Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience Page 6
4. So N.G.L.Hammond, The Lycurgean Reform at Sparta,' JHS 70 (1950) 51 n. 50. Anthony Snodgrass, Early Greek Armour and Weapons (Edinburgh, 1964) 181 finds in Tyrtaeus 'contradictions that are reminiscent of Homer,' some of which may be resolved if 'the context is one of siege warfare, in which hoplite tactics would of necessity be modified.'
5. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 128…'The porpax shield, which implies hoplite tactics.'
6. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 138. Snodgrass has persuaded me to modify my former complete acceptance of Miss Lorimer's views: J.K.Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970) 15. For the second spear carried on the march, e.g. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 90 fig. b; 97 fig. 8 b, c.
7. That the second spear at least was a reality is confirmed by the presence of pairs of spearheads in graves; Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 136–9.
8. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 138 and pl. 15 b, c. We should probably understand, as Snodgrass does, that the hoplite's second spear is in his left hand. D.A.Amyx, Corinthian Vase-painting of the Archaic Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988) 25 and pl. 6—'Near the Huntsmen Painter.'
9. Compare Lorimer (supra n. 2) 93–5 and fig. 7 for a similar mixture of arms and equipment in a roughly contemporary picture convincingly identified as the death of Achilles at the hand of Paris.
10. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 115.
11. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 114 represents what is probably the majority view—that the treaty is genuine. But see the very pertinent criticisms of Everett L.Wheeler, 'Ephorus and the prohibition of missiles,' TAPA 117 (1987) 157–82.
12. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 115.
13. David A.Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry (London, 1967) 141–2 notes the difficulties of this seemingly straightforward couplet. He offers the interesting suggestion that the poet's rations might have been 'in a knapsack slung from his spear in the Mycenaean manner,' but prefers the interpretation 'my spear provides my bread and wine.'
14. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 114–15.
15. Amyx (supra n. 8) 32 no. 3. 'By the Chigi Painter.' Amyx (supra n. 8) 397–434 discusses the difficulty of establishing an absolute chronology and offers (p.428) a system 'closely comparable to that originally proposed by Payne'—which has been orthodox for the past half-century.
16. Compare the drawings of the original publication (AD II (Berlin 1901) fasc. 4 pl. 44) with the best recent photographs, those by Max and Albert Hirmer, in Erika Simon, Die Griechischen Vasen (Munich, 1976) pls. VII, 25.
17. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 83.
18. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 138. The second spear was assumed to be really there by the scholar who originally published the vase (Georg Karo, AD II fasc. 4 p. 8).
19. For the throwing-loop (aiganee), Hans-Günter Buchholz, Gerhard Jöhrens and Irmgard Maull, Jagd und Fischfang: Archaeologica Homerica Band I Kapitel J (Göttingen, 1973), J83–J96.
20. This force—possibly Cretan mercenaries: Ctesias, Persica 26—seems to be distinct from the Scythian archers shown in friendly association with hoplites on Athenian black-figured vases of the last generation of the sixth century; M.H.de Vos, Scythian Archers in Archaic Attic Vase-painting (Groningen, 1963). See A.M.Snodgrass, Arms and Armour of the Greeks (London, 1967) 83–4, 98–9.
21. Snodgrass (supra n. 20) 38. For the Achilles Painter's 'namepiece,' J.D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (2nd edn: Oxford, 1963) 987 no. 1.
22. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 133.
23. H.L.Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950) 261.
24. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 133.
25. Snodgrass (supra n. 20) 80.
26. Snodgrass (supra n. 4) 56. Cf. Polyb. 6.25.6–9.
27. Margaret C.Miller, 'Midas as the Great King in Attic fifth-century vase-painting,' Antike Kunst 31 (1988) 82.
28. Thomas Moving et al., From the Lands of the Scythians (New York, 1973) pl. 7; E.H.Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913) 72–3. Minns, while noting other examples, comments on the comparative rarity of the battle-axe in Scythian graves.
29. Lorimer (supra n. 23) 305–6.
30. Caroline Weiss, 'An unusual Corinthian helmet,' California Studies in Classical Antiquity 10 (1977) 195–207.
31. A.D.Keramopoullos, 'Taphos polemistou en tois ozolais Locrois,' AE 1927–8, 109 fig. 66y. Cf. also Snodgrass (supra n. 20) 84–5 and pls 51–2.
32. A hero (Memnon), with a sword in his hand and a second, scabbarded, by his side, appears on a krater by the Berlin Painter in London. (Beazley (supra n. 21) 206 no. 132.) This must be a mistake by the painter; there is no second scabbard. Anderson (supra n. 6) 37.
33. Examples, Anderson (supra n. 6) pls 2, 3, 8, 9.
34. Keramopoullos (supra n. 31) 109 fig. 66.
35. Snodgrass (supra n. 20) 97 and pl. 50, compares this sword with the modern Gurkha kukri.
36. Amyx (supra n. 8) 147 no. 1; for the cleaver, see also the list of men 'cutting up carcase,' 'chopping meat,' and 'cutting up a tunny,' T.B.L Webster, Potter and Painter in Classical Athens (London, 1972) 247–8.
37. Anderson (supra n. 6) 32 and pl. 10. Miss G.M.A.Richter (quoted in Anderson, page 278 note 99) first identified the sword as Spartan.
38. J.Boardman, 'Sickles and strigils,' JHS 91 (1971) 136–7: J.K.Anderson, 'Sickle and xyele,' JHS 94 (1974) 166.
39. K.M.T.Chrimes, Ancient Sparta: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Manchester, 1949) 255: Anderson (supra n. 6) 38.
40. Anderson (supra n. 6) 84–5.
41. E.L.Wheeler, The Hoplomachoi and Vegetius' Spartan drillmasters,' Chiron 13 (1983) 1–20.
42. W.K.Pritchett, The Greek State at War II 210–16.
43. E.L.Wheeler, 'Hoplomachia and Greek dances in arms,' GRBS 23 (1982) 230.
44. J.K.Anderson, 'The Statue of Chabrias,' AJA 67 (1963) 411–13.
45. e.g. the flanking figures on Side A of the calyx-krater by Euphronios in New York (D.von Bothmer, BMMA 1973 no. 15).
46. e.g. the reverse of Euphronios' Amazonomachy krater in Arezzo: Beazley (supra n. 21) 15 no. 6.
47. Hanson (supra n. 1) 75–6.
48. Hanson (supra n. 1) 84.
49. e.g. Anderson (supra n. 6) pl. 2b.
50. Anderson (supra n. 6) 88.
51. e.g. Amyx (supra n. 8) pl. 60.1; Lorimer (supra n. 2) 102 fig. 10.
52. Lorimer (supra n. 2) 103.
53. B.B.Shefton, 'Some iconographic remarks on the Tyrannicides,' AJA 64 (1960) 174 n. 13. Cf. Snodgrass (supra n. 20) pl. 44.
54. As on the 'namepiece' of the Penthesilea Painter, Beazley (supra n. 21) 879 no. 1.
55. Shefton (supra n. 53) 174. Compare Snodgrass (supra n. 20) pl. 46.
56. For 'the killing-field' and 'the wounded,' cf. Hanson (supra n. 1) 197–218.
* * *
2
THE IDENTIFICATION AND RETRIEVAL OF THE HOPLITE BATTLE-DEAD
Pamela Vaughn
For many of the Trojans and Achaians alike were that day stretched out side by side with faces in the dust' (Iliad 4.543–4). Homer's scene, while perhaps from a context of pre-hoplite warfare, nevertheless succinctly describes the mix of bodies which would have confronted any army that fought in mass array. After the crush of battle, after the victor had routed the vanquished and taken possession of the field, after the defeated had regrouped and acknowledged defeat by asking for a truce to recover the bodies of the dead, the grim misery of sorting and identifying the hoplite casualties began. Besides the emotional pain of hoplites seeing their friends and kinsmen lying among the dead, there was the additional practical difficulty of identification to consider; in the carnage following a hoplite battle such identification could at times be nearly impossible. Xenophon, for example, described the chaotic aftermath of a hoplite battle at Koroneia (394 BC): 'the earth stained with blood, friend and foe lying dead side by side, shields smashed to pieces, spears broken asunder, daggers drawn from their sheaths, some on the ground, some in bodies, others still gripped by hand' (Xen. Ages. 2.14). The image, then, of tangled bodies and weapons on a fie
ld reeking of carnage is abundantly clear: corpses had to be separated and cataloged somehow, regardless of the condition of the actual remains.
Identification was difficult, not only because the bodies of friend and foe were frequently mingled, but also because corpses were often found stacked in piles, due to the very crush of the initial hoplite confrontation and the subsequent pressure generated by the pushing of the ranks to the rear.1 Homer, for example, envisions Sarpedon lying almost hidden among the dead, 'for many had fallen upon him' (Iliad 16.661). At Leuktra (371 BC), too, the Spartan king Kleombrotos perished while fighting 'and a great mound of corpses' piled up
around his body (Diod. 15.55.5). If we can believe Plutarch,2 the Theban Pelopidas, sinking upon a pile of corpses belonging to both friend and foe, might well have perished among them (and those who, in their turn, fell upon him) during a skirmish had not Epameinondas, his great friend, found and defended his compatriot until both were rescued by the Spartan king Agesipolis (Plut. Pel. 4.5).3 In such circumstances, the great weight of the hoplite panoply (approximately 70 lbs/31 kg), coupled with that of the infantryman himself, made suffocation beneath a mound of corpses or near-dead a real possibility for any hoplite felled in the crush of pitched battle. Wounded or dead, ally and enemy would lie piled together; consequently, there was little chance that, at the conclusion of a hoplite battle, corpses could easily be known merely by their position on the battlefield. Very few hoplite armies had elite contingents who fought and died exclusively as a group and whose corpses thus could be identified on the field; the notable exception, of course, was the 150 paired dead whom Philip of Macedon easily identified as the remains of the Theban Sacred Band at Chaironeia (Plut. Pel. 18, Mor. 76la-d).
Difficult as it would have been for the survivors to separate armorencased enemy soldiers from their own forces, pursuit of routed troops often led to bodies being strewn over a much wider area, creating a task of collection and sorting almost as difficult as that in the center of the battlefield. At Kynoskephalai (364 BC), for example, after Pelopidas, commander of Theban and allied Thessalian forces, had fallen fighting against Alexander of Pherai, his cavalry chased the entire enemy phalanx for a considerable distance, slaying more than 3,000 and filling up the countryside with corpses (Plut. Pel. 32.7); thus, the recovery of the enemy dead must have been a logistical nightmare. It was therefore, from such a mass of lifeless humanity—concentrated and entangled or solitary and scattered—that all Hellenic forces were accustomed to recover their dead in order to administer proper and necessary funeral rites.
Why was it so important that the war fatalities of the Hellenic states receive such special, almost ritualistic, attention? The physical evidence of the ancient war monuments, burial sites, casualty lists, epitaphs, vase paintings, as well as confirmation found in the literary sources, proves the existence of such reverence, and virtually all surviving evidence points to the unusual homage and commemoration accorded to the battle-dead.4 Therefore, after the battle, when either victory or defeat was usually absolute and unquestioned, established custom dictated that Greek armies were faced with the very real task of sorting, collecting and
identifying, as accurately as possible, the corpses of each side. This was absolutely crucial because, within such a context, the funeral ritual and burial, whatever forms they might take, fulfilled the obligations to the fallen warrior, while reassuring the survivors as to their own future treatment. The identification process, then, was a necessary means to that end, a crucial first step that acknowledged the critical link between military and civilian life by reaffirming the basic belief in the sanctity of the dead. Men would be identified and accorded proper funerary rituals, either at home or on the battlefield, never allowed to rot where they fell nor to be thrown anonymously into a collective pit.
Hoplite commanders exhorted their men to victory by reminding them of the civic honors and glory which would attend their death: 'fortunate also is he who may die, for no one even if wealthy will acquire for himself a monument so glorious' (Xen. Hell. 2.4.17). This same sentiment was phrased eloquently by the seventh-century BC poet Tyrtaios at the very dawn of the hoplite era:
And he who so falls among the champions and
loses his sweet life,
so blessing with honor his city, his father, and
all his people,
with wounds in his chest, where the spear that
he was facing has transfixed
that massive guard of his shield, and gone
through his breastplate as well,
why, such a man is lamented alike by the young
and the elders,
and all his city goes into mourning and grieves
for his loss.
His tomb is pointed to with pride, and so are
his children,
and his children's children, and afterward all
the race that is his.
His shining glory is never forgotten, his name
is remembered,
and he becomes an immortal, though he lies under
the ground,
when one who was a brave man has been killed by
the furious War God
standing his ground and fighting hard for his
children and land.
(12.23–34; Lattimore translation, emphasis added)
Besides the more mundane assurance that each hoplite would be accorded proper funeral ritual, he also would have known that the dead, in particular those who had sacrificed their lives for their country, were deserving of special recognition; society at large, then, provided further reinforcement to stand fast and fight hard for 'children and land.' The sacrifice of life for country was a laudable one, and one by which others could measure the value of a man's life: Solon, for example, tells Croesus that one man, Tellus, was the most fortunate of men, in part because he died bravely on the field of battle and was given a public funeral, and thus earned wide recognition by the Athenians (Hdt. 1.30). Plutarch relates that Solon also was credited for various reforms involving the funeral ritual at Athens, including a law which forbade speaking ill of the dead, which all praised since 'it is pious to regard the deceased as sacred, and just to spare those who are absent, and politic to rob hatred of its perpetuity' (Plut. Sol. 21).
Socrates, himself an old hoplite veteran, even if he disapproved of the principle of public eulogy, still recognized that the commemorative elevation of the war dead was a fact of Athenian life: To fall in battle, Menexenus, indeed seems to be a splendid thing in many ways. For a man obtains a splendid and magnificent funeral even though he be at death a poor man; and though he be worthless, he wins praise at the hands of skilled men who do not praise at random, but have prepared their words a long time beforehand' (Plato, Menex. 234C).
The respect and homage, therefore, paid to the battle-dead is a common enough theme in Greek literature, and the pervasive feeling is that the tradition somehow derived from divine ordinance and sanction. Naturally, such respect was predicated on the practice of mutually returning (and thereby distinguishing) enemy-dead for proper observances, a tradition first attributed variously to Theseus or Herakles, which attests to its antiquity (Plut. Thes. 29; Ail., VH 12.27).5 Depending on the sources, Theseus is portrayed either as mounting an armed assault against the Thebans in order to retrieve the Argive dead from their city and thus to preserve the custom of 'all Greeks' (Eur. Supp. 526–7, 538–40), or as establishing the first truce for the collection of the dead (Plut. Thes. 29.4).6 Either version quite clearly shows that respect for war fatalities is deep-seated in Greek society. The pre-Socratic philosopher Herakleitos also observed that 'gods and men honor those who are killed in battle' (B24). Homer, too, reminds us that when Achilles killed the Trojan Hektor and persisted in his attempted desecration of the body, the gods not only
took every effort to preserve Hektor's body from corruption, but also ordered Achilles to return Hektor's body to his family or risk the wrath of Zeus (Iliad 24.134–7).7 The pre
servation of Hektor's corpse in a pristine condition emphasizes how disconcerting the very thought of mutilating even an enemy's corpse was to the Greeks.
In a similar attempt to fulfill the obligation due to the fallen kindred warrior, Antigone risked death to bury her brother Polyneikes in spite of Kreon's edict expressly forbidding such action. She explained her reasons by stating simply that a mortal's decree cannot transcend the unwritten and unassailable rules of the gods (agrapta k'asphale theon nomima) which have been in effect through all time (Soph. Ant. 450–7). Dire consequences befall Kreon's city because of his edict, once again demonstrating the anger of the gods when such violations of custom occur (id. 1016–30). Such literary evidence reveals the common, near-religious fervor for proper burial rites, the antiquity of the practice, and the real concern in the Greek mind for any anonymous, decaying corpses of warriors.8