The rise of tyrants in the bigger city-states coincided with the development of hoplites, who by the 600s B. C.E. were common in city-state armies. The hoplite soldier, outfitted with a bronze helmet and breastplate, a broad, heavy shield, and an iron-tipped spear up to 10 feet long, was extremely effective in battle. Hoplites marched in a very tight formation called a phalanx. Each soldier’s shield overlapped that of the soldier next to him, leaving few places for enemy weapons to penetrate. The hoplites were difficult to stop as long as they stayed in formation.
Altogether the hoplite carried and wore about 60 pounds of equipment in battle, which he paid for himself. The hoplite enjoyed a higher status than the traditional soldier, who perhaps wielded just a sword, or a bow and arrows. Archers, for example, used their weapons from afar and avoided the close-up warfare the hoplites faced-because less courage was required, the archers gained less status. Archers and other lightarmed soldiers were also assumed to be of a lower economic class, since presumably they could not afford the bronze hoplite armor.
In his book The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, author and classics scholar Victor Davis Hanson describes a likely encounter between two companies of hoplites, each representing a city-state or a confederation of city-states. The front rows of each company marched toward one another, each trying to remain in position as they broke up the formation of the other. Holding their 20-pound shields at chest height for protection, they used their spears against the enemy as the lines began to stumble or break apart. All of this was done under a blazing Mediterranean sun as the hoplites struggled in their bronze protective gear amid clouds of dust, the bodies of wounded and dead piling up around them.
Greek city-states had frequent battles with one another over boundaries or other land control issues. A city-state did not hesitate to go to war to acquire more farmland if it would mean keeping the population fed. But although war was a common fact of life, large battles between Greeks in the Archaic period were unusual. Battles tended to be brief, perhaps lasting only an afternoon, which limited casualties and better preserved the booty, since they fought on the farmland they were defending or trying to acquire.
Strict discipline was the key to a successful hoplite army, and nobody practiced discipline better than the Spartans. Sparta, unlike all the other Greek city-states (1,500 of them) developed into an entirely military state in the Archaic period. Its professional hoplite soldiers were the most formidable in Greece. In fact, Spartan discipline was so tight that the system of government remained the same over many centuries-rebellion against authority was un-Spartan.
About the same time that hoplite soldiers became a common sight on the battlefield, a new warship was being developed, called the trireme. Although at this time the Greeks fought primarily on land and naval warfare was rare, the trireme would prove to be a civilization-saver in the next century (see page 31).
World History
