Meggie Macdonald

Bibliographical Sketch/Abstract of The Gaze in Polybius’ Histories by James Davidson

Davidson argues that, unlike the historical interpretation that ‘gaze’ is a “substantial unitary reality”, gaze in Polybius is presented through characters and readers and hence identifies multiple gazes.  This competition of narratives is especially evident in Book III.  Generals’ speeches also represent an element in the “struggle over the interpretation of events” where, for example, Scipio’s analysis of Hannibal’s Alpine crossing evolves into expressing the obstacle, not as the mountains, but as the fear his crossing invoked in the Roman people.  The focus of the Histories is on the differing realities and the development and tension of those realities.  His basic reasoning lies in the fact that Polybius writes about dangerous deeds, not danger itself, because perceptions lead to greater surprise and reactionary tactics by the opponent.  There are the perceptions of the combatants themselves, of third parties assessing the situation, and Macedon and Greek states considering each other.  On top of that, Polybius’ readers are looking at all these in turn, reinforcing his belief that one can only understand what one examines from every angle. 

Davidson proceeds to discuss the ‘didactic arena’, the simile of readers as spectators in something resembling a boxing match.  Polybius often describes war as a fighting contest between:  the two opponents, the blows exchanged, the opponent him-/herself, and between the spectators and each opponent.  As combatants are aware that they are on show so too is military warfare a show of superiority, and that show of strength can be the obstacle, irregardless of its reality.  Davidson believes Polybius chose to focus on the perceptions because they are the more powerful.  Finally there are levels in the narrative that enhance these perceptions:  the military action level, (the event), the signifying action level, (the perception of that action), and the pathological level involving the response to the perception.  Polybius’ focus is again on the second of these, emphasizing how the ‘daring’ of a person accomplishes a specific perception with the intention to weaken or dumbfound the opponent, ensuring victory through demoralization. 

According to Davidson, Polybius believed that demonstrations of power were the key in warfare.  Hence, he sees the Romans exacting a pre-emptive imperialism, holding off the ambitions of others with their own perceived might.  He concludes with a brief sketch of Polybius, and expresses hope that his examination of the gaze in Polybius can be applied to other ancient authors.

Basileus:  The Evidence for Kingship in Geometric Greece by Robert Drews (Yale University Press, 1983)

When reviewing Robert Drews’ book Basileus:  The Evidence for Kingship in Geometric Greece, it is made uncomfortably clear that there is no universal standard for structuring an argument of this size (ie. more than essay length, although there is an argument to be made here as well).  Mr. Drews offers his readers a new theory to the debate on Dark Age kings in Greece but does so by a most circuitous route.  The structure of his book is simple but not effectively so.  His thesis, using a modern definition, that ‘kings’  did not exist in the ninth century BCE is not coherent or even visible throughout.

Mr. Drews suggests that the term basileus only came to mean ‘king’ in the sense of a single monarchical leader very recently and that during the Heroic and Dark Ages this word meant something entirely different.  He does not explicitly state his definition for the word ‘king’ but does plan to redefine basileus in a ninth century context.  As a result of this redefinition, Mr. Drews presumably will also describe what and how these basileis ruled in the Geometric Period. 

His book is divided into six sections – introduction, chapters II to IV, conclusion – and the main body of chapters addresses; first, the evidence available for basileis in this period; second, Mr. Drews redefines basileus; and third, he traces the changing responsibilities of magistrates from the Mycenaean Age down to the Classical Period.  In his introduction, he briefly outlines the historiography of the debate on this subject, which is vital in order to appreciate the innovation of his own contribution.  Hermann Bengtson believes kingship (modern definition) disappeared prior to the colonization movements of the eighth century BCE, an approximate date that Chester Starr generally agrees with, adding that there were some colonies that had kings but that this was a fading phenomenon.  Russell Meiggs does not believe kings survived past the end of the ninth century, while Raphael Sealy sees monarchy lasting well into the seventh century.  The next consideration is what these men were kings of who disappeared sometime between the ninth and the seventh centuries in Greece.  Were they ‘kings’ of a polis?  Were they leaders of loose coalitions, reminiscent of the alliance of Achaean basileis who agreed to go to Troy and retrieve Helen?  Juri Andreev argues that a basileus of the ninth century ruled over a village or a deme, types of communities that would later evolve into Classical poleis.  This is the argument upon which Mr. Drews himself will base part of his upcoming text.

Mr. Drews does clearly outline how he plans to prove or disprove the argument for ‘kings’ as such in the Geometric Period.  He states that the evidence used in the past was from four ‘weak’ sources:  the Iliad and the Odyssey, Strabo and Pausanias, Corinthian and Athenian kinglists, and the fact that Archaic officials between 720 and 500 BCE were called basileis, all attesting to monarchic traditions in the recent past.  Instead, Mr. Drews will presumably attempt a reanalysis of the Homeric sources, and include Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides.  In addition, he will also consider the foundation myths of numerous Greek cities throughout Attica, the Peloponnese, Ionia, and the Mediterranean.

Chapter II deals exclusively with the evidence for ‘kings’ in the Geometric Period and from this, Mr. Drews reaches the conclusion that the sources do not support the theory that basileis were exclusive rulers in Greece at this time.  A series of foundation myths pervade many of the major settlements along the coast of Asia Minor that allude to a common ancestry.  The “standard genealogy of Codrus”, provided by Hellanicus (F.Gr.Hist. no.323a), fr. 23 , is as follows:  Deucalion, Hellen, Aeolus, Salmoneus, Tyro-Poseidon, Periclymenus, Boros, Penthilus, Andropompus, Melanthus, Codrus [pp.11-12].  The Ionians themselves believed their origins lay at Pylos and that their twelve cities were representative of the twelve sons of Neleus [p.11].  There is also an Athenian Neleus claimed on the mainland who connects Ionia and Attica with origins at Pylos [p.11].  Each of the major cities listed in Mr. Drews’ introductory table of contents is addressed in turn, some of which attribute more than one Codrid or Neleid king ruling simultaneously [pp.14-36] .  There is also a case where the descendents of the founding son of Neleus who were quickly forced to rule jointly with other aristocrats at Mytilene [p.30].  The majority of evidence for founders and their immediate progeny ruling as ‘kings’ in the Aegean and Asia Minor are a series of conflicting myths and stories told by ‘weak’ sources:  Pausanias, Plutarch, and Nicolaus of Damascus.  Mr. Drews concludes that there is no sustaining evidence for kings in this region in the ninth century because none of the sources that attest to basileis recognize them as exclusive leaders beyond the realm of the Heroic Age [p.34-36].  What is interesting to note here is that, although Mr. Drews’s writing suggests that the Heroic Age was a chronologically datable part of ancient Greek history, he rejects evidence of kings in myth as unhistorical. 

There are only two cities in the Western Mediterranean that Mr. Drews scrutinizes for ninth century kings, Tarentum and Syracuse, and he determines that they did not exist there either [p.39].  Where the evidence at Tarentum supports his theory that a group of basileia ruled there ca. 515 BCE, in Syracuse there is a dearth of material for kings apart from a vague association with a Thracian wine mentioned by Athenaeus, Julius Pollux, and Aelian [p.38-39], all of whom wrote in the second and third centuries CE, nearly a thousand years after the time in question.

In the case of the Isthmus and the Peloponnese, there are a variety of competing kingship traditions at Corinth, Arcadia , Messenia, and Lacedaemon [pp.47, 68-69, 73, 76, 82], all stemming in one way or another from the Children of Heracles.  Mr. Drews clearly draws attention to this break from the traditions of Ionia, where origins at Nelian Pylos were predominant [p.40].  He is also perfectly willing to use the theory of a Dorian or Heraclid Invasion without openly accepting it with any of his own research contributions.  In most cases, the literary evidence for kings in this region is slight or unsubstantiated; however, Argos presents an interesting case that Mr. Drews investigates further.  It is likely that by the sixth century BCE, Argos was a democracy with a basileus established in the fifth century who probably headed the army [p.58-59].  The best known of these was Pheidon, who Herodotus called a tyrant for his hubristic nature [p.61].  Pausanias refers to a basileus named Damocratidas who existed after the Messenian Revolt in the third quarter of the seventh century and there is also mention of a basileus named Eratus in the late eighth century.  The evidence thus suggests that there was a single basileus in Archaic Argos who acted under the orders of the ruling damiorgoi (chief magistrates) as a military commander and perhaps held that position for life [p.62]. 

But did Argive kings rule in the Geometric Period?  The heroic dynasts were all destroyed in myth and Plato reflects that the cataclysmic loss of these Heraclids in Argos and Messenia inspired Lycurgus to control Sparta’s two kings with laws [p.64].  Plato therefore “cannot have believed that kingship there continued long after the heroic age” [p.64].  The major problem arose when Theopompus, “writing when Macedon was a great power, was obliged to come up with something more serious” to legitimize Macedonian monarchic rule [p.67].  He chose to link a Macedonian kinglist to Argos and disrupted the chronology Herodotus gives for Pheidon by placing him much earlier in history than did Herodotus himself [p.68].  The validity of this list is further confused by the third century Peripatetic, Satyrus, who also gives a Macedonian ancestor story closely tied to that of Argos but with unreasonably long reigns of more than fifty years for each king [p.69-70].  Mr. Drews states that the sources available identify an advisory Argive basileia between 720 and 450 BCE, in the Archaic Period but not in the Geometric, and believes that the creation of kinglists by Theopompus and Satyrus supports this [p.71].  However, it is unclear how he has interpreted the kinglists as evidence when he suggests that they are mere fabrications with political implications.

The final section in Chapter II is devoted to Central Greece.  In Athens, there are two competing kinglist dynasties, one of Cecrops and another of Melanthus and Codrus [p.86].  The second of these acts as Mr. Drews’ focus throughout the Athenian evidence, noting that it included decennial archons in its latter half.  The kinglist is as follows:  Melanthus, Codus, Medon, Acastus, Archippus, Thersippus, Phorbas, Megacles, Diognetus, Pherecles, Ariphron, Thespieus, Agamestor, Aschylus, Alcmaeon; and included the seven archons down to approximately 683 BCE:  Charops, Aesimides, Clidicus, Hippomenes, Leocrates, Apsander, Eryxias [p.87].  Mr. Drews states that this list was treated seriously throughout the Renaissance but has recently been reexamined.  He includes an extensive historiography of this reexamination because the emphasis of the debate rests on when the list was compiled and how seriously that can determine its validity [p.88].  The names in the list after Codrus are nothing more than names; they do not figure anywhere else but in the Parian Marble Kinglist, which Herodotus and Hellanicus appear to have referred to [pp.91 and 93].  No one in Classical Athens knew of any decennial archons in their history, and nor had they heard of the Melanthid kings (the first of the two competing lists) [pp.92-93].  It appears that the second kinglist seen above, covering a period of about four hundred years, was set up in the Athenian Agora in the 420s BCE and that, although Athenian ‘kings’ existed in the Late Helladic period, the last one to survive in popular memory was Codrus .  There can be no further discussion about the veracity of any of the names that follow his.  Thus, concluding with what many see as the centre of the ancient Greek world, Mr. Drews concludes his extensive collection of evidence with the following statement:  “There is no credible evidence for kings in the poleis of Geometric Greece” [p.97].

Mr. Drews’ structure in this section is based on a geographical survey that does not maintain a standard movement pattern but changes by region from an east-west geographical analysis to west-east to north-south etc.  This lack of consistency is disconcerting when the reader attempts to understand the flow of the argument.  Mr. Drews does not even offer a map by region for the reader to refer to when this confusion arises.  The irrelevance of the choice of a geographical foundation for the survey is not made clear until much later in the text.

In Chapter III, Mr. Drews traces the linguistic descent of the word basileus from Homer and the Mycenaean Age down to the Classical Period.  Asserting that the Homeric stories tell of Proto-Geometric and Geometric Greece, he first identifies the initial argument about the changing meaning of the word as it exists between the Iliad and the Odyssey [p.98-100].  In the Iliad, scholars believe that basileus has a meaning stronger than simply ‘nobleman’ but not yet entirely separate from it, while in the Odyssey, the term comes to mean more specifically ‘the king’ [p.100].  Mr. Drews’ says that the earlier confusion over the term basileus “depends on the notion that there is a true meaning for a word, which from time to time will reassert itself against false meanings” and that as a result of a lack of evidence that the Homeric word ever meant ‘king’, the theory must be abandoned [p.101].  He instead chooses to reexamine Homer’s use of the term and finds that most often the basileis were ‘leaders of men’, sometimes synonymous with ‘fosterlings of Zeus’ [p.101].  A few of these basileis are exclusive ruling ‘kings’ – Priam, Agamemnon, and sometimes Nestor – but many are not hereditary monarchs simply because their fathers are still alive and ruling.  Examples of this second type are Achilles, Ajax, and Alexander (Paris) [p.101].  Among the Trojans, the basileis are a group of leaders who do not rule and Priam is the commanding anac.  Mr. Drews draws the conclusion that the basileis were a group of leaders but neither single nor exclusive [p.102]. 

Mr. Drews discounts Gschnitzer’s suggestion for a basileus as ‘der Erste’ since it cannot stand without a definite article that would make it exclusive and because it lacks overtones of high birth [p.102].  He also rejects the possible choice of the Latin dux because, although it has an elevated meaning, it is used in a military context inappropriate here [p.102].  He instead chooses the phrase ‘highborn leader’ in English to describe the basileis of ninth century Greece.  His evidence lies in Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymn of Demeter.  In the Iliad, a basileus never has a place attributed to the title except in regards to Agamemnon in two places (7.180 and 11.46)  [p.103].  It is also never applied to a deity, presumably because the term was not majestic enough in Homer’s time to refer to a god [p.104].  And yet, basileus is potentially as lofty a title as anac in the Iliad [p.104].  However, there is a slight shift in meaning in the Odyssey when the term comes to be used with a genitive as a ‘nomen gentis’ (ie. the basileus of a place) [p.105].  In Hesiod, the meaning of the word changes again.  Hesiod rarely uses it to refer to an exclusive ruler and chooses it instead when discussing a group of leaders [p.105].  Mr. Drews identifies two passages in the corpus that refer to ‘the basileus’; in Theogony 486, it is attributed to Cronus; and in Works and Days 668, Zeus [p.106].  However, he includes in this last citation references to Theogony 886, 897, and 923 and also includes another unidentified example of an exclusive basileus in Theogony that names Memnon [p.106].  So in fact there are six references to a singular basileus, but Mr. Drews only sees fit to explicitly note two.  The five references to qemistopoloij basileusi in the Hymn to Demeter are never eked out in the book and the example Mr. Drews gives from the mid-seventh century BCE is of Tyrtaeus referring to the Spartan dual basileis [p.107].  From Alcaeus, Sappho, and Theognis, basileus comes to mean an exclusive leader by the late seventh and early sixth centuries [p.107].  In the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, the word still does not mean an exclusive ruler in Greek and it is only in the modern language that it is used as English speakers use ‘king’ [p.108].  Thus Mr. Drews concludes that there is no historical or philological basis to think that basileus ever meant ‘king’ until much later in Greek history [p.108].

From this follows a weak transition where Mr. Drews describes an imperative need to appreciate the innovation of basileia and prytaneis in, presumably, the late Archaic and early Classical Periods [p.109].  From Linear B tablets dating to approximately 1200 BCE where a ‘PA-SI-RE-U” was a minor official in the Mycenaean palace system, these officials became a group or council of leaders during the Dark Ages when that system had collapsed [p.110-111].  In the eighth century, around 750 BCE, there developed a need or desire for more defined leadership and thus, throughout the Archaic Period, the basileis became more exclusive with demarcated procedures and responsibilities [p.115].  It is this development that Mr. Drews will outline in the fourth chapter “The Hereditary Basileis of the Archaic and Classical Periods”.

Although this transition into the fourth chapter is much more stable than the shift to discussing the ‘innovative’ prytaneis, he has left one vitally important question unanswered.  Where did the impetus for leadership definition come from?  He offers a suggestion that it was due to influence from the Phoenicians and other eastern models, but does not seem to feel that anything more is required [p.115].  Like his lack of specific definition for ‘king’ in this book, he leaves the reader to assume that there was some kind of socio-cultural development or adjustment underway at this time.

Chapter IV represents the pith of Mr. Drews’ argument as he traces the line of magistrates in the major city-states of Greece.  Insofar as he recognizes that the term basileus was not universally implemented throughout Archaic and Classical Greece, he argues that there was no single basileus holding power at the beginning of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE [p116].  He also admits unabashedly that very little is known about the responsibilities of either the collegial basileis or the single basileus [p.117].  At Megara, a basileus was a military general; at Athens, a judicial authority; and Aristotle adds religious connotations to the milieu [p.118].  Mr. Drews estimates that the single basileus “must have enjoyed unprecedented power and prestige” and that the remarkable nature of this new form of office encouraged a new term for it:  monarchos [pp.118-119].  This term quickly developed into a pejorative in Herodotus (6.92) and in Aristotle (Pol. 1305a and 1310b) [p.119].  The collegial basileia had military and diplomatic duties in Argos, where their survival into the fifth century BCE is attested, as well as in Sparta and most likely Tarentum as well [pp.120-121] (as a colony of Sparta, it would probably have adopted the governmental structure of the metropolis).  Similarly, the governance at Thera and Cyrene likely followed the example of their Spartan metropolis [p.124].

To conclude, Mr. Drews reasserts his belief that in the Geometric Period, Greek poleis (or the precursors of poleis) were not ruled by exclusive ‘kings’ but by basileis with a variety of responsibilities and authority.  The term basileus only began developing exclusive connotations throughout the Archaic Period, a process that did not reach fruition until the modern age.  It was the college of basileis, or ‘highborn leaders’, that Mr. Drews believes Homer and Hesiod recognized and that shortly thereafter a time of great change initiated the shift in the meaning of the word [p.130].  In the eighth century BCE, the formal polis structure was developing to eventually include electoral powers within a citizen assembly, political privilege based on wealth, and a council and magistracies that were filled by a governing class [p.130].  It was not a ‘king’ that this development replaced but the basileis of the Dark Ages before poleis emerged as autonomous communities [p.131].

Perhaps the single most egregious omission in Mr. Drews’ book on kingship in Geometric Greece is the recognition that there are a variety of poleis under consideration in this analysis and that each have their own distinct chronology.  Chapter II, although it presents readers with an incredible amount of data on the subject of basileis in the ninth century, does not differentiate these chronologies and instead surveys ancient Greece geographically.  This is an ineffective and deceiving way to address such a manifold historical development.  Mr. Drews’ decision to separate his analyses from his conclusions is also misleading since it gives his readers a difficult time of trying to accurately critique the substance of his thesis.  This choice of structure also makes Mr. Drews himself look like an amateur, something he certainly is not, because it results in an apparent lack of focus throughout the majority of the book (Chapter II covers 86 of a total 137 pages of the text) .

The introductory section of the book state that the use of such ‘weak’ sources as the Homeric epics, Strabo, Pausanias, kinglists, and assumptions from Archaic usage of the word basileus have led previous scholars astray in their conclusions about the existence of kings in the ninth century [p.5].  And yet, he includes these sources not only throughout his analysis but also in a decisive way.  The heroic age is considered a chronologically datable era of Greek history and the Iliad and the Odyssey are perhaps the sources used most often by Mr. Drews.  He does, however, use Herodotus only after alluding to the conventions and customary traditions available in The Histories that can give clues to the way the late Archaic and Classical Greeks understood their own histories.

Mr. Drews’ book therefore should not be used as a resource for academics, particularly those new to the profession, as it misrepresents aspects of his evidence that are vital to understanding the value of his argument.  Without the awareness that chronologies vary between regions and communities in the main body and without any explicit definitions or structural layout in the introduction, it is impossible to truly appreciate this book as a resource for Geometric Greek history.  Considering the tentative nature of studying the historically datable in this period and the continuous debate over standards and models, these are aspects that Mr. Drews should have clearly identified with specific regard to his work to then allow scholars to place it in a larger framework for the study of ancient Greece.

Supplementary Bibliography

Fitzgerald, Robert (transl.).  1975.  Homer.  The Iliad.  New York:  Anchor Press/Doubleday

Barnes, Jonathan (ed.).  1984.  The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 2.  The Revised Oxford Translation.  Bollingen Series LXXI.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press

www.perseus.tufts.edu

As part of a previous assignment for graduate school, the author was asked to create a lecture as part of a course rather than complete a major research paper.  It was expected that the lecture would be approximately 2 hours long, with the usual fifteen minute break, and a bibliography was required although footnoting was not. This was the result.

March 15th, 2012 – WAR IN THE WESTERN WORLD HIST 2300

Greece Part II:  The Archaic Hoplite Phalanx OR Homer Marries Pericles in Utah

Good afternoon, class!  Just to recap, last week we looked at warfare and military style in the East before the cataclysmic events in the Mediterranean around 1200 BCE.  The groups included were the Egyptians, Assyrians, and the Persians, who will become important players in this week’s discussions.  Last day we had a look at Homer’s epics and how war was portrayed in ancient poetry after the end of the Dark Age. Anyone of you who wishes to make speculations about what was going on militarily before then will have to contain themselves until next year’s course.  Today, we will have a look at the development of Greek warfare in the Archaic period, from around 700 to 500 BCE, and examine what traditions war was founded on and how these traditions were modified or maintained as city-states developed.  Until the third century, Greek states represented military power that remained unbeatable until the arrival of the Romans.

There is a great deal of debate surrounding much of today’s material, but I will attempt to establish the main camps within each argument.  This is also going to be an exercise in understanding how varied historical and literary interpretations can be.

Homeric warfare, as described in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is redundantly referred to as ‘heroic’.  Groups of men would go into battle and, at least for Homer, the focus was on individual combating pairs – Hector vs. Patroclus, or Achilles vs. Hector, for examples – where valour and skill were displayed knowingly  for posterity.  These characters knew that though they may die on the shores of Troy, their names would live on in the hearts of Greeks everywhere.  What is interesting to note from this time period – and I use the phrase ‘time period’ loosely , since no concrete date can be set for even the existence of such an era – is the importance placed upon armour at this time, one’s own or someone else’s. 

Armour in Homer’s epics was nearly always made of bronze, a material not particularly well-suited to warfare since it is not a hard or strong metal.  However, it is an exceptionally workable material – insignia and engravings can be made on it – and when polished, it truly shines.  It was also much more expensive to produce than, say, iron, making it a symbol of wealthy status .  Anyone who was able to obtain such armour could assume the same kind of status as befitted the original owner.  It is almost standard throughout cultures in Europe that a person can take over the worth of another if he possesses what that other used to represent his status.  In Book XVII of the Iliad, Patroclus has been killed and there is an ensuing fight over his body and armour.  Menelaus stands over the body and Euphorbus, son of Panthoos contests his right to it:

“Son of Atreus, nobly bred, Lord Marshal,
Yield, leave the corpse, give up his bloody gear!
No Trojan hit Patroklus in the fight
Before I hit him.  Let me have my glory.
Back, or I’ll take your sweet life with one blow.”
Euphorbus acknowledges the honour due to Menelaus, but bluntly demands his right to the body and arms of the man he has just killed, his right to glory.  Rarely in epic poetry are characters this direct without also being ‘flowery’.  What Euphorbus challenges is Menelaus’ understanding and acceptance of a heroic value system common to both.  And if epic can do anything, it can make the pursuit of glory into an imperative that extends beyond enemy lines. 

Armour was, like combat, individualized and very personal.  Each man could be identified by his armour, such as Hector rejoicing when he had killed Patroclus because he thought he had slain Achilles.  Patroclus, you will remember, had taken Achilles’ armour to restore morale to the Achaeans on the battlefield and to frighten the Trojans who would think that Achilles had returned to fight.  There was no uniformity of arms in Homer’s poems but instead originality, specifics, and recognition of the man you were facing as worthy of acknowledgement. 

In the Iliad, poor men do not fight; there is no evidence that anyone but the fairly well-off could afford to outfit themselves with armour for war.  In fact, we read virtually nothing about them and thus must only infer that, if the poor DID fight, they were not deemed worthy of praise in poetry because they were not ‘heroes’.  Heroes were men who did not have to worry about paying for their armour and equipment but had come to Troy to show off their battle prowess and their ethical superiority , particularly in matters of wife-abductions.  Heroes preserved and dictated the code of honour in ancient Greek society, and this code was something that Homer felt needed to be sung in his poetry.

In the Geometric period, warriors wore bronze belts attested in the Iliad as armour and as gifts .  Their body armour and greaves were also bronze, something we were able to establish for the late eighth century at least from a burial found near Argos dating to approximately 720 BCE, which contained a bronze helmet and cuirass .

In terms of weapons, what seemed most common were two spears and a shield.  They also carried a large sword and a bow with arrows .  Spears could be thrown or thrust at the enemy, and swords when mentioned were used in a variety of ways.  However, it is the shield that most concerns us here today, since it has been the concern of modern scholars for decades on end.  The shield was oval-shaped and had two grooves, or ‘scallops’, cut out of the long sides to make it into what is commonly called the Dipylon shield type .  This was the pervasive shield type in eighth century art, and takes its name from a vase painter who is most famous for his battle scenes.  Like many aspects of art that can involve artistic licence rather than photographic reality, the representations of this oblong shield are debated by scholars for their value to historical study.

There must have been a military advantage to this style and the scalloped sections removed from the shield that it would be permitted to decrease its protective area . One of the most provocative arguments is that while running – something we see a great deal of in late Geometric vase painting and in the eighth century – the oval shield would have constantly been banging against the elbows of the man carrying it, and so those small sections were cut out to eliminate this .  Another argument is that it lightened the weight of the shield just enough so that a warrior could carry two spears into battle instead of one , holding one in his shield hand.  There is something appealing in the way the shield is used in the 2004 Wolfgang Petersen film “Troy” – Brad Pitt’s Achilles is able to protect himself with the shield while still holding a spear protruding through the scallop to thrust at his enemies .  

Suffice it to say, possibilities abound; but until a military historian with battle experience returns to the debate, it is hard to know for sure which is the most correct.     
Individual battle was also a way to display masculine virtue, something a great many cultures continue to do to this day.  To the Greeks, martial valour was vital to Greek masculinity and the battle cry in the Iliad – “Be men, my friends!” – is a concise way of exemplifying this .  And yet, in the Bronze Age, individual combat was not confined to war but could be instigated at any time in such a timocratic culture.
Whether any of this actually describes the realities of war in this period of ancient history is entirely beside the point.  What matters is that Homer wanted to reflect these ideas in his poems and that this part of the oral, and later literary, tradition of the warrior would come to affect the Greeks of the Archaic Age .  One scholar writes:  “Whatever the tactical innovations of the seventh century [which was arguably when the Homeric epics were composed], in reading these poems we confront a martial imaginary, using images of battle to evoke whole ways of life” .

So, at the end of the eighth century BCE, what we have in Greece is a series of individual fighters identified and honoured through their own particular armour and who fought primarily with shield and spear.  At the very least, it is the idea of ‘heroic’ warriors that extends into the late eighth century and the Archaic Age.

Somewhere around this same time, there was a shift from lightly armed warriors to more heavily-armed fighters and it is around 700 BCE that most scholars agree that infantry units called the phalanx began to develop in the ancient Greek world.  What caused this move from the traditional fighting style to more closely packed units of soldiers?   There is no literary or artistic evidence that suggests anything substantial, at least not without a great deal of supposition and speculation.  However, we know that in or around the cataclysmic events of 1200 BCE, the Mycenaean palace civilizations collapsed and a subsequent “Dark Age” ensued, wherein any kind of central administrative bureaucracy ceased to function.  The Greek peoples had to learn how to exist without it.  What kind of emotional state would this create?  An anxious one.  The shift from lightly-armed ‘heroic’ warriors to heavily-armed groups was a result of the disconcerting lack of central control.  Small communities now needed a way to protect themselves and naturally, the more armour, the more protection.

One of the first adjustments to the traditional ‘heroic’ style of fighting was the adoption of a more solid round shield.  It became so iconographic that the soldier who carried it was named after it:  the hoplite.  What now developed into common usage was a large round shield made of wood but that still preserved its polished exterior with a gilt of iron, bronze, or in some cases gold.  The main differences between this shield and the Dipylon shield is that the new ‘hoplon’ had no scallops cut out of it for comfort and had a double hand grip, which redistributed the weight across the length of the forearm and turned it into a primarily forward-facing armament .  The ‘heroic’ shields had been light enough and maneuverable enough that a warrior could sling it over onto his back while running and thus free up his arms .  This new shield, in a single blow, eliminated both the ability to run and the possibility of pursuit as it was the only truly heavy piece of equipment, weighing in at approximately 15 pounds or 7kg . 

The traditional view has been that the shield was developed to complement a closer massed formation of infantry, one that required a heavy forward-facing shield to protect both the man carrying it and the person to his left .  Thus the phalanx formation could have necessitated the advent of the hoplite shield.  But in a world of such uncertainty as the late Geometric and early Archaic Periods, (encompassing approximately the late tenth to eighth centuries BCE), it would be much more feasible, (one would think), to protect oneself first and develop a fighting style to accommodate the weapons second.  Also, there would have been many options for arming oneself, depending on what one was able to afford.  A ‘style’ or loose standard would have had to develop overtime and a battle formation established afterwards to accommodate all the potential variables.

The second major weapon required of a hoplite was a 6 to 8 foot long spear with a bronze or iron head, and a bronze spike at the bottom end that was affectionately called ‘the lizarder’ .  The shaft of the spear was gradually shorted to this length by the late Archaic period but had reached surprising lengths in its earlier development .   Again, the argument that the closer fighting precipitated a shorter spear can be contrasted thus.  A long spear that, once thrown, could be picked up and thrown back by the enemy would have had damaging effects, and so the use of the throwing spear gradually disappeared in favour of the hand-held thrusting spear .  Nothing else was required to identify oneself as a hoplite but the shield and the spear.

Unfortunately we have no record of any Archaic battles to base our theories on, and must rely instead upon heroic myth, Classical records, and the artwork and poetry that survives from the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.  From this, the objective would be to extrapolate the evolutionary trends from Homeric to Classical warfare and basically fill in the blanks.  However, other avenues have been explored as well.  For example, the Chigi vase, discovered in Etruria and dating back to the middle of the seventh century BCE, is the earliest extant depiction of hoplites, though the jury is still deliberating about whether it depicts a phalanx as well.
 
It is one of the most remarkable examples of an artistic representation of closely massed warriors armed with spears and the round hoplite shield, perhaps one of the first where an artist was able to show such close formation by overlapping images of warriors.  It is argued that, until the Chigi vase Painter was able to do this, no one had been able to adequately portray hoplites in formation .  This also suggests that the closer formations of hoplites had come into existence well before the seventh century BCE and it had simply taken until then to learn how to paint them . 

There is debate about whether the artist was trying to mimic hoplites in close formation or whether it was simply a matter of aesthetic and axial preference that made him or her overlap shields and break up the scene with spears held aloft .  In no way was this painter necessarily compelled to represent true-to-life images , but there is something very telling about the nature of this formation.  These men stand, with varying shield decoration, side by side in a unit .  Something has changed from the Homeric heroes who fought for personal glory and immortality.  These men were now fighting together.  An observation that has not yet been made explicitly is that the uniformity of arms and helmets among the fighters, especially when no mass manufacture of arms was evident at the time, suggests that there may have been some kind of fashion that wealthy warriors preferred to adhere to.  Of course, as I have already stated, there may have been a purely aesthetic and personal reason for the way warriors are depicted on this vase. 
The Chigi Vase Painter chose also to depict a scene were the two opposing lines had not yet engaged in battle and no one has yet died .  There is suspense inherent in this moment, when both lines are still intact and facing off impressively, that alludes to some understanding of the emotive nature of battle.  This is not a surprising feature since Greeks throughout the Archaic and Classical Periods had military experience, and one can easily believe that this painter, if he had not fought personally, had at least seen a battle to know what to paint to show the highest point of emotion.

To an extent, a cult of the soldier was growing out of the traditions of the past in Greece.  Kinship-based communities at war “relied on friends and kinsmen to come to the rescue more or less spontaneously” .  This was not a new development, since the rationale behind such a massive mobilization of warriors from Greece in the Trojan War was an agreement between the kings to always come to one another’s aid.  A natural extension of these relationships, as the Chigi Painter had seen, was the image of comrades fighting side by side in battle.  Emotional and social unity would lead to more cohesive structures in battle, and thus it is clear that the phalanx came after these socio-cultural aspects reasserted themselves.

The Archaic poet Tyrtaeus strengthened the ideals of social and military cohesion with his battle poetry: 

When a man stands firm in the front ranks

Without flinching and puts disgraceful flight completely from his mind, making his soul and spirit endure
And with his words encourages the man stationed next to him

The overarching idea is clear:  hold the line.  Thus, this is perhaps the newest element in battle for Archaic Greeks.  Rather than attacking as a rabble, they were to advance as a unit.  But there are also rhetorical images in the above poem associated with:  masculinity – to stand firm without flinching and to endure; with honour – putting ideas of flight from one’s mind; and with solidarity – to encourage one’s comrades-in-arms.  When one considers the corpus of poetry by Tyrtaeus, one understands that he considered the courage of hoplites in close combat to be the only true form of bravery and excellence .  Again, whether or not this was true or artistically romanticized is irrelevant.  The poet felt the need to describe it and, just as Homer chose to describe individual virtues, there must have been some sort of cultural imperative that led to a praise of wartime solidarity.  The discipline to stand with ones comrades had become a characteristically Greek virtue .

And why the focus on cohesion?  Part of the reason that hoplite warfare changed the face of human conflict was because for the first time, infantrymen were equipped and disciplined enough to withstand a cavalry charge .  Cavalry depended, not entirely but to a large extent, on unnerving an infantry line so that they scattered and could be run down.  The phalanx supplied the confidence needed to steel oneself and hold the line.

So, up to this point, we have been addressing a great deal of material that can only be analyzed subjectively.  We do not know what if any plan Homer had when he sang his epics about honour, virtue, and tradition.  We cannot be certain what the Chigi Vase Painter had in mind for his work that would be exported to be part of a tomb burial in Etruria.  And we cannot be certain that Tyrtaeus was responding to a socio-cultural imperative about solidarity in warfare.  What we can know, on the other hand, is that themes of comradeship, alliance, masculinity, virtue, and honour had pervaded oral and literary culture for nearly three centuries by the middle of the Archaic Age.  These ideals would dominate warrior culture right down to the Classical period, and as history moves closer to the mighty Persian Wars, another element will become intertwined with ‘heroic’ tradition:  politics.

Democracy is considered perhaps the greatest single achievement scholars can attribute to the ancient Greeks and to them alone.  But we must all be aware that the democracy we recognize today is not even remotely like the democratia that existed in Athens and elsewhere after the end of the Archaic Age.  For the Greeks, democracy was not meant to give a vote to everyone, or even to give recognition to everyone.  Slaves, women, children, foreigners, and permanent residents had no say in the governmental policies of Classical Athens.  The democracy recognized only the adult male citizens of a polis and it was to them that the city-state looked to for protection, justice, order, and a feeling of ethnic superiority.  The invective launched against the Persians during the wars of the fifth century BCE helped to solidify a polarity of opposites between the Greeks and anyone who did not speak Greek – the barbarians.  Democracy was a continually changing government where juries, generals, and judges alternated frequently.  It was felt that no one man should be able to exercise the control that tyrants were able to wield during the Archaic Age.

Because of general lack of literary evidence, the belief that hoplites were democratically inclined has pervaded academia .  Democracy only achieved its romantic status, (for scholars), in studying the Classical period and particularly Athens after the massive revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE (in France and the United States respectively).  Unfortunately, modern historians cannot remain objective when researching events with a well known outcome.  Realistically though, this is not a crushing hindrance to modern scholarship.  Learning history is to learn it as it relates to a modern audience here and now.  Emphasis upon a modern idea is not ‘wrong’ when dealing with this material, but it is inappropriate not to recognize the anachronism and specify one’s use of it accurately.
Athenian democracy, upon which we base our modern republican traditions, did not exist in any recognizable form in the centuries we are dealing with today, namely the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.  The particular kind of ruling structure that established itself at this time was not democracy at all, but tyranny .  Please, everyone, be aware of yet another term that has different meanings at different times in history.  Archaic tyrants were leaders who took power through a coup d’etat or some other often illegitimate avenue , but infrequently with the ambitious bloody carnage that we generally associate with a ‘tyrant’. One can say that the move to arm warriors more heavily was expedited by the abrupt need by a usurper for superior troops.  However, once in power, many of their policies were not tyrannical in the pejorative sense but instead definitive.  A tyrant who reasserted control over a community could dictate its future and regulate its present.  There was a gradual disappearance of the traditional wearing of weaponry at this time, for example, suggesting less feuding and more recourse to leadership for resolutions .  This is a reasonable government structure to arise out of a central administrative collapse that left communities virtually autonomous.  The nature of the inclinations of hoplites towards democracy stem from an Enlightened and humanistic retrospective attitude that has been unable to establish an unprejudiced place in Archaic or Classical Greece historical study.

The theory that, in conjunction with this instability, “military developments drove political change”  reflects the movement towards social cohesion that is exemplified by the shift from light warriors to more heavily-armed troops and the ideology of solidarity that is pervasive in extant literature from this time.  By the end of the seventh century BCE, “hereditary status was giving way to wealth as the main basis of prestige and power” .  The continued use of bronze as the outer shell of a hoplite’s shield attests to this, since bronze was still an expensive material that required metals to be imported from elsewhere to produce .

Another aspect of this ‘tyrannical’ foundation is that, in overthrowing the ruler(s) of any one community, one must inevitably face the allies of that ruling party.  Tyrants who used hoplites to win power were using them against other Greeks.  Truly the hoplite was an incredible innovation because, although he came into being from engagements within his own world, he was able to stand up to foreign invasions for centuries after, until the coming of Rome’s legions finally defeated them.

It appears that the ideology of solidarity has worked on many modern scholars as well, when in reality the shield “did not presume or dictate a dense formation”  and also did not presume democratic tendencies among its bearers.  Even the fighting formation was not as rigid as it would eventually become.  Most importantly, patriotism on the same massive scale as in Classical Athens was not heavily ingrained yet .  Politics as a consciously recognized force did not exist, but a code of honour that transcended individual communities was asserting itself into Greek culture.  This would become codified in the Classical Age and become ancient Greek politics.  A symbolic system for war, such as this honour code, worked as a way to understand the world and “reflect[ed] a degree of interstate solidarity among hoplites” .  So, to an extent (but a small one), hoplites did change politics but only insofar as they symbolized an ideology that would become part of democractic political strength.

It is now that the phalanx begins developing into a more recognizable form.  “Relations of dependence… were gradually undermined by political, social, and economic reform in the course of the sixth century” , but these were not what instigated the newfound control inherent in such a formation.  Rather, the style resulted from a combined effort to achieve ‘heroic’ stature.  There was no way to individually emulate the heroes of old; that age was unforgivably over .  But as a group, there was hope that solidarity could maintain a sense of honour for everyone among them.  “The superior cohesion of the phalanx in the early fifth century would therefore have been not so much a matter of greater physical density as of greater co-operation and solidarity among the soldiers – a quality praised as characteristically Greek already in Homer” .

We must next address the problem of tactics and strategy.  Both these are also rightly identified as anachronistic terms that have meaning to modern military personnel and historians looking for order out of chaos, but are incorrectly associated with the functions of the Archaic Greek phalanx.  Hans Van Wees is more than convincing in his treatment of hoplite warfare as more maddening than regimented, a concept of war not unfamiliar in the present age of “shell-shock” and Post-Traumatic Stress disorders , but it had not been reduced to those awful levels quite yet.  The one argument put forward for something that could more accurately be called a style is the mass shove, in Greek othismos, that was the major element in these new Greek infantry groups.  The Greek phalanx was reinforced with an average of eight men deep and they would push with all their might to try and break then dissolve an enemy line .  This theory forced a re-examination of hoplite marching and fighting stances, but required little more than a shift of footing, literally.  Instead of the traditional view that had hoplites standing shoulder to shoulder, the mass shove had them standing one foot in front of the other .  There is simply no way to accomplish a continued shove of any kind if the front line lost its balance and fell forward.  Instead, with the lines pushing on each other’s shoulder instead of the middle of the back, the shove could work effectively and the lines would remain standing. 

“Warfare between massed phalanxes was not a graceful or imaginative affair, but required above all disciplined cohesion and unyielding physical and moral strength” .  Numbers reinforcing the front line were vital in order for the line to withstand the shock of the initial hit and remain intact .  There was no way to move weapons such as a long spear around in such a situation and, although a seemingly odd position for an army to put itself in, this forcefulness was behind the continued successes of the Classical phalanx .  Although this gave great advantage to an army of infantry facing enemy cavalry – horses panic; men, to some extent, can control themselves – your whole body was thrust right into a densely packed battle of sheer brute force.  Something that is almost entirely foreign to modern armies with such technological weapons, hoplites stared right into the face of their enemies, breathed their breath, smelled their sweat, and had to understand immediately that to live they must kill.  This kind of experience is what made the phalanx one of the most fearful armies in the Mediterranean world .

What most scholars are willing to admit but not usually willing to reconsider is the fact that a phalanx works best on open, flat ground but to a large extent Greece is neither open nor flat .  There is the possibility that this style of formation was specifically designed for fighting on farmland where the terrain is as close as it will ever get to being ‘ideal’ for hoplites .  However, the clearest indicator of misinterpretation of the fluidity of an Archaic hoplite army is the comment made by Polybius that the army became vulnerable when it had to break ranks to cover rough terrain .  Polybius wrote almost three hundred years after today’s lecture’s timeframe, so he was undoubtedly referring to a phalanx that had undergone a series of changes and was no longer what it had been in the Archaic age. 

This again raises the question why such radical shifts in warfare occurred between the Dark Ages and the Archaic Period, developments that would continue to solidify and become more stringent in the Classical and Hellenistic periods and would eventually lead to exploitation by Rome.  In five hundred years, ancient Greek armies moved from being a loosely united band of raiders to a rigid disciplined infantry formation.  The shield, continually our most telling source, was not necessarily superior to its predecessors but only tells us that the need for protection in the front was outweighing concerns for maneuverability and protection of the flanks or rear .

The hoplite ‘reform’ was only military insofar as its technological and social innovations occurred in the military sphere .  It did, however, “bring on a change in conceptions of bravery, but hoplite ideology retained the indelible stamp of its aristocratic origins” .  There was a new “recognition of the inevitability of war if independence [was] to be maintained and horror at some of its consequences” .  The pervasiveness of heroic traditions in art and literature commended that virtue onto what would eventually be considered imperial  hoplite regiments.  And yet, issues of individuality lie restless in the material and literary remains available for study.  ‘Front-line fighters’, to use the most obvious example, suggest that antagonism between two opposing lines rose to such intense levels that single hoplites broke ranks to advance on an enemy who had done the same . 

There was still a very clear elitism that existed in ancient Greek warfare.  In Homer, only the hereditary leaders recognized as legitimate by the divine and their subordinates fought wars.  In the Geometric period, it was the aristocracy; in Archaic Greece, the wealthy.  “The Greek hoplite entered history as an individual warrior, probably in most cases an aristocrat” , but he quickly came to symbolize more than his aristocratic or wealthy background.  The hoplite became a universal symbol for the elitism of the ancient Greeks, something that is all too evident in works by later ancient historians such as Thucydides , whom we will address next class along with the rest of the Classical period.

By the end of the sixth century BCE, the hoplite phalanx had come to represent both community solidarity  and expressed the agriculturalist societies of the age .  “If Herodotus occasionally sounded like Homer, it was probably because in some respects early fifth century Greeks still fought like Homeric heroes” .  Society still valued individual combat in battle but hoplites had come to reflect the socio-political ruling class as well .  This is what Salmon means when he wrote that the ‘hoplite reform’ of the Archaic Age gave potential revolutionaries the military strength to become actual revolutionaries , even though he makes these new hoplites sound like a new and displaced social class.  Perhaps he was lacking another term to describe them that his modern readers would effectively associate with.

By the end of the Archaic Period, all the elements that have made ancient Greece famous ‘in the popular press’ are well into their adolescence:  city-states, hoplite phalanx warfare, democracy, and the philosophies uniting the three.  The hoplite had changed quite a bit from the recognizable figure at the beginning of today.  The two major pieces, the shield and the spear, retained their vital inclusion in the hoplite panoply but swords had ceased to be part of the ensemble.  They also wore simple conical helmets of felt for padding and bronze for outer protection, a loose tunic, and a belt .  Those who could afford it also had body armour , including a cuirass that only went out of style entirely after the fifth century .

What is under discussion now is when the citizen-soldier appeared and if that status contributed to democratic reforms or notions.  This is another of your ongoing questions to keep in mind.  If you have enough time to think about it, I might just add it to the exam at the end of term.  Thank you.
 
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