 The Chigi Vase,
which shows a phalanx (©!!!)
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The first Greek author to use the expression phalanx
(φαλαγξ) is Homer,
and in his poems it means something like an organized battle line. This
is remarkable because in Homer's poems, warriors fight individual
combats whereas the soldiers in a phalanx (the hoplites)
fight
as a group. However, it is reasonably clear that Homer's duels were in
his age already becoming anachronistic. The Greeks had started to fight
as organized lines of battle, and if we can trust the evidence of the
Chigi Vase, which was produced in c.650 BCE, the soldiers already had
standard equipment in the seventh century. |
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Vase painting of a hoplite
(KMKG,
Brussel)
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By then, tactics must
have been very simple. The heavily-armed soldiers, recruited from the
upper class of a town (because only they could afford arms and
panoply), were standing in long, parallel lines, close to each other.
Every hoplite carried a large round shield (the aspis
or hoplon)
which covered his own left side and the right side of the man to his
left. A phalanx was, therefore, very densely packed and could not
easily turn to the left or right. If its allowed to compare war with
sport: a hoplite battle was something like a "scrum" in a rugby match:
both sides, armed with spears, tried to push over the enemy, and once a
phalanx was victorious, the losses at the other side were extremely
heavy, because the victors would use their swords to kill the defeated
men.
Standing in a battle line and waiting for the
clash with the enemy took considerable courage, as the playwright Euripides
suggests in a diatribe against the demigod Heracles,
who was...
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A Carian. Relief from
the
eastern
stairs of the Apadana
at Persepolis
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... a man who has won a reputation for
valor in
his contests with beasts, in all else a weakling; who ne'er buckled
shield to arm nor faced the spear, but with a bow, that coward's
weapon, was ever ready to run away. Archery is no test of manly
bravery; no! he is a man who keeps his post in the ranks and steadily
faces the swift wound the spear may plough.
Wounds were likely, and therefore, the hoplites were protected by a
breastplate, greaves, their hoplon, and a tunic of stiffened linen.
Their offensive weapons were, as already noted, a spear and a sword -
the latter only to be used in the second phase of the battle. The
soldiers must have been strong men, because the full panoply could
weigh as much as 15 kg, and it comes as no surprise that foreigners
often noted that the Greek soldiers were "men of bronze" (Herodotus,
Histories,
2.152) or "men clad in iron" (Ptolemy
III Chronicle). On the reliefs on the eastern
stairs of the Apadana
in Persepolis,
it is not the Yaunâ
(Greeks) but the Carians
who are armed like hoplites, but it was generally admitted that the
latter had developed part of the hoplite panoply. |
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 Marathon (©**)
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The original tactic,
which we compared to the rugby scrum, was essentially a one-dimensional
way to fight a battle. The development of hoplite warfare made it
increasingly two-dimensional. The famous battle of Marathon
(490 BCE) is one of the first recorded instances in which the phalanx
was employed in a more creative way. The Persians seriously outnumbered
the Athenians, and the Greek commander Miltiades
was forced to stretch his lines, to prevent outflanking. At the same
time he strengthened his wings, even when this meant that the center
was weakened: |
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During the battle,
the Athenian wings destroyed the Persian wings, and turned against the
center. If we are to believe the body count after the battle, the
Athenians lost 192 men in the ensuing mêlée,
their opponents 6,400. This is exaggerated (6,400 = 192 × 331/3),
but no doubt the invaders suffered severely.
The obvious response to an attack by a phalanx was
a
first strike by light armed spearmen and archers. Their missiles would
break the ranks of the attacking phalanx. At the same time, cavalry
could be placed on the wings, which could attack the enemy's rear once
the battle had started. The smaller (red) army in the next diagram has
a fair chance against the larger (pink) army:
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Hoplites on the Monument
of the Nereids from Xanthus
(Turkey), now in the British
Museum |
During the Peloponnesian
War,
which lasted from 431 to 404 and was fought all over the Greek world,
warfare became increasingly professionalized. At Mantinea in 418 (more...),
we see the first instance of a realignment of the troops after the
battle had started, something that had never been attempted before.
The main innovation, however, was the oblique
phalanx.
The first experiments took place during the Corinthian War (395-387),
but it was during the Battle of Leuctra in 371 that its devastating
potential became clear. The Theban commander Epaminondas
placed his troops at an angle with the Spartan troops and fortified one
of his wings. in this way, he was able to concentrate his forces on one
section of the Spartan battle line. The Thebans broke through the
Spartan lines, and their victory was complete.
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Macedonian phalanx
(©!!!;
Johnny
Shumate)
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King Philip
II of Macedonia,
who had spent his youth as a hostage in Thebes and knew Epaminondas
personally, further improved the phalanx. Until then, it had been eight
to sixteen lines deep, but now, twenty lines were more common. The
spear, which had been two to three meters long, was now replaced by a
lance (sarissa) with a length of about six meters.
Because a hoplite now needed both hands to carry his weapon, his shield
was made smaller. |
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Chaeronea (©**)
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Once the battle had started, the battalions of hoplites -or, as they
were now called, pezhetairoi,
"foot companions"- forced the enemy to stay at the same place ("to hold
'em by the nose"), while the cavalry attempted to break though the
lines of the enemy and tried to reach their rear ("kick 'em in their
balls").
Battle had by now become a very flexible affair.
At Chaeronea
(338), the main cavalry units were on the left wing and the phalanx
advanced obliquely; at Issus
(333), the phalanx was a straight line and the main cavalry unit,
commanded by Philip's son Alexander
the Great, was on the right wing.
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Alexander's conquest of the Punjab and the valley of the Indus
meant the introduction of the war elephant, which was used against
enemy cavalry, which could never keep its line of battle when faced by
these monsters. (The soldiers in the phalanxes usually had special
sarissas that were used to attack the trunks, whereas archers could
attack their eyes.) At the same time, units became more varied: heavy
cavalry was used to force a break into the enemy's lines, light troops
were used to protect or disturb the phalanx, and sometimes, even
catapults could be employed. |
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As a result, the
phalanx was one of several units that could be employed by a general.
However, it was still the most important instrument to force the enemy
to stay at the same place and it was still the most important part of
the army once the battle had been won and the enemy had to be killed.
The main weakness of the phalanx alway was that
its
right wing was poorly protected, because hoplites had their shields on
their left arm. (The historian Thucydides
describes how phalanxes always drift a bit to the right.) Another
important weakness was that the phalanx could only operate on a plain;
hills would break the line of battle, and an enemy would enter these
openings. Finally,
if the battle lasted very long, the first line of men would collapse of
sheer exhaustion.
The first encounter between a Greek phalanx and a
Roman legion was the battle of Heraclea in 280, in which Pyrrhus
of Epirus
overcame his Italian enemies, but suffered heavy losses because the
Roman army was more flexible and could replace the soldiers in the
first line; they could continue to fight much longer. This flexibility
was Rome's main advantage, especially when rearrangements had to be
made during the battle - something that was always necessary during a
fight on a hilly terrain. In June 197, at Cynoscephalae,
the Roman commander Titus Quinctus Flamininus overcame the Macedonian
king Philip V, and the Greek historian Polybius
of Megalopolis concluded that this battle was the best
example to show that legions were superior to the phalanx.
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Jona Lendering © 2005
Revised: 31 March 2006 |
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