The heavily armoured infantryman, known as the hoplite, began to emerge on the battlefields of Greece in the mid-seventh century BC. 1 The seventh century was also witness to a wave of changes in the governments of some Greek cities, which resulted in the established oligarchies and monarchies being replaced by tyrannies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the emergence of the hoplite class impacted upon the political developments in Greece, and specifically with regards to the tyrannies that were established across the Greek world between c.650-500 BC. 2 During the seventh century, tyrants took control of Corinth (Cypselus), Katane (Euarchus), Megara (Theagenes), Miletus (Thrasybulus), Mytilene (Melandrus), Samos (Demoteles), Sicyon (Orthagoras), and a failed attempt to seize power in Athens (Cylon). In order to understand the extent to which hoplites may have affected these political developments in Greece, it is important to examine their influence on the battlefields. Warfare in the eighth century BC was essentially a long range skirmish oriented affair, fought by individual aristocratic warrior specialists. 3 This method of warfare was generally inconclusive, and it did not always descend into a decisive melee phase. 4 The introduction of the hoplite as a solider, and the gradual development of the phalanx as a tactical unit, was specifically implemented to " supersede long-range fighting " with decisive melee encounters decided by an increasingly uniformly armed force. 5 This emergence then eventually led to the implementation of massed phalanx based battlefield tactics, which in turn required a number of similarly armoured men in order to be effective. In order to maximise the military potential of the hoplite, and additionally to protect themselves as best they could from attacks on their flanks and rear, Greek aristocrats were obliged to recruit a sufficient number of these heavily-armoured warriors from outside of the ranks of the traditional aristocracy. To achieve this, the aristocrats were forced into widening the qualification requirements to include wealthy non-aristocratic farmers. As a consequence, for the first time warfare, which had hitherto been the domain of specialist aristocratic warriors, was opened up to include the wealthier farmer-soldiers who could afford to arm themselves with the hoplite panoply of arms and armour.
2021, "The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare" (updated and corrected version, 2022)
2021, W. Heckel; F.S. Naiden; E.E. Garvin; J. Vanderspoel, eds., A Companion to Greek Warfare, Wiley-Blackwell
Free related PDFsRelated papers
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Fighting by the Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite Agôn
2002
This examination of the unwritten rules of Greek warfare suggests that the ideology of hoplite warfare as a ritualized contest developed not in the 7th century, but only after 480, when nonhoplite arms began to be excluded from the phalanx. Regular claims of victory, in the form of battlefield trophies, and concessions of defeat, in the form of requests for the retrieval of corpses, appeared in the 460s. Other 5th-century changes in military practice fit the theory that victories over the Persians led to the idealization of massed hand-to-hand combat. Archaic Greeks probably fought according to the limited protocols found in Homer.
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Polis, The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought, 2014
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The Othismos, Myths and Heresies: The Nature of Hoplite Battle
War in History, 1997
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Adam Schwartz (Nantes 2023), ‘‘Pass it on Not Diminished, But Greater and More Powerful’: Athenian Hoplites in the Fourth Century BC’, Video Recording, from Session 3 of Fourth-Century Athens at War: After Claude Mossé: An International Conference at the Nantes IAS (France).
The widespread notion that Athens went into a steep decline in the furth century was prompt-ed in no small part by Claude Mossé. For her, this decline had a clear military dimension: the disastrous setbacks and losses in both materiel and manpower during the Peloponnesian War caused a general defeatism among fourth-century Athenians, reduced drastically their willingness to serve in the armed forces and undermined the performance of such armies or fleets as they were able to mobilise. This seemed to fit the traditional idea that postwar Athens had increasingly to turn to mercenaries to fight her wars. This paper argues that the efforts of Athenian hoplites after 404 cast doubt on this notion. Throughout the fourth century, Athenians continued to enrol in the hoplite arm and to serve regularly in wars. When Athens was victorious, it was often due to the courage of these hoplites. What is more, the postwar dēmos initiated military reforms to facilitate Athenian hoplite success: in the 370s or 360s, they introduced a new conscription method for hoplites, which speeded up mobilisation and ensured that the burden of military service was shared more equitably. And in the 330s, the dēmos backed a substantial increase in the public training of future hoplites. This new training, as well as a new public subsidisation of equipment for hoplites, resulted in an increase in the proportion of Athenians willing and able to serve. This further undermines the downbeat assessment that Mossé had of fourth-century Athens at war.
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Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 2015
Combat scenes depicted on vases are a critical source for the reconstruction of Greek warfare in the archaic period. They are the subject of a lively debate over their accuracy and reliability as historical sources, and the degree to which they represent historical ways of fighting among archaic Greeks has been questioned. A particularly common argument used to question, or even in some cases, to reject some scenes as potential sources is to identify them as depicting ‘archaizing’ and/or ‘heroizing’ topics, that is, images drawn from a legendary past or from the myths. This scepticism has often been based on the identification of a few elements in the pictures which have traditionally been regarded as belonging to myth or to a period prior to the introduction of the phalanx. It is shown here that an examination of both these specific elements and the larger combat scenes in the light of new theories about the phalanx and the hoplite in the archaic period offer fresh grounds for analysis.
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The social and cultural background of hoplite development in Archaic Athens: peasants, debts, zeugitai and Hoplethes
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PART II
Military Operations
CHAPTER 6
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the
Nature of Hoplite Warfare
Fernando Echeverría
During the Archaic period (roughly 750–500), the emerging communities in Greece
embarked on intermittent episodes of conflict with each other that entailed the mobilization
of armies and fleets. At the same time, some of them were founding new settlements abroad,
others exploring routes for trade and piracy, and others still reaching the mighty powers in
the East to trade, raid, and sometimes fight. All those situations were potential scenarios for
military conflict, determined to a great extent by the culture of the polis but definitely not
circumscribed to it. Unfortunately, the fragmentary state of our sources leaves us uncertain
about how those wars were fought and through which means and practices. The study of
warfare in the Archaic period relies on a handful of poetic narratives (epic) and fragments
(lyric), an immense but problematic stock of iconographic material (paintings and sculptures), and a considerable yet still expanding collection of artifacts (mainly arms and armor).
However, we lack the kind of historical and detailed narratives that we find during the
Classical period (such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon), and here is where the
trouble begins.1
This scattered, fragmentary, unsystematic, and sometimes even contradictory evidence led
late nineteenth-century scholars to believe that there was a broad gap between the warfare
and society depicted in the Homeric epics and those described by the Classical sources;
radical changes had to be hypothesized if the gap was to be filled. Over more than a century,
scholars introduced new aspects into the debate, such as politics, society, economy, or
technology, combining the scattered pieces into a single picture: the result was the so-called
“hoplite revolution,” a holistic theory that accounted not only for the evolution of Greek
warfare but also for the historical development of the Greek polis in the Archaic period. This
1 Nature and types of sources for Greek warfare: Hornblower 2007; Millett 2013.
A Companion to Greek Warfare, First Edition. Edited by Waldemar Heckel, F.S. Naiden,
E. Edward Garvin, and John Vanderspoel.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
76
Fernando Echeverría
theory was based in turn on a particular vision of the nature of Greek warfare as a comprehensive and internally consistent structure of military practices and ideas that is commonly
known as “hoplite warfare.” The need to bridge an alleged divide between Homer and
Herodotus led then to a reconstruction of the political and social history of the Archaic
period built entirely around the hoplite as a military, political, and socioeconomic figure, the
so-called “hoplite narrative.”
The following pages will sketch the origins and evolution of the scholarly discussion on
hoplite warfare, trace the complexities of the theory of the “hoplite revolution,” and draw its
various implications for the reconstruction and understanding of the Archaic period in
Greece. But, more importantly, they will also address the many difficulties that the “hoplite
narrative” presents as an academic explanation for Greek warfare and culture in the Archaic
period. Finally, despite the broad acceptance and dissemination of both the “hoplite
revolution” and “hoplite warfare” models, I will present them here as two (problematic,
questionable, and overstretched) modern constructs.2
“Hoplites Rule”: Decoding the “Hoplite Narrative”
Both “hoplite warfare” and the “hoplite revolution” are related aspects of what Victor
Hanson recently branded as the “hoplite narrative,”3 a comprehensive account of the rise of
the polis and the nature of the political and social organization in Archaic and Classical
Greece from the point of view of military change. Previously, the “narrative” was most
tellingly referred to as “orthodoxy,”4 but the consciousness of a relationship between the
nature and origins of the Greek political community and the patterns and practices of Greek
combat emerged much earlier, in the mid-nineteenth century, as we shall see. Hanson then
basically articulated in twenty-first century language what was in fact an old belief: that the
political, social, and economic history of the Archaic period could be explained through the
figure of the “hoplite.”
In this “narrative,” the hoplite is not just an ancient type of heavily armed infantryman,
but a multifaceted and all-encompassing figure that synthesizes the social, political, and
ideological changes of the Archaic period. The modern notion of “hoplite”5 combines both
military and socioeconomic connotations, referring to a particular type of Greek soldier
equipped with a specific panoply of weapons and fighting in a certain kind of formation (the
phalanx) on the one hand, and to an individual belonging to a particular socioeconomic class
with landed property and citizen rights on the other. Finally, it also conveys ideological
connotations, referring not only to the agrarian ideas of economy, sacrifice, and hard work
but also to notions of equality, homogeneity, moderation, and participation.
The “hoplite” is then the key to the “narrative,” for his peculiarities, constraints, and
interests are supposed to determine the complex set of changes and circumstances that
explain the Archaic period. He is also the cornerstone that connects (as the name attests)
“hoplite warfare” with the “hoplite revolution”: the emergence of the hoplite determined a
2 The “hoplite revolution” as a “modern construct”: Raaflaub 1993, 80.
3 Hanson 2013.
4 Morris 1987, 196; Rawlings 2000, 234; Cartledge 2001, 155; Matthew 2009, 395; Krentz 2010; 45; Kagan
and Viggiano 2013b. See recently Konijnendijk 2016, 1–2; 2018, 22; Lloyd 2017, 234–235.
5 For theoretical approaches see Lazenby and Whitehead 1996; Echeverría 2012.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
77
new kind of warfare that empowered this new class of farmers and enabled them to force
political changes in their communities; they established isonomic and democratic regimes in
which the elites were balanced by a powerful, self-conscious, and autonomous middle class,
which legitimized in turn their control of political power through the practice of this exclusive
and highly normative (or ritualized) style of warfare, the most adequate, efficient, and
economic way of war for the polis; finally, the ideology of the “hoplite” became the ideology
of the polis as a whole, and political and social institutions were shaped according to their
egalitarian principle. The narrative thus contains multiple elements such as military change,
social and political revolution, agrarian ideology, ritualized combat, democracy and egalitarianism, and class struggle, glued together in a single and coherent story.
Hanson dominates the “hoplite narrative” in recent scholarship, but the narrative is in fact
much older, the result of a long process of reflection that started by the middle of the
nineteenth century. First came “hoplite warfare,” the idea that the Classical period possessed
its own style of combat governed by a complex set of rules and conditions; then the “hoplite
revolution,” arguing that a new socioeconomic class transformed the political scene of
Greece; and finally the “hoplite ideology,” the notion of an ideological system motivated and
determined by the “hoplite class.” During that process, many other aspects (Homeric warfare
and society, colonization, tyrannies, mercenary service, archaic legislation, ritualized warfare,
property levels, citizenship) were incorporated into the debate, making the original narrative
increasingly complex and wide ranging. Given the state of the ancient evidence, however, the
narrative allowed a considerable degree of speculation, starting with the date of the military
revolution itself: “hoplite warfare” is fundamentally reconstructed using Classical sources
and thus fits the framework of the Classical period, but the “hoplite revolution” argues that
it emerged at the beginning of the Archaic era, basically extrapolating it to the eighth century
with the support of a few circumstantial pieces of evidence.6
The “hoplite narrative” is then a “hoplite-centric” account of the Archaic period, using a
multifaceted and overstretched notion. Moreover, since Archaic Greece is perceived as the
formative period of such purely Hellenic institutions as the polis, representative government,
legislation, philosophical inquiry, or athletic competitions, the “hoplite” is thus situated at
the beginning of all those phenomena, at the very core of Greekness.7 According to the
“narrative,” then, hoplites do indeed rule, and the key to understanding their predominance
lies in the factor that gave them the edge against the elites: their new panoply, including their
broad, two-handled round shield.
The Cornerstone: The Hoplite Equipment
Archaic Greek military equipment has received considerable attention, particularly since the
publication of Snodgrass’ seminal work.8 A series of modern studies traces the origins and
evolution of the main types of weapons9 and infers that a particular group of them
6 Basically a few lyric fragments by Archilochus and Tyrtaeus and a few vase paintings from the mid-seventh century
thought to represent closed formations (the Chigi Vase). See Echeverría 2008, 74–85. For recent interpretations of
the Chigi Vase, see van Wees 2000, 2004, 170–172; Hurwit 2002; Viggiano and van Wees 2013, 67–68.
7 Hanson 1989, 1995, 2000, 2013.
8 Snodgrass 1964; see also 1965a, 1965b, 1967, 1971, 1980.
9 Bottini 1988; Bol 1989; Jarva 1995, 2013; Baitinger 2001.
78
Fernando Echeverría
constituted the typical “pack” of the Greek heavily armed infantryman, so they are known
collectively as “hoplite equipment” or the “hoplite panoply.”10 This set consisted of six items:
a metallic helmet of closed design and topped by a crest; body armor of different types
(fundamentally of bronze, but later also leather) with the predominance at the beginning of
a heavy, double-plated bronze cuirass (the “bell cuirass”); a pair of bronze greaves crafted to
adapt to the muscles of the lower leg; a two-meter-long spear with bronze ends, a spear
point, and a butt spike (the sauroter), that was the main offensive weapon; a short sword
(40–60 cm) with straight or curved blade that is usually interpreted as a secondary weapon;
and a wide (90–100 cm of diameter), bowl-shaped round shield (the aspis or Argive shield),
with wooden core and a protruding rim, occasionally covered with a bronze sheet and
provided with two handles, a central armband (porpax) and a lateral handgrip (antilabe).
According to modern scholarship, the different elements of the panoply appeared in
Greece from the middle of the eighth century onward and spread during the following
decades in a piecemeal process: they appear in considerable quantities as offerings in sanctuaries and figure prominently in the iconography of the period.11 The extent of the impact of
foreign influences in Greek military technology of this period is still debated,12 but by the
beginning the sixth century, the panoply seems to be widespread and will be the standard
equipment of Greek heavy infantry forces during the Classical period. The physical
characteristics of the different items of the panoply have generated little controversy, except
for the weight of the Argive shield and the accumulated weight of the panoply: traditionally,
both shield and panoply were regarded as heavy and cumbersome,13 but recent estimates
reduce their weight by half,14 with important consequences for the general interpretation of
the capabilities of the Greek hoplite.
Discussion has, however, focused on the panoply in action. The “hoplite narrative” argues
that the particular blend of peculiarities and disadvantages of the panoply explains the nature
of hoplite warfare and hence the “hoplite revolution.”15 It all starts with the Argive shield:
its double grip and its width provide better handling and greater protection, respectively;
these qualities are improved by its concave shape, which allows the inner side of the rim to
rest on the shoulder, contributes to deflect blows, and makes it structurally more solid. These
very same qualities, however, together with its considerable weight, make its wearer slower
and heavier, while the double grip determines that the shield protects only one side of the
fighter and thus exposes him to attacks from the unprotected side or the rear. The bronze
cuirass offers additional protection at the cost of additional weight, and the helmet
10 Treatments and descriptions of the “hoplite panoply”: Snodgrass 1964, 1967; Anderson 1970, 13–42;
Cartledge 1977, 12–15; Anderson 1991; Hanson 1991b; Hunt 2007, 112–117; Krentz 2007a, 67–72;
Jarva 2013, 397–412; Lee 2013, 147–149; Viggiano and van Wees 2013.
11 Iconography of the hoplite panoply: Lorimer 1947; Greenhalgh 1973; Salmon 1977; van Wees 2000;
Viggiano and van Wees 2013.
12 Particularly Assyrian and Persian influences. See Lee 2013; Raaflaub 2013a.
13 An estimated combined weight of 30–32 kg: Lorimer 1947; Cartledge 1977, 20, 1996; Hanson 1989, 55–88,
1991b; Dawson 1996, 48; Mitchell 1996, 89; Schwartz 2002; Jarva 2013, 398. The idea goes back to Rüstow
and Köchly 1852, 44 and Delbrück 1887, 56. See Krentz 2010, 45–50 for discussion.
14 Krentz 2007a, 70–71, 2010, 50, 2013a, 135–137. Rawlings also questions the burden of the hoplite panoply
(2000, 246–249).
15 Lorimer 1947; Adcock 1957, 3–4; Greenhalgh 1973, 70–74; Cartledge 1977, 12–13, 1996; Salmon 1977;
Hanson 1989, 1991a, 1991b; Bryant 1990; Mitchell 1996, 89–91; Schwartz 2002, 2009, 2013; Viggiano 2013.
For a recent analysis of the discussion, see Krentz 2013a, 137–140, who situates the origin of the idea in
Helbig 1909, 1911.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
79
paradoxically increases the vulnerability of its wearer considerably by reducing his visual and
auditory perception. As a result, the hoplite is a heavily equipped and highly protected
fighter, but also a slow, clumsy, and easily disoriented target.
Bearing those difficulties in mind, the “hoplite narrative” argues that the different weapons
are engineered to complement each other and compensate for their individual disadvantages,
but, more importantly, that the panoply needs a closed formation, the phalanx, to be truly
efficient. According to the “narrative,” hoplites can only fight in the ranks of the phalanx and
they are useless in isolation;16 the homogeneous adoption of the panoply also facilitates
fighting in a closed formation. The key is technological determinism: the peculiarities of the
weapons determine the need for a specific tactical deployment, and that deployment only.
Determinism lies also behind the original adoption and later spread of the new panoply in
Greece, as we shall see. So from this deterministic point of view, the “narrative” takes for
granted that the panoply implies a hoplite (thus the label “hoplite equipment”) and that
hoplites imply the phalanx (thus the label “hoplite warfare”); the equipment then becomes
an indicator of the presence of certain military realities.17 Conversely, a phalanx is taken to
imply the presence of hoplites and they in turn are taken to imply the presence of the panoply.
Technological determinism thus comes full circle.
All the different stages of the deterministic sequence have been questioned recently: it has
been argued, for example, that the panoply was rarely complete (something attested by the
iconography)18 and that the different items could be used in endless combinations, even
including controversial typologies such as the Boeotian shield; as a result, military equipment
was not homogeneous but could depend to some extent on particular tastes and local
traditions. If there was no such thing as a standard panoply, hoplites cannot be the key to the
phalanx as technological determinism and the “hoplite narrative” claim.
The Nature of “Hoplite Warfare”
For modern scholars, “hoplite warfare” is basically the style of combat determined by the
peculiarities and conditions of the “hoplite” (the multifaceted character described above),
but also the military structure derived from it.19 In place during the Classical period, it can
be summarized as a combat system consisting of a clash of phalanxes with a set of prescriptive
rules and protocols. It was the result of the prevalence of the hoplite in the Greek poleis
16 Lorimer 1947; Andrewes 1956, 32; Detienne 1968, 139 n. 108; Bryant 1990, 498; Mitchell 1996, 89;
Cartledge 1977, 13, 1996, 712; Hanson 2000, 206; Schwartz 2002, 40.
17 This quality is used, for example, for chronological purposes: identifying the “hoplite panoply” in painted
scenes allows us to date the appearance of the hoplite and, consequently, of the phalanx. This is the premise of
most iconographical studies: Helbig 1911; Nilsson 1929; Lorimer 1947; Snodgrass 1965b, 1993;
Greenhalgh 1973; Salmon 1977; Anderson 1991. See van Wees 2000 for a comprehensive discussion.
18 For discussion with further bibliography, see Jarva 1995; van Wees 2000, 2004, 47–52; Lee 2013; Echeverría 2015.
19 General descriptions of “hoplite warfare”: Adcock 1957, 2–11; Anderson 1970, 1–9; Ridley 1979;
Hanson 1983, 1989, 1991a, 1991b; Bryant 1990; Wheeler 1991, 2007; Bowden 1995; Dawson 1996, 47–52;
Mitchell 1996; Santosuosso 1997; Morgan 2001; Trundle 2001; Lendon 2005, 39–57; Krentz 2007a, 72–77; de
Souza 2008; Hunt 2009, 229–230; Lee 2013, 153–157. Theoretical discussions on the nature of “hoplite
warfare”: Snodgrass 1965a, 1993; Detienne 1968; Cartledge 1977, 1996; Hanson 1983, 1989, 1991a, 2000;
Krentz 1985, 2007a, 2007b, 2013a, 2013b; Connor 1988; Cawkwell 1989; Lazenby 1991; Wheeler 1991, 2007;
Foxhall 1995; Hanson 1995, 2000; Mitchell 1996; Storch 1998; van Wees 2000, 2004, 2013; Schwartz 2002;
Rawlings 2007, 2013; Echeverría 2011; Lloyd 2017; Konijnendijk 2018.
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Fernando Echeverría
(“hoplite warfare” thus corresponds to the “time of the hoplite”),20 a figure who was simultaneously a farmer (owner of a plot of land), a citizen (a free man with political rights and
participation in decision-making), and a soldier (a heavily armed infantryman fighting in the
phalanx), and thus was in an ideal position to impose his political and military agenda upon
the entire community. The notion of “hoplite warfare” developed in two complementary
spheres: a tactical one, dealing with the circumstances of the hoplite in the phalanx and on
the battlefield, and an ideological one, referring to the ideas and values that inspired this kind
of warfare and influenced Greek communities in turn.
“Hoplite warfare” (this consciousness of the particular way of war of Classical Greek
communities) was the first step in the construction of the “hoplite narrative,” and discussion
started with the analysis of tactics.21 By the 1850s, Grote22 established that the kind of warfare
practiced during the historical period in Greece was radically different from the “heroic” warfare of the epics; historical warfare was characterized by the closed order of the phalanx, in
which individual prowess became secondary to the discipline of the group, and the soldier of
the phalanx was a nonaristocratic member of the farmer class, who imposed an egalitarian ethos
upon the tactical formation. In the following decades, a group of German scholars23 built on
Grote’s ideas and established one of the main principles of “hoplite warfare”: that Greek war
could be reduced to (and equated with) battle. According to them, Greek wars were decided
in short and straightforward battles by the clash of two closed formations of heavy infantry
arranged in neat ranks and with homogenous equipment; there were no tactics, no maneuvers,
and no inventiveness, but considerable single-mindedness and prejudices; battles were planned
in advance, and troops other than heavy infantry were regarded as auxiliary and played no relevant role in the action. It has been argued24 that the Prussians elaborated such a restricted
model of combat in order to reduce Greek warfare to a minimum set of rules and protocols and
thus produce greater contrast with fourth-century tactical developments. In any case, by the
first quarter of the twentieth century, the foundations of “hoplite warfare” had been laid.
In the following decades, Anglo-American scholars adopted the model without reservations25 and helped to fix and spread the principles of the “hoplite orthodoxy”: the simple
battles of phalanxes, the exclusive presence of hoplites, the deterministic correlation between
hoplite and phalanx, the homogeneity of equipment, and the quasi-ritualized protocols and
practices. Moreover, they also formulated for the first time the great “paradox” of Greek
warfare (the prevalence of the heavy and rigid phalanx in the rugged landscape of Greece),
situated the aim of combat in agricultural devastation (as a bait to lure the enemy army to
accept battle), and discussed the nature of hand-to-hand combat in closed formation (the
debate on the othismos or “push” and the analogy of the rugby scrum).26 These ideas became
extremely influential and shaped the image of Greek warfare up to this date.
20 See fundamentally Hanson 1989, 1995, 1996 for the rise and fall of the hoplite in Greek history and the
corresponding rise and fall of hoplite warfare, what he labels the “age of the hoplite.” See recently
Snodgrass 2013, 92–93 on the end of the hoplite.
21 I follow the treatments by Kagan and Viggiano 2013b; Konijnendijk 2018, 7–20.
22 Grote 1846, 106–107.
23 Whom Konijnendijk 2018, 7–12 aptly calls the “Prussians”: Rüstow and Köchly 1852; Droysen 1889;
Bauer 1893; Beloch 1897; Lammert 1899; Delbrück 1900; Kromayer and Veith 1903, 1928.
24 Konijnendijk 2018, 11–12.
25 Grundy 1911; Gomme 1945; Adcock 1957; Anderson 1970; Pritchett 1971–1991.
26 Grundy 1911; Fraser 1942; Pritchett 1971–1991 IV; Krentz 1985, 1994, 2013a; Cawkwell 1989;
Luginbill 1994; Goldsworthy 1997; Schwartz 2002; van Wees 2004, 188–191; Rawlings 2007, 93–97;
Matthew 2009. For a recent analysis of the discussion, see Krentz 2013a, 143–148.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
81
The elaboration and definition of the ideological framework of hoplite combat during the
1960s and 1970s was the next step in the evolution of the concept of “hoplite warfare.” The
original thinkers of the “hoplite narrative” had already established that the new style of
combat implied a new mentality in opposition to the traditional “heroic ethos” of the
aristocracy, but no particular attention had been paid to the question beyond the basic
formulation of a set of anti-aristocratic principles.27 Proper reflection now prompted a lively
discussion that sanctioned the existence of a “hoplite ideology” that explained and justified
the hoplite system, and consisted of two basic components: equality and ritualism.
With a major impulse by a group of French scholars,28 the tradition of the homogeneity and
solidarity of the phalanx was now interpreted as a principle of strict equality, determined by
the nature of the military equipment and combat in closed formation, and then transferred to
the social and political spheres. The conditions of the panoply and the phalanx (homogenous
equipment, fixed positions in the formation, restricted movements, and rigidity) determined
that hoplite combat rested on the solidarity and equality of the fighters, and thus aristocratic
individualism was abandoned in favor of collective values (keeping formation, cohesion,
rejection of individualistic behavior, sacrifice); the hoplite was now expected to collaborate in
the mass of fighters for the common good; the “hoplite class” was characterized by socioeconomic homogeneity and prompted egalitarian institutions (assemblies, juries) in the
community. The egalitarian principle of the polis was then the result of the transference of
military values to the political and social spheres. Once predominant in the polis, egalitarian
values reinforced in turn the role and protocols of the phalanx and hoplite combat, emphasizing and actively encouraging solidarity, anonymity, and simplicity (amateur soldiers who
relied on simple tactics and strategies), and serving as a legitimizing factor for the prevalence
of the “hoplite class” in the political, social, and military institutions of the polis.
The second component of the “hoplite ideology” is ritualism. The German scholars of the
nineteenth century had already described “hoplite warfare” as a simple, unimaginative kind
of warfare,29 but its rigidity seemed to be the result of the simplicity of the tactic itself and
the limitations of the phalanx. From the 1960s onward, however, the tactical simplicity of
“hoplite warfare” was reinterpreted as a deliberate choice taken by the hoplites to materialize
their ideas, principles, and interests,30 a conscious solution to the paradox formulated by
Grundy and Gomme: in order to make the phalanx a feasible system to settle political
disputes, its tactical limitations had to be compensated by a strict code of unwritten norms
and protocols that emanated from the material conditions and ideological principles of the
“hoplite class”; being a natural by-product of the hoplite mentality, the code was tacitly
adopted by all Greek communities with a substantial hoplite group. The “simple battle”
described by the Prussians became thus a “ritualized battle.”
Ritualism drew from the long tradition of studies on Greek athletic competitions to
conceive battle as a highly regulated contest in which all the relevant elements were present:
a setting (the battlefield), a board of judges (the gods), two participants (the rival armies),
and a prize (military victory). The rules for the competition, finally, were most systematically
distilled by Ober,31 a list of 12 norms that were allegedly of general application in Greece and
included formal declaration of war, sparing of “civilians,” and ransom of prisoners, among
27 Grote 1846, 106–107; Rüstow and Köchly 1852; Meyer 1893; Grundy 1911; Weber 1922; Nilsson 1929.
28 Detienne 1968; Mossé 1968; Vidal-Naquet 1968; Garlan 1972; Ducrey 1985.
29 Rüstow and Köchly 1852, 144–145; Droysen 1889, 93–94; Lammert 1899, 21.
30 Detienne 1968; Pritchett 1971–1991 II; Cartledge 1977; Connor 1988; Hanson 1989, 1991a, 2000;
Bryant 1990; Ober 1991, 1994; Dawson 1996, 49–52; Mitchell 1996.
31 Ober 1994.
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Fernando Echeverría
others. Ritualism seemed to fit perfectly the principles of “hoplite warfare”: the hoplite
agenda of economy of effort, the hoplite social background of amateur farmers, the hoplite
reliance on the allegedly heavy and cumbersome panoply, and the hoplite reduction of war
to individual and quickly resolved battles. By the 1990s, then, it had become the prevailing
view on the mechanics of Greek warfare.
With the principles of the “hoplite ideology” already in place, the final step toward the consolidation of the model of “hoplite warfare” came with the work of Hanson,32 perhaps the most
influential advocate of the “hoplite narrative” in the recent decades. Hanson reinstated the
traditional elements of the narrative (Greek warfare as phalanx battle, the paradox of “hoplite
warfare,” the simplicity and ritualism of phalanx warfare, the deterministic identification between
hoplite and phalanx, the peculiarities of the hoplite panoply, the hoplite class as an anti-aristocratic
and egalitarian social group), but also made four distinct and far-reaching contributions to it:
first, he described an economic revolution at the beginning of the eighth century in Greece that
allowed the exploitation of new farmlands and thus explained the rise of the “hoplite class,” a
group of non-elite landowners presented as middle-class independent farmers or yeomen;
second, he connected the “hoplite ideology” (egalitarianism and ritualism) with the agrarian
nature of the “hoplite class” and coined the term agrarianism, the agrarian ideology of the hoplite that helped to understand his world view and his agenda, connecting in turn Greek warfare
and the polis with agriculture; third, he adapted John Keegan’s ground-level approach to battle33
to ancient Greece and thus explored the “hoplite experience” of combat from a battlefield point
of view, describing the actions, emotions, and concerns of the hoplites standing in the ranks of
the phalanx; and fourth, he presented the “hoplite system” as the origin and foundation of a
distinctively Western “world system,” in which modern warfare and democracy are the direct
and uncorrupted counterparts of hoplite warfare and democracy. Armed with these tools, and
with an unwavering faith in the democratic virtues of the middling hoplite, Hanson updated the
old pillars of the theory, turning it into a comprehensive and holistic “narrative.”
The expanding construct of “hoplite warfare” met equally growing criticism from the
1960s onward by a group of scholars known as “revisionists.”34 Revisionism, however, not
only addressed the problems posed by the principles of hoplite combat but embarked on a
deeper reconsideration of Greek society, politics, and war that has led to the gradual articulation of alternative views of the Archaic period and the nature and origins of the polis. We
will develop the evolution of such criticism in some detail in the following section, but for
now it is crucial to understand that its cumulative effect has been to question the very concepts of “hoplite” and “phalanx” held by the “hoplite narrative.”
In fact, the “narrative” had never taken serious steps toward a rigorous definition of
their two single most important terms. In the late nineteenth century, the “Prussians”
used both “hoplite” and “phalanx” as primarily military and tactical concepts, but their
approaches and definitions were considerably determined by their own professional
background, so they privileged the creation of a theoretical paradigm even at the expense
of an absolute lack of evidence at times.35 From then on, the terms were shaped more by
32 Hanson 1983, 1989, 1991a, 1991b, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2013.
33 Keegan 1976.
34 Snodgrass 1965a, 1993, 2013; Krentz 1985, 2000, 2002; Foxhall 1995, 2013; Rawlings 2000, 2007, 2013;
van Wees 2000, 2001, 2004, 2013. For the label see Wheeler 2011, 79–104.
35 Konijnendijk 2018, 7–10. A paramount example, highlighted by Konijnendijk, is Rüstow and Köchly’s axiom
(1852, 118–120) that the standard depth of the phalanx was eight ranks, a statement completely unsupported by
the ancient sources but anyway taken as a given by generations of scholars.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
83
conventional use than by a proper conceptual reflection, most of the time in absolute disregard of their ancient meanings and connotations. This is most evident in the case of
“hoplite”: its core meaning is extremely narrow (a kind of heavy-armed infantryman mentioned in the literary sources of the Classical period), but in modern literature, it became
rather common as an adjective applied to many different fields. At the beginning it was
referred to strictly military matters, so scholars spoke of “hoplite panoply,” “hoplite
equipment,” “hoplite shield,” “hoplite forces/army,” “hoplite phalanx,” “hoplite
formation/line,” “hoplite tactics,” and “hoplite warfare/battle.”36 From the late 1960s
onward, however, the concept colonized a broad range of social, ideological, political,
and economic spheres, and thus new uses appeared: “hoplite system,” “hoplite state,”
“hoplite polis,” “hoplite republic,” “hoplite democracy,” “hoplite class,” “hoplite status,”
“hoplite assembly,” “hoplite landowner,” “hoplite farm,” “hoplite ritual,” “hoplite ideology,” “hoplite ethos,” “hoplite discipline,” “hoplite agon/agonalism,” and so on.37
The hoplite thus left behind the soldier to become the multifaceted figure we have been
discussing, responding to the interests and concerns of modern scholarship. This “definition by use” has been crucial in the shaping of our modern concepts of both “hoplite”
and “phalanx,” but at some point it has brought some confusion and a disturbing detachment from the ancient realities themselves, so it seems crucial to pursue a serious reflection on this matter.38
The Theory of the “Hoplite Revolution”
The definition by the early theorists of the “hoplite narrative” of a distinct military figure
with its own military tactic soon led to the application of the new model to the political and
social evolution in Archaic Greece and to the complex question of the nature and rise of the
polis. The so-called “hoplite revolution” or “hoplite reform”39 attempts an explanation of
the social and political processes that led to the birth of the polis using the figure of the hoplite as its central focus, its guiding principle, and its driving force. In its basic structure, the
“hoplite revolution” is based on Aristotle’s reflections on the birth and evolution of the
political regimes in Greece,40 and particularly on two fundamental Aristotelian ideas: the
identification between political power and possession of weapons, and the foundation of
Greek communities on military values and structures. The modern theory has expanded on
aspects and details that Aristotle could have never anticipated, but its internal mechanics are
no doubt Aristotelian.
36 Nilsson 1928, 1929; Lorimer 1947; Snodgrass 1964, 1965a, 1965b.
37 Snodgrass 1965a, 1965b; Detienne 1968; Cartledge 1977, 2013; Salmon 1977; Bryant 1990; Lazenby 1991;
Hanson 1995; Kagan and Viggiano 2013a. Nilsson spoke of a “hoplite-state” already in 1929 (p. 9), so the
potential for the spread of the term was already present.
38 Fifty years ago, Snodgrass stated that “we should be hesitant in our application of the term [hoplites] to the
earlier stages of Greek armament” (Snodgrass 1964, 204). It seems quite evident that the conceptual caution he
was urging has largely passed unattended. For a recent attempt at a conceptual reflection on both “hoplite” and
“phalanx,” see Echeverría 2012.
39 Although Anglo-Saxon scholarship prefers the term “hoplite reform,” I think the theory is more correctly
labelled as “hoplite revolution,” doing better justice to the revolutionary nature of the social, political and military
changes described in it.
40 For the connection between Aristotle and the “hoplite revolution,” see basically Echeverría 2008, 93–103;
van Wees 2013.
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Fernando Echeverría
The theory draws a continuous line of cultural development with several phases of deep
transformation arranged in causal succession (a “revolution” made of a sequence of minor
“revolutions”). In its most developed form, it argues41 that an economic change in the
beginning of the Archaic period allowed new groups to afford new military equipment
(the hoplite panoply), which led in turn to a military change with the introduction of the
phalanx; the new tactic eroded the military exclusivity of the aristocracy and prompted a
social change that entailed the consolidation of a new social class of middle (or at least
non-elite) landowners who served as hoplites in the phalanx; finally, given their new
military and economic predominance in the community, the hoplite class forced political
changes that established the egalitarian institutions of the developed polis. As a result, a
set of diverse (and in principle unrelated) questions and debates, such as the rise of the
polis, the emergence of the hoplite, and the introduction of the phalanx, were put
together in a causal relationship, with the result that a single theory was able to explain
them all in concert.
The theory is built on five fundamental principles that articulate its internal logic.42 First,
the cultural gap between the “Homeric world” and the “historical world” of the polis: the
societal and political structures presented in the epics are regarded as radically different from
those of the Classical polis, and a period of changes and adjustments is consequently argued.
Second, the community of warriors:43 Greek communities were structured according to
military values and to the military prevalence of a class of warriors who fought as a way to
access and preserve political participation; that made the political community isomorphic
with the army. Third, technological determinism: new weapons with superior qualities were
immediately adopted and replaced the old types, rendering them obsolete; new weapons
entailed new types of fighters, both involving in turn new tactics that were automatically
implemented; technological determinism is thus driven by the principle of superiority
(of design, of performance, of effectiveness) and often leads to the idea of “arms race” between communities. Fourth, the sociopolitical revolution: “class struggle” (or at least vertical
conflict) erupted between a privileged aristocratic class and lower and oppressed socioeconomic segments who resort to violence and the use of weapons to force political changes;
this context of political and social unrest is connected to the rise of tyrannies, as a symbiotic
alliance between the revolting classes and ambitious despots. And fifth, the polis as intrinsically egalitarian and democratic: the values of solidarity and equality of the hoplite class
impregnate the social and political institutions (counsels, assemblies) of the new communities that emerged from the social and political struggle with the elite; democracy, egalitarian communities governed by isonomic and democratic principles, is the goal of the
“hoplite revolution.”
Those different arguments were laid down in a long and piecemeal process that took more
than a century to complete. The basic components of the theory were already present by the
end of the nineteenth century, but it only reached its maturity by the 1960s, when it was first
41 I will draw from my own treatment in 2008 (29–71) and from Kagan and Viggiano’s (2013b), less detailed
but more recent. This presentation will be necessarily schematic. Other synthesis of the theory in Bryant 1990,
494–500; Wheeler 1991, Bowden 1995, 47–49; Cartledge 1996, 685–686; Raaflaub 1997, 49–50;
Krentz 2007a, 61–65; Hunt 2009, 231–234; Viggiano 2013.
42 Echeverría 2008, 66–71.
43 This is based on the Aristotelian principle that the possessors of the weapons were the participants in the
political system: Arist. Pol. 1265b 28–29, 1268a 21–23, 1279b 2–4, 1297b 1–2, 1329a 11–12. For a recent
discussion on the polis as a “community of warriors,” see Berent 2000, 273–285.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
85
labelled as the “hoplite reform.”44 The intellectual background of the theory can be found
in the historiography of the mid-nineteenth century,45 which noticed the cultural gap between Homeric warfare and society (aristocratic, individualistic) on the one hand and the
Classical polis and phalanx (egalitarian, solidary) on the other. A social and political transformation in the Archaic period was inferred to account for that military and political divide,
and particularly the replacement of the aristocratic cavalry by a homogenous formation of
middle-class infantrymen.46 Greek communities abandoned the traditional and heroic kingships in favor of oligarchies, but those were in turn challenged by despots and individual
rulers. It was also by the end of the nineteenth century when the German scholars established
the principles of “hoplite warfare” as a solidary and homogenous style of combat that undermined the military supremacy of the elite, as we have already seen.
This background, that has been labelled a “proto-orthodoxy,”47 set the context for the
foundation of the theory at the beginning of the twentieth century, when its basic components
were put in place. Scholars then argued that the nature of the Greek polis was essentially military and thus reinstated the Aristotelian principle of the “community of warriors”: military
values and practices determined social change, political participation, and institutional
organization.48 They accepted the divide between the “heroic” and the “historical” ways of
war and the replacement of the cavalry by the phalanx, and tied the latter to the democratic
polis. This change had been carried out gradually, with the rise of a middle class of farmers
(the traditional demos) that demolished the aristocratic system in the middle of intense
political struggles. As a result, new timocratic systems emerged, as well as the democratic
institutions of the developed polis.
Slightly later, Lorimer laid another principle of the theory,49 technological determinism,
arguing that the tactical change was the result of “a single structural alteration,” the doublegrip system of the Argive shield.50 She established that the reason to account for the unprecedented spread of the shield was its (presumed) superiority, and the reason to justify the
adoption of the phalanx was the peculiar characteristics of the panoply; its subsequent spread
throughout Greece was attributed to its superiority as a tactic and to the dynamics of “peer
polity interactions” and “arms race.”51 A minor adaptation in a weapon was then responsible
for a chain reaction that led to the end of “heroic” and cavalry fighting and the prevalence
of infantry fighting in closed formation. That is the very definition of technological
determinism.
Finally, the political consequences of the reform were explored by Andrewes,52 who
embraced the Aristotelian definition of Greek tyranny and Grote’s and Weber’s idea of the
end of traditional oligarchies by a collaboration of new middle classes (the demos of the
44 “Hoplite reform”: Snodgrass 1965a, 1965b; Detienne 1968; Greenhalgh 1973. Previous scholars had naturally
conceived the idea of a military and political reform or revolution: Lorimer 1947, 92; Andrewes 1956, 38.
45 Grote 1846; Fustel de Coulanges 1864.
46 The idea was drawn (but also considerably adapted) from Aristotle’s famous fragment in Pol. 1297b 16–25.
47 Kagan and Viggiano 2013b, 3.
48 Meyer 1893; Helbig 1911; Weber 1922; Glotz 1928; Nilsson 1928, 1929; Ehrenberg 1932, 1937.
49 Lorimer 1947.
50 Lorimer 1947, 76.
51 An analysis of technological determinism and the “hoplite revolution”: Echeverría 2008, 193–248, 2010.
“Arms race” applied to Greece and hoplite warfare: Lorimer 1947, 108; Andrewes 1956, 38; Cartledge 1977, 18;
Salmon 1977, 96; Holladay 1982, 99–100. “Peer polity interactions”: Snodgrass 1986, 51–52.
52 Andrewes 1956.
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Fernando Echeverría
ancient sources) and ambitious demagogues. He then argued for a context of internal
struggle in the Greek communities, the stasis, characterized by the rise of the middling demos
and its alliance with those demagogues who conspired to overthrow the oligarchic regimes
and established tyrannies throughout Greece. Andrewes reinstated the components of the
“hoplite revolution” and gave it its final shape: a military change led to a social transformation, which in turn prompted a political reform.53
This “orthodoxy” was soon to be questioned. Snodgrass picked up Meyer’s and Nilsson’s
idea of the gradual “reform,” and in a series of works on Greek military equipment in the
1960s and beyond,54 he undermined the principle of the sudden revolution presenting the
new panoply as a “motley assemblage” of dispersed weapons, and its introduction and
spread in Greece as a “piecemeal” process.55 Snodgrass suggested that the adoption of the
equipment and the introduction of the phalanx were not successive steps but were separated
by a sizeable lapse of time. He also questioned the idea of the social revolution and presented the middle-class farmers as “reluctant hoplites,”56 undermining in turn the need for
a political revolution. Snodgrass accepted the rest of the theory (military change and political
change, the superiority of the hoplite and the phalanx, military service as a requisite for
political participation, collaboration between demos and tyrants), but with considerable
nuances, so he inaugurated a “gradualist” line that was followed by some in the ensuing
decades.57 Another group of scholars, however, immediately reinstated the principles of the
sudden revolution and even elaborated on the social and ideological implications of the
adoption of the phalanx;58 for them, technological change led to tactical change and to the
“paradox” of Greek warfare, “heroic” combat was antithetical to phalanx warfare, and the
middle classes of hoplites established a “republic of Equals” in which “political and military
systems were perfectly homologous.”59 As a result, “orthodoxy” was preserved and the
theory split in two contrasting positions that disagreed in the pace of the military and
political transformation.
Scholarly discussion had been kept so far within the framework of the “hoplite revolution”
and no criticism had questioned the structure as a whole, but that was bound to change by
the end of the 1970s: Two separate and completely unrelated monographs challenged some
of the most fundamental assumptions of the theory. First, Latacz’s analysis of the Homeric
poems60 concluded that “heroic” combat was only a (short) phase of the Homeric battle and
that the core of the fighting was in fact carried out by the anonymous mass, arranged in a sort
of closed formation that he recognized as a forerunner of the Classical phalanx.61 The impact
of this discovery cannot be underestimated: Latacz had questioned the gap between Homeric
and historical combat that Grote had established more than a century before and had thus
eliminated the context for a military reform. Taken to its last consequences, the idea was a
53 Drews 1972 modified this view arguing that the “hoplites” on which the would-be tyrants relied were not
lower-class members of the community but mercenaries, so he skipped the social transformation in his own
reconstruction.
54 Snodgrass 1964, 1965a, 1965b, 1967, 1971, 1980.
55 Snodgrass 1964, 83–84, 89–90, 136–139, 193–204, 1965a, 110.
56 Snodgrass 1965a, 115, 1980, 101–102, 106–107.
57 Finley 1970; Salmon 1977; Murray 1980.
58 Detienne 1968; Greenhalgh 1973; Cartledge 1977, 1996.
59 Quotes from Detienne 1968, 140 (my translation).
60 Latacz 1977.
61 Latacz 1977, 45–67, 224–245.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
87
deadly blow for the theory,62 but later scholars managed to embrace the proto-phalanx
without questioning the “hoplite reform.”63
The second contribution came from the field of archaeology. Polignac’s study on rural
sanctuaries during the Archaic period64 presented them as physical nodes in the ideological
definition of the community and its identity, and as territorial markers in the construction of
the surrounding landscape: they signaled the geographical limits of the polis and thus had to
be protected, demanding a new kind of warfare in which the community as a whole could be
involved (“hoplite warfare”). Polignac suggested thus a cause other than determinism for the
introduction of the phalanx and laid the emphasis of social and political change not on
internal struggles but on the dynamics of territorial conflict between neighboring communities. This line was immediately expanded by Morris,65 who questioned the “hoplite revolution” as a valid theory66 but anyway subscribed to “orthodox” notions such as vertical
conflict (between the agathoi and the kakoi), the egalitarian principle of the polis, or the
“middling tradition.”67
This reconsideration of the Archaic period both from the philological and the archaeological spheres shattered the pillars of the “hoplite revolution” but did not manage to tear it
down. Alternatively, it prompted a period of exploration that produced a string of revised or
“updated” versions of the theory, all of them presenting individual attempts to integrate the
new discoveries in the framework of the “hoplite revolution”:68 Most of them reinstated the
scheme of technological determinism, social struggle, and political revolution that had been
the core of the theory since the beginning, although from more moderate positions that
included a more complex causality and a deeper reflection on the social, economic, and
political processes.
An expected corollary to this exploratory phase was an “orthodox” reaction that updated
and reinstated the pillars, components, and internal dynamics of the theory. Hanson’s work
during the 1980s and 1990s69 was a direct reaction to the challenges to the “hoplite
model” and the main reason for the revitalization of the theory, which was starting to
crack. Hanson provided a new context (the agrarian revolution of the eighth to sixth centuries), a new ideology (agrarianism, the agrarian “hoplite ethos”), a new goal (the
democratic polis), and even a new military process (tactical determinism: the panoply was
designed to fit a pre-existing phalanx) for the “hoplite revolution,” and thus tied its old
components (the rise of an egalitarian middle class, the vertical struggle with the old
“heroic” elites, the creation of the democratic institutions of the rising polis) in a holistic
and more comprehensive “narrative.” The impact of Hanson’s scheme on the interpretation of Greek military and political history has been massive, and some scholars have followed his lead,70 but his methodology (American-centric perspective, tendency to
62 As argued by Raaflaub (2005, 2008, 2013a, 2013b), who accepts the existence of a “proto-phalanx” and thus
rejects the theory of the “hoplite revolution.”
63 Pritchett 1971–1991 IV, 1–44; Hanson 1995, 2000.
64 Polignac 1984.
65 Morris 1987.
66 Morris 1987, 196–202.
67 Morris 1987, 19–42, 175–183, 1996.
68 Bryant 1990; Bowden 1995; Mitchell 1996; Osborne 1996; Storch 1998. Even Snodgrass (1993)
reconsidered his old position in the light of the recent developments.
69 Hanson 1983, 1989, 1991c, 1995, 1996, 2000.
70 Schwartz 2002, 2009, 2013; Viggiano 2013.
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Fernando Echeverría
anachronism and presentism, lenient treatment of the literary sources, complete disregard
for archaeological data) has been severely questioned.71
Hanson’s reaction was partly motivated by the impact of a group of “revisionists” who in
the past three decades have subjected the theory to thorough and systematic criticism.72
Krentz entered the complex debate on the othismos and concluded that hoplite battle consisted of a multiplicity of individual combats; this strengthened the gradualist position at first,
but later invited connections with van Wees’ new approach to Homeric combat: van Wees
completely reinterpreted the dynamics of Homeric warfare as an open and fluid battlefield in
which the individual leaders moved freely followed by their “hosts” and engaged intermittently in the fighting to retreat immediately to the safety of the rearguard.73 This was the
greatest upheaval in the interpretation of Homeric warfare since Latacz’s contribution, and
its consequences and implications are still to be fully explored. One of them was immediately
clear: van Wees argued that this open battlefield could be also detected in the fragments of
Tyrtaeus and Callinus, thus opening the path to an open phalanx during the Archaic period,
but Krentz’s hypothesis potentially projected it well into the Classical era.
Krentz also questioned the alleged ritualism of Greek warfare and showed that Ober’s
“rules” were the result of an optimistic reading of the literary sources at best (some of them
referred to religious duties, others rarely verified in practice, and most of them not older than
the fifth century).74 This was a crucial contribution, for the “hoplite narrative” had constructed an idealized view of Greek warfare as a “civilized” and “diplomatic” conflict at the
expense of ignoring the brutality described in the literary sources, and Krentz helped to reinstate it as a human (contradictory, unpredictable, uncontrollable) activity. In a related field,
Krentz reassessed the weight of the panoply and found it much lighter than previously
thought; this had crucial consequences for closed combat, for it undermined the deterministic connection between the panoply and the phalanx.
Van Wees had reinterpreted Homeric warfare, questioning the gap between the “Homeric”
and the “historical” worlds, but he then attacked the entire notion of a hoplite middle class.75
He argued that both the analysis of the literary tradition and the quantitative assessment of
the economic conditions of the Archaic period unveil a polarized society with a sharp divide
between rich and poor and no room for middle classes, and concludes that most elements
usually regarded as “middling” (political equality, the poetry of Hesiod and his ideology of
work, the Athenian zeugites, military service in the local militia) should be in fact reinterpreted as characteristics of the elite. This debilitates in practice the traditional context for
(vertical) “class struggle” and lays new emphasis on (horizontal) competition and conflict
within the elite.
Other scholars entered the fray. Foxhall argued for unexploited and rather empty landscapes during the Archaic period, thus questioning Hanson’s pattern of “family farms”
and small plots that supported the rise of a “yeomen class,” and discussed the informal
organization of the institutions and internal dynamics of the polis.76 Rawlings presented
71 Fundamentally by Foxhall 1995, 2013; van Wees 2000, 2001, 2013. See also González and López-Barja 2012.
72 Krentz 1985, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2007a, 2007b, 2010, 2013a, 2013b; van Wees 1986, 1988, 1992, 1994a,
1994b, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2013. Rawlings 2000, 2007, 2013; Foxhall 1995,
2013; Raaflaub 1993, 1997, 2013a.
73 van Wees 1986, 1988, 1992, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 1997.
74 Krentz 2000, 2002, 2007a, 76–79.
75 van Wees 2001, 2002, 2006, 2013.
76 Foxhall 1995, 1997, 2013.
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
89
the wide range of military tasks and contexts that the Classical hoplite was expected to
cope with, undermining the traditional connection between the hoplite and the phalanx.77 Raaflaub, finally, explored the nature of ancient Greek democracy and the rise of
the polis and connected them to the activities of the elite and the gradual definition of a
“public” sphere; this essentially political process interacted with the military transformations of the period, more gradual and leading to the slow definition of closed combat and
the Classical phalanx.78
The combined effect of their work was devastating: they questioned the deterministic connection between the hoplite panoply, the hoplite, and the phalanx; they rejected the “paradox” of Greek warfare and envisaged a more fluid and flexible phalanx that took a couple of
centuries to develop and only appeared in its Classical form by the end of the Archaic period;
Krentz also differentiated between an “inclusive” and an “exclusive” phalanx, depending on
the presence (or not, respectively) of troops other than hoplites in the formation;79 there
were no middle classes, nor political revolutions to overthrow the oligarchic regimes, which
continued to rule in most parts of Greece. They consequently rejected the “hoplite revolution” altogether and elaborated alternative ways to reconstruct the social, political, and military processes in Archaic Greece. Van Wees even attempted an alternative narrative of the
cultural development of the Archaic period, presenting a range of social, political, and
economic processes that converged to generate different responses at different times in different Greek communities, instead of a sequence of steps in causal relationship and with a
single origin (as the “hoplite narrative” does).80 Its impact is still to be measured. This
“revisionism”81 constitutes the last phase of the evolution of the theory and takes us finally
to the present.
Conclusion
In their Introduction to Men of Bronze, the most recent and influential synthesis on the
subject,82 Kagan and Viggiano declare that their original intention for the 2008 Conference
at Yale University that inspired the book was “to bring together the leading scholars from
both the orthodox and the revisionist schools of thought to examine the current state of the
field.” Eventually, they lament that, “instead of working toward a consensus, each side
sharpened its position in response to the latest research.”83 Looking at the history of the
“hoplite narrative,” that outcome could have been easily anticipated: since the appearance
of the first criticism to the theory by the 1960s, the debate has evolved in a sequence of
reactions and counter-reactions by two main lines of thought (the “orthodox,” more strict
and conservative, and the “gradualist/revisionist,” more flexible and innovative), but has
rarely led to an understanding. When doubts about the “hoplite revolution” started to grow
77 Rawlings 2000.
78 Raaflaub 1993, 1996, 1997.
79 Krentz 2010, 2013a, 2013b.
80 van Wees 2013. In this reconstruction, the “hoplite” is no longer the cause and the core, but a mere
component among many others.
81 See also Echeverría 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015; Konijnendijk 2016, 2018; Lloyd 2017.
82 Kagan and Viggiano 2013a.
83 Kagan and Viggiano 2013a, xvii.
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Fernando Echeverría
by the 1970s and 1980s,84 for example, the “orthodox” reaction described above brought
about Hanson’s “Western way of war” and “hoplite narrative.” The situation is (and has
been) rather polarized.
And it is no surprise, since each position entails much deeper implications beyond the
particular characteristics of a certain weapon: it compromises the particular perspective on
historical change and causality, on political and social structures and mobility, and on the
nature of the polis. On one side, “orthodoxy” thinks of the polis as an advanced form of
ancient state, subjected to the rule of law and governed by formal institutions; on the other,
“revisionism” envisages a more informal and flexible situation, with the polis as “little more
than a stand-off between the members of the elite who ran them,”85 or at least as a less formalized political community.
Despite the work of “revisionism,” the “hoplite narrative” has taken over the field, particularly outside the Academia, where its capacity to produce much simpler and all-encompassing
explanations to complex processes is much appreciated. Within the scholarly world, the
“hoplite revolution” has lost much of its former appeal, but “hoplite warfare” is still the most
widespread model to reconstruct the dynamics of Greek warfare. According to the “orthodoxy,” this is because “revisionists” have not been able to produce “a coherent theory that
even begins to replace the orthodox model,”86 so they argue that the burden of proof rests
with those who want to question the “hoplite narrative.”87 This is seriously flawed on two
methodological grounds.
First, the “hoplite narrative” is not carved out in stone in some ancient inscription, but
deduced and constructed by modern theorists at the expense of historical extrapolation and
against existing evidence at times, so the burden of proof rests always with those who want
to put it up. Second, a narrative as complex and expanding as the “hoplite narrative” serves
basically the purpose of easing our need for answers and ensuring our peace of mind, but it
does not necessarily bring more clarity to ancient Greek warfare and politics. This allencompassing structure is a gigantic but unstable construct that attempts to explain the
whole Archaic period from one single component, the “hoplite,” like an inverted pyramid
resting on its apex. Greek history does not need an alternative and competing narrative of
that kind, in my opinion, but different narratives that approach the ancient sources with new
eyes and allow a degree of inconsistency and singularity among the hundreds of different
Greek poleis of the Archaic period, as the one produced, for example, by van Wees.88
Too much pressure has been put on the shoulders of the “hoplite” over the last decades:
he has been identified as an independent farmer, a social revolutionary, a highly specialized
infantryman, a convinced democrat, a tyrant-supporter, a responsible citizen, an amateur
84 When the theory is first rejected: “The silence of the record is so impressive that one should doubt the
presuppositions of the ‘hoplite’ theory” (Sealey 1976, 57); “The ‘hoplite revolution’ must be listed among the
great non-events of history” (Frost 1984, 293); “There is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory that
there was a hoplite reform” (Morris 1987, 198); “We should begin by expelling from the closets of our textbooks
two skeletons that have lingered there far too long. One is the theory that tyranny and hoplite phalanx were
directly connected [. . .]. The other skeleton is the theory of the ‘hoplite revolution’” (Raaflaub 1997, 53). See
also Nafissi 2009, 129.
85 Foxhall 1997, 119.
86 Viggiano 2013, 126.
87 Schwartz 2013, 119.
88 Krentz also attempted an alternative reconstruction of the evolution of “hoplite warfare” (2002, 35–37),
while Lloyd (2017, 239–246) specifically addresses the diversity of the Greek world in his own account. Another
alternative reconstruction in Morgan (2001).
The “Hoplite Revolution” and the Nature of Hoplite Warfare
91
fighter, a political reformer, a champion of equality, a dedicated soldier, a moderate thinker,
a reactionary exclusivist, a solidary and selfless battle comrade, a conscious voter. But whatever he was, he represented just a fraction of the population of the ancient Greek communities, and not even the biggest one. Perhaps it is time to put him to rest for a while and pay
due attention to the role of other groups in the defense and political articulation of the
community. Perhaps it is time for narratives without the “hoplite.”
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