I also point to the appearance of a new feature on the inside of the ‘hoplite’ (or Argive) shield. I believe the shift from mass tactics to massed tactics can be traced archaeologically by the appearance of a number of different things, including trumpets, open-faced helmets, and a new type of sword.
The passage deals with the date of the introduction of what we can refer to simply – if again somewhat anachronistically – as ‘phalanx’ tactics. Recently, someone asked for clarification on something that I wrote on page 109. It’s been selling well and I occasionally get sent emails with questions regarding aspects of the book. It’ll be two years this November since Henchmen of Ares was published. Of course, when I wrote that I could write a book on the subject, I was being a little facetious, as I in fact did write a book on warfare in Greece from the Mycenaean era down to the Persian Wars. The Greeks were, in fact, hopelessly inexact as far as terminology was concerned: any shield, regardless of type, could be referred to as an aspis. John Lazenby and David Whitehead dealt with this issue exhaustively in their article ‘The myth of the hoplite’s hoplon’, published in Classical Quarterly 46 (1996), pp. But hoplon is the general term to denote equipment: the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus refers to heavily-armed men as panoploi (‘all equipped’), and the word was actually seldom used to denote a shield specifically. All too often, I see people refer to the ‘hoplite’ shield as a hoplon. Indeed, Herodotus even suggested that most characteristically ‘Greek’ elements of the ‘hoplite’ panoply were invented by Carians! And there are pictures of similar people from Phrygia that date to the ninth century BC and therefore predate the earliest Greek depictions of hoplites.Īnother issue that doesn’t seem to want to go away is the Greek term used to denote the shield. They might indeed be Greek mercenaries, but they may just as well be local troops equipped in a similar manner. But the bowl itself is Phoenician in origin and was found on Cyprus.
One can look at the Amathus Bowl in the British Museum and conclude that those guys with round shields, helmets, and spears are ‘hoplites’. Then there’s the assumption that ‘hoplites’ are always ‘Greek’. Then there’s loads of modern authors who define the term as ‘citizen-soldier’, which opens up an entirely different can of worms, not least of which etymologically (since a soldier is technically someone who fights for pay). It isn’t used before the fifth century BC, so referring to pictures of heavily-armed warriors on Greek vases as ‘hoplites’ is actually anachronistic. The term ‘hoplite’ itself is problematic: it refers to a heavily-armed warrior with shield and spear, but that’s about it. I could write an entire book on the subject.
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