About 650 BC, Greek generals in various different city-states came up with a new way of fighting battles that gave Greek soldiers of the Archaic period a big advantage over the soldiers of other countries like Egypt or the Lydians. Instead of fighting all in a big crowd, running forward and just trying to get at the enemy any which way, Greek generals trained their soldiers to fight in lines, shoulder to shoulder. In this way each man (women were not allowed to be soldiers) was protected by the shield of the man standing next to him. When they all marched forward together, no enemy spears or arrows could get through their wall of shields.
A soldier who fought this way was called a hoplite (HOP-light), and a group of soldiers who fought this way were called a hoplite phalanx (FAY-lanks). |
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A hoplite phalanx was a very strong military formation - but it only worked if all the soldiers were well trained, and if they were all brave enough to hold the line. If anyone started to run away, the whole line would fall apart, and it wouldn't work. Or, if some men went slower than others, or got out of step, it wouldn't work. So hoplites needed to spend a lot of time training, the way people today train to be in a marching band, for instance.
Another new thing about this way of fighting was that each man had to have the right armor. Nobody could fight without a shield, and a helmet, and all that. So you could only be a soldier if you could afford the hoplite armor. It was pretty expensive, and this kept a lot of poor men from being in the army. |
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Some people think that this new emphasis on the importance of each ordinary soldier (instead of just the aristocratic heroes of the Iliad) helped democracy to develop in Greece. Even if that's not true, the hoplite phalanx made Greek soldiers very desirable mercenaries for all the countries around them, for the next several hundred years. And it helped them to fight off the Persians during the Persian Wars.
And it was more or less the same hoplite tactics, when the Roman army used them, that helped the Romans to conquer their empire |
