wasnt this thread about too many phalanx units
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wasnt this thread about too many phalanx units
Yeah, but now we are talking about phalanx units in general. I think most people acknowledged that this was the era of the phalanx and other than the german phalanx all of them should definately be in. The only question remaining about that was whether they should be a true phalanx or something a bit different.
i go for more difference
Emperor Umeu 1
Uesugi Kenshin is right, pretty much any Hellenistic State (Carthage, Greeks, Successors, etc.) would have deployed either a hoplite, or Macedonian style (or both) phalanxes has their key heavy infantry element. But CA could or should have given the hoplites and near hoplites and over arm thrust rather then a mini-Macedonian look.
Kraxis
”The light infantry had proven itself in battle against slower hoplites enough times for the Greeks to understand that they needed to do something. The Spartans devised sending out their young hoplites.”
I’m not so sure, that that is true. Or the related point that some how the Greeks need to response to some sudden new light-infantry challenge.
As a broad counter I would point out Marathon, Plataea, Cunaxa, Eurmedon River, etc. all victories of hoplites over light infantry, and crushing ones at that.
Now the battles you cite have become almost canonical as demonstrating blundering pig headed Greeks just won’t learn how vulnerable lumbering hoplites are (add let me add Demosthenes abortive attack on Aeolian as well). But I think that is rather something of a CW construction.
Pylos: Really what we have here is a tiny Spartan garrison cut off by Athenian sea power, exposed too an overwhelming assault by hoplites, professional archers, and peltasts, and a vast auxiliary army of rowers armed javelins, slings and targets. If you discount any helot attendants the Spartans might have had (fair I think, seeing as they had not been offered any reason to fight for the Spartans, and the Athenian army at Pylos included ex-helots in it’s ranks and was explicitly offering shelter and freedom), the Spartans were outnumbered by around 3:1 by just the Athenian hoplites. When you add professional light infantry and rowers (even conservatively) you get something over 20:1.
The last day at Thermopylae hardly argues for the value of Persian troops over Spartan. Similarly the lesson of Sphacteria, has nothing do to with light infantry over hoplite. If anything the lesson is don’t put valuable troops on islands if you enemy can assert mastery of the sea at anytime they wish, because they will simply apply overwhelming force to you garrisons at their leisure.
Demosthenes in Aetolia: I know you did not bring this one up but it’s often linked to Demosthenes and his Pylos campaign. Demosthenes did err in not waiting for his Lorican allies (light infantry) because of his initial success. But the key point is that he originally did intend to have both heavy and light infantry. When things got ugly, it interesting that his tiny force of archers was sufficient to hold off the Aetolian peltasts, unlike hoplites they apparently could not deal with archers. Finally, it’s worth noting his guide got killed (bad luck). Rather then some Greek who thinks only of hoplites, Demosthenes looks rather like a first time commander who got a bit too excited with his initial success. But more importantly, he correctly envisioned a mixed force of light infantry and Hoplites, backed archers, exactly the force that might have beat the peltast only Aetoilians.
Iphicrates: As far as I can make out there is nothing to suggest the younger Spartans were armored more lightly then any other Spartan. Also by my reading of Xenophon it looks like the Spartans did not really sustain serious fatalities until they started to sent the young hoplites in pursuit. Also it’s not like Iphicrates beat 600 Spartans with 600 peltasts. His peltasts probably outnumbered the Spartans, and he was operating in conjunction with Athenian hoplites (who themselves may have outnumbered the Spartans). Lesson: don’t put a small hoplite force near a much large combined arms force commanded by aggressive and opportunistic generals.
I admit though there appears to a fair amount of grave stele from Peloponnesian sites that suggest in the early 4th century unarmored hoplites may have existed.
First off I think this was an exception. Stele from Athens, Thebes, votive figurines from Southern Italy seem to argue in favor of most of Greece choosing not to partake in this trend. Epaminondas is noted (by Plutarch) as being dismissive of the Iphicrates style
heavy peltast, and the Thebans are generally accepted as not abandoning armor.
Considering the Spartans became increasing reliant on mercenaries (men who almost certainly could not afford a full kit of hoplite gear) and armed helots, I would suggest many of the under armored ‘Spartans’; are either mercenaries (who like Hannibal’s mercenaries would improve their armor with victory) or intentionally under armored helots.
So perhaps Sparta and some of her allies adopted a light hoplite, I would say it was a mistake Light hoplites appear largely unable to deal with professional peltasts (ala Iphicrates), and equally they loose to real hoplites (Sparta loosing to Thebes).
As a complete aside, it’s interesting the hoplite is often noted as lumbering while the legionary is not. But overall the armor and weapons were about the same weight. Many historians (Hanson is perhaps the worst offender here) like to suggest how immobile a hoplite was by citing an archaic hoplite from say 600 BC. Ignoring the fact that by the 4th century most hoplites used either a cuirass only (either the linothorax or muscled bronze plate), a helmet that allowed hearing and vision, no greaves (or at least only greaves see the next bit) and no addition plate bits and bobs (vambraces etc…). Altogether, not a kit that is really any heavier then that of the Roman legionary. Also while Plato may have belittled it, sword drill was clearly becoming a common element of hoplite training in the 4th century as well. I think it is altogether likely the more mobile elements of Philip’s (and Alexander’s) phalanx were rather more of the hoplite type.
As I have always said balance, flexibility and variety will win out. Has anyone heard of them attempting to mix heavy and light hoplites or were they one or the other during a time period?
Hi, conon394,
I am a bit confused as to where you are going with this. While I'm not too concerned about the Spartan case in particular, I don't see how you can disagree with the Greeks realizing they needed some lighter troops for dealing with peltasts and for harrassing other hoplites. Part of the reason is campaign vs. battlefield use. Sure a hoplite will do well in stand up, but if you can use peltasts to keep him harrassed along the march in rough terrain, he will also be less effective if he reaches the field.
I disagree about the struggles at Sphacteria and in Aetolia, and about Iphicrates as well. If anything these reinforced the need for combined arms. Hoplites could escape from one another when the need arose. Unprotected, they couldn't escape from determined light infantry nor could they actively engage them if the light infantry were not forced by other circumstances to engage. And of course there are substantial terrain limitations for the hoplites or other phalanx types.
It makes perfect sense that archers with their range would counter peltasts, esp. when backed by hoplites. I have no problem with hoplites standing up well to archer attack, but it seems to me peltasts would have trouble closing and throwing their missiles under archer fire--since doing so would force them to expose themselves, and the archers could easily be arranged for enfilade fire. Meanwhile, the hoplites can hunker down and watch the show.
The battles you cite (Marathon, Plataea, Cunaxa, Eurymedon River) are against Persians, who lacked effective heavy infantry. Without sufficient heavies the combined arms approach isn't really combined arms. (Sort of like the modern day concept of trying to win with only an air campaign, and no ground component.)
I won't defend Hanson ~D but the point I see is not that hoplites were lumbering as much because of their gear, as the formation was lumbering since it had to remain unbroken to be effective. All the hoplite and phalanx defeats I can think of resulted from disorder of the formation, whether it was caused by terrain, elephants (enemy or friendly), combat, a command blunder, or even from success in pushing the enemy back--because it too would cause disorder that could be exploited.
As was cited here or on another phalanx thread, the only times the romans had great success against phalanxes were when the phalanxes were not properly formed up. A disorganized phalanx is not a powerful weapon. But when fully prepared a phalanx will crush just about anything on the battlefield. Especially if it is a phalanx minigun mounted on US ships for close antimissile duties! ~D
I agree my post was a rather wide and scattered.
So let me try and refine my argument...
First I wanted to respond to the following by Kraxis
"And the hoplites... Well have you read about the Polopponesian Wars? Or the wars between Sparta and Thebes? We are talking about naked hoplites or very lightly armorued ones. Indeed quite unarmoured."
My contention is:
I think that while it's true Hoplite gear did evolve, with a couple of exceptions I don't think the majority of Hoplites could ever be described as naked or lightly armored. I would argue the following...
In general I think hoplite gear did become lighter from where it was in the early classical period (maybe 600 BC), I think it reached equilibrium sometime around the mid to late 5th century.
That equilibrium being: A helmet that allowed considerably more freedom of hearing and vision then the old Corinthian style; A cuirass either a linothorax (likely with some kind of metal reinforcement), or a bronze muscled breastplate; the Argive style aspis or hoplon; And greaves as a possible addition (although less common post Persian wars, they never really seem to go away).
I think for most of the 4th century this holds in general for mosr hoplites, Theban, Athenian, etc. While there is evidence for unarmored hoplites (particularly in the Peloponnesian region), I’m confident it is largely explained by either Spartan use of mercenaries and or helots; I just don’t see the Spartan equals abandoning armor. Iphicrates’ reforms to the extent they occurred should not be misconstrued as a new light hoplite but rather: A one off event during campaigns in Persia, the development of a professional Greek peltast, and finally reforms at Athens to deploy citizen ‘heavy peltasts’ in some special cases.
A last point, in the 4th century the population outlet of colonization was unavialble, so I don’t really see any surprise in finding mercenary hoplites appearing who have just the bare minimue of gear. After all if these men could afford a complet hoplite kit, they most likey would have enough wealth to be happy at home as middle-class hoplites
To other points:
I just don’t see Pylos as a good example of anything but any 400 or so troops confronted by 20:1 odds (where the enemy is well lead and confident) looses. Considering how many hoplites Demosthenes and Cleon had they could have won anytime, the only delay was their desire to win with almost no casualties.
In the 4th century I just don’t see that there was any real need to lighten Hoplites (to the point of lacking armor) as some response to professional peltasts. They could irritate, and occasional pick off an isolated detachment, but not win a decisive victory. The Athenians were never able to bar the isthmus either to Sparta or Epaminondas, by deploying peltasts. They could delay, and aggravate, but not much more.
I was also tying too point out that if Sparta really did generally abandon armor (sometime around 400 B.C.), it looks like a mistake. Since they were still neither light enough to catch peltasts, while it seems they lost the ability to address the Theban hoplite challenge.
I agree on combined arms. That is why I disagree that hoplites ever generally abandoned their armor. Good generals, Epaminondas, Agesilaos, Chabias, Iphicrates, Phillip, learned not you need naked guys with hoplons, but rather don’t forget the cavalry and auxiliary light infantry.
than wy the hell dous hoplite means the heavy armed/oured
Duh. 'Cause they started out as armored heavy infantry. The fact that they for most intents and purposes dropped armor altogether at one point is hardly enough a reason them to start calling themselves by a different name, as their function and background remained essentially unchanged.
Anyway, wasn't hoplon the shield they used ?
Far as I know the lightening of the hoplite panoply was started by the Spartans (who by and large were the military innovators of Greece at the time). The main reason was mobility, both strategic and tactical. One major problem with the armored hoplites was that especially the bronze muscle-cuirass coupled with the helmet, greaves, shield and weapons was a godawfullt heavy combination. The lighter bronze-scale cuirass wasn't quite as cumbersome, but if the formation was to be maintained the guys wearing just scale had to move at the pace of the plate-wearing folks.
Bronze, you see, has the minor problem as an armor material of being relatively soft; if you want to make a genuinely protective bronze plate, it's going to end up fairly thick and heavy...
Thirty to forty kilos is the estimated total weight of the full hoplite panoply I've seen cited. That's quite a lot, especially in the Mediterranean heat. What it meant in practice was that the already slow hoplite shieldwall was slowed down to a veritable crawl, and effective pursuit of a broken enemy (who would naturally ditch his heavier equipement) was essentially impossible.
Nevermind the problems caused by unburdened skirmishers with their nasty javelins, or archers. Both had reasonable enough chances to severely hurt fully equipped hoplites.
Hence, the temporary lightening and then disappereance of armor. The conditions of war had became such that it made more sense to make the hoplites mobile rather than armored, so they could maneuver better, travel lighter, pursue routing foes and generally move faster. Prior to the Persian Wars several city-states, anticipating the possibility of having to fight the Persian archers, adopted the sport of "dashing in armor" - and the lenght of the dash was curiously about the same as the effective range of Persian infantry bows...
As a side effect lighter armor, or none at all, was far cheaper than a heavy panoply - for various reasons, bronze was pretty expensive. This wasn't such a big deal for the Spartans, but in the rest of the city-states the hoplite had to buy his own toys and thus more men than before could fight in that role.
Later on, before the Macedonians turned up and changed the military paradigm, the Greeks again started using heavy armor, and apparently the solid bronze cuirass became the standard wear. Don't ask me what made for this, I don't know. Economically it might well have been made possible by sheer accumulation of bronze armoury over the centuries, driving the price down.
Anyway, the Macedonian phalangites were comparatively lightly armored - their defense was in many ways their pike - and the Romans for their part used mostly iron mail at the time, which was rather more weight-efficient than just about any sort of bronze armor could ever hope to be. The realities of maintaining a very tight, "closed" formation and the assorted quirks of the pike as a waepon, however, rendered the phalangites positively glacial in comparision to the fairly loose-order legionaires.
Watchman
The shield was the aspis . The classical Greek word (hoplon) that forms the basis for Hoplite is used to describe Armor, weapons, or more generally a Heavy armed soldier, and more generally still just tools. Hoplon used to describe just shield is a late usage by Roman era historians (and of course modern historians).
"Thirty to forty kilos is the estimated total weight of the full hoplite panoply"
That is excessive. By the mid 5th century a Hoplite is going to typically have:
Shield: around 18lbs
Sword: 4 - 6 lbs
Spear: 6 -7 lbs
Helmet: 4 - 5 lbs
Cuirass: Linothorax (no metal) about 10lbs to a max of 30lbs (a rather heavy estimate) for a bronze cuirass
Greaves: maybe 6 - 7 lbs
My estimate puts the hoplite (conservative numbers with the bronze breast plate) at about 70 lbs (32 Kg). However, I can’t actually find a weight for any existing muscled cuirasses. 30lbs seems a tad excessive. In addition greaves were largely abandoned by the Peloponnesian war. So if you allow an estimate of only 20lbs for the cuirass, and no greaves the kit drops to around 55lbs (25kg).
By way of comparison a republican legionary looks to have hauled around at least 65 lbs (30 kg) worth of armor and weapons.
"or archers. Both had reasonable enough chances to severely hurt fully equipped hoplites."
While it certainly looks like peltasts could inflict casualties, but they had to get close enought to risk a counter attack. Beyond that consider the famous attack by Iphicrates . Xenophon points that the Athenian peltasts anticipated being able to attack the Spartan column on it's unshielded side (since the Spartans lack any covering force of say cavalry or light infantry). The Spartans take casualties, but don’t really suffer losses until the brake their formation trying to chase down the peltasts. At sparactea, even with an overwhelming number of missile troops, the Spartans were relatively safe once they retreated to the end of the island and they were no longer being flanked. As for archers, I think the evidence from the Persian wars is sufficient to show that the hoplite was largely immune to archery, except at point blank range.
“As a side effect lighter armor, or none at all, was far cheaper than a heavy panoply - for various reasons, bronze was pretty expensive. This wasn't such a big deal for the Spartans, but in the rest of the city-states the hoplite had to buy his own toys and thus more men than before could fight in that role.”
I don’t think you can use manpower as an argument for lighter equipment. The vast majority of Greek states were oligargies. One of the key ways these states justified limited political participation was by setting the entry level for full citizenship at the ‘hoplite class’ level. They really had no interest in expanding the number of people who might qualify to be hoplites. Consider Athens, under the democracy to use a round average number about 10,000 or so hoplites were generally available for service (this excludes the 18-20 year and over 45 year classes). But under the coup of 411, the thirty tyrants, and the oligargy imposed by Antipater, at a minimum half of these men were disenfranchised and no longer allowed to bear arms. In many respects Athens is unique as just about the only classical city state that regularly used all of it manpower citizen (hoplite or poor), metric and slaves, to fight its wars. The leaders of most greek city-states probaply slept better knowing the hoi polloi could not afford to be hoplites.
But didn't the 30kg include the soldiers rations, cooking equipment and tools to build the camp etc. - rather than just his 'fighting gear'?Quote:
Originally Posted by conon394
Interesting discussion, by the way...
Didn't hoplon mean hoplite gear in general?
I did research for a project on Sparta and that is what always came up in the books and internet sites that I checked.
"Hoplon" just means armaments really, or "military gear". Hence "hoplites". I think "Aspis" is the shield in ancient Greek.Quote:
Originally Posted by Uesugi Kenshin