Comment on Facebook, On Turtles and Hoplites

The Romans did the Turtle. It is a technique that shows their professional training. The Greeks used the Phalanx. The key facts to remember for the phalanx are first that everyone in it was a middle class farmer with enough money to buy their own armor and technically an amateur, although in Sparta the men left the management of the farm to their wives while the men lived in barracks and trained. The really rich, the descendants of the old aristocracy, were not in the phalanx, except as senior officers, but in the cavalry.

The second important fact is that the Greek citizen soldiers were called hoplites after their shield. The shield was held by a strap and hand grip onto the left arm. That allowed the right hand to wield a spear or short sword for close in work. The shield protected the left side of the body of the man holding it and it also covered the right side of the body of the man standing to the left of the man holding the shield. That meant that the man at the far right end of a line of warriors had no one standing to their right and therefor their right side was unprotected. That is why standing to the right is the position of greatest danger and is the position of Honor.

During a battle hundreds or even thousands of hoplites would line up with the bravest and most honored warriors in the front line and to the right and then more lines behind them. The two armies would advance and then attempt to stab with their spears over the shields or beat on their opponents shield with their sword until by force the enemy was pushed back. A battle resembled a rugby scrum with weapons. The noise of swords beating on shields must have been deafening. Once an opening was made because of the lack of protection for a hoplite on his right side the tendency was for the soldiers fall back and turn to protect themselves. So any opening could turn into a route.

It would be impossible to run to safety while holding the heavy shield. Dropping the shield was a sign of dishonor. In Sparta a mother would tell her son who was going off to war that he should come back with his shield or on it, meaning dead. Also in Sparta if a soldier was a coward the young women, who were famous for their greater freedom than other Greek women, would get up at the next village festival and dance and sing a song about the coward. Most young men would rather face death than face having the young women sing that song about them.

In pre-Classical times or the Heroic Age rule was by the kings or their children who engaged in single combat. In the Iliad Achilles and Hector fight and the other soldiers form a circle to watch. Once Hector is dead the other Greeks run up to stab at the corpse and pose with it. No one had a cell phone camera though. The kings could afford to ride into battle on a chariot drawn by small horses, but they usually dismounted to fight.

Later the other aristocrats who also could afford horses gained more power. They had the right to speak in council and later their votes could restrain the power of the kings. The kingship became a religious and symbolic office in aristocratic governments. Chariots fell out of fashion and horses were bred to be large enough to ride into battle. There was no stirrup though so equestrian combat did not resemble that of Medieval Europe. When the hoplite and phalanx formation was adopted during the Greek Dark Ages, after the Dorian invasion the middle class farmers gained political power.

In Athens wealth became dependent on seaborne trade and the navy. Athens shifted from having slaves pull the oars on its ships to hiring free but poor Athenians who needed a job to man the fleet. That proved to give them a decisive advantage, making the Athenian navy as unbeatable on water as the Spartan army was unbeatable on land. The Athenians who could not afford the hoplite armor but who could risk their lives pulling an oar then gained the right to vote in the Assembly, making Athens a Naval Democracy.

h/t Regan Howard