Historical story

Terrifying Greek Battles

To Weapon! is the somewhat bloodthirsty theme of the Week of the Classics. Clash of arms was common in fifth century BC Greece. In this period, Greek city-states such as Sparta, Athens and Thebes often clashed with each other. In addition to naval battles, the cities also fought their wars on land. What did these battles actually look like?

In Greece of the fifth century BC, there was a rule between the different city-states (poleis ) a very aggressive rivalry. Every policy wanted to be the best. City-states had to maintain their autonomy or wanted to expand their empire of power. In order to gain honour, fame and gain, hegemony over the other was necessary. Many such battles therefore took place between the Greek city-states themselves. After declaring war on each other, they made every preparation to go to arms.

Classical Athens was known for its supreme fleet, in which the rowers of the warships (triremen ) rammed into the enemy ships. In addition, like other city-states, the city had an army of heavily armed soldiers, the hoplites. Hoplites were not professional soldiers but civilians, who exercised a profession in peacetime and went to war at the outbreak of war. Only the city-state of Sparta had professional soldiers and they were virtually unbeatable. Spartan hoplites had a lot of time to train:all the work was done by their slaves, the helots .

Athenian Disorder and Spartan Hierarchy

Athens was the largest city and could send the largest hoplite army to the battlefield. Ten thousand men were no exception for this policy, but other city-states most likely failed to match those numbers. The men walked about 25 kilometers a day on sandy, narrow paths to the site of the battle. As a result, they often had to walk one after the other, which resulted in marching columns of up to ten kilometers in length.

Along the way, religion played a major role. For example, the Spartans slaughtered sheep at the border as border crossing sacrifices to appease Zeus and Athena. Army commander and historian Thucydides (460 – 400 BC) writes that during the Peloponnesian war with Athens the Spartans turned around twice in one year because the signs during the sacrifice turned out to be unfavorable.

Once they arrived at their destination, the Athenians' stored camps were in a state of democratic disarray. Everyone decided for themselves when they ate or slept – cozy next to friends or neighbors – and competed for the best place. Athenian citizens regarded each other as equals and were therefore difficult to command in the army camp. So the commander had a limited amount of power here. The Spartans, on the other hand, had a social and political hierarchy; their approach was much more militaristic and they lived a lot more systematically in the army camp. With the help of trumpets they all went to sleep at the same time and everyone got up at the same time.

Terrifying Infantry

Surprisingly, the Greek battles of this time were mostly not. Many confrontations took place on flat, open terrains. The enemies knew the battle was about to take place because a messenger announced it in advance. The closed infantry formations, the phalanxes, were now about two kilometers apart. The closed phalanx was one of the most effective combat methods of this period and invincible against other types of formations.

Imagine an army of eight thousand hoplites. A phalanx consisted of eight to twenty rows of soldiers in a row and each hoplite took up at least one square meter. Then there is a roaring crowd of people more than a kilometer wide in front of you! The poet Xenophon describes the battle order of the Spartan king Agesiloas at Koroneia (394 BC) as 'one mass of bronze and purple'. Once close, you could recognize the Spartans by their impressively large beards without mustaches.

In terms of positions in the army, the Athenians were again a lot more democratic than the Spartans. The Athenians chose their own places, which certainly led to a fight. With the Spartans, the commander determined this. The most effective setup had the best soldiers in the front for the attack. The weak were in the middle and the veterans in the back held it all together and pushed everyone forward. Being at the front was heroic and honorable, but extremely risky:of the Greek and Spartan vanguards, only half returned alive from battle.

Encouraging words and singing

When the moment of battle arrived, a trumpet or oboe sounded the starting signal for battle. With the Spartans, the oboe player often accompanied the soldiers to keep the phalanx arrangement intact. The Spartans marched to their opponents, singing loudly. Thucydides expressed this beautifully in his description of the battle of Mantineia (418 BC) during the Peloponnesian War:

“The Spartans spoke words of encouragement to each other […] and sang their war songs and urged each other, brave as they were, to remember what they had learned, convinced that a long practice of action is a greater remedy than a speech of a moment, however beautifully put into words.”

The other Greek city-states tended to run towards the opponent. This looked a lot more chaotic, but many hoplites did this to overcome their own fear and intimidate the opponent. An advancing phalanx a mile wide was extremely terrifying. Surrounded by hundreds of men, the running hoplites had only one way to go:forward. Scared or not, they had no choice. They knew the battle was inevitable.

Full attack

The front ranks of the advancing hoplites had their spears in underhand position, horizontally aimed at their opponent. Just before they approach each other, they slowed to turn their shields forward. The battle between the two troops was therefore first and foremost a showdown between the front lines. The ranks behind the first line kept their spears vertical for the time being. The poet Euripedes described this in the following way:

“They lunged at each other with their spears, but immediately ducked behind their round shields to let the iron points slide down without danger. When one of them noticed that the other had his eyes just above the edge of the shield, he would swing his spear, hoping to hit him with the point.”

Both armies formed a block with the shields against each other to prevent falling holes. By pushing, the hoplites standing in the center and rear were able to break the battle line of the opposing side with their weight. Ultimately, they were always looking for a hole in the opponent's phalanx. That could determine profit or loss.

So the end of the battle often started with a hole in one of the battle arrays. This expanded further and further so that the ranks trailing behind no longer pushed forward and pushed, but instead fell backwards. Disorder ensued and the losing side fled. The soldiers on the winning side give chase. This often resulted in the most casualties, but there was never a question of complete extermination of the army in ancient Greece.

Thucydides described the battle of Mantineia. The Spartans took on the Athenians and their allies, the city-states of Argos and Mantineia, and won.

When the Spartans had come to blows with their opponents, the right wing of the Mantineians drove the soldiers of (the Spartan general ed.) Brasidas to flight. The Mantineians and their allies, along with the thousand-strong select troops from Argos, penetrated the gap in the Spartan line, which had not yet been filled. They surrounded the enemy and drove them to their chariots and killed some of the elders who kept watch there. In this section, the Spartans were defeated.

But with the rest of their army […] they threw themselves at the Athenians and put them to flight without most of them waiting for a scuffle. For when the Spartans attacked, they immediately fled, and some were even overrun in their fearful flight lest they fall into the hands of the enemy. Then […] the Spartans on the right wing, with their troops jutting out of the line, tried to encircle the Athenians, who were now under threat from both sides. Surrounded on the outside, already conquered on the center side. […] The Mantineians, their allies, and the select troops from Argos had no intention of pursuing the enemy any further, but seeing that their army was vanquished and the Spartans came upon them, they fled. [….] The Spartans lined up armed before the corpses of the enemies, immediately erected a trophies and stripped the fallen of their armor. They took their own dead and brought them back to (their base) Tegea, where they buried them.

Battlefield full of corpses and blood

The day after the battle, the losing side asked for a truce to bury their dead. The slightly wounded who remained on the battlefield were often taken as prisoners, but the seriously wounded were killed on the spot. Xenophon described the battlefield at Koroneia, where the Spartans and Thebans had fought in 394 BC, as follows:

“[..] The earth was red with blood, the bodies of friends and enemies lay side by side, shields were shattered, spears broken, and swords lay from their scabbards on the ground, stuck in bodies, or were still being hands held.”

The losing side's request for a truce was usually granted. It was also a solemn moment in which the losing side acknowledged defeat. The battle was officially over after such a request. The number of dead in a Greek battle was 'not too bad':an average of five percent of the victorious party was killed, while fourteen percent of the losing party did not survive the battle.

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