites in Athens and other Archaic poleis were (prosperous or elite) farmers and property holders within the community; he does not address the specific question of residence.

The exploration of Mediterranean landscapes through archaeological survey over the past thirty years has transformed our understanding of the ancient Greek polis in its territorial setting. We now have a relatively clear picture of the rural countrysides within which the urban centers of the polis developed and were embedded. The growth of this body of archaeological data has provided us with an additional tool for working through the complex spatial, social, and political relationships between town and country. However, this additional source of data has introduced new, and exacerbated existing, methodological issues. Archaeological and historical data differ in character, and historical “events” do not map easily onto archaeological “events” (Foxhall 2000). Can we use archaeological data to address questions of social and political status in Archaic Greece? If so, what questions can we legitimately ask of these data? Can archaeological evidence be mobilized to address the historical issues of whether the hoplite phalanx was coterminous with “middling” (Hanson 1999: 69) or prosperous (van Wees 2005: 55–56) property holders and whether this phenomenon began in the eighth or sixth century BCE?

Using Archaeological Data: Landscape and Survey

If, as historians, we wish to engage with archaeological evidence, we must first be aware of how it is generated and of what, precisely, it consists. It is no use simply swiping the conclusions from the archaeology book without understanding how and on what basis those interpretations were reached (Alcock and Cherry 2004: 5). When historians do this, it can result in the promulgation of major misunderstandings and misinterpretations (and the same is true in reverse, when archaeologists try to use the conclusions of historians on textual data) (Osborne 2004). It is easy to forget that archaeological data are no more “neutral” or “unbiased” than historical data, and that archaeologists, like historians, have often “found” what they were looking for—that is, their results and interpretations are shaped by the questions they were asking in the first place.