Discovery Channel - War and Civilization (First Blood) 1/6
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek City-states. They were primarily armed as spear-men and fought in a phalanx formation. The word hoplite (Greek: ὁπλίτης hoplitēs; pl. ὁπλίται hoplitai) derives from hoplon (ὅπλον, plural hopla ὅπλα), the type of the shield used by the troopers,[1] although as a word "hoplon" could also denote weapons held or even full armament. Warfare in ancient Greece appears to have consisted of set-piece battles between independent nations. The hoplite was an effective solution to this situation. A nation could not afford a professional and/or standing army, so battles had to be fought by the citizens themselves. The tactics and techniques used in battle therefore had to be simple enough to be quickly mastered. Since the equipment was provided by the individual hoplite, it had to be affordable by an average citizen. The hoplite probably first appeared in the late fifth century BC. In the late Classical Period most battles appear to have primarily involved clashes of opposing phalanxes; tactics were complicated and casualties were relatively high. Towards the end of the late classical period, battles seems to have declined, culminating in the 'new model' army of the Ancient Macedonian Kingdom. Almost all the famous men of Greece, including philosophers and poets, fought as hoplites.[2][3] The most well-known hoplites were the Spartans, who were trained from boyhood in combat and warfare to become an exceptionally respected and superior hoplite.
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Discovery Channel - War and Civilization (First Blood) 2/6
The fragmentary nature of Ancient Greece, with many competing city-states, increased the frequency of conflict, but conversely limited the scale of warfare. Unable to maintain professional armies, the city-states relied on their own citizens to fight. This inevitably reduced the potential duration of campaigns, as citizens would need to return to their own professions (especially in the case of farmers, for example). Campaigns would therefore often be restricted to summer. Armies marched directly to their target, possibly agreed on by the antagonists. If battle was refused by one side, they would retreat to the city, in which case the attackers generally had to content themselves with ravaging the surrounding countryside, since siegecraft was undeveloped. When battles occurred, they were usually set piece and intended to be decisive. The battlefield would be flat and open, reducing the possibilities for complex tactical maneuvers. These battles were short, bloody, and brutal, and thus required a high degree of discipline. At least in the early classical period, other troops were less important: cavalry generally protected the flanks, when present at all, and both light infantry and missile troops were negligible. The phalanxes would approach each other in a steady, slow march to keep cohesion or rarely at a run, if the enemy was prone to panic. The two lines would remain at a small distance to be able to effectively use their spears, while the psiloi threw stones and javelins from behind their lines. If the "doratismos" (Greek for spear combat) was not decisive, then the lines would close and swords would be drawn out. The shields would clash and the first lines (protostates) would stab at their opponents, at the same time trying to keep in position. The ranks behind them would support them with their own spears and the mass of their shields gently pushing them, not to force them into the enemy formation but to keep them steady and in place. At certain points, a command would be given to the phalanx or a part thereof to collectively take a certain number of steps forward (ranging from half to multiple steps). This was the famed "othismos". At this point, the phalanx would put its collective weight to push back the enemy line and thus create fear and panic among its ranks. There could be multiple such instances of attempts to push, but it seems from the accounts of the ancients that these were perfectly orchestrated and attempted organized en mass. Battles rarely lasted more than an hour. Once one of the lines broke, the troops would generally flee from the field, sometimes chased by psiloi, peltasts or light cavalry. If a hoplite escaped, he would sometimes be forced to drop his cumbersome aspis, thereby disgracing himself to his friends and family (becoming a "ripsaspis", one who threw his shield). Casualties were slight compared to later battles, rarely amounting to more than 5% of the losing side, but the slain often included the most prominent citizens and generals who led from the front. Thus, the whole war could be decided by a single field battle; victory was enforced by ransoming the fallen back to the defeated, called the "Custom of The Greeks".
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Discovery Channel - War and Civilization (First Blood) 3/6
Individual hoplites carried their shields on their left arm, protecting not only themselves but also the soldier to the left. This meant that the men at the extreme right of the phalanx were only half protected. In battle, opposing phalanxes would exploit this weakness by attempting to overlap the enemy's right flank. It also meant that, in battle, a phalanx would tend to drift to the right (as hoplites sought to remain behind the shield of their neighbour). The most experienced hoplites were often placed on the right side of the phalanx to counteract these problems. There was a leader in each row of a phalanx, and a rear rank officer, the ouragos (meaning tail-leader), who kept order in the rear. The phalanx is an example of a military formation in which single combat and other individualistic forms of battle were suppressed for the good of the whole. In earlier Homeric combat, the words and deeds of supremely powerful heroes turned the tide of battle. With his friends jostling and pushing on both sides and behind, and his enemies forming a solid wall in front of him, the hoplite had little opportunity for feats of technique and weapon skill, but great need for commitment and mental toughness. The hoplites had to trust their neighbors for mutual protection, so a phalanx was only as strong as its weakest elements. Its effectiveness depended on how well the hoplites could maintain this formation while in combat, and how well they could stand their ground, especially when engaged against another phalanx. The more disciplined and courageous the army, the more likely it was to win - often engagements between the various city-states of Greece would be resolved by one side fleeing before the battle. The Greek word dynamis, the "will" or "ability to fight," was used to express the drive that kept hoplites in formation.
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Discovery Channel - War and Civilization (First Blood) 5/6
The rise and fall of hoplite warfare was intimately connected to the rise and fall of the city-state. As discussed above, hoplites were a solution to the armed clashes between independent city-states. As Greek civilization found itself confronted by the world at large, particularly by the Persians, the emphasis in warfare shifted. Confronted by huge numbers of enemy troops, individual city-states could not realistically fight alone. During the Greco-Persian Wars (499-448 BC), alliances between groups of cities (whose composition varied over time) fought against the Persians. This drastically altered the scale of warfare and the numbers of troops involved. The hoplite phalanx proved itself far superior to the Persian infantry at such battles as Marathon, Thermopolye, and Plataea, as long as it was protected from cavalry. During this period Athens and Sparta rose to a position of political eminence in Greece, and their rivalry in the aftermath of the Persian wars brought Greece into renewed internal conflict. However, the Peloponnesian War was on a scale unlike conflicts before. Fought between leagues of cities, dominated by Athens and Sparta respectively, the pooled manpower and financial resources allowed a diversification of warfare. Hoplite warfare was in decline; there were three major battles in the Peloponnesian War, and none proved decisive. Instead there was increased reliance on navies, skirmishers, mercenaries, city walls, siege engines, and non-set piece tactics. These reforms made wars of attrition possible and greatly increased the number of casualties. In the Persian war, hoplites faced large numbers of skirmishers and missile armed troops, and such troops (e.g. Peltasts) became much more commonly used by the Greeks during the Pelopennesian War. As a result, hoplites began wearing less armour, carrying shorter swords, and in general adapting for greater mobility; this led to the development of the ekdromoi light hoplite. Late on in the hoplite era, more sophisticated tactics were developed, in particular by the Theban general Epaminondas. These tactics inspired the future king Philip II of Macedon, at the time a hostage in Thebes, in the development of new kind of infantry - the Macedonian Phalanx. Although clearly a development of the hoplite, the Macedonian phalanx was tactically more versatile, especially used in the combined arms tactics favoured by the Macedonians. These forces defeated the last major hoplite army, at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), after which Athens and its allies joined the Macedonian empire.
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