Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience Page 8
The situations just mentioned, however, raise another, more pragmatic issue which is more germane to our central interest in the actual mechanics of such a practice of collection and burial: delay. After the battle, each army surely would need time to gather its remaining forces, to collect its equipment where possible, and to regroup; brief delays would be natural and would neither imply any neglect of the responsibility each army had for its own dead, nor at that point necessarily raise problems of simple identification and burial. Indeed, initially this time could be quite useful, since it would afford an opportunity either to check those surviving hoplites against
the muster rolls of the entire army kept by the taxiarchs (as at Athens), or simply to call roll. This action could be either beneficial or demoralizing, of course, depending on the relative successes and losses of the army. At Kromnos (365 BC), for instance, the Arkadians had the upper hand against the Spartans, who became disheartened when they saw their king Archidamos wounded and when they heard later the names of the dead, all of whom were among their bravest men (Xen. Hell. 7.4.24). Apart from the general demoralization arising from the defeat, the losses were substantial; thus the troops were discouraged sufficiently for the Spartans to seek a characteristically un-Spartan truce rather than to continue to fight (Hell. 7.4.25). In the close quarters of the phalanx, both during and between battles, it seems that an unofficial (i.e. word-of-mouth) roll-call of the dead would keep the men generally aware of their relative circumstances, as informal story-telling would quickly produce some details of battle casualties. Indeed, it seems unrealistic to think that the hoplites would be completely unaware that very many of their number were missing and unaccounted for.26 This ability to ascertain such a situation quickly may in fact actually be illustrated by the extraordinary Athenian action at Solygeia (425 BC, Thuc. 4.44). After a victory there, the Athenians had already stripped the corpses of the enemy dead, retrieved their own casualties, and set up a trophy to commemorate the victory. When Corinthian reinforcements appeared, the Athenians, under Nikias, were forced to retreat, leaving behind in the process two bodies which, as our sources tell us, they were unable to find. Total casualties were known to have been somewhat less than fifty, and so the Athenians must have been able to confirm the actual body count, if not to complete the identification of individual corpses.27 Later, when the enemy was in possession of the territory, the Athenians were compelled to return in order to ask for a truce to recover the remaining two bodies. This incident raises a couple of interesting points. In the first place, the tale is used to illustrate the piety of Nikias, the general who preferred 'to abandon the honor and reputation of his victory than to leave unburied two of his fellow citizens' (Plut. Nik. 6). Second, besides providing clear evidence again of both the concern for burial and the strategic importance of recovering bodies, the incident demonstrates the relative precision involved in the Athenians' reckoning of battle casualties.28
This well-defined ability to reckon casualties was neither limited to Athenian forces,29 nor confined to the arena of the battlefield. A preliminary tally of battle casualties could reach the home cities in
advance of the soldiers' actual return, especially if losses were significant enough to warrant a call for reinforcements. For example, after the famous Spartan disaster at Leuktra (371 BC), the names of the fallen (numbering some 1,000) were sent on to their kinsfolk, but the women were under strict orders not to make any public outcry, but instead to bear the disaster in silence (Xen. Hell. 6.4.16). Meanwhile, the ephoroi made the necessary proclamation of those who were to be included in the next service levy (Xen. Hell. 6.4.17). Such an efficient system of determining the dead once again must have been based upon a strict attention to accounting, to rosters, to prompt reporting of battle casualties (see, for example, n. 33)—in short, to the necessity of identifying all the dead immediately after battle.
Any natural delays in interment caused by the necessity of accounting or by disputes over principles of exchange, by their very nature, however, could wreak havoc upon the corpses of the dead, left exposed to the elements and the process of decay and thus preventing specific association of name with body. That exact problem is the basis for Menander's Aspis, in which the faces of the corpses after battle are bloated beyond recognition. The poet tells us that, when the servant comes to identify his master, the fallen warriors have been in the sun for three days (69–72), a period not at all uncommon, given the time necessary, as previous examples have indicated, to regroup and dispatch heralds. Remember, too, that hoplite battles were usually fought in summer, when Mediterranean temperatures in the range of 90–100°F (32–37°C) could cook flesh in a few hours and consequently expand the corpses into grotesque caricatures of human beings. Further risks of attack by carrion—the infamous birds and dogs of Greek tragedy and earlier epic—were sure to increase the longer the corpses lay exposed; indeed, such images can actually be found in ancient reliefs and on vases (e.g. Vermeule 1979 103–7, figs 20–3, 26). Finally, moisture, whether in the form of rain, blood, or humidity arising from fertile fields, hastened the natural corruption of the flesh. In the Anabasis (6.4.9), for example, Xenophon reports on a small debacle where some Arkadians were isolated and then butchered. When Xenophon and his men were finally able to backtrack and recover the bodies, five days had passed. Xenophon notes that obviously it was then not possible to cart off the corpses and so they had to be buried, such as they were, where they lay. He does mention, however, that some bodies on the road could be gathered, while others simply could not be found. This suggests two things: first, once more it implies that, based on their ever-present muster rolls, the armies
knew exactly whom to seek among the dead. Second, in sharp contrast to the other multifarious risks attendant upon the rotting bodies—'ripe' is the word modern soldiers use—lying in the open terrain, the dry, hard road caused far less deterioration in the corpses lying there; they at least were apparently intact enough to be handled and perhaps gave off a less overpowering stench. Most bodies, however, would not rest on roads, and thus the fate of the more decayed corpses of Xenophon's men would be more typical of Greek warfare in general.
Indeed, any lack of decomposition and corruption would have been most unusual and taken on mythic proportions, as illustrated in Plato's tale of a bold warrior, Er, son of Armenios, of the race of Pamphylos. He once was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, was found whole' (Rep. 10, 614B). A similar wondrous story is related about Alexander's body: during the many days of dissension among his commanders after Alexander's death, his corpse, although it lay without any special care and in places moist and stifling, showed no signs of corruption, but remained pure and fresh (Plut. Alex. 77.3). Given the normal damage delay could inflict on all but immortal corpses, it seems most amazing to consider that the Boiotians were even able to give back the Athenian dead at Delion after seventeen days (Thuc. 4.101.1); that those bodies had not only some rudimentary form of care from their Boiotian guards, but also some protection from the animals and the elements seems to be the most likely explanation. Even today, the problems engendered by delay are still a relevant issue; it is a task with which the Red Cross recently struggled in Lebanon, after that organization finally had been given permission to gather bodies of the rival Christian forces—dead which had been lying in the streets and abandoned rubble of Lebanese cities for several weeks and which were therefore, in all likelihood, unrecognizable.
In addition to the forces of time and nature, the typical blood and gore created by the use of edged and pointed weapons during battle also hindered identification of the bodies. For example, during a truce in the Trojan War to allow for collection of the dead, Homer portrays both sides working side by side, roaming the battlefield to collect their respective slain comrades. It was difficult, the poet tells us, to know each man, but then they washed the blood from them (Iliad 7.423–6). Although Homer does not specifically draw the connection, it seems cle
ar that with the washing came recognition, for all wept as the bodies were loaded into their respective carts. While disfiguring facial wounds themselves, or even decapitation, would seem to be the chief
obstacles to identification, especially since much of the face and neck of the hoplite was unprotected, few such detailed cases are reported with any frequency in our sources. Instead, disfigurement seems more likely to have come either from the inevitable trampling during phalanx battle or from occasional, deliberate secondary mutilation (e.g. Ducrey 1985: pl. 170, 174) than from the give and take of spears and swords in the collision of pitched battle.30
Moreover, we should not forget the role of the hoplite panoply in the deterioration of the dead, for it too could only add to the intrinsic problems of identification and collection. For example, armor, especially the breastplate and helmet, would maintain or even elevate to some degree body temperature and thus increase the initial process of decomposition. In addition, should the corpse not be stripped immediately, rigor mortis would make that task even more difficult; perhaps a good deal of mutilation could ensue in the course of plundering the armor of the dead, since the flesh or limbs could have been torn in the attempt to acquire booty. It is perhaps in this context that we can interpret the statement of the Roman commander Lucullus who, when he realized that his men feared especially the soldiers in full armor, reportedly bid them not to be afraid, as it would be 'harder work to strip them than to defeat them' (Plut. Mor. 203A2).
In any case of nearly complete disfigurement, it would be natural, perhaps crucial, to turn to secondary forms of identification, but oddly none of the hoplite's traditional equipment would have been truly reliable in identifying individuals. In the first place, shields and other armaments (even if normal looting did not occur) would be notoriously unreliable as a form of personal identification, even though there is some evidence that panoplies were occasionally modified and thus reflective of individual taste (cf. Hanson 1989:55–88). After all, shields can be dropped or lost (cf. Alkaios, fr. 428)—or more likely thrown down—in a pitched battle or rout (e.g. Archilochos, fr. 6; cf. Hanson 1989:65–71). On occasion a hoplite would also pick up another's weapon or any shield close to hand if his own was no longer available; certainly, then, deception and confusion over ownership, whether intentional or not, were always a possibility. Patroklos, in the armor of his friend Achilles, set the Trojan forces trembling when they were convinced that the hero himself had returned to the fray (Iliad 16.278–83). The entire comic plot of Menander's Aspis, as so often in New Comedy, revolves around misidentification;31 in this case, the corpses of soldiers, as mentioned earlier, were bloated
beyond recognition from exposure to the sun. As a result, the servant of Kleostratos (wrongly) identified his master by his shield, buckled and bent by the body. As we learn later, however, the 'dead' Kleostratos had marched out of camp equipped with borrowed armor and apparently unrecognized by others (lines 106–13).
In another instance, a desire for deliberate deception inspired the Spartan cavalry to take up the shields of their allies, the Sikyonians, and to advance against the Argives who remained unafraid, naturally thinking that those who bore those 'Sigmas' were inferior Sikyonians, not the dreaded Spartans. Then, so the story goes, the Spartan commander Pasimachos said 'by the twin gods, Argives, these Sigmas will deceive you' (Xen. Hell. 4.4.10). In similar fashion, Arkadian hoplites once painted clubs on their shields, 'as though they were Thebans' (Hell. 7.5.20). Yet such shield devices, even when recognizable as Spartan 'Lambdas,' Sikyonian 'Sigmas,' or Messenian 'Mus,' would usually be of service only in identifying forces in a collective sense—perhaps in pinpointing the general area where a number of Spartans or Messinians lay dead. As the determining factor, however, in identification of specific, individual corpses, they were usually utterly without value.32 For instance, even the occasional occurrence of such striking shield emblems as the Eros with thunderbolt that Alkibiades carried (Plut. Alk. 16), the purple and gold of Nikias (Plut. Nik. 28), or the fly on the shield of an anonymous Spartan (Plut. Mor. 243C) would be of little use: if it were found lying on a battlefield, even attached to a warrior's arm, one could still say only that it was the shield of a certain hoplite, not necessarily the man himself, who, if dead, may have lain distant from his armor and weapons. Clearly there must have been some more effective mechanism of identification that could not be so easily confused, lost, or exchanged. Remember, too, that although arms and armor occasionally may have proved to be of some help for the victorious army, such equipment usually would have been unavailable for the defeated force, as they were stripped away by the victor and piled anonymously together.
Weapons in possession of the conquering army occasionally can, on the other hand, have some limited value as an indication of the general number, rather than identity, of casualties. As referred to previously (p.45), when a herald from the Ambrakiotes arrived to ask for a truce to bury the bodies of those killed in the first of two encounters with the Akarnanians (426/5 BC), he noticed immediately the pile of weapons taken from the defeated hoplites. This caused some confusion, since the stack was far more extensive than would
have been warranted by the number of troops sent out to the first encounter. As Thucydides tells the story,
he was amazed at their number, for he did not know of the recent disaster, but thought that the arms belonged to the men of his own division. And someone asked him why he was amazed, and how many of his comrades had been slain, the questioner on his part supposing that the herald had come from the forces which had fought at Idomene. The herald answered, 'about two hundred.' The questioner said in reply, 'these arms, though, are clearly not those of two hundred men, but of more than a thousand.' And again the herald said, 'then they are not the arms of our comrades in the battle.' The other answered, 'they are, if it was you who fought yesterday at Idomene.' 'But we did not fight with anyone yesterday,' he responded; 'it was the day before yesterday, on the retreat.' 'And it is certain that we fought yesterday with these men, who were coming to your aid from the city of the Ambrakiotes,' came the reply. When the herald heard this and realized that the force which was coming to their relief from the city had perished, he lifted up his voice in lamentation and, stunned by the magnitude of the calamity before him, departed at once, forgetting his errand and making no request for the dead.
(3.113.2–5, Loeb translation)
Both the herald's initial judgment and his final horror were based on the amount of armament plundered from the dead. Note that, as a final note to his despair, and as an incident which Thucydides uses to illustrate the depth of his shock, the herald returned to the Ambrakiotes without asking for the burial truce he originally came to obtain.
Similarly, at Epipolai in Syrakuse (413 BC), after the Athenians' ill-fated night attack, the 'arms taken were out of proportion to the dead, for while some of those who were forced to leap down the bluffs were destroyed, others were saved' (Thuc. 7.45.2). Unlike the case of the Ambrakiot herald, the Athenians could take some small comfort in the fact that their casualties, although numerous, were fewer than the number of weapons retrieved would have indicated. Again, however, it is clear that abandoned weapons were unreliable evidence of actual battle-dead.
With such confusion and misinterpretation possible, we must search for more reliable tokens—name tags of some sort, perhaps—which would have ensured unequivocal identification even in the
worst of circumstances. Not surprisingly, what little evidence exists for such forms of identification is associated with the Spartans, the only professional soldiers in Greece. On one occasion at least, when the Spartans were about to go into battle with the Messenians, they supposedly wrote their names on small pieces of wood (a skytalis) and wrapped these (with leather thongs, perhaps?) around their left wrists, so that their kinsmen (that is, their fellow hoplites within the ranks, since Spartan soldiers traditionally were not returned home for burial)33 would know who they once had been.34 Since these skytalid
es were not intrinsically valuable pieces, they were unlikely to be taken as plunder by the enemy in the event of a Spartan defeat. It is interesting also to observe that this most clever idea for these apparent 'dog tags'35—a practice which itself would not reappear in the west on any uniform scale until the First World War—seems to have come from the soldiers themselves, who knew better than any the real hazards of war, the likelihood of disfigurement, and the Spartan emphasis on proper identification of corpses for burial; there was, after all, if we can believe Plutarch (Lyk. 27), a tradition that only Spartan men who died in battle, in addition to women who died in childbirth, were deserving of monuments with names inscribed on them. We hear of even further distinctions accorded to some of the Spartan hoplite dead: Aelian (VH 6.6), for example, asserted that those few who had especially distinguished themselves in battle were buried in their red cloaks, while others were laid among olive branches (cf. Plut. Lyk. 27.1–2, Mor. 238d). The sheer practicality of these markers and the general uniformity of hoplite battle throughout Greece should suggest some such similar practice of body identification elsewhere; yet, there seems no evidence outside Sparta for this particular usage, nor any confirmation that this use of 'dog tags' was ever uniformly carried out even by all Spartans. Certain stamped emblems (see, for example, n. 32) apparently only identified state-issued armaments; other clay tokens, stamped with the names of Athenian military commanders stationed in various areas outside of Athens, seem to have been employed as credentials (symbola). Indeed, these particular tokens have been convincingly identified as 'passports' carried by state couriers or others on official business to certain commanders in outlying areas.36 As yet, to my knowledge, there has been no suggestion that any engraved clay or inscribed lead pieces have been found in excavations which might be associated with military identification tags during battle. Until such evidence is found, or reassessed and linked to hoplite battle practice, our Spartan