The Greek Hoplite Reform (original) (raw)

The heavily armoured infantryman, known as the hoplite, began to emerge on the battlefields of Greece in the mid-seventh century BC. 1 The seventh century was also witness to a wave of changes in the governments of some Greek cities, which resulted in the established oligarchies and monarchies being replaced by tyrannies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the emergence of the hoplite class impacted upon the political developments in Greece, and specifically with regards to the tyrannies that were established across the Greek world between c.650-500 BC. 2 During the seventh century, tyrants took control of Corinth (Cypselus), Katane (Euarchus), Megara (Theagenes), Miletus (Thrasybulus), Mytilene (Melandrus), Samos (Demoteles), Sicyon (Orthagoras), and a failed attempt to seize power in Athens (Cylon). In order to understand the extent to which hoplites may have affected these political developments in Greece, it is important to examine their influence on the battlefields. Warfare in the eighth century BC was essentially a long range skirmish oriented affair, fought by individual aristocratic warrior specialists. 3 This method of warfare was generally inconclusive, and it did not always descend into a decisive melee phase. 4 The introduction of the hoplite as a solider, and the gradual development of the phalanx as a tactical unit, was specifically implemented to " supersede long-range fighting " with decisive melee encounters decided by an increasingly uniformly armed force. 5 This emergence then eventually led to the implementation of massed phalanx based battlefield tactics, which in turn required a number of similarly armoured men in order to be effective. In order to maximise the military potential of the hoplite, and additionally to protect themselves as best they could from attacks on their flanks and rear, Greek aristocrats were obliged to recruit a sufficient number of these heavily-armoured warriors from outside of the ranks of the traditional aristocracy. To achieve this, the aristocrats were forced into widening the qualification requirements to include wealthy non-aristocratic farmers. As a consequence, for the first time warfare, which had hitherto been the domain of specialist aristocratic warriors, was opened up to include the wealthier farmer-soldiers who could afford to arm themselves with the hoplite panoply of arms and armour.