Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece Read Online Free Page A

much from what is merely a significant advance in the course of another man’s “evolution of the hoplite.” Nowadays, in fact, nearly everyone seems to accept some kind of gradualist account of the onset of the Greek hoplite, though we differ in the degree of gradualism that we favor, and in the chronological settings to which we extend it. Thus the nascent phalanx of the Iliad , even on Latacz’s own account, has some further developments to undergo before reaching the form recognizable from historical accounts; while, for Hans van Wees, these further developments had still not run their full course by the end of the seventh century BCE. A combination of these two views would extend the evolution of the hoplite over a century or more.
    Against this trend toward gradualism, however, one substantial obstacle has remained: the adoption of the two-handled arrangement for the hoplite shield, that single, once-for-all advance, apparently widely and rapidly accepted. It is absolutely certain that this invention was in place by the early decades of the seventh century, and very likely that it had already happened in the late eighth. But was it desirable, or even practicable, to combine this new piece of equipment with any battle formation other than the fully fledged, close-order phalanx, whose members were uniformly armed with it?
    Here a genuine conflict of views persists. Paul Cartledge (now joined by Greg Viggiano at this conference) has been prominent among those who champion the inseparability of shield and formation; Victor Hanson has brought home to everyone the features of weight and concavity that distinguish the hoplite shield from just any two-handled form; while Hans van Wees has been tireless in the search for othercontexts of use for the two-handled shield. For now, I would only plead for flexibility in our interpretations. Is it not possible, even likely, that the developed form of the hoplite shield—heavy, wooden, concave, partly bronze-faced—did not appear immediately upon the invention of the double handles? Could it have been precisely this final form that introduced and characterized the slightly later phase of the “standardized heavy panoply” that I identified earlier? Certainly the decorated bronze arm armband, the most diagnostic surviving feature of the developed hoplite shield, begins to appear among the dedications only from this time. In that case, the earlier round, two-handled shields, though undoubtedly real and of similar dimensions, could have been made of different, lighter materials, and so perhaps been usable in a wider range of battle formations.
    I note, too, how often those involved in recent discussion of hoplites have seen themselves as seeking compromises between different views, and I am happy to join their number. My paper has concentrated heavily on the beginning and the early phases of the age of the hoplite, to the detriment of the far better documented Classical period, let alone anything later. So let me end with a pointer in the direction of something that is very seldom discussed, no doubt because it is heavily deficient in written documentation and almost entirely lacking in iconography: the final disappearance of the hoplite.
    Some may be tempted to say that the age of the hoplite had come to a close on the battlefield of Chaironeia in 338 BCE, when the hoplite phalanx met with immediate defeat and ultimate replacement at the hands of the Macedonian army. Yet the evidence shows that many elements of the hoplite system and, especially, of the enrollment of citizens for it, still remained in place in the Greek cities for generations after this; nor did the tactics and armor change everywhere overnight. This was not necessarily a token of localized backwardness or conservatism. Rather, as has been argued in an illuminating paper by John Ma (Ma 2000), the system was a central characteristic of the small intercity wars of the Hellenistic age. However much our literary