The issues treated in this carefully edited volume are hardly new. Hoplite warfare has been the focus of many debates amongst ancient historians, archaeologists, classical philologists and anthropologists. Issues under discussion include the origins and development of this type of combat, its relationship to the genesis of archaic Hellenic society, the connection between hoplite warfare and the formation of the polis as a distinctive form of political organisation and the value of cultural representations of warfare as sources for ancient Greek military history. But despite the many insights which these discussions have yielded, it cannot be said that unanimously accepted results have been reached. We seem to have arrived at an impasse. A summit meeting of the most eminent protagonists on the scholarly battlefield is therefore to be welcomed. By providing a venue for an open (but peaceful) exchange of arguments, such a reunion might usefully lead the discussion into new directions. This was the purpose of the conference held at Yale University in April 2008. Its proceedings, published in this volume, document a broad variety of different approaches to ancient Greek military history. A detailed doxographical introduction by the editors begins by describing the current scholarly orthodoxy. According to the conventional view, there was a ‘hoplite revolution’ in the eighth or seventh centuries b.c. This revolution was the consequence of the invention of the panoply, consisting of shield, spear, helmet, cuirass and shears. The weight and design of these weapons forced (or at least permitted) soldiers to fight in tight formation as a phalanx, and their cost limited the circle of warriors to wealthy or middling farmers who formed the backbone of the developing polis and its armies. Opponents of this view question various elements of this picture, amongst them the interpretation of our meagre sources, the chronology of military reforms, the connections between military and social change or even the supposed structure of early Greek society in general. Most of these issues are taken up in the following articles.
In the opening paper, H. van Wees and V. look into the relevant iconographic and material evidence for hoplite fighting, including the famous Chigi vase. They make clear that images of soldiers shown in rank and file on archaic vases or aryballoi are not necessarily realistic representations of actual fighting, nor can it be proven that the construction of a shield with an antilabe forces hoplites into a phalanx-like formation. That may be so. But why do those images appear on various media only a short time after the invention of the hoplite armour? It still seems most plausible that there was a tight connection between hoplite weaponry and the phalanx.
In a concise essay P. Cartledge identifies the most important contentious issues on the field of archaic warfare. What is the adequate approach to our sources (which are few, disparate and never unambiguous)? How did the practice of mass fighting develop? Was there something like a ‘hoplite ideology’ that helped to lead poleis into the hoplite way of fighting and, if so, what did it look like? Finally, was Aristotle correct in linking participation in warfare and the distribution of political rights? In his short discussion of these points Cartledge offers no solutions but important pointers to future research.
A. Snodgrass reminds us to be precise not only in chronological matters but also in the application of theoretical concepts. Terms such as ‘mass’ or ‘massed’ fighting and ‘hoplite revolution’ or ‘hoplite evolution’ have different meanings amongst philologists and historians. Taken as a whole, Snodgrass's contribution is a plea for an interdisciplinary and flexible approach to the problems posed by hoplite warfare. Like him, K.A. Raaflaub argues for a slow and gradual rise of hoplite and phalanx but insists that both belong to the archaic polis; yet he poses the question of the extent to which influences from the Near East – particularly the Assyrian empire – played an important role in the introduction of hoplite armour and phalanx tactics in Greece. After a helpful overview of the Assyrian material and a comparison with its Greek correspondents, Raaflaub convincingly concludes that both hoplite armour and phalanx were Greek innovations. In his opinion, the lack of external influence in warfare can be explained by the distinctively Greek form of political organisation and communalisation: the polis. A slightly different (and less convincing) approach to the same problem is taken by J.R. Hale. In his view, the driving force behind the rise of hoplite combat should be sought less in politics than in ‘private enterprise’. It is true that Greek mercenaries can be traced in many regions of the Eastern Mediterranean. On Hale's reading, they were the first hoplites in the eighth and seventh centuries. However, the decisive question of whether single individuals such as Archilochus could have invented hoplite warfare is not tackled in his paper.
More important, it seems to me, is L. Foxhall's contribution. She examines from an archaeological point of view the hypothesis that in archaic times a growing class of middle-class peasants living on newly-cultivated lands formed the main bulk of hoplites. Several recent surveys show that settlement areas within known polis territory did not grow significantly in the period under consideration. Either the middle-class farmers lived elsewhere – or we need to give up the hypothesis. The latter is exactly what H. van Wees in his contribution recommends us to do. In addition to the archaeological data, he interprets the well-known statements of Solon, Tyrtaeus, Hesiod and later authors as witnesses to power struggles within a narrow aristocracy which (he claims) dominated Greek society until classical times and economically relied on dependent labour. The farming middle class would only have come into being later and with it – in a very slow process – the phalanx. It is not surprising that V.D. Hanson, one of the leading ‘traditionalists’ in this field, rejects van Wees' broad argumentation. He adheres to a revised orthodoxy, emphasising that crucial matters like the relation between heavy weaponry and the way of fighting, or the importance and presence of war in archaic and later sources, are most plausibly explained by the conventional ‘hoplite narrative’.
It was not to be expected that this volume would resolve (or even calm down) all controversies over the place of the phalanx in Greek history – even if it contains analyses of concrete matters hitherto not treated in similarly detailed fashion, such as a paper on the weight of the arms by P. Krentz or an important contribution on the physique of archaic Greeks by A. Schwartz. Still, this book is an important publication. It treats matters of enormous significance for Greek history, raises the relevant questions, debates them at a high level and offers a host of new ideas which all merit careful consideration. Although the book leads readers into the heat of an ongoing scholarly battle, key issues are presented with exemplary clarity. At the same time, it becomes obvious how difficult it is to obtain decisive answers in this complex field. Not only do we depend on the interpretation of historically highly problematic sources like fictional or programmatic texts (such as Homer, Solon, lyric, etc.) or works of art, but the authors of these sources lived in a society of which we do not know anywhere near enough to reach universally accepted historical reconstructions.
