Tag Archives: classical Greek

The Myth of the Heavily Burdened Hoplite

15 Saturday Jun 2019

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How much weight did these warriors carry? Archaeological finds let us give a pretty good estimate. A Corinthian aryballos (oil flask)in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 41.162.157

Today, people with detailed direct knowledge of Iron Age arms and armour in the Aegean describe them as for athletes, as lightweight as the smiths could make them. Most hoplites had just one or two spears, a round shield, some kind of headpiece and some kind of sword, dagger, or cleaver. A hoplite was heavily burdened in comparison to man with a club and a selection of rocks in a fold of his tunic, not in comparison with modern ‘light’ (not motor-borne) infantry who often carry their own body weight in equipment. So where does the idea that hoplites wore 30 kilos of equipment come from? Back in 2010, Peter Krentz laid out the sad story.

Most scholars writing in English today estimate the weight of a hoplite’s equipment as 70 pounds (33 kilograms) or more, a figure that goes back to Delbrück, who took the figure 72 pounds from W. Rüstow and H. Köchly’s Geschichte des griechischen Kriegswesens von der ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos (1852). These are German pounds, each equal to 500 grams or 0.5 kilograms, as is clear from places where Rüstow and Köchly give weights in both pounds and kilograms. Their original estimate, therefore, was actually about 36 kilograms (79 avoirdupois pounds). Even this lofty figure has been exaggerated— in 1994 Richard A. Gabriel and Donald W. Boose gave the weight of a panoply (a full set of hoplite equipment) as 85–90 pounds (39–41 kilograms). But, as I say, most scholars writing in English today favor 70 avoirdupois pounds, which Victor Davis Hanson describes as “an incredible burden to endure for the ancient infantryman, who himself probably weighed no more than some 150 pounds.” Rüstow and Köchly’s figures do not deserve this veneration. They did not weigh museum pieces or attempt to reconstruct the equipment. As a result, a reviewer, Theodor Bergk, dismissed their figures as “purely hypothetical attempts,” while Hans Droysen justified his decision to ignore them by calling them “arbitrary estimates.” After all the archaeological discoveries of the past century and a half, especially in the German excavations at Olympia, we can do better today.

– Peter Krentz, “A Cup by Douris and the Battle of Marathon,” in Garrett G. Fagan and Matthew Trundle (eds.), New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare (Brill: Leiden, 2010) pp. 188-190

In short, this number persisted because it was the first one on the table, and because archaeologists refused to systematically measure and weigh finds until the 1990s (and when they did, they mostly did so in Greek and German, while the people becoming interested in hoplites only read English). Krentz estimates the weight of hoplite equipment as follows:

  • Helmet 1.2 kg {Extant Late Corinthian helmets}
  • Body Armour 3.6–6.8 kg {Extant bronze cuirasses and modern linen and leather armour}
  • Greaves (pair) 1.3 kg {Extant bronze greaves}
  • Shield 3.2–6.8 kg {Reconstructions based on two extant shields from Italy; for example, the poplar wood shield covered in 0.5 mm bronze sheet in the Museuo Gregoriano would have weighed 6.2 kg/13.5 lbs new}
  • Spear 1.5 kg {Reconstructions based on extant spearheads and buttspikes}
  • Sword, Scabbard, and Baldric 1-2 kg {Parallels with Roman gladii, weight of one damaged original}
  • Clothing 1 kg {Reconstructions}
  • Total (rounded) 13–21 kg

All of his figures are consistent with the weight of kit from other cultures. While modern infantry have to carry more than their body weight over the mountains of Afghanistan or the steppes of upper Mesopotamia, a Greek hoplite carried about as much weight into combat as I hauled to and from school five days a week.

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Edit 2019-08-03: Corrected the names of the editors of the collection with Krentz’ article

An grave stele from near Athens c. 390 BCE in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, accession number 40.11.23

Some Thoughts on “Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History”

04 Saturday May 2019

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A wall of gigantic rounded stones roughly shaped and placed together with a few smaller stones to fill gaps

Even the most overwhelming project can be completed if you take it one stone at a time! Photo of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae by Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia Commons, with a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Konijnendijk, Roel (2017) Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, Supplements History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, Band 409 (Brill: Leiden)

Since the 1990s, there has been intense debate about early Greek warfare. Most people agreed that there was something wrong with the versions available in English, but it took time to agree on just what that wrongness was and whether it could be fixed with a few small changes or was more fundamental. This book is another Cyclopean stone in the walls of the current consensus.

Konijnendijk argues that the California School of writers on Greek warfare (John Kinloch Anderson, William K. Pritchett, and Victor Davis Hanson) were basically refining the ideas of Austrian, German, and English scholars before the First World War. The continentals were interested in a comparative history of warfare with the practices of the Prussian army at the top, the Roman army in the middle, and early Greek armies near the bottom, while the English scholars tried to explain why Greek warfare as described by the Prussians was so peculiar. For a long time it seemed like these early writers had solved the problem so little was written on the subject in English. When a new group of scholars in Cold War California became interested in warfare, they launched a flood of research in English which almost erased the original German context of their theories. In short, the ‘orthodoxy’ is really a set of received ideas from 19th century Europe which survived until a group of ‘scientific historians’ began to question them.
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Cross-Post: Hixenbaugh on Ancient Greek Helmets

21 Thursday Mar 2019

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A closeup photo of a Corinthian helmet with a rough blue-green patina

Randall Hixenbaugh, illustrated by Alexander Valdman, Ancient Greek Helmets: A Complete Guide and Catalog (Hixenbaugh Ancient Art Ltd: New York, NY, 2019) 738 pages (275 color pages), 8 1/2 x 11 in, ISBN 978-0-578-42371-5, USD 450 (hardcover)

From Jeffrey Hildebrandt, for the deep of pockets:

The most comprehensive study ever produced on the subject of ancient Greek armor, tracing the development of the ancient Greek helmet from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period, cataloguing over 2100 ancient Greek helmets and both public and private collections, examining every aspect of the design, manufacture, use, and cultural relevance of the military helmet in ancient Greek culture. Over 700 helmets are depicted in large full color illustrations.

Ancient Greek helmets are emblematic of the culture that created them at a time when entire nations were often obliterated by more powerful adversaries. This armor was the product of a culture that believed in free thought, free trade, and scientific inquiry unhindered by religious dogma. In their elegant and effective designs, we see the accumulation of these unique factors: individuality, industry, pursuit of excellence, and the desire to protect the lives and property of men that cherished these values.

The author “holds a Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology and has participated in a number of archaeological excavations of Roman and Punic sites in Tunisia.” I can’t afford $450 books, and I can’t endorse the second paragraph of the description at all (it tells us how 19th century freethinkers, Edwardian colonial officials, and Cold War propagandists wanted to be, not about how ancient cultures actually lived; it picks one culture to represent whatever virtues the speaker admires, then uses other cultures to represent the corresponding vices), but if this book piques your interest, you can learn more at Hixenbaugh’s website. Jeffrey Hildebrandt is very impressed with the author’s earlier work.

Our Transliterations are Inconsistent

21 Saturday Oct 2017

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A photo of a tabbycat sitting on a pathway and staring at a closed door with a white rabbit painted on it

Although a brute beast who does not even know aleph bet gamel, this cat knows exactly what that sign means! A model of clear communication. Photo by Sean Manning, October 2017.

Over on Language Hat, people are arguing about how to pronounce LaTeX, the encoding for mathematical formulas: does it end with <k> like in <tech> or <ks> like in <hex>?

And for me it was worth it just for this footnote: “TeX is pronounced ‘tek’ and is an English representation of the Greek letters τεχ, which is an abbreviation of τέχνη (or technē).” All these years I’ve been saying “tex” (and “latex” for LaTeX) like a doofus!
…
And LaTeX is pronounced [lɑːtɛk]

If you cast your mind back to “How do you pronounce those accented characters in ancient Near Eastern languages anyways?” two lines on the chart might spring out:

Table 1: Special Characters Used for Transcribing Ancient Languages

Character Name Approximate Pronunciation IPA
ḫ n/a
H with breve below		 Classical Greek chi, <ch> as in Scots loch, German ich x
x n/a
x		 In Old Persian, <ch> as in German auch (not [ks] as in English hex) x

One letter in Latinized Akkadian (ḫ) and one in Latinized Old Persian and the International Phonetic Alphabet (x) have the same pronunciation. But look at which pronunciation it is!

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Some Thoughts on “Hoplites at War”

25 Saturday Feb 2017

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The cover of "Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE" ISBN-13 978-1-4766-6602-0

Paul M. Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray, Jr., Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE. McFarland and Company: Jefferson, NC, 2016. ISBN 978-1-4766-6602-0 (paperback) 978-1-4766-2636-9 (ebook). 233 pages.

In 1989 Victor Davis Hanson threw a match into some scholarly tinder by publishing a book which was both very readable and obviously flawed. Since no two scholars could agree about which parts of his book were incorrect, this has lead to thirty years of argument about just what happened on Greek battlefields. Unlike most scholarly debates, this one has fascinated people outside the university who follow the debates and try to push forward their own theories. Some of them have gone on to graduate school, others organize re-enactments and backyard tests, and a few write books. One of these amateur contributions is Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE by Paul Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray. That is an ambitious title for a book of 233 pages, and the preface is bold too:

In this book, we make use of traditional sources, but combine those with cutting-edge (apt for a book on warfare!) science … We hope the result provides a comprehensive source on hoplite warfare that will advance key debates for modern scholars, while entertaining the general reader. … [what we present here] is an assessment of what we firmly believe to be most probable based on all evidence at hand.

While this book’s reach exceeds its grasp, I think it contains some important ideas.

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Some Thoughts on “A Greek Army on the March”

04 Saturday Jun 2016

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John W.I. Lee, A Greek Army on the March: Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2007. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482830 Bookfinder link to the hardcover version.

John Lee’s book on the Greek-speaking half of the army of Cyrus the Younger does not seem to have found the audience which I think it deserves. That is a shame, because I found it very useful when I was writing my Master’s thesis, and I think that a wide variety of other people both inside and outside the university would find it helpful too.

Many books on life in the Ten Thousand have been written by retired soldiers or policemen, and implicitly or explicitly take the bureaucratic armies of the last hundred and fifty years as a model. Writers searched for a detailed chain of command with large units made up of small ones and a network of officers and non-commissioned officers, a relationship between the organization of the army in camp and the organization of the army in formation, and other things which modern armies have. It was possible to do this by ignoring or minimizing a large number of anomalies. John Lee had the courage to ask “what if we take Xenophon seriously? What if we accept that what he describes seems very different from a modern army, and ask him what he means?” And so he wrote a book about how the Ten Thousand functioned as a community of men and women living and marching and fighting together.
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