You might want to spell check Spatolos because neither Google nor Bing bring up any relevant results.
This is complete bunk. Pretty much the only Greek region that didn't have good cavalry was the Peloponnese and maybe some islands; the Athenians, Thebans, Sicilians, Chaldikians, Ionians, Italiotes etc. all had quite effective cavalry. Very small numbers were enough to tip the balance of whole campaigns; combined with peltasts, they tore hoplite armies apart at Spatolos, and just fifty Sicilian horsemen were able to play a Theban army like a fiddle, drawing them forward and forcing them back all along the line.
*SpartolosYou might want to spell check Spatolos because neither Google nor Bing bring up any relevant results.
1 Athens was a minor city state that nobody payed attention too. They were under the rule of oligarchy that appointed Draco around 620 to codify the laws he was very harsh. Athens became a democracy in 508 bc. Sparta had its hierarchy and was dominant in the pelopnnesan peninsula
No, they don't. The Chigi olpe is basically the only example depiction of heavy infantry combat that even suggests ordered lines, and even then, it doesn't really when you actually analyze it. It shows a row of hoplites in combat (using missile weapons, indicating that missile troops haven't been driven out of the main battle line like they later would be), but it also shows another, separate group (different number of men) running up to support them, while another group is still donning their equipment in a rush.
The survival of the mixed mob deployment into the Persian invasion indicates the phalanx was relatively new, and Herodotos doesn't even believe it's a Greek practice, attributing the division of the army into separate bodies of heavy, light, and cavalry troops to the Medes.
artistic depictions of hoplites from the 5th and especially 4th century often depict them wearing no armor, not even linen cuirasses;
Orderly lines continue to be more noted by their absence; men marching in step is considered very noteworthy in the writings of Thucydides and Xenophon,
and Herodotos is never able to tell us how many ranks deep a formation is.
The Spartans were if anything the last people to adopt phalanxes, since they're described at Plataea as fighting in the quasi Homeric, Tyrtaios style of the archaic mob mixed with light troops.
One of the sides looks like it's been surprised and is rushing out to battle piecemeal. The actual combat, however, looks pretty clearly to be between two ordered lines of heavy infantry, not two disorderly mobs with heterogeneous equipment.
And I don't think it's accurate to describe the soldiers depicted as "missile troops", either, since they're clearly equipped for close combat with heavy shields, body armour, and enclosing helmets. They seem to have javelins, but then so did the Roman legionaries; carrying javelins into battle isn't incompatible with using close-order, close-quarters combat as your main tactic.
Herodotus says that Cyaxares, the kind of Media, "first ordered the men of Asia into companies and first arrayed the spearmen and archers and cavalrymen apart from one another, whereas before this they had all fought mingled together without distinction" (1.103.1). This doesn't at all imply that the Greeks of Herodotus' time (or of the time Herodotus was writing about) fought mingled together, nor does it imply that Herodotus thought the Greeks learnt to fight in formation from the Medes.
They often depict them fighting completely naked, too, and often show the Persians dressed up as Amazons rather than wearing actual Persian equipment. Greek artistic depictions aren't necessarily to be trusted.
Marching in step helps with fighting in orderly lines, but isn't necessary for it; the Romans didn't march in step, nor did most medieval infantry, but nor did they fight as disorganised mobs.
Is there any time when the occasion would seem to demand that he specify the depth of a formation? Because if not, the fact that he doesn't specify the depth doesn't tell us anything, really.
No they aren't. Herodotus says that the Spartans were each accompanied by seven Helots, but he doesn't say that these Helots fought mixed-in with the Spartans. (In fact, I don't think he says anything at all about how, or even whether, they fought -- they might have fought as separate units, they might have stood behind the front line and threw missiles, they might have just been unarmed camp followers. Any of these interpretations would be compatible with the text.) Indeed, he rather indicates that the Spartans fought in an orderly phalanx formation: in explaining the Persian defeat, he says that "in courage and in strength the Persians were not inferior to the others [i.e., the Spartans and Tegeans who were opposing them], but they were without defensive armour, and moreover they were unversed in war and unequal to their opponents in skill; and they would dart out one at a time or in groups of about ten together, some more and some less, and fall upon the Spartans and perish" (9.62.2) -- in implicit contrast to the Spartans, who presumably weren't without defensive armour and didn't dart around in small groups but kept in their formation. A little later he says that "[the Persians'] manner of dress, without defensive armour, was a very great cause of destruction to them, since in truth they were contending light-armed [γυμνῆτες] against hoplites [ὁπλίτας]" (9.63.2), again indicating that the Spartans were in general heavily-armed, not just a heterogeneous mob with only a small proportion of well-armed soldiers.
So wait, you believe one-off depictions on pots that you think support your conclusions, but not a general trend in the many artistic depictions of a lightened panoply? This isn't a case of heroic nudity; they're depicted fighting clothed and sometimes with helmets, but bronze and even linen cuirasses basically vanish from artistic depictions by the end of the fifth century. The Greeks considered the shield and spear the only essential elements of the panoply; when the Athenians implement their (brief) program of universal service in the late 4th century, the arms they issued at the end consisted of just a shield and spear. As I mentioned above, Xenophon's army of mercenaries, people who made their living fighting, had very little body armor between them.
Considering the fact that contemporary literary sources depict mixed battle lines and the archaeological evidence for extreme wealth stratification, the fact that Herodotos, living in a time of hoplite phalanxes, is even aware of mixed battle lines and thus makes a rather fanciful story to explain the appearence of the phalanx does seem to indicate it didn't exist from time immemorial.
Moreover, the fact that Thucydides and Xenophon are both able to tell us how many ranks phalanxes fought in and Herodotos isn't is very suggestive; many an enthusiast has been frustrated by his account of Marathon, where he simply states the center was thinner than the wings without saying anything about the number of ranks. Sure, you can argue it's not strictly necessary, but that raises the question of why Thucydides and Xenophon bothered; if nothing else, it indicates a more lax attitude towards order in earlier times that ranks were considered unimporant. Taken in combination, the fact that Herodotos neither describes discernable ranks nor marching in step make it very unlikely that earlier periods, where we have literary depictions of mobs of mixed arms, were fighting in ordered phalanxes.
Regarding Plataea, you'll find Herodotos describes "The Lacedaemonians and Tegeans accordingly stood alone, hoplites and light-armed together; there were of the Lacedaemonians fifty thousand and of the Tegeans, who had never been parted from the Lacedaemonians, three thousand."
Herodotos never uses the word phalanx in the military sense either, and never discusses Spartans marching in step, indicating that their military system hadn't yet fully evolved, so concluding the Spartans fought in an orderly phalanx (while being deployed together with their helots) requires a lot of interpretation compared to the view that they were promachoi.
A few key elements of Herodotos's narrative of the Persian invasion are contradictory, and we have to be careful about how we resolve them. First of all, we can be reasonably sure that, army vs army, the Greeks were not severely outnumbered at Plataea. Their army was massive, and a force much larger on the other side would be almost impossible to maintain in place for a prolonged period; moreover, the size of the Persian camp would roughly correspond to an army in the range of 60-120,000 men, and Mardonios never extends his battle line to envelop the Greek flanks, which would have produced an easy victory. Mardonios seemed to trust the quality of his troops more than their numbers; he wanted a battle before the Greek army could continue growing, and reportedly offered to fight with his Immortals against the Lakedaimonian hoplites with equal numbers (10,000 each); if he had a better chance of victory by dint of superior numbers, this challenge would have made no sense. These facts, derived from Herodotos's own narrative, tell us that the Greeks were not badly outnumbered overall.
As such, when Herodotos describes the actual fighting taking place between the Spartans and Tegeans against the Persians, we can be relatively certain the Persians were outnumbered.
Their contingent consisted of the Immortals and their armored cavalry, elite troops all.
Earlier, in describing the manner of dress of the Iranian contingents of the army, he describes them all as wearing iron scale armor, and Masistius was so well armored the Athenians were at a loss for how to kill him for a short while. As such, his lines about the Persians losing because they don't wear armor don't make sense; pretty much nowhere else does he or any other Greek writer claim they defeated the Persians by dint of better armor.
This is based entirely on Herodotos's own account; when we incorporate archaeological evidence, the idea of well armored Greeks suffers still greater damage, since cuirasses are so rare compared to helmets among the Olympus panoplies. Of those who wore helmets, about a third seem to have had greaves, and a tenth cuirasses. This is of course excluding hoplites who wore no helmets, so the actual proportion of well armored Greeks is logically even smaller.
The concept of a large phalanx of well armored hoplites fighting in good order in the Archaic period really can't be sustained in light of the contrary evidence, which is why the new generation of scholars who are increasingly defining the consensus see the phalanx as a late invention, the product of changing patterns of land use at the end of the 6th century, rather than the product of the double grip shield.
I don't doubt that hoplite equipment became generally lighter as time went on; I just think that the pictorial evidence needs to be taken with a healthy dose of salt.
Thucydides and Xenophon were both military men before they turned to writing history; Herodotus doesn't seem to have been. It's not really surprising that accounts written by ex-soldiers should have incorporated more military minutiae than an account written by someone with no military experience. [...] Again, Herodotus wasn't a military man, so basing theories on the lack of military detail in his works is an unsound procedure.
I take it you're quoting Hdt. 9.61.2 (it would be helpful if you could provide references, BTW, since it makes it easier to check citations), "οὕτω δὴ μουνωθέντες Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ Τεγεῆται, ἐόντες σὺν ψιλοῖσι ἀριθμὸν οἳ μὲν πεντακισμύριοι Τεγεῆται δὲ τρισχίλιοι". But your translation appears to be off, or at least debatable; the actual Greek reads "So the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans were left alone, [the Lacedaemonians] being together with their light-armed troops fifty thousand in number, the Tegeans three thousand". IOW, Herodotus is saying that the total number of Lacedaemonians is fifty thousand including their light-armed troops, not that the Lacedaemonians fought in a mass mixed up with their light-armed troops. [...] The Greek contingents had become separated during the night march, so the Spartans were separated from the rest of the Greek forces. And I don't think that Herodotus ever says what proportion of the Persian army at Plataea was made up of actual Persians; they could well have outnumbered the Spartan contingent, as indeed Herodotus suggests (9.31.2). Actually Herodotus describes three groups in the Persian contingent (8.113.2): "those Persians who are called "Immortals"... and after them of the other Persians those who wore cuirasses [τῶν ἄλλων Περσέων τοὺς θωρηκοφόρους -- heavy infantry, perhaps?], and the body of a thousand horse". It doesn't necessarily follow that every Persian was fully-equipped, though; Herodotus could simply be describing the complete panoply, which only a few actually wore (and I don't think he ever explicitly says that they *all* wore scale armour, at least not in 7.61.1). As for Masistius, he was a senior officer, so naturally he'd have been better-equipped than the average soldier. Alternatively, I think you suggested in a previous thread that the Persians at Plataea might have set off to attack the retreating Greeks without stopping to put on their armour. That's also a possibility.
Herodotos spent years, if not decades researching for his history, with these battles being still in living memory; he composed the most detailed battle narrative that survives from antiquity. It stands to reason that if his sources had mentioned the number of ranks, especially in cases like Marathon where this had great tactical significance, this would have been included. I think it's more logical to conclude Herodotos's sources were unable to state the number of ranks because armies were not yet organized that way (as indeed they weren't in earlier times) than it is to say Herodotos wrote these highly detailed accounts, but left out relevant information that was in his sources. Moreover, this late-gradual development model helps explain the well attested lightening of the panoply, which recommends it still more.
For the Spartans and Tegeans to be outnumbered, there would have had to be 54,000 Persians, (10,000 Immortals, 1,000 picked horsemen, and 43,000 Persians with cuirasses -how's that for unarmored?). Since the Medes were supposed to be equal in numbers, this implies these two contingents numbered 108,000 men, before even factoring the Sakae, Indians, and Baktrians, whose contingents were taken whole into Mardonios's army.
Spartan fighting at Thermopylae, in which they seemed to advance and retire freely, rather than constantly duking it out in close quarters like in later battles, and their deployment with huge numbers of light troops, suggests the (attested in the Archaic period, which can't be said for the phalanx) Homer-Tyrtaios style combat with better armed promachoi and a supporting mass of light armed troops. By the time of the Peloponnesian War, Spartan armies no longer do this. If we have some idea how armies fought at the beginning of the Archaic period, and see echoes of that at the beginning of the Classical period, and we know that the biggest reason for change towards the standard Classical system (new patterns of land use) happened at the end of the Archaic period, the logical conclusion is that prior to that change, armies continued to fight in that style.
I don't think it's logical at all. Lots of accounts of battles fought between close-order troops make no specific mention of rank numbers, so the argument that Herodotus makes no mention of them, therefore the Greeks didn't fight in ranks, just seems like special pleading.
Assuming that Herodotus' account of the Spartan and Tegean numbers is accurate, or that he is correct in saying that the Median contingent was as big as the Persian, or even that he's correct in saying that only the Persians fought the Spartans. Those might not be safe assumptions.
Herodotus' actual account says (7.211.3): "The Lacedemonians meanwhile were fighting in a memorable fashion, and besides other things of which they made display, being men perfectly skilled in fighting opposed to men who were unskilled, they would turn their backs to the enemy and make a pretence of taking to flight; and the Barbarians, seeing them thus taking a flight, would follow after them with shouting and clashing of arms: then the Lacedemonians, when they were being caught up, turned and faced the Barbarians; and thus turning round they would slay innumerable multitudes of the Persians; and there fell also at these times a few of the Spartans themselves." So Herodotus at least seems to regard the Spartan retirements as a deliberate feint to draw their enemies on, rather than an example of general open-order fighting. Note also that he describes them as fighting "in a memorable fashion" (ἀξίως λόγου), which suggests that their tactics here weren't usual for Greek or even Spartan armies, and also that they are apparently able to act as they do because they are "perfectly skilled in fighting" (μάχεσθαι ἐξεπιστάμενοι), which suggests better cohesion that one would expect from a disorderly rabble.
Why should we assume they fought in ranks and files in the first place? Obviously we have to make some assumptions if we do want to reconstruct an ancient battle, but I don't find it very hard to believe that a people who once did fight without ranks and files, and whose art of war was very underdeveloped in terms of organization and institutions, would fight without them if they're never once mentioned in a very detailed near-contemporary history even when they would be tactically significant.
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]By Herodotos's time, these tactics definitely would be unique (indicating Spartan armies had changed in the interim), but at the time of the Persian Wars, Sparta was pretty unusual. No one else brought such a large proportion of light troops at Plataea either. The proportion of light troops to hoplites and Plataea mostly accords with estimates for rich vs poor in Greece before marginal lands came under widespread cultivation; given Spartan arch-conservatism, it's not implausible that their society remained more economically stratified than other Greek states longer. I don't necessarily think there's a smoking gun to prove exactly how archaic armies fought, but I think that when you take the sum of the evidence together, the several data points that support each other produce a 'line of best fit' that indicates a late adoption of the phalanx, probably in the late 6th century.
I don't think that the Greek art of war was "very underdeveloped". Maybe when compared to the professional units in the Persian army (the Immortals etc.), but as a whole I don't think there's any real reason to think that Greek armies were noticeably backwards compared to their neighbours.
Sparta was widely recognised as the leading military power of Greece by the time of the Persian Wars. It's hard to see how this could be the case, though, if they were still using comparatively ineffective mob tactics when everyone else had switched to phalanxes. And again, we don't know that Herodotus' numbers are accurate; he may be mistaken about the ratio of Spartiates:Helots in the Spartan army.
And it's worth noting that we have considerably better documentation of the fifth century BC than of the sixth, better documentation of the late sixth than of the early six, and better documentation of the sixth and of the seventh. None of our sources make explicit mention of a switch from mob to phalanx tactics, and it's not at all plausible that a state of such military importance as Sparta could have overhauled its military after the Persian Wars without any mention of this appearing in our sources. (Or that Herodotus, who as you say is generally quite detailed, and for whom the Spartan reform would have been within living memory, could be unaware of such an event.) It's slightly more plausible that such a switch could have taken place in the late sixth century without our sources noticing it, although not as plausible as it taking place in the early sixth century or in the seventh.
Close quarters, yes, close order, maybe not. The people with the best organized phalanx in the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans, fought with almost no armor. The most tactically sophisticated hoplite phalanx army in Greek History, Xenophon's Cyrians, had about 50 cuirasses between them. Meanwhile, no state in the Classical period wore panoplies as heavy as those of the Homeric heroes, who did fight in a far more fluid, open style. Since Krentz and Rawlings have compiled numerous instances of hoplites fighting in where phalanxes could not be deployed, we shouldn't assume that the panoply came packaged with a close order fighting style. In the Archaic period, the hoplite body was a small elite of wealthy landowners, who would have been far outnumbered by the light armed dependent laborers they brought with them on campaign. In this context, the continued use of the mixed battle line makes sense.And again, Greek hoplite equipment was in use long before the Persian Wars, and is clearly optimised for close-quarters fighting rather than fluid Homeric warfare. The heavy aspis shield and enclosing Corinthian helmet are good pieces of kit when you're in a phalanx with your comrades packed about on either side, but when you're fighting individually and attacks can come from any quarter you'd want a more manoeuvrable shield and a helmet which allows you a larger field of vision and unconstricted hearing (hence why, for example, Greek cavalry never seemed to have adopted the Corinthian helmet; cavalry warfare is more fluid, so being able to see and hear threats coming from your side is more valuable).
Sparta was the recognized military leader because they had the largest chora and the largest citizen body; during the pre-phalanx period, they subjugated the Messenians and brought most of the Peloponnese into an unequal alliance system by dint of numbers. This was the source of their power at the beginning of the Classical period, not any particular military excellence. There isn't that much evidence they were especially tough or anything like that in the Archaic period. They were defeated by Argives in the seventh century and the Tegeans in the sixth. In the battle of 300 champions, the Argives supposedly outfought them; in the following clash of full strength armies, though, the Spartans won, indicating quality wasn't necessarily their greatest strength. When they finally humbled the Argives in the early fifth century, they did so by tricking them and overrunning their camp, then trapping them in a sacred grove and burning it down. According to the oracle at Delphi, it was the Argives who had the best military reputation, while it was the Spartan women who were the best in Greece. Since the intermixture of numerous light troops with the hoplites at Plataea matches at least Early Archaic fighting styles and corresponds to their share of the Lakedaimonian population, and lacking an alternative tradition, I'm inclined to accept the Spartans were fighting in a more conservative fashion.
By the Peloponnesian war, they do have unique military institutions (a detailed chain of command down to the file, organization into many tactical subunits, and formation drill), but these aren't really attested in Herodotos.
It's unlikely to have taken place in the late 7th century, since Tyrtaios's works date to roughly this period, and still show a very fluid way of fighting.
Close quarters, yes, close order, maybe not. The people with the best organized phalanx in the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans, fought with almost no armor. The most tactically sophisticated hoplite phalanx army in Greek History, Xenophon's Cyrians, had about 50 cuirasses between them. Meanwhile, no state in the Classical period wore panoplies as heavy as those of the Homeric heroes, who did fight in a far more fluid, open style. Since Krentz and Rawlings have compiled numerous instances of hoplites fighting in where phalanxes could not be deployed, we shouldn't assume that the panoply came packaged with a close order fighting style. In the Archaic period, the hoplite body was a small elite of wealthy landowners, who would have been far outnumbered by the light armed dependent laborers they brought with them on campaign. In this context, the continued use of the mixed battle line makes sense.
Whilst superior numbers were undoubtedly a key factor in Spartan hegemony, there's no evidence in Herodotus or any authors that they were the only factor. Indeed, the speech which he puts in Demaratus' mouth about how the Spartans will fight on to the bitter end rather suggests otherwise. (Demaratus, of course, would hardly be an unbiased witness, but then I don't think Herodotus intended his audience to read that speech and think "What rot, everybody knows Sparta was only important because of their numbers!")
As for "the intermixture of numerous light troops with the hoplites at Plataea", I've already pointed out that the Herodotean passages you used to try and prove your point actually say nothing at all about how the Spartan Helots fought.
Not necessarily. If anything, Tyrtaeus' frequent exhortations to stand and fight would seem to indicate a less fluid fighting style than the Homeric one. Homer's heroes could duck in and out of combat as they wished without compromising the overall battle-line, whereas such behaviour would be fatal to the cohesion of a phalanx or shield wall.
I was talking specifically about the Corinthian helmet and aspis shield, and I note that you made no attempt to refute my arguments on those points. As for the argument that sixth-century hoplites wouldn't have bothered wearing body armour if they fought in a phalanx, I don't think that's really a tenable position in light of all the armies -- Roman, Byzantine, Germanic, Saxon, Viking, Norman -- which employed both close-order tactics and (for those who could afford it) body armour. Whilst later Greek armies seem to have decided that reducing their load of armour was worth it for the gains in mobility and ability to equip large numbers of people, there's no reason to suppose that this occurred at the same time as the adoption of close-order tactics, in view of the numerous cases where adopting close-order tactics did not lead to such an abandonment of body armour.
It's not that Herodotos is ignorant of Sparta's institutions -at least once he's able to refer to a specific unit in their order of battle- but that the ones he describes are different from those in Thucydides' work.
The fact that no other Greeks use the Spartan technique of feigned retreat (if that's what's going on) or use such a high proportion of light troops does mark them out as unique implicitly.
It's also possible the Spartan manner of fighting might not have been quite so different from the other Greeks; Herodotos could still single out individual heroes from the battle,
and Plutarch describes the Athenian corps of archers as mixed in with the picked force of 300 hoplites sent to aid the hard-pressed Megarans; it's possible that even at this stage, missile troops were yet to be excluded from the phalanx as they later would be.
He also exhorts warriors to fight at the front, instead of holding back. The fact that hanging back with the missile troops is even considered an option (if a shameful one) is evident of a much looser battle line than the Classical phalanx, where such a thing could scarcely be attempted; moreover, the way he exhorts the light armed men to use the shields of hoplites for cover and fight beside the heavily armed men shows that the mixed order was still very much in vogue in the seventh century.
They had Corinthian helmets in the Archaic period, but they were mostly ditched by the time of the Classical period, where we actually can be certain of phalanx tactics, in favor of more open designs. It very well may have been the case that the all-around protection of the Corinthian helmet was necessary on the confused and jumbled battlefield of the Archaic period, but ceased to be necessary as close order formations came into fashion.
The Argive shield is also suitable for more fluid combat; fighting in the side-on stance of the Greek hoplite, it protects the whole body quite well from a wide arc of attacks. Perhaps the central grip helped the hoplite bear the weight longer by keeping it higher up the arm than a single grip shield would; in a battle without a solid line to puncture and roll up, achieving a decision may have been more protracted.