The Hoplite Heresies pt.2

This second entry is on the material conditions related to the development (or lack thereof) of the Greek general, or Strategos.  Again, it is primarily a military piece.  All dates are B.C. unless otherwise noted.

The Strategos  

Despite the military dominance of their armies, the Classical Greeks developed very few great captains.  Those that come quickly to mind are Brasidas (a brilliant Spartan commander during the latter half of the Peloponnesian War) ,Epaminondas (the Theban father of modern strategy who led his army to victory over the Spartans in 371), the innovative condottiero Iphicrates of Athens, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and Alexander.  The Spartans, despite their ability to turn out excellent soldiers, produced but two commanders of note: Brasidas, and the controversial admiral Lysander, and both during the latter half of the 5th century, and, significantly both operated in conditions that were uncommon to the traditional heavy infantry base of Spartan operations.  It was left to the Romans to produce strategic leadership in a consistent manner.

The classical phalanx has been romantically referred to as the "armed polis".  This gives us some indication as to its origins, which lay with the development of the ctiy-states themselves.  In the archaic period, the lack of a developed state structure, and so also lacking a military organization, meant that the early Greek commander was the tribal "front fighter".  In order to instill any discipline at all, it was necessary that he lead by example and by feats of personal bravery.  It is notable that the role of the general, or "strategos", did not completely change from the front-fighter, even through the 5th and 4th century.  The strategos continued to fight in the front rank of the phalanx, on the right side place of honor, and there is a long list of generals killed in such action, including the above-mentioned Brasidas and Epaminondas.  This practice persisted despite the growth in strategic and tactical use of combined arms in the latter half of the 5th century.

Strategoi

In Athens, the Board of Strategoi, a body born in the late 6th century, was a government council made up of the ten annually elected strategoi.  It was heavily, if not exclusively, stacked with representatives from the same old aristocratic families.  This will not shock anyone, as politics in general were very much the sphere of Athens' top families; the class nature of Athenian democracy shows itself in the fact that being an elected official was a full-time job with no pay, but not many farmers had enough slaves to completely leave their farm behind for the city through the whole year.  But, it does illustrate the continuing connection between the aristocratic front fighter and the strategos.  Being a politically important position, it was not necessarily the best military minds who were elected to this position, and the genius of the competent was often negated by the common practice of splitting commands between political opponents (see the tragic fate of the Syracuse expedition in 415).

Unlike in the East, war was not the exclusive sphere of a warrior caste.  But, as I noted, the positions of command were nonetheless manned by the sons of aristocracy.  This persisted despite the coming of democracy in Athens.  The aristocracy of large land and slave owners, after all, was the only class in society that was trained in military arts until well into the 4th century.  This situation was in contradiction with the make-up of the phalanx, as the citizen phalanx forced the aristocratic fighters to rely on the shields of the small farmer- hardly conditions in which to win personal glory.

It was also in contradiction with the conditions of battle.  The phalanx relied on discipline and unit cohesion as much as skill in arms.  Sword fighting came into play primarily during retreat or other moments of desperation.  It would be a mistake to call it a useless skill, but it certainly did not carry the value that it did in the Homeric tribal battles of the past.  There were those in Athens who mocked the many trainers who sold lessons on swordsmanship to the wealthy, but this was an important tradition to the sons of the slave owners.  The phalanx did not rely on personal bravery and did not present its fighters with one-on-one combat with which to prove that bravery and skill.  The training of the aristocracy was a holdover from the past and the classical strategos was a transitional position between the tribal front fighter and Roman general.  It was events related to the ascendancy of slave society in the 5th century that would strain the contradictions of the position.

Border skirmishes and world wars

There is an idea that battles between Greek armies were somehow formalized and bound by rules of conduct or traditions.  In the 4th century, Athenian politicians spoke of how the "ancients" conducted war in a more honorable way, with rules and notions of fairness.  In reality, these men spoke of the Greeks of the 5th century, just a few generations removed, and one can provide numerous examples of trickery, ambush, and barbarism both before and during the Peloponnesian War.  This talk is reminiscent of the commonly-heard, and ridiculous, notion that wars in the 19th century were somehow formalized and honorable, etc. etc.   The Greek wars during the 7th and 6th centuries were certainly limited in scope and aim, but that is a different issue.

Mainland Greece, as I have mentioned before, was not known for being a particularly wealthy land.  This is especially true of the Greece of the 6th and 7th centuries, the period in which the phalanx developed.  Corinth stood out as the first major trading city, its unique geography giving it excellent ports on both the East and West sides of the isthmus.  Other than this one Greek city, the major trade cities were concentrated in the East- the Eastern Greek cities of Miletus and Sardis, Egyptian Memphis, and Tyre.  But, it was not until after the Persian Wars that the city states began to grow wealthy and greatly expand their commercial interests.  In a period when sea travel was dangerous due to piracy, foreign war ships, and the limitations of navigational technology, there was no such thing as separation of military and commercial enterprise;  the two were intimately linked to each other, and so also the interest of the state.  After the Persian defeats, Athens, with her newly-built navy went on the offensive throughout the Aegean and southern Mediterranean, clearing the way for Greek ascendance in rapid fashion.

Clauswitz famously wrote that war is a continuation of politics by other means.  The aim in war is, generally, to destroy the ability of the enemy to continue the conflict.  But, the political aims of the combatants give proportion to the means by which the war is fought and propagated.  So, the more limited the aims- the less that the arouse great interest and concern the fate of the ruling class, and the state as a whole- the more likely it is that peace will be sought, and obtained, through avenues other than the annihilation of the military power of the enemy state.  There is a point at which the cost of carrying on the conflict becomes greater than the political object itself.

Before the Persian Wars, the interests of conflict were generally of a limited nature.  Border conflicts, inevitable given the lack of arable land and the agricultural interest of both the small farmers and large slave owners alike, made up the vast majority of warfare between the mainland states.  The Greeks of the Classical Period had no general method of taxation for military expenses.  Funds were secured on a needs basis through a combination of compulsory collection and individual donation and loan.  It was not long before a campaign ate through the available funds.

Neither were there, among the Greeks, standing professional armies.  Each state relied on citizen militias up until the late 4th century, although an increasing use of mercenaries was made from the middle 5th century on.  The men who made up the phalanx, especially in the period before the Persian invasions, were the land and slave-owning farmers of each state.  These citizens were willing to give a limited amount of time for campaigning before they had to return to their fields.

All of the above-mentioned factors conspired to assure that the short campaign, leading up to a pitched battle, dominated the warfare of the 7th and 6th centuries.  There were no formal rules that govern this, merely material conditions.  This point flies in the face of a long historical tradition.  This school can see for themselves the limited nature of Greek campaigns during the archaic period before the 5th century, their tendency toward the pitched battle, and these men can also plainly contrast those practices with the rapid military changes during the 5th century; they come to the conclusion that warfare must have been more ritualized, but then things began to change.  Unfortunately, they are only viewing the superficial aspects of the issue - warfare is rooted in the material interests of the ruling classes of a given society, be they unconscious or not.

Relating this all back to the Strategos: there was little demand for the development of the general as the strategic commander and planner during the early period of hoplite warfare.  It is no accident that the first great Greek generals are born of the later 5th century and the Peloponnesian War; the stakes were higher and concerned access to the wealth of the greater Mediterranean world, rather than the shifting of tiny borders.  This led to myriad changes in the military organization of Grecian armies and fleets, but overall, the situation led to the demand for true generalship.  And when great men are demanded by historical conditions, they tend to appear.

Ultimately, the city states never produced an Alexander, Scipio, or Caesar- the strategos was a transitional position in the development of the Western general.  But, to not understand the material conditions which governed the possibility of that development is to be forced to accept the poor notion of a formalized warfare.  And to accept that is to fall into an idealist trap of either calling the Greeks not naturally inclined toward military genius or lacking a great mind to come up with better ideas in relation to military command- both of these are wrong.

The Hoplite Heresies, pt. 1

This post will be the first in a group of military and historical writings that do not necessarily fit within the scope of "Class Struggle and Classical Greece", but are nonetheless of interest.  None of these are meant to be scholarly works or to exhaust any of the issues.  All dates are understood to be B.C. unless otherwise noted.

The Big Push

Everyone who knows something about ancient Greek warfare is probably familiar with the image of the phalanx, a shield wall bristling with spears, as stout in defense as it was irresistible in offense.  Others may have seen the movie "300" in which the Spartan hoplites (heavily-armed spearmen) demonstrated their method of crashing into the enemy line shield-first, and then using the push to make headway.  Despite the lack of historical value of that silly film, its depiction of the phalanx in combat is, more or less, representative of the mainstream view of classical historians.  This view sees the mass of hoplites advancing at a run with the aim of colliding, shield-first, into the enemy and then the rear ranks pushing with on the backs of their comrades with their shields until one side breaks.  However, the issue of the battle-ending "big push"has been the center of controversy for some time.  What is in question is not IF the Greek phalanx was the most advanced form of infantry unit of its time - this has been settled by the record of Greek military success- it is WHY.

No one alive has ever fought in a phalanx, or any similar military formation.  Everything we know, we owe to the ancient Greek and Roman historians.  The ancient historians, though, are a notoriously difficult and unreliable bunch.  Despite all the wonderful insight and detail that Thucydides and Xenophon- those two who we owe most for our knowledge of classical warfare - provide us with, they tell us very little about the specifics of what went on during the drawing up of the lines, what happened when the march forward began, how signals were given, or, crucially, what happened when those lines of men met.  In the days before history had formed into a discipline, it was not deemed necessary to write about things that were mundane or familiar; the ancient historians, despite their intellect and talent, could not conceive how anyone would find such details of any interest.  Rather, the unusual, special, and exciting were the subject of their chronicles.  In a society with no standing army, all male citizens would have been familiar with the methods of war, either from first-hand experience, from the training ground, or just the stories of their fathers.  It would not be until the reigns of Philip and Alexander that the idea of a professional Greek army would be put into practice.

Marathon

A legacy of this vague treatment of battle conditions is the conception of the push.  Herodotus told us of the heroic Athenian resistance at Marathon (490), the first battle in which a Greek army overthrew the multitudes of  the Persian levies.  The Athenian phalanx lined up facing the beach head held by the Persians, and upon Miltiades signal, began their advance, at a run, across the 1,500 meters between the armies, before meeting the Persian lines.  It is universally recognized that the Athenians did not really run for nearly a mile in hoplite equipment;  the heavy shield, cuirass, helmet, and greaves would have made sure of that.  It is more likely that they ran the last 200-300 meters of the advance, still no small achievement for an amateur army.  Herodotus leaves us with the idea that the Athenians smashed into the Persian lines head-on, presumably with their shields, bowling the lighter-armed Easterners over with their impetuous.    

There are other records of hoplites advancing at a run, but we should not assume that the purpose was to speed towards an impact.  Well-known classical historian Victor Davis Hanson, representing the orthodox view, writes that the hoplites collided at each other at ten miles per hour and then pushed into the back of the men in front of them with their shields.  I will address the pushing below, but as to the pushing, there is another factor on the battlefield that is deadly to soldiers besides other infantry- missile troops.  Few things kill the morale of a body of troops faster than being subjected to prolonged missile fire- take the French at Agincourt for a classic example- and the men in the phalanx were no different in this regard.  The effective range of a bow was around 200 yards.  The Athenians at Marathon were not fools; choosing to run would reduce the time spent under the withering fire of Persian bows.  This seems to explain running toward the enemy, generally.  

As for the pushing into the backs of men in front of each line, this also seems suspect.  Such a tight push would make it impossible, for instance, to retrieve the wounded, or for one to ever get back up once they had been knocked down.  Furthermore, it would make those in the front rank little more than the tip of a battering ram;  no real skill at arms would be required or valued if all they had to do was continue to push forward and stab at whatever appeared before them.  

Paul van Wees makes the point that Xenophon notes a man falling and rising three times during a battle in Hellenica, hardly something that would be possible in a rigorous pushing match.  The Spartan king Cleombrotus, who fell during the fighting at Leuctra (371), was carried to the back of the line by his men.  If he had been at the front of a giant squeeze, his body would be trampled underfoot without the Thebans being kind enough to stop their own push in order that the king of their enemy be taken away; this was hardly in their character.  Of course, there is also no need to be one-sided and suggest that pushing never happened.  It is possible that those in the front line may have utilized a shield push to allow for the second line to strike at their now-pinned and off-balance targets.  This is a qualitatively different push than that suggested by Hanson and his fellows, though.

The phalanx has been called the ultimate shock formation.  By this, it is understood that the "shock" is a physical one, of bodies of men shoving with their literal weight.  I do not buy the idea of shock in this sense.  Ardant Du Picq, a military historian of the 19th century, and veteran of the Crimean War, did not buy the idea of "shock" either.  To him, based on documentary evidence collected from soldier interviews and from his own experience, men run because of mental more than physical force.  Xenophon, the sharpest military mind we know of from this period, believed that a phalanx as shallow as two ranks could hold against a formation a hundred deep, if the discipline were good (see Cyropaedia).  This is an exaggeration, but he is clearly not counting on shields in the back to provide force.  The depth of a phalanx must have provided a shock to the morale of the enemy, such as the sight of the 50-deep left wing of the Thebans at Luectra- it would seem that no matter how many the Spartans killed, their spots would be filled, and the Thebans would feel the moral force of those fifty ranks behind them as well.  

When the evidence is poor and contradictory, as ours is, the historian must draw upon knowledge of other similar modes of battle and human behavior.  Of course, there is always a threat of anachronism and over-generalization when treating this ground, but I feel confident in making some limited comparisons.  To say that the Greeks fought in such a way as suggested by the orthodox view is to say that they invented a historically unique mode of combat.  We know that similar material and social conditions create similar results and conclusions.  Was Greece so insular and unique as to produce a totally alien military?  Hardly.  

The Greeks, being a people forced to face the sea by their very geography, have been in contact with the rest of the Mediterranean world for centuries before the classical phalanx really evolved into what we are familiar with.  There are aspects of Near Eastern warfare evident in earlier Greek warfare, such as the chariot, which certainly was not a home grown invention of the mountainous Greek mainland.  Without going into too much detail, we can throw out the notion that there was some special effect as to create a totally alien form of combat in world history.

Swiss Pikes and Hoplites

The phalanx was a qualitatively higher form of infantry than had been in use in other armies, though.  We can perhaps look to another historical example to better understand its effectiveness: the pike squares of the 15th century AD Swiss Confederacy.  Similar situations create similar conclusions. The men in the pike square were without shield and, in actuality, more similar to the later Macedonian phalanx, but that can be ignored for the general point.  In both the Macedonian phalanx and the pike square, the lack of an arm freed up for the offensive use of a shield limits the comparison to the hoplite phalanx, but it is still the most exact that history provides us with.

  The medieval armies bested by the Swiss pikes were, in a purely military sense, similar to those Persian forces faced by the Greeks in the 5th century.  The men-at-arms (feudal nobility fighting on foot) that made up the core of the medieval infantry force were similar to the military caste that traditionally made up the core of Eastern armies in the ancient world.  Individually they were brave and skilled warriors, but they fought, more or less, as individuals who happened to be in a unit.  The strength in both the armies of Persia and European Feudalism rested in their cavalry, though, and it was precisely this arm that was most easily broken by the abilities of the spearman.  The Swiss pikes, and the Greek phalanx, fought as a unit that happened to be made up of individuals.

Another similarity to be drawn between the Eastern force and the medieval is the primacy of cavalry in the attack.  The cavalry charge is not successful because of some sort of literal shock where horsed trample over men; horses will not run into a stationary object.  If a charge is successful, it is because the men broke the ranks and ran, allowing for the horsemen to ride them down at will.  If the core of the Eastern force was made up of heavily-armed men of the military caste, the mass was of lightly-armed conscripts of varying degrees of reliability and training.  These masses were prone to panic and not armed or trained to stand up to a charge of their social superiors.  The situation was similar in the feudal force.  The horsemen found it difficult, however, to find a way to approach the serried spears of the Swiss squares.  The pike Square eventually became the dominant feature of all European armies into the 18th century AD.

Some Conclusions

Is it so difficult to imagine a similar situation in the early 5th century?  The landscape of Greece did not lend itself to raising horses, so while the aristocrats of the city states certainly kept horses, it never became the jewel of the battlefield as in the East.  Basing itself on a slave economy, Greece was able to free up its citizens (to varying degrees) from the daily toils of menial labor, not just its upper castes, as in Asiatic despotism;  this had an effect on not only its culture, but its mode of war.  The "citizen", rather than the "subject" also gives us an idea of the class balance of power that raised itself precariously on slave production.  The citizen, freed to develop himself physically through athletics and varying amounts of basic military training, while defending the state that he had a stake in, made for a fearsome soldier and a more fearsome mode of fighting- fighting as a unit.

It is a mistake to take a one-sided view of the development of the phalanx; much of the speculation on whether or not the "charge and push" method dominated is also linked to the question of whether or not battle was ritualized or not.  The question will be dealt with in another post, but it is enough to say that there is no narrative model for a "typical" Greek battle in our sources.  Furthermore, to assume that an historically unique mode of combat is responsible for the military victories of the Greeks is to lessen the real historical greatness of Greek civilization: they were the bearers of a higher form of production and upon that, a historically ascendant military model raised itself along with their other achievements.  In short, if the historian abstracts the military from the social, then he is forced into all kinds of strange formulations.