Polis, Greece session 2

CLASSICAL GREECE
ii- Polis

PRINCIPAL TOPICS

I.Η ΔΙΚΗ (Justice personified)

II. Physical Picture of the Polis

III. Agrarian Revolution

IV. Political Revolution

V. Hoplite Revolution

Η ΔΙΚΗ 1915 was a time
when people still

(JUSTICE) made classical
allusions

Η Δικαιοσὖνη
Τό τί;

“[the] Justice.
“What [is] it?”

Plato, Republic

Let me read you something, as we move to the fullest claims that will be made for
the role of the polis. Aristotle in his Politics says this: "as man is the best of the
animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when he is divided away from the
law and justice." But he tells us, human justice can be found only in the polis,
because he says, man is by nature a politicon zoon, an animal of the polis, and as I
told you, a man who is without a polis by nature is above or below the category of
man.
Kagan, op. cit.

JUSTICE IN MYTH

Dikē was the daughter of Zeus, along with her two sisters, Eunomia (good laws) and Eirene (peace-
f., cf.,Irene)

She ruled over human justice, while her mother Themis ruled over divine justice. Her opposite was adikia
("injustice"): in reliefs on the archaic Chest of Cypselus preserved at Olympia, a comely Dikē throttled an ugly Adikia
and beat her with a stick

one of her epithets was Astraea (starry), referring to her appearance as the constellation Virgo

Dike lived upon earth during the Golden and Silver Ages, when there were no wars or diseases, men
did not yet know how to sail, they raised fine crops. They grew greedy, however, and Dikē was
sickened

she left earth for sky. After her departure, the human race declined into the Brazen (Bronze) Age,
when diseases arose

An 1886 base-relief figure of Dikē Astraea in the Old Supreme Court Chamber at
the Vermont State House.

THE FIVE AGES OF MAN
ACCORDING TO HESIOD

Golden -men lived among the gods. Peace and harmony. Humans didn’t have to work to feed themselves, earth
provided in abundance. They lived to a very old age in youthful bodies, died peacefully

Silver -Zeus replaces Chronos. Men lived for one hundred years under dominion of their mothers. After death,
humans of this age became "blessed spirits" of the underworld

Brazen -Men of the Bronze Age were hard. War was their purpose and passion. Not only arms and tools, but their
very homes were forged of bronze. The men of this age were undone by their own violent ways and left no named
spirits but dwell in the "dank house of Hades"

Heroic -”the fourth age was brazen too, but nobler and more generous, being begotten by the gods on mortal
mothers. They fought gloriously in the siege of Thebes, the expedition of the Argonauts, and the Trojan War. They
became heroes, and dwell in the Elysian Fields”--Graves, The Greek Myths

Iron -Hesiod finds himself in the Iron Age. During this age humans live an existence of toil and misery. Children
dishonor their parents, brother fights with brother and the social contract between guest and host is forgotten.
During this age might makes right, and bad men use lies to be thought good
Wikipedia

Justice ... is an element of the polis. The administration of justice, which means
deciding what is just, is the regulation of the partnership which is the polis. Man
can't live without the polis, justice exists only in the polis, the polis is something
more than a place, it's more than the walls, it's more than the ships, it is some
kind of a thing that is spiritual it seems to me.
Kagan

VALUES
HOMER’S HEROES AGE OF THE POLIS

individualism group loyalty

áρετή (aretē, manly δική (dikē, justice)
excellence)
all the heroic values
κλέος (kleos, glory)
but subordinated
τιµή (timē, honor, respect)

ἄγον (āgon; struggle,
competition)

THE PHYSICAL
PICTURE OF THE
POLIS

THE PHYSICAL
PICTURE OF THE
POLIS

[The Athenian] Acropolis, Leo von Klenze

ATHENS--THE UNTYPICAL POLIS

the largest--1,000 mi2--about the size of Rhode Island

unlike most poleis, Athens had gained control of the whole region of Attica

all who lived there, even in villages 60 miles from Athens, were Athenian
citizens [subject to qualifications, of course!]

this was the famous συνοικισµóς (synoicism--literally, “together in the same
household”) of Attica, accomplished during the 8th and 7th centuries

all told, there are between 1,000 and 1,500 poleis, most of them much tinier

Athens’ population? “at full bloom, 40-50,000 men, human beings, 125,-300,000”

συνοικισµóς (synoecism)

The Athenians ascribed the unification of Attica
to their greatest hero, Theseus….In the Athenian
account of synoecism, Theseus created a political
unity by proclamation, abolishing the
governments of the other towns and villages and
forging a single government in Athens. Later on,
the unification of Attica was celebrated in a
festival called the Synoikia, believed to have been
instituted by Theseus. In making Theseus the
founder of the polis, the Athenians followed the
common Greek practice of attributing important
events of the preliterate period to some great figure from the legendary past….the
inhabitants of Attica cherished a belief that they were autochthonous (sprung
from the land) and thus had always lived in Attica and shared a common kinship.

Pomeroy & al. Ancient Greece; A Political, Social and Cultural History. 2008. pp. 181-182

THE IDEAL POLIS

a place where all the male adult citizens could come to a central place and
hear a speaker (about 5,000)--Aristotle

Plato chose the “magical” number of 5,040 (factorial 7!)

Plato also took notice of the fact that 5040 can be divided by 12 twice over.
Indeed, Plato's repeated insistence on the use of 5040 for various state
purposes is so evident that it is written, "Plato, writing under Pythagorean
influences, seems really to have supposed that the well-being of the city
depended almost as much on the number 5040 as on justice and
moderation."

most poleis were well under 5,000 adult males--Kagan

“FROGS AROUND A
POND” -- SOCRATES, IN THE PHAEDO

DATING THE CREATION OF THE
POLIS

there are no written records from the time when towns and villages evolved
into poleis

but it is easier to date the foundation of overseas Greek colonies

the Greeks had traditional dates for their foundation in the 8th & 7th centuries

archaeological evidence roughly supports these legendary dates

and every colony was organized along the lines of a polis

so the surmise is that they followed the patterns of their mainland µήτηρ πολις
(mētēr polis mother state) who must have so developed in the 8th & 7th centuries

former Classics prof at CA Central State, author of a critical book
on the Academy, Who Killed Homer? (2001) & many others

“...he is also a farmer and he was, I think, in the fifth generation
that had farmed the same piece of farmland in California, in the
Central Valley of California

“that climate, that whole scene is very similar to the
Mediterranean climate that the Greek farmers were engaged in;
so it had...proper analogous possibilities

“… he came to the conclusion that much could be learned about
the development of the polis if one looked at the business of how
one farms in these kinds of environments Victor Davis Hanson
(1953-)

“And I think that turns out to be a great key to understanding
what's happening, and everything you hear from me on this
subject I learned from Hanson.”--Donald Kagan

Now, at some time in...the Dark Ages, and Hanson would suggest...probably
around the eighth century is the greatest transition. Somehow the oikos
[household, family] obtains a chunk of land that is understood to belong to it.
The Greek word for that is a kleros, and...now the family knows that it has this
land: it has it now, it will have it next year, the family will be able to pass it on
from father to son…. and that changes everything! That kind of stability gives
promise and is a basis for making every...necessary investment in the soil...in
order to make it better and more profitable for you.... As Hanson says, thus
arose the kleros, or the idea of a privately held plot attached not [only] to any
one person, but rather in perpetuity to a single farm family or oikos.
Kagan

As Hanson points out, look at the difference between this and previous [types of land
tenure]. People either rented the land from a large landowner or they were hired help
who got nothing except a salary or a piece of what they did. Serfs were compelled to
work the land, or in some places even slaves. Well, they have no incentive, [let alone the]
capacity, to invest capital for the purpose of improving the [amount] and quality of the
their crops, their trees, their vines. They would not be willing to take the risk without
clear title to the land. That is the critical thing. Once they have it, and they plant
permanent crops, that changes the whole basis of society and the values, and the
attitudes that go with it. In short, according to Hanson, it is the invention of the family
farm that is the critical [event] in this very, very important moment in the history of the
human race and there certainly is no example of it that I know of, apart from Greece,
when it happens right about this period. [Of course,] none of this happens overnight.

[These changes are taking place from about 900 to 700 BC] I would... guess at an
increasing pace as [time progressed]. Then...the population grows. For this the
archaeological evidence is very strong. There are...more and more people living on the
land of Greece…. The more people you have, up to a point, that's good. There are more
people who can work to increase the production. But beyond that point there are more
people to feed than the [farming] can produce, and that leads to a [need to expand] of
the land available for cultivation.
Kagan

the olive tree is native to the Mediterranean basin; wild olives were
collected by Neolithic peoples as early as the 8th millennium BC

first cultivation took place on the island of Crete. Archeological
evidence suggest that olives were being grown in Crete as long ago
as 2,500 BC

Homer called it "liquid gold." In ancient Greece, athletes ritually
rubbed it all over their bodies. Olive oil has been more than mere
food to the peoples of the Mediterranean: it has been medicinal,
magical, an endless source of fascination and wonder and the
fountain of great wealth and power

indeed the importance of the olive industry in ancient economies
cannot be overstated

Olive oil production in Klazomenai, an ancient city the tree is extremely hardy and its useful lifespan can be measured
of Ionia( now, near Urla, Izmir, Turkey)
in centuries. Its wide and deep root system ensures its survival
without additional watering, even in the water-sparse
Mediterranean

Poseidon is greedy of earthly kingdoms
and once claimed possession of Attica by
thrusting his trident into the Acropolis at
Athens, where a well of sea-water
immediately gushed out and is still to be
seen; when the South Wind blows you
may hear the sound of the surf far below.
Later, during the reign of Cecrops,
Athene came and took possession in a
gentler manner, by planting the first olive
tree beside the well. Poseidon, in a fury,
challenged her to single combat, and had
not Zeus interposed and ordered them to submit the dispute to arbitration, Athene would
have accepted the challenge. Presently, then, they appeared before a divine court, consisting
of their fellow-deities, who called upon Cecrops to give evidence. Zeus himself expressed no
opinion, but while the other gods supported Poseidon, all the goddesses supported Athene.
Thus, by a majority of one, the court decided that Athene had the better right to the land,
because she had given the better gift….

Whereupon she took up her abode in Athens, and called that city after herself. However, to
appease Poseidon’s wrath, the women of Athens were deprived of the vote, and the men to
bear their mother’s name as hitherto.

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths. 1992. pp. 59-60

...There are getting to be more and more people living on the land of Greece…. and that leads to a
desire for expansion of the land available for cultivation.

Now, there are a couple of ways that can go; one that was...important and again it's
something that Hanson emphasizes, is what he calls internal colonization. When you are
engaged in agriculture, it's natural to go first to...the most fertile soil. But now, when you
need more, you can't just say I only want the best bottom land there is. You move out to
someplace that nobody bothered to farm before, because it wasn't profitable enough. So,
marginal land is brought into play with hard work and ingenuity, and this is one of the
things that Hanson emphasizes that is so helpful. You must be a farmer to understand
these things — not everything that you try works. I think the picture he paints of farming
reminds us of the picture that Homer paints of human condition: [the image of] the two
jars of Zeus. Most of the luck is bad; it's hard to succeed, and with some combination of
luck, skill, determination and hard work all of that will decide which of these farmers will
be successful and which will not.

There will be success and there will be failure. Hanson says, "[this was] the real beginning
in the West of individual property holding on a large scale.” Hanson himself has a farm
that specializes in grapes for the purpose of producing raisins…. He points out that the
knowledge of how to do this, of how to grow the kind of grapes you want, viticulture, and
also arboriculture, both of these, are learned from Asia. The Asians were ahead and the
end of the isolation of Greece made possible [this cultural diffusion]....
Kagan

Chapter 5. The New Farm [00:42:26]

Everything is farmed in a new way...intensive farming. It's not extensive...you
[don’t]scatter your stuff over wide fields.... Every piece of soil is necessary. A lot of it can't
produce the crop you would most like to grow. So, you find another crop that will grow
there that can be useful.... So, you have varied crops...the ones that are [native to] a
Mediterranean climate. Everybody needs grain; bread is the stuff of life.... So ...you grow
it where you can, if not, you have to get it elsewhere. Olives, for the purposes that I
mentioned to you the other day that is a very important one. Vegetables can be grown
many times in places where you could never grow wheat or grain. Fruits from the trees...

Now, observe several things about them. [These crops] together will make up everything
you need to live. All the food groups are represented there. I have left out meat and fish,
of course, neither of them very [widely consumed] in this part of the world, … there were
sheep and there were goats, even [though] beef would have been very [costly]. But what
you need to understand about the Greeks is that they don't eat a lot of meat. Now, you
might say, how come no fish? I mean, they're surrounded by water.... Well, guess what, it
turns out fish don't live everywhere in the water and they don't live very much around
Greece as it turns out. I don't mean no fish, but no sort of major schools of fish. This is
not the banks of Newfoundland and the Greeks do eat fish, but not a lot. So, their diet is a
little bit of that — some of their protein from that, then bread, olive oil, fruit, vegetables,
cheese, milk, those kinds of things they can [manage].
Kagan

Well, one of the things farmers in history discovered is that it's very hard to
do well as a farmer if all you do is grow the crops, because people normally
don't use what you grow in the form in which you grow it. I'm thinking again
of grapes and olives; they made mostly olive oil and wine….

Now, if you're a poor farmer, you don't know what else to do. So, you send it
off to a middleman who does the turning of the grapes and the olives into the
liquids that are necessary, and he takes a good bit of the profit. But these
farmers didn't do that. They acquired the equipment necessary; grape and
olive presses which allowed them to purify and to make the final product, and
that made for more success than they otherwise would have had….
Kagan

At the end of the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Thucydides wrote:

“The people of the Mediterranean began to emerge from
barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine.”

The time period to which Thucydides was most likely referring was between
3000 BC and 2000 BC [before the period we’ve just been considering] when
viticulture emerged in force in the areas of Asia Minor, Crete, Greece and the
Cyclades of the Aegean Sea. It was during this period that grape cultivation
moved from being just an aspect of local consumption to an important
component of local economies and trade.

Wikipedia

...if you're going to succeed as a farmer, you
have to have places to store what you produce,
so that you will have it for next year when you
need it.... if you have a surplus...you can sell it.
Probably in the early days, this was largely a
question of barter. You could trade it in for
those things that you didn't make yourself and
needed. But in any case, it is a profit, but it's no
good if it's going to spoil. So it's important to
realize the role of ceramics; they need to make
storage jars that could be sealed very well and
preserve the stuff for a very long time, and
indeed, they did that.
Kagan
As the result of its relative durability, pottery is a
large part of the archaeological record of Ancient
Greece, and because there is so much of it (some
100,000 vases are recorded in the Corpus
vasorum antiquorum) it has exerted a
disproportionately large influence on our
understanding of Greek society.…the shards of
pots discarded or buried in the first millennium
BC are still the best guide we have to the
customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks.

Wikipedia
domestic amphora
transport amphora

Another thing that you need to
understand about these farms...is that
they are...really small. Maybe a typical
farm is ten acres; that is a very small
farm. We are talking not about the
emergence of an agricultural
aristocracy, we are talking about the
emergence of an agricultural
community of small family farms.

One of the things that come with the
development of this kind of
agriculture as the polis is coming into
being is slavery.

Phlyax scene: a master and his slave.
From a Silician red-figured calyx-krater
ca. 350 BC–340 BC

Now, of course, slavery is as old almost as the human race, it certainly was
already present in the world of Homer, but it [seems] in the Dark Ages
there were few slaves because owning slaves requires wealth. You can't have
slaves without wealth, because you must feed them at the very least, …dead
slaves are no good to you. If a slave dies you must buy a new [one], and
while he's alive you must feed him. So, [in] a very poor society, you're not
going to see much slavery, but it is true, that as the family farm I've been
describing comes into being, a way is found to use slaves [profitably].

The reason is, if you are just engaged in a single crop farming, well you
plant it, you take care of it, and then when the time comes, you reap it.
What do you do in between? Well, there's not much to do. So, you have to
feed the slave all year round to work only a small part of the time, that's not
very profitable. But [at] Hanson's farm, as I like to think of it, there is work
to do all year round, because different crops need attention at different
times...and some of them need very hard work, so there's plenty of work to
be done. At these small farms, you should imagine [the family] had one or
two slaves. [Only at the silver mines of Laurium or the shipyards do you see
large gangs of slaves]
Kagan

...when you only have one or two slaves, the master is working right alongside
them, doing exactly the same work that they are doing, and also instructing them
and telling them what's what. If you want to really understand this in a practical
sense, it's more as though these guys are hired hands. I mean, they live in the
house, they get fed, probably with everybody else, they work with the master; the
difference being that they are slaves rather than free men.

One of the funny things is that the emergence of this family farm gives rise to the
polis' character as a land in which there is a citizenry, which is to say free men
who rule themselves. So, the polis will see the invention of freedom in this way,
and oddly enough, it is accompanied by the growth of slavery at the same time.
Both slavery and freedom come along at the same time in the Greek world….

As Hanson points out, only in early Greece did independent agrarians have free
title to their land, own slaves, and ultimately...come to have control of their own
communities. Although the political development came late in the process, it did
come.
Kagan

As Hanson says, the new farmer is not just a different kind of farmer, but a
different kind of person. He is a citizen in his political role, he is a soldier but he is
a soldier not in the pay or the hire of a king, or of an aristocracy; he is a citizen
soldier who has participated in the decision that says it is time to go to war and
who will play an active role in making decisions about his state's policy and
behavior. He is independent in a way that nobody who was not a king or an
aristocrat in the past has ever been — a new kind of man, the backbone of the
polis as it emerges. I don't want to overstate this. There is still an aristocracy made
up of the old guys and they don't just disappear and there will be a long stretch in
which there will be some degree of conflict between these new independent
farmers and the old established aristocracy, and never does that aristocracy go
away, that's old. I'm simply emphasizing what's new in the situation and it's very
new indeed.

Kagan

Chapter 6. Politics [00:57:09]

Now, I've talked to you essentially about the economic aspect of this phenomenon….The
next point is... politics.

In the world of Mycenae there was a despotism of sorts, some kind of a lord, a king, for
lack of a better name, a monarch who fundamentally rules and everybody is subject to
him. He has an aristocracy around him, he has a lot of helpers, but he's the boss and that's
what you see in the world everywhere else.

After that, if you examine as best we can the cities of the Dark Ages and ask what kind of
government...would these communities have had, you probably wouldn't do badly if you
looked at the Odyssey for the best clues you could find. Of course, they won't be perfect,
there's a mixed character of the world of Homer, but still, if you look at the world of
Odysseus, his home, what's going on in Ithaca, there are some valuable clues.
Kagan

There is somebody in that world called a basileus, a single individual who is understood to
be superior in some way to everybody else. However, he's not very superior to everybody
else. He has all of these noblemen around him, all of whom claim to be basileis. A fairer
way to put this would be that this is largely an aristocratic society. That was our conclusion
after we looked at the poems of Homer, and that's what continues, even after the world of
Mycenae.

People who had power by virtue of their wealth, by virtue of their personal physical
strength maybe, by virtue of their descent, birth always was a critical criterion in the days
of the aristocracies. You would have aristocracies who would have the practical, the de
facto control of things.

Kagan

By definition, an aristocracy is plural not singular, so how do you make decisions in an
aristocracy? The answer, typically, is a council. I use the word council, the Greek word is
boulē (βουλή), and not assembly, which in Greek comes to be called ecclesia (εκκλησια) ,
because an ecclesia is understood to be a gathering of the entire adult male population,
and a boulē is understood to be not a gathering of the whole, but rather a smaller group
who has some degree of authority, and I suggest that in the earliest days they had all the
authority that mattered.

Kagan

However, it's interesting that these Greek communities from a very early time
seem to have been different from the Mycenaean by virtue of the fact that the
men who fought in the army always seemed to have had to be consulted when it
came to a question of war, and so you always had an assembly, even in an
aristocratic state. But decisions in general were made by aristocrats. Moreover,
the law was interpreted, spoken, and to the degree it had to be enforced by the
aristocrats working through a council in their community. These councils might
have been elective from within the aristocracy or they could have been simply the
whole aristocracy, depending on the size of the community. You can't have a
functioning council if it gets to be too big.
Kagan

That's where you start; that's the Dark Ages….the results will be different in every state.

Sometimes the old aristocracy will be able to hold on for a very long time and to suppress
any attempt to change things. Other times, and this will be...very significant, the
dissatisfied people in the society, mainly these farmers I'm talking about, will get
together...and engage in what amounts to a kind of a revolution or at least a coup, and
bring about a different kind of a monarchy which the Greeks called a tyranny.

When these tyrannies take place, they last for different periods of time, but when the
tyrant is removed, what follows after that...is never again in that town a one-man rule
of any kind. Either what is established after the tyranny is an oligarchy [but notice I didn't
say an aristocracy]. An oligarchy means “rule of the few”, but what changes is it is no
longer the rule of those few who are born in the right place, it will be based upon the
wealth of those people and that means that the newly wealthy, or the newly...reasonably
well-off will participate in their government and the form of government which is
oligarchy will be throughout the classical period the most characteristic form of
government in Greek city states. [emphasis added, jbp]

Kagan

That's where you start; that's the Dark Ages….the results will be different in every state.

Sometimes the old aristocracy will be able to hold on for a very long time and to suppress
any attempt to change things. Other times, and this will be...very significant, the
dissatisfied people in the society, mainly these farmers I'm talking about, will get
together...and engage in what amounts to a kind of a revolution or at least a coup, and
bring about a different kind of a monarchy which the Greeks called a tyranny.

When these tyrannies take place, they last for different periods of time, but when the
tyrant is removed, what follows after that...is never again in that town a one-man rule
of any kind. Either what is established after the tyranny is an oligarchy [but notice I didn't
say an aristocracy]. An oligarchy means “rule of the few”, but what changes is it is no
longer the rule of those few who are born in the right place, it will be based upon the
wealth of those people and that means that the newly wealthy, or the newly...reasonably
well-off will participate in their government and the form of government which is
oligarchy will be throughout the classical period the most characteristic form of
government in Greek city states. [emphasis added, jbp]

Kagan

Harmodius & Aristogeton kill the tyrant Hipparchus

When democracy is invented it will have its moment and it will spread, and there will be
numerous democracies but they will never be the majority of the poleis. The typical polis
will be a kind of a Hanson farmer outfit, where people from that class and up, will
participate in politics, will be the governing bodies in their state. They will be the ones who
continue to fight in that infantry that is decisive for the state, and they will be the ones
who make decisions, and the people poorer than them will be excluded. So, it's very
important to realize that these family farmers, who are successful, do not necessarily lead
to democracy. Indeed it is an unusual outcome when they end up with democracy.

Kagan

The hoplite phalanx of the Archaic and Classical periods in
Greece (ca. 750–350 BC) was a formation in which the hoplites
would line up in ranks in close order. The hoplites would lock
their shields together, and the first few ranks of soldiers would
project their spears out over the first rank of shields. The
phalanx therefore presented a shield wall and a mass of spear
points to the enemy, making frontal assaults much more
difficult. It also allowed a higher proportion of the soldiers to be
actively engaged in combat at a given time (rather than just
those in the front rank).
Wikipedia

a classical Greek hoplite is an infantryman who
carries a hoplon

The word "hoplite" (Greek: ὁπλίτης hoplitēs; pl.
ὁπλίται hoplitai) derives from "hoplon" (ὅπλον,
plural hopla ὅπλα), the type of the shield used by
the soldiers

this type of warfare develops contemporaneously
‘όπλον with the rise of the polis and the formation known
Hoplon as the phalanx

...these successful farmers, who also will be the fighting men who fight for their
polis as infantrymen when the infantry becomes the critically important part of
the army. These men, the combination of their independence, their wealth — they
do have wealth, they amount to something -- and their role as soldiers makes
them demand a larger voice in the government of the state, in the decisions that
affect them so closely. They will be finding different ways to insist on their
inclusion and the results will be different in every state.

Kagan

ὁπλίτης
hoplite

...these successful farmers, who also will be the fighting men who fight for their
polis as infantrymen when the infantry becomes the critically important part of
the army. These men, the combination of their independence, their wealth — they
do have wealth, they amount to something -- and their role as soldiers makes
them demand a larger voice in the government of the state, in the decisions that
affect them so closely. They will be finding different ways to insist on their
inclusion and the results will be different in every state.

Kagan

Defensive equipment

helmet

breastplate
shield

greaves

bronze butt spike
iron tip

spear

offensive weapons
δόρυ
ξίφος dory
xiphos
sword

Positioning the hoplon

correct

Positioning the hoplon

wrong!
why?
anybody...
anybody...

CLASS & SOLDIER TYPES

the polis never supplied panoplies so only those wealthy enough to buy the
bronze armor and shield could fight as hoplites

the poorer men came to war as peltasts (slingers), archers, or javelin
throwers; or else they served as servants. They also were the most likely to
be the scavengers of the battle field, looking for booty among the fallen

Funerary loutrophoros; on the right a bearded slave
carries his master's shield and helm,

380–370 BC,
National Archaeological Museum of Athens






the wealthiest came as cavalry

CLASS, SOLDIER TYPES & POLIS TYPE



the wealthiest came as cavalry

Aristotle, in the Politics, remarked that if the predominant arm of the polis
was cavalry it was most likely an aristocratic state; hoplites, an oligarchy; a
navy, democracy

offensive weapons

the right side

φάλαγξ
Phalanx

PHALANGE FACTA CAESAR IMPETUM IN HOSTES FECIT--DE BELLO GALLICO

traditional
phalanx

Epaminondas
phalanx
at Leuctra,
371 BC

THE ADVANCE

παιάν
paean

STAGES OF A HOPLITE BATTLE

formal declaration of war & explicit abrogation of existing truces & treaties

pre-battle ritual

selection of appropriate site

public sacrifice of a domesticated animal and brief harangue by the commander

shock collision between phalanxes until one or the other breaks

cessation of the killing

post mortem accord
combination of Hanson & Kagan

If anything, the sheer terror of hoplite battle, the courage needed to stare at a
wall of spears across the plain, and the urgency for group solidarity in the confines
of the phalanx gave positive momentum to ideas of civic responsibility and
egalitarianism, and formed the emotional and spiritual substructure of much of
archaic Greek sculpture, painting and literature.

Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, p. 55

Φόβος
terror
in
battle



Φόβος



Nearly every major Greek author, philosopher or statesman, despite their
education and often élite status, served their fellow citizens in the front line of
battle: Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Aeschylus, Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides,
Sophocles, Pericles, Socrates, Thucydides, Alcibiades, Xenophon, Demosthenes
and others too numerous to mention at some time wore a breastplate and killed
another human--something historians and literary critics should always keep in
mind when they assess the character and ideology of Greek politics, art,
philosophy and literature.

Hanson, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, pp. 55-56

ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ
Epilogue

Question from one of Kagan’s students:

If the hoplite phalanx was so stunningly successful against
the armies of other nations, why didn’t they simply adopt
the tactic instead of hiring Greek mercenaries?

ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ

So the Greeks of the Archaic period began to venture forth
along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Their
poleis often experimented with the political form which they
called τυραννεια (tyranny).

But, that’s another story...

Polis, Greece session 2

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Polis, Greece session 2