Professor Donald
Kagan: We were discussing,
in the broadest sense,
the emergence and the
development of the polis
and specifically I had been
telling you about Hanson's
theory about the development of
the family farm and the
individuals who worked the
family farm as a critical
element in that story.
Now, that same individual who
produced the economic
wherewithal that would support
independent individuals,
who are not nobleman,
and who could conduct their
lives in an autonomous way and
who fought ultimately--fought
their way onto governmental
bodies which allowed them to
participate in the key
decisions,
political decisions,
and all other decisions in the
state that served the element of
their character and of their
place in the world.
That is the one that I want to
turn to today.
Their role as soldiers,
fighting for the common
cause--and that common cause now
being not an individual goal,
not a family goal,
but the goal of the entire
civic community,
which was coming into being and
I suppose would have had to come
into being,
in order to have this role,
fighting for one's
polis.
The style of warfare that
emerges in this period,
apparently for the first time,
is what we call the hoplite
phalanx and each half of that
needs to be explained.
Hoplite comes from the Greek
word hoplites and
hoplites is built around
the word hoplon which is
the name of a kind of shield
that the infantrymen,
and we are talking about an
infantry formation here,
carried.
You want to get out of your
head the notion of a shield
that's a little thing that you
can move around with one hand,
like that, real easy;
that's not what it was.
It was a great round shield
about three feet across and it
had--let me step out here so
that I can show you.
Can you hear me back there?
Is that all right?
Imagine a round shield of the
size I've talked about and one
of the things that's important
is that at the end of the
shield,
the right end from my
perspective has a grip on it,
but in the middle of the
shield,
there is also a kind of a loose
piece of leather thong that you
can put your arm through,
so that the shield is resting
in part on that grip and on the
grip that you hold at this end.
You need to do that to be able
to control the shield that's as
big as that and as heavy as
that,
because it is made
fundamentally of a heavy wood,
typically covered by leather,
sometimes with some bronze,
a bronze sheet across the front
of it as well.
That is a very heavy thing and
it will weigh you down after a
while.
It's going to be really hard
for you to maintain that grip on
that thing all through the
course of a whole battle,
but that shield is the key,
this hoplon which gives
the name to the word hoplite,
or hoplites,
which is hoplite.
Phalanx means that
these men, each man carrying his
hoplon,
are lined up first of all in a
line,
but that line is reproduced
going back, so that you end with
about--typically,
a phalanx would have
been eight men deep,
eight rows deep,
and that block of soldiers,
however long it is,
or is made up--is called the
phalanx, which means
something like roller.
It's because the phalanx
would have looked,
if you were up on a hill
somewhere watching it go by,
as though something was rolling
across the plain as the men went
forward and looking pretty
formidable,
so that anything in its way
would be mowed down in the
normal course of events.
So that is what we mean by the
hoplite phalanx.
It's a core of heavily armed
infantrymen in a solid block.
Okay, when did this come
into effect?
I'm going to start out today's
talk by giving you what has been
the standard and orthodox
interpretation of how the
hoplite phalanx worked,
which, I think,
again Hanson has given us the
clearest and most useful
account.
But as you know already,
from what you've read,
this has come into great
dispute in recent years and I'll
just say a little bit about the
dispute before we get through
today.
But what I'm giving you is the
old fashioned traditional
interpretation.
By that view,
the phalanx would have
come into being somewhere
between about 700 and 650 B.C.,
which is to say after the
earliest poleis are in
business, and according to this
interpretation,
you really have them growing up
together.
Nobody could be exactly sure
about how this process worked.
One of the big arguments that
is part of this story is when
did this development of new way
of fighting come about;
rather quickly,
over a matter of a few years,
or did it stretch out over
quite a long time.
The most extreme critics of the
traditional point of view would
say over centuries,
that you don't get the
full-blown hoplite
phalanx that I will be
describing to you,
even until you get the fifth
century B.C.
But again, let's take it in the
traditional way.
So, if you imagine this is
growing up as the polis
comes into being,
let me describe what a hoplite
was like and then try to
describe what the phalanx
was like and how they operated
and what are some of the
consequences of their coming
into being.
The hoplite himself is marked
by, first of all,
the shield and second of all,
as we continue to think about
his defensive capacities,
he has a certain amount of
armor to protect his body.
He has on top of his head a
helmet made of bronze,
perhaps weighing about five
pounds, these are approximate;
they would have differed from
person to person to some degree.
A very important element,
he would have had a breast
plate made of bronze,
perhaps as much as 40 pounds.
He would have snapped across
his shins, greaves,
sort of like the shin guards
that a catcher in baseball
wears, also made of bronze.
The shield itself,
as I've told you is made of a
heavy wood, covered by a leather
or bronze sheet about three feet
across,
something in the neighborhood
of 16 to 20 pounds worth of
shield and gripped as I told you
before.
So you want to think about
his hoplite, when he has
everything on and when the
shield is in place,
again let me sort of try to
demonstrate this,
he ought to be covered by some
kind of defense from head to
toe.
The top is this helmet that
comes up over his face and
covers it pretty totally.
It's made of strong metal,
it's got very thin slits to be
able to see straight ahead,
covered up;
everything else is covered up,
a good one will cover your neck
as well.
It's very hard to see very much
and you can't anywhere pretty
much but straight ahead.
You shouldn't be able to hear
very much either,
and it mustn't have been too
delightful to breathe out of the
thing,
although your nose is free,
but it's covered by a nose
piece.
So there's this guy with this
helmet, it must weigh--I'm
trying to think.
I always want to--modern
football helmets which are
monstrous--I'm so old we used to
play with leather ones without a
face mask.
What do they weigh?
Got any football players here?
I think they weigh a lot.
I think they're very heavy,
indeed, but I don't know how
much they weigh.
Anyway, if you imagine sort of
putting on a modern football
helmet, with that mask in front
of you,
you would begin to get an idea,
only begin to get an idea of
what it was like to have that
bronze helmet on your head.
So there you are with that.
Then you remember that you got
shin guards down to your feet;
you have this breastplate.
Now, between your waist and
your shin guard there's some
very delicate territory,
and there's no armor.
That's what your shield is for.
Your shield should cover that
territory.
You want that shield up so that
it pretty well meets your
helmet, so it's going to be at a
certain distance but it will
also go down to where it needs
to go down here.
If everything goes right your
enemy won't be able to penetrate
you, but you should be aware
that there are two places where
you are relatively vulnerable
for openers,
and that is,
if somebody can come in above
your shield, your throat is
going to be available to him,
and if somebody can come in
under your shield then your
vulnerable area will be
vulnerable indeed.
So, those are places where you
see people get wounded and
killed, if that can be done.
One other very important
thing to understand about this
defensive problem and this is
one of the debatable issues
between the old guard and the
traditional interpretation;
I'm still giving you the
traditional view.
If you imagine that your
hoplite is standing with his
left foot slightly extended in
front of his right,
and we'll see in a moment it
pretty well has to be in order
to deal with the spear that he's
grasping,
and if he's holding his shield
as he must this far,
then he's got a half a shield
sticking out in this direction
so that he's pretty well
protected on the left side,
but he's got nothing protecting
his right side.
If somebody can come at him
from this side,
he is very vulnerable from
there.
Now, that's a very important
point, because why in the world
would you give a shield of the
kind I am describing,
for a man to defend himself,
if you imagine him standing by
himself anywhere,
if you imagine him any distance
from the rest of the guys
fighting alongside of him.
This has been one of the major
reasons for explaining the
function of the phalanx
as I will explain it to
you.What are you going to do
about the vulnerability on this
side?
Well, the answer is,
in the traditional view,
is that he was never meant to
stand by himself.
A hoplite only makes sense in a
phalanx.
A phalanx understood in
this way only makes sense if you
imagine very close order.
Basically, ideally,
the right side of my shield is
being met by the left side of
the shield of the guy to my
right so that we make a solid
block of soldiers able to defend
ourselves imperfectly,
but really essentially quite
well.
Obviously, some of us are going
to get killed,
some of us are going to go down
and we'll cope with that in just
a few minutes,
but if you think of us as a
unit we have a way of
maintaining our security,
our safety, so long as we
remain in the proper formation
that I have been describing.
Let me talk about the
offensive aspect of it.
The idea of going into battle
is not merely to avoid being
killed;
the purpose is to kill the
other fellow.
How do you do it?
The hoplite has two weapons of
which the most important by far
is a pike, I guess,
is what we would call it.
It's a spear that you don't
throw.
It's a spear that you thrust
and it's got a bronze point,
which is the business end of
the weapon.
Its length might be anywhere
from six to eight feet in
length.
I said bronze,
but actually the tip was
usually iron,
but it could be bronze as well.
In addition,
it had a butt made also of
bronze, which could be a lethal
weapon.
If I strike you in a vulnerable
place with a stick that has a
bronze butt on it,
it could well kill you.
It would happen because the
spear itself was made of wood
and that meant you can count on
it often breaking in the midst
of battle,
in which case,
if you have one end of it or
the other you can still have a
point that you can use to help
yourself in this scrum that it
is a hoplite phalanx
battle.
Although I don't quite
understand--I should say,
there's many things about how
the fighting went on which we
can only attempt to imagine
because we just don't have films
of ancient hoplite battles,
I'm sorry to say.
We have people inventing them,
but even the ones that are
invented aren't very helpful,
because it's awfully hard to
know how they did what they did.
But I think we can imagine some
part of it more easily than the
other.
What I was going to say is that
you could, at least
theoretically,
strike with your spear in a
overhand manner or you could
strike with it in an underhand
manner,
the only thing is I don't know
how you do that underhand when
you're in the middle of a
phalanx.
So, I will be talking about the
overhand stroke,
which I find it easier to
grasp.
So, let's see if I can,
again, give you some sense of
what this is like.
Here's a hoplite standing like
this, and when he comes into
contact with the opposing army,
he will presumably strike down
in this way.
There are other things that he
can do.
His shield,
in addition to being a
defensive thing,
is also potentially an
offensive weapon.
He can belt you with that
shield, and if he's stronger
than you are,
or better prepared or more
balanced than you are,
he could knock your shield out
of your hand.
He could knock you back and
open up a space,
he could knock you down,
and so you should imagine that
there's at least one chance to
give a guy shot with the shield,
and after that you could just
be using it as something to
press the other fellow back and
you would meanwhile be whacking
away with this in the most
simple picture that you can have
of how the hoplite would have
conducted himself.
The other weapon was a short
sword that he kept at his side,
which presumably he would not
use so long as he had a spear,
which was a better weapon.
But if that broke,
if that wasn't available to
him, he could turn to his short
sword,
which was a thrusting sword,
not like the Roman short sword
which was double edged and
slashing.
You had to stick somebody with
this hoplite phalanx
sword.
Now, that gives you the
picture of the individual;
I hope you can get some sense
of what the phalanx might
be like, but as I try to
describe how the fighting really
went,
I always find it necessary to
ask for some audience
participation,
so that you can get some idea
of what it might have looked
like in a very,
very limited way.
So, I would like to ask for
some volunteer hoplites.
The Greeks, as far as I know,
did not allow anybody to be
left handed in a phalanx;
think about the problem.
But we don't care;
you can be a lefty.
Of course, the Greeks only
allowed men to fight in the
phalanx,
but we are much more elevated
than that.
So, I could ask any of you who
have the courage to come forward
and fight in my phalanx?
Nobody?
Just come forward.
I think we got more room here.
Okay, why don't I have the
shorter people comes toward me
and the taller people go into
the back.
I think this will make it a
little easier for us,
just line up next to each
other.
Right behind him in perfect
order;
the biggest guys in the back,
go ahead.
Make it a third row;
there's enough for a third row.
Are we all set?
Back up.
Make sure you're behind
somebody, directly behind
somebody.
How many we got up front?
Four?
Have we got four?
So we'll have three in the back
that'll be all right.
Get right behind that guy;
you got to be--boy you got to
be lined up.
Now, get into your hoplite
stance, left foot forward.
Okay, now when you're
fighting, if you're fortunate
enough, and the Greeks were
sometimes fortunate enough to
fight people who were not
hoplites,
like when the Persians came at
them they fought hoplites
against non-hoplites.
Boy, that's a nice day for a
hoplite.
The Persian infantry did not
have heavy armor,
they did not have that kind of
a shield, they had wicker
shields;
fortunately,
we have vase paintings that
show us Persians.
For one thing they're not
dressed like civilized people in
a dress, they're wearing pants.
But their shields are made of
wicker and they don't have that
kind of metal body armor and all
that stuff.
So, you could blow through that
infantry like butter.
Probably never that easy but
really, you're just not going to
lose, and the truth of the
matter is that hoplites beat
non-hoplites in all battles that
are fought on flat land in
battles that the Greeks fight
in.
I just want to tell you
about--in Herodotus,
he tells the tale about how the
fighting went versus the
Persians,
and here's the line he says,
"Once the Greeks go to war they
choose the best and smoothest
place to go down and have their
battle on that."
That wasn't just because they
sort of had an aesthetic
pleasure in nice flat fields.
That's what you need for a
phalanx,
because to maintain the
integrity of the hoplite line,
you can't have bumps and
grooves, and trees and rivers in
the way;
it will break things up.
So, they do,
in fact, seek such a field.
So if you're fighting a
non-hoplite infantry crowd,
you're in great shape.
But what the Greeks spent most
of their time doing was fighting
each other, one hoplite
phalanx against another
hoplite phalanx.
So, you have to imagine
that this thing started with
these guys back in their camp
and the other army back in its
camp,
and they both have to agree
that they want to have a battle,
for a battle to take place,
and they will have picked a
place that is flat where they
can do what they're doing.
Usually, the battle took place
over some land that was being
contested on a frontier and they
would go down to that area and
pick a spot and there they would
go and fight with one another.
So now, the two armies are
lined up.
Here's an interesting question:
how wide is the line going to
be?
Well, that's not an answer that
is entirely at the disposal of
the general, because he's got
two considerations that he has
to worry about.
One is, he can't afford to have
his hoplite line outflanked,
because if I can come around
and take care of this guy from
this side,
he is engaged with a guy who's
right opposite him,
I can just kill him no problem
at all.
So, he has got to at least try
to be equal with the guy who's
furthest on this side,
and same with the guy on the
other side.
So, that means he's got to make
his line unless he comes up with
some clever trick,
the same size as the other guy.
Well, typically the two
armies aren't identical in size.
So, if you're going to try to
be the same breadth across the
field that's going to affect how
deep you can be,
and depth as we shall see once
we get started fighting is
relevant in ways that we need to
work out,
but if one phalanx is
eight deep and the other
phalanx is 12 deep,
the 12 deep phalanx has
an advantage.
So, numbers count,
but it's not an easy one-to-one
question, various issues will
determine who comes out ahead.
Okay, now let's make this first
battle I'm going to describe for
you to be as clear cut as we can
make it, and it probably never
was like that.
Let's imagine my army is the
same size as theirs precisely,
so that the line is the same
size on both sides;
therefore, also the same depth.
So, we'll just do this
imaginary perfect battle.
As the two armies approach each
other, I should make it clear,
they start out walking at a
certain clip.
By the way, it's critical that
they should stay in formation;
nobody should get ahead of
anybody else.
How do you do that?
With rhythm and in subsequent
armies later in history,
they used drums to maintain
that technique.
The Greeks did it by the
playing of a flute like or oboe
like instrument that played a
military tune that had you
marching forward at the right
pace.
That was very, very important.
So you're marching forward
at that pace,
but now as you get closer and
closer to each other,
various items begin to affect
your behavior.
One is, I would think, fear.
In fact, I know--fear.
So, what do you do,
supposing, if you feel like
running?
Can you boys in the first row
run anywhere?
You got seven guys behind you;
that's not even an option and
that's a very important aspect
of the phalanx.
That's not even an issue.
So, if you're afraid,
what are you afraid of?
Well, the other guy has got
people--I should have mentioned
on the sidelines,
one way or another,
shooting arrows at you,
throwing javelins at you,
things like that.
You want to get through that as
fast as you can,
and engage with the enemy.
But there's another reason why
you want to get there fast is
because, well by now,
I should have pointed out that
we know that before you started
out the battle that your general
gave you a meal and he also gave
you plenty of wine,
so that by the time you're in
this position,
you've had a few and there's--I
mean,
there's a science to that too
as perhaps some of you know.
No you don't.
College students do not have a
science of this at all,
they just pour the stuff down
their throats with the goal of
becoming drunk as fast as they
can.
That's barbaric in the
technical sense.
I mean, the Greeks
didn't--Plato's
Symposium,
all of these guys are sitting
around having a drinking party.
That's all they do all night,
but they also are talking and
they're talking very well as a
matter of fact,
and the goal of this
conversation is,
or of this party rather,
symposium means by the way
drinking together.
So they're drinking and they're
talking, and both of these are
supposed to go on at the same
time.
And here's the thing;
the idea is to drink as much as
you can without passing out and
at the end of Plato's
Symposium everybody is
out,
except for Socrates who looks
around and says,
"oh well no more conversation
everybody's asleep."
Off he goes,
and we know who won that one.
Why could they do that?
Well, they weren't ignorant
undergraduates,
but beyond that they drank
wine,
not those barbarian liquids
that you drink,
and also they mixed that wine
with water,
so that it shouldn't get them
drunk too fast.
Think about how the world has
decayed, since those days.
So anyway, it still has its
alcoholic consequences,
and I like to think that the
trick for these guys was to get
to that level of inebriation
before it affects your nerves
and your physical ability to
act.
But it's worked on your brain
to the point where you get to
that sort of what I like to
think of that bar room
militancy,
whereby if a guy says,
"would you pass the peanuts,"
you say, "oh yeah!"
I'd like to think that's the
ideal hoplite mode.
So, I think that's working on
them, they want to get at those
SOBs on the other side,
and they want to kill them;
that's their mood.
Well, all of that is working on
both sides.
And so that when they come
together, they come together in
a trot.
You have to imagine they're
moving along quicker than you
would by walking,
so that they will go bang and
we can see what happens.
However,
there's one other variable that
you want to be aware of and that
is,
he knows he ought to be going
straight ahead like that,
but he also knows that his
right flank is open.
Well, he would love to be
fighting at the edge of the
Grand Canyon,
so that he doesn't have to
worry about his right flank,
but he's out there in the
middle of a field.
Now, he knows that first step
ought to be like this,
but he's only human,
so the first step is like this,
and so is the guy on the other
end on that side.
So, in fact,
as Thucydides tells us
beautifully in Book V,
when the two armies actually
hit each other they have already
made a slight turn to the right.
Everybody moves to the right,
these guys move to the right,
those guys move to the right
and they're smacking each other
at something like that angle.
Okay so much for that.
Now, here we go.
I'm coming at this guy and what
I want to do,
if I can, I want to kill him.
If I can't, I want to knock him
back, because what I really need
to do is to get him out of the
way.
Let me imagine that I've been
lucky enough to get you out of
the way--you're fighting him you
can't even look at me,
but I can do that.
But let's face it.
In order to kill you,
I'd have to earn the privilege
by knocking him back.
Now, let's imagine I've been
very lucky and gotten to
you--just get down on your knee.
Imagine she's very badly
wounded or dead,
but she's out of it.
Now, here's where the ballgame
can really be determined.
First of all,
let's consider the man behind
you.
Is that you?
Now, if you are standing there
with your--by the way the first
three rows have a chance of
hitting each other.
So, he's banging away over
somebody's head at the guy on
the other side,
but you see this guy in front
of you has just been knocked
down.
The blood is spurting out of
her neck or her side or whatever
and she's groaning down there on
the thing.
What is your instinct?
What's your instinct?
Tell me.
Get out of here!
They just killed this guy in
front of me and they're coming
after me.
I always think of that
wonderful scene in--how many of
you ever saw the Longest
Day?
It is about D-Day;
there's a wonderful scene where
this German officer comes down;
he's in charge of the defensive
arrangements there at Normandy;
he's in a bunker,
and he's reporting back to
headquarters and it's dark,
and suddenly there's enough
light that he sees suddenly on
the horizon is 5,000 ships,
the whole damn fleet.
As he calls back and he says,
"they're coming,
they're coming."
They say, "how many?"
He says, "thousands of them."
They say, "in what direction?"
He says, "auf mich zu direct."
That's the way it looks to him.
So that's what his tendency is,
but if he does that,
it's very bad news for his
city.
What he has been trained to
do, what he knows he needs to do
is to fight forward and somehow
step over her,
step on her,
do whatever he has to do to
fill this hole.
He's got to come forward and
take the danger and take the
blows and close the line.
Because if not--now,
I am in the situation where the
guy next to me has beaten you
up,
but I can now get her and I can
step in here,
and the guy behind me can do
the same,
and so we can create a wedge in
which we are doing the killing
and they are doing the falling.
If enough of that happens,
after awhile some sense of
what's happening up front
quickly works its way to the
back,
and there can be a moment,
and there always is a moment in
a hoplite battle,
where the guys in the back say,
"uh-oh we have lost this
battle."
So, the guys in the back turn
and run, which is the only thing
you can possibly do once you
feel our phalanx is
broken.
We can't stand against them
anymore and when you start
running, the only thing the guys
who are left up front can do is
run.
Now, think of what it's like to
run with this in your hand.
Can you make much speed that
way?
No, and speed is what you want.
And so the big issue is--this
is what you must never do,
but this is what you got to do
if your phalanx is
broken.
You got to drop your shield and
run.
Then I'm on the winning side,
and what I want to do is kill
as many of these guys as I can.
However, there's this great
question of how far do the
Greeks pursue in a hoplite
battle?
Thucydides has an interesting
passage in there,
in which he says that the
Spartans win the Battle of
Mantinea and Thucydides says
that the Spartans did not pursue
the hoplite.
The Spartans never pursue their
enemies very far.
It's as though he's explaining,
giving an answer to a question
that somebody asked,
"why didn't the Spartans do
better in that battle?"
To which there could many
answers at the Battle of
Mantinea, but it seems there's a
much easier answer.
Basically, the Greeks couldn't
pursue very hotly with infantry.
They don't want to throw their
shields away,
they want to keep their
shields, so guys with shields
are chasing guys without
shields.
So, they're not going to chase
them very far.
Now, another issue that
emerges in discussion of these
kinds of battles is the
casualties.
For a long, long time the
general wisdom was there were
not heavy casualties in hoplite
battles--people calculating on
what I was just talking about.
But then an old Yalie who took
this course when he was very
young, and later became an
ancient Greek historian,
took the wonderfully outlandish
device of answering this
question.
He simply took all the battles
in Greek history that we have a
record of, and which we know
what the casualties were like,
and counted and he
concluded--anybody can check
because there they are--that
casualties could run as high as
15% at a hoplite battle.
That's a high casualty rate and
many a military unit will break
if they have that many
casualties.
Actually, what he finds is the
winning side would lose about 5%
and the losing side would lose
maybe as much 15%,
and so you get some idea.
But don't imagine that these
were anything like bloodless or
easy.
They were bloody,
although the actual amount
would vary with the
circumstances.
Now, you know the battle is
over in a variety of ways.
One, the enemy ran away;
that's pretty good.
But for the Greeks it was very
important that things should be
really official.
There were, and there's a lot
of debate about what I'm going
to say next, there were
protocols of fighting that were
followed.
Some people want to have these
to be many and for them to be
very binding,
others want them to be very few
and not very binding,
and that's an argument one can
get into.
But some things seem to be
indisputable,
for instance,
if I say we won the battle I
can prove that to you most of
the time.
Why?
Because I now occupy the land
that we fought on.
Therefore, I can do what they
did.
Take a stick,
bang it into the ground,
hang on that stick a captured
helmet,
or a captured corselet,
something that represents the
military equipment that the
losers had that were left on the
field.
We hang it up;
that is called a trophy.
The word trophy comes from the
word that means to turn,
trepho,
and it means that this is the
place where the enemy turned and
ran.
We own that property now,
we own their equipment,
and therefore we won the
battle.
Another tangible way of
understanding who won the battle
and who didn't,
is we winners,
because we own the field,
we can pick up the casualties,
take care of those who can be
saved,
bury the ones who have been
killed;
we don't have to ask anybody's
permission.
Burial is very critical.
If you remember from reading
the Iliad and
Odyssey,
it is absolutely critical in
the Greek religion that people
be properly buried,
because if they're not,
then their shade goes on
forever in misery and pain.
They cannot rest quietly in
Hades unless their body has been
properly buried;
so you got to do it.
The losing side must come to
the winning side and they must
ask permission to pick up their
dead and bury them.
Typically, that is granted and
they can then do it,
but they are of course humbling
themselves by making the request
and coming down under the orders
of the winners and taking their
dead away and being buried.
So it's very,
very clear who won and who lost
and that's--I think it's a very
important point because Greek
hoplite warfare,
which is the characteristic
warfare of the Greeks from the
eighth century on into the
fourth,
never loses its character as a
kind of a game,
in which there are winners and
losers,
and the winners are given the
prize and the losers don't get
the prize.
It's a contest just like
everything else in Greek society
and there's a tremendous amount
of pride that goes into victory
and a tremendous amount of shame
that goes into defeat.
But we said the same thing
about the Homeric heroes,
didn't we?
Here's the difference;
they're not fighting for
themselves, they're not fighting
for their families,
and only to limited extent are
they fighting for their personal
glory, their kleios;
they are fighting for their
city, and they will be honored
by their city in victory or even
in defeat,
if they perform very
heroically, and of course,
what about if they were very
shameful?
What about if they run away?
I think I want to save the
illustration of that one until
we talk about Sparta.
What Tyrtaeus tells us very,
very specifically how bad that
is;
it's bad.
So, you have this tremendous
continuity between the sort of
the honor code that was so
dominant in the Homeric world,
which has now been shifted to
the larger unit,
which is the polis.
If you can see it,
all adult males fought.
I should back up;
that's not quite true.
There's an important point I
didn't make.
Not everybody gets to fight in
the hoplite phalanx.
The town, the city,
the polis does not
provide the fighters with their
defensive armor.
They might sometime give them
their weapons,
but not their defensive armor.
You can't fight as a hoplite,
in other words,
unless you can afford to pay
for your equipment and that
excludes a goodly number of
citizens who are too poor to
fight in the phalanx.
This becomes a very,
very large issue because the
notion that there should be a
real connection between
citizenship in the full sense
and military performance is
totally a Greek idea--I mean,
the Greeks just totally accept
that idea.
Actually, later on at the end
of the fourth century when
Aristotle is writing his
Politics,
he makes really a very clear
connection as to the style of
fighting and the kind of
constitution that you have.
He said very clearly,
if you use cavalry as your
major arm, your state will be an
aristocracy.
If you use hoplites,
your state will be,
what he calls a politea,
a moderate regime.
If you use a navy,
your state will be a democracy
in which the lower classes are
dominant.
So, there's this real
connection and that's the way
they really thought about it.
So, what we will see as the
polis is invented,
moving away from aristocratic
rule in the pre-polis
days or in the early
polis days--you will see
a middling group of citizens who
are,
according to this
interpretation,
Hanson's farmers who are also
going to gain the political
capacity to participate in the
town councils,
and who are the hoplites but it
will exclude the poor,
who will not have political
rights.
Most Greek states,
just as they never moved beyond
the hoplite style of fighting,
never go beyond the
oligarchical style of
constitution which gives only
hoplites political rights in the
state.
Okay, stay there because who
knows, there are 20 million
other things I might have said,
but instead let me give you the
opportunity to ask questions
that you would like to raise,
particularly if you want to ask
about how they fought,
as long as we have a
phalanx here we might as
well use it if we need too.
Are there any questions?
Yeah?Student: How
would they practice because
weren't they prominently
farmers?Professor Donald
Kagan: The answer is they
damn near didn't.
That is, you've got a very key
point;
there was very little military
training.
On the other hand,
you don't need very much.
Think about it,
what are the skills?
What are the technicalities?
If I'm the general and so I
say--what do I say?
Charge!
Now we're engaging each other,
what do I say?
Fight harder men!
Now we're in trouble and I say,
don't run away!
There are no techniques,
there are no maneuvers,
there are no--you can't do
anything and so they didn't
practice very much,
except one stunning exception,
the Spartans.
They were not farmers as we
shall see, and therefore,
they spent their lives
practicing warfare.
It paid off;
they usually won.
So, the answer is basically
that the ordinary Greeks did not
engage in very much
practice.Student: If
they're all fighting in this
hoplite style,
how do all of these great Greek
military personas develop,
who are famed for being such
wonderful,
individual soldiers,
if there's no real
hand-to-hand,
one-on-one?Professor
Donald Kagan: Well,
there is nobody out there that
you could see.
Typically, we don't have guys
like that.
The guys who are famous are the
generals who get credit for
putting together a nice
formation when it's not the
simple one I've just given you.
Just to be a little bit more
plain about that.
In the famous battle of
Marathon, which I will tell you
about when we get there,
one of its features is that
because the Greeks were
numerically badly inferior to
the Persians,
they had this problem of
covering the line.
So, they could have thinned out
their entire phalanx,
but that would have given the
Persians a chance to break
through anywhere and everywhere,
and so what Miltiades did was
to make his wings heavier,
deeper and very dangerously
thin in the middle.
It was a gamble.
The gamble was our wings will
crush their wings and turn in on
them from behind and from the
side,
and set them a running before
they break through our middle.
As Wellington said at Waterloo,
it was a damn near thing.
The Persians broke through the
middle but just before that,
the Athenian wings crushed the
Persian wings and set them
running for their ships.
So, everybody says what a
genius Miltiades was.
Similarly, in naval battles
Themistocles at Salamis comes up
with a clever device.
So, you see what I'm driving at;
we know those guys.
You never really hear of Joe
Blow who killed thirty-four guys
in the phalanx.
There must have been some guys
like that but you just don't
hear about those fellows.
Any other questions?
Yeah.Student: When
do they just pull out their
swords and start
hacking?Professor Donald
Kagan: When they had no
spear.Student: So,
the spears
broke?Professor Donald
Kagan: Yeah,
they would--these spears must
have broken like mad.
And so the thing to do,
unless you have something else,
you would go for your
sword.Student: It's
not like you go out and you
start fighting people with just
your body shield and you're
happy there.
Professor Donald Kagan:
Always, oh yes always.
You never, according to my
understanding of this,
you never, never want to be
without your shield.
That means, you never want to
be away from your
phalanx.
This is disputed.
This is exactly--these are the
grounds on which this new
school--one of the ways in which
they argue otherwise.
I'll say a little bit about
that, when I get through with
phalanx.
I just want
to--yeah.Student:
What about projectiles?
Professor Donald
Kagan: These guys don't have
any projectiles.
However, there are light arm
troops made up of those two poor
to be in the phalanx,
who do use projectiles and the
projectiles are arrows,
javelins, or stones thrown by
slings.
The trouble with them is none
of them has any range.
Think about that for a moment.
Get out of your mind Henry V,
forget the Battle of Agincourt.
They don't have--those men in
Lincoln green with the enormous
long bows, made out of good
English composite whatever,
who can fire the thing
thousands of yards and penetrate
and kill the French nobility.
How many of you have seen Henry
V in the Laurence Olivier
version 1945?
They got this miserable modern
one with the sort of Vietnam
like conditions that they have
out there;
it's raining all through the
God-damned battle of Agincourt.
Great battle,
it's got to have sunshine,
blue skies, terrific--well,
never mind.
They had very poor bows and
arrows.
They didn't have the composite
bow, didn't have power.
It would have had a hard time
getting through the shields and
it didn't have any distance.
But they were worth something
because they did this.
Actually, those guys would be
useful, not so much,
hardly at all during the scrum
of the phalanx,
but should one side be
retreating.
That's where they do it harm.
Once you throw your shield away
and you're running,
anybody who's got a weapon can
take you out,
and that's what would have
happened.
Yeah?Student: So,
is it unlikely that someone
like the fellow that was named
begin with M.
that we read about from the
selection.Professor
Donald Kagan: Do you mean,
Miltiades?Student:
No, the archer in the
Iliad.Professor
Donald Kagan: Oh,
in the Iliad.
Student: Is it
unlikely that people would
actually have been able to do
anything like
that?Professor Donald
Kagan: Yes,
of course, the Iliad has
various people who are very good
archers, who could kill the
other guy.
I'm sure there were bows and
arrows at that time,
but they did not yet have the
kind of armor that they would
have in this time.
So, they would have been more
vulnerable and you wouldn't have
to have such a powerful bow.
Of course Paris,
isn't he the one who kills
Achilles, right?
But Achilles,
of course, he got him in the
heel where he didn't have any
armor.
Anything else?
Yeah?Student: I
mean, isn't it somewhat
inefficient to load it really
deep,
because I assume if a spear is
only six feet long,
what are people in the back
going to be
doing?Professor Donald
Kagan: Very good yes,
and that's a big argument that
nobody has a good answer for.
The traditional answer is that
these guys actually did press up
against the rows in front of
them and that this provided a
momentum that gave the front
line an advantage in beating the
enemy facing them.
You can see all kinds of
troubles.
Why didn't the guys in the
middle get crushed?
I don't have any very good
answers for that and yet it is
one part of the traditional
explanation is this,
and it's a very important one
and much debated,
that at a critical time in the
battle one technique would be
one side would give one great
big shove.
The word in Greek is
othismos,
and if that was successful as
it might be,
it could knock down the lines
of the front guys and get the
other side running.
There's ancient evidence,
there's an ancient source for
that, that says that's what
happened and that's one of the
things that we have to deal
with.
The critics of this point of
view would say that's impossible
and inconceivable.
Another possible
explanation of the significance
of depth is, remember,
our poor victim here.
If you multiply her,
then you want to have as much
depth to fill in behind to close
that hole as you can,
so that that would make your
phalanx more sturdy,
because you could take more
casualties without breaking,
that seems reasonable to me.
But again, I can't imagine how
these guys fought in these
circumstances.
I really can't see it.
I mean, it's a pity we can't
kill people in experiments
deliberately anymore,
because we need to see how this
works, but I can't do it.
But I do think that that makes
a reasonable amount of sense.
Anything else on the mechanics
of our phalanx?
Yes?Student: How did
they determine when two armies
would charge each
other?Professor Donald
Kagan: To charge each other,
is that what you're saying?
Well, what happens is one army
is invading the land of the
other.
So, it's--In a way,
it decided when the fighting is
going to take place up to a
point.
Namely, it's going to happen
this summer, because we're
coming and it's going to happen
this week;
it's going to happen tomorrow,
if you don't run away.
So, now, the defenders have to
do it, in a perfect situation,
I am marching towards their
corn crop,
grain crop, at the time just
before the grain is going to be
harvested.
If we cut down that grain you
don't eat this winter.
You get in front of the grain,
when we say.
So, that would be the classic
way of determining how it works.
It's never--it probably wasn't
quite that easy but the invading
side goes for something that the
other side will have to defend
and that determines when the
fighting takes place.
Yes sir?Student: How
long would most of these battles
last?Professor Donald
Kagan: Hard to say.
Hard to imagine anybody doing
this for more than a couple of
hours.
So that would be my guess,
but nobody knows for sure.
But I think if you can imagine,
up to a couple of hours would
be about right.
That's worth mentioning,
how long is a war?
A couple of hours,
because typically there's just
one battle;
one side beats the other and
that's the war for now.
Until we get,
of course, this is early days,
until we get to the
Peloponnesian War when things
change radically in fighting in
general,
but this is your standard.
Yes sir?Student: You
had mentioned that the losing
side casualty numbers were
approximately about
15%?Professor Donald
Kagan: Yeah,
it could be that
bad.Student: If
you're fighting for an hour or
two hours,
it just seems like that would
be such a low
number.Professor Donald
Kagan: Well,
you got to realize that much of
the time, until the
phalanx breaks,
there's not a lot of killing
that can go on.
You can only kill just a few
people while they're still
defending themselves in this
manner.
I have to believe that the bulk
of the killing took place on the
flight and so that's why that
works out.
Student: What do you
do the rest of the time?
Just push?Professor
Donald Kagan: If you're not
hitting, you're pushing,
that's the
theory.Student: An
hour?Professor Donald
Kagan: Or two.
Yes?Student: How do
they decide who went in front
and who went in the
back?Professor Donald
Kagan: No,
that's right.
They would have decided on the
basis of what was most effective
and you would not want old guys.
By the way, how old are the
people out there is a good
question.
Typically, the youngest guys
are twenty, and typically the
oldest guys are 45,
but everybody was liable to
military service in these states
until they were about 60.
So, you can imagine in certain
circumstances there would be
guys that old back there,
but fundamentally it's between
20 and 45.
Okay, I would have thought that
the front row would exclude the
older people.
You want tough guys up front;
you don't want your front line
being broken.
So, the guys up front are
going--the younger you are,
chances are you're going to be
more physically strong than
older guys.
Probably, though,
you wouldn't want to have the
very youngest guys up front,
because another thing you want
is experience.
People who have seen this
before, done it before,
lived through it,
and now you can count on them
not to run away,
better than you can on a fresh
recruit who's never done this
before.
So, I would have thought--so
you see I'm speculating to a
certain degree,
but I would have thought you
would have guys 25 to 35 in the
front couple or three lines,
and then behind them younger
men and then maybe the older men
at the very back,
or maybe because you wanted to
be sure that that last row
didn't turn and run away too
fast,
you might have some who were
not quite so old at the very
back, but it's all a question of
what's effective and why;
that would be my thinking about
that.
Yes?Student:
[Inaudible]Professor
Donald Kagan: In what?
Normally.
I say that a typical
phalanx is eight;
however, by the time you get
down to the fourth century and
people are doing all kinds of
new and innovative things,
we hear that the left wing of
the Boeotian army at Leuktra was
fifty men deep.
Now, what are you going to do
with that?
But it's clearly a fact.
There were previous examples of
people trying to have a deep
wing that would do things,
but if you take me back to my
primitive phalanx here
about 600-650 they're not doing
that stuff yet.
But I think that depth would
have been determined by how many
soldiers you had available.
You would have made your
phalanx as deep as you
could, and once you had the
width established.
Yeah?Student: Would
the winner of the war slaughter
the enemy that would fall behind
or would they give them
back?Professor Donald
Kagan: The question is would
the defeated army--would the
winning army kill all the
defeated guys who were still on
the battlefield at the time?
It would vary.
They could capture them.
There's a reason to capture
them.
You could demand ransom for
them.
So, there would be some
inclination to capture men
rather than to kill them.
On the other hand,
guys who were engaged in a
fight of the kind we must
imagine get very angry;
these guys killed a buddy next
to you.
So, there would have been a
certain amount of just furious
killing going on,
but I don't think that would
have been the way you planned
the game.
You kill enough guys to achieve
your goal and if you're still
rational you take the rest
prisoner.
I think would be the way to go.
Yes?Student: What
would stop an opposing army from
flanking you?Professor
Donald Kagan:
What would stop it would
be--why didn't they flank each
other?
Boy, if they could, they would.
But the difficulty is,
if you take your left flank and
move it out here so you can
flank this guy,
one of two things has to happen
to your army.
Either you open a nice hole
between yourself and the rest of
your army, in which case
somebody's going to get very
badly killed and you're going to
be on the run very soon,
or you have to somehow
communicate to the rest of the
army, "everybody come over this
way,"
which will still leave that
flank open to being flanked by
the other side.
That's what prevents that from
happening, we just don't see
that going on.
Yeah?Student: Was it
just the Greek sense of honor
and propriety that kept them
from doing more creative sneak
attack?Professor Donald
Kagan: It used to be thought
before people were very
careful--we know that they do
every terrible thing in the
world in the Peloponnesian War.
Whatever the rules were before,
they're off when we get into
the Peloponnesian War.
There's just no dirty trick
that anybody fails to do if it
can.
But they surely must have done
it before too.
When you're serious,
any way to win will do,
but mostly you could make a
virtue of a necessity.
The kind of battle I've been
describing to you,
a nice flat field,
two armies coming at each
other,
there's not much you can do in
the way of trickery,
and so you can take a high tone
and say,
anybody who fights any other
way is a no good coward.
In fact, we have some claim,
and a Roman writer later on,
that there was a treaty back in
the eighth century B.C.
between a couple of states in
Euboea, that said they would
never use missiles of any kind,
because that was cowardly.
The only legitimate fighting is
man against man,
shield against shield,
chest against chest,
everybody else is a pussy.
So, I think that became--and
whatever the reality was,
that story was always being
told, that's the way for a man
to fight;
anything other than that is
open to suspicion.
Okay, thank you very much
hoplites.
A little hand for the hoplites.
Just a few more little details.
The situation begins
at--remember,
the two sides are opposite each
other in the field,
probably in the morning.
Each side conducts sacrifices
in which they ask the gods for
assistance in the battle,
sometimes they hope that there
will be a favorable omen
suggesting they're going to win.
They have breakfast,
they drink, and they advance
typically to a battle song
called the paeon which we
have, what they sang.
I don't have the tune but I
have the words.
Does that sound like a good
thing to march into battle?
Sounds good to me, I like that.
Then would come the battle.
I talked to you about the
pursuit, the aftermath.
There's just one more thing you
need to know about this
phalanx mode of fighting.
When the phalanx fought
against any other infantry
formation the phalanx
wins;
from the time we first hear of
Greeks fighting non-Greeks,
when the Greeks have the
phalanx,
I think I'm right in saying
they never lose a battle.
Finally they do in the,
I think it's the second century
B.C., when King Phillip of
Macedon has his phalanx
fighting against the Roman
legion and the legion wins,
but believe me,
it was no easy thing for the
legion to win even in that
battle.
There was nothing automatic
about that.
So great was the military
success of the phalanx
that the King of Persia who was
always getting into wars and
hiring troops--whenever the
kings could they hired Greek
hoplites to fight for
them.
When prince Cyrus seeks to
overthrow his brother right
after the Peloponnesian War he
signs up 10,000 veterans of the
Peloponnesian War from the
Peloponnesus,
because with 10,000 Greek
hoplites, he believes that he
can conquer the Persian Empire
and make himself king,
even though the numbers are
fabulous.
And those Greeks marched 1,500
miles into the center of the
Persian Empire,
down into Babylonia,
fight the army of the Persian
king, defeat the army of the
Persian king,
but unfortunately the prince
who led them down there is
killed in the battle,
making the victory rather
pointless, because the whole
idea was to make him king.
So then you have Xenophon
writing his Anabasis,
The March Back,
telling the story of how those
1,500--those 10,000 Greeks
rather got back home.
Just a word for the other
side of the argument,
I want to read you a quotation
from Hans Van Wees,
who is the leading critic of
the traditional orthodox
explanation I just gave you.
Here's one, "It is clear that
the emergence of the hoplite was
only the beginning of a lengthy
process which certainly lasted
more than a century,
and may have lasted more than
two centuries,
leading to the creation of a
close ordered hoplites only
phalanx.
The classical hoplite formation
then was not the long lived
military institution of
scholarly tradition,
but merely one phase in a
history of almost four centuries
of slow change towards ever
denser and more cohesive heavy
infantry formations."
I'll read you one more of his
statements, "Those who favor an
early date for the emergence of
the hoplite phalanx rely
on one argument above all,
the new type of shield adopted
in the late eighth century,
unlike its predecessors,
could be used effectively only
in an extremely close and rigid
formation.
Double grip shields thus
presupposed or imposed an
extremely dense formation.
The tacit assumption is that
hoplites stood frontally opposed
to their enemies like wrestlers,
rather than sideways on,
like fencers,
holding their shields parallel
to their bodies,
but artistic representations
show that this is not how
hoplites fought."
I would say that the crux,
the kernel of the critique,
a lot of things you can argue
about--The kernel of the
critique lies in this assertion
which derives its force from an
interpretation of pictures on
pottery.
You can see I'm not too
friendly to that interpretation,
but it is being taken very,
very seriously.
So seriously,
you fortunate Yalies,
that they will be here on April
9 and 10 of 2008,
an international conference on
the subject of the hoplite
phalanx and the emergence
of the city state.
It will be a classic Greek
agonal confrontation,
because among the other stars
who are going to be engaged,
Curtis Easton will be one of
them, the main event will be a
one-on-one between Victor Davis
Hanson and Hans Van Wees.
You're all very welcome to come
on that occasion.
See you next time. 
 
