I have been asked for my thoughts on the 'battle' part of @BretDevereaux' wildly successful blog series on the myth of Sparta. With his permission, I shall now proceed to apply pedantry to his pedantry. 1/help
acoup.blog/2019/09/20/col…
I should point out first of all that this series is really good overall. It's well-read, incisive and funny. It's really helpful to see someone make an informed assault on a massive pop-history chimera. Kudos &c.
But.
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Of course, our main disagreement is one of interpretation: BD favours the 'orthodoxy' on hoplites. Yes, when he says in the blog there are a handful of people who care - that's me! I'm a handful.
(I phrased that wrong.)
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As a Greek warfare expert: Don't do this. Orthodoxy is dead. Citing Hanson and Schwartz? Spare us. It ain't coming back.
But hey, if you've done the reading and you're not persuaded, that is your right. I can't stop you*
*but please read Konijnendijk 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021
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So we disagree on the foundations, but that's fine. In this context it only matters because BD assumes a very tight phalanx with overlapping shields. We can neither prove nor disprove that, so what can I say?
We'll work with it.
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Other stuff is, sorry to say, more plainly wrong.
First, a minor but infuriating point. Hoplites were not named for their shields. Please stop perpetuating this myth. Lazenby & Whitehead did the debunking in 1996.
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jstor.org/stable/639557?…
Second, the painful cliché of internet nerds that "the first fight in 300 is accurate." It's utterly not. Nothing we're shown here - equipment, formation, combat stance, tactics - accords with what we know about Greek warfare.
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Setting aside that Thermopylai was probably a siege battle (see Van Wees below), we actually have no evidence the Spartans already used a phalanx formation at this time. We DO have evidence that they DIDN'T.
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brill.com/view/book/edco…
Herodotos' account of Plataia suggests something very different (see Hunt, 'Helots at Plataea' (1997)).
It's kinda weird to hang up a whole argument on phalanx tactics when the reality of phalanx tactics is in doubt for the period in question.
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It's a little ironic that BD gets on Snyder's case about the shields - which ZS is perfectly upfront about changing because he thought this design looked better on film - while praising him for some of the more structural stuff he... also got wrong.
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But even if we accept for the sake of argument that there was a Spartan (proto-)phalanx at Thermopylai--
Third: PLEASE STOP SAYING THERE WAS A STANDARD PHALANX DEPTH.
I wrote a whole thing about this in my book (Classical Greek Tactics (2018)).
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Some depths are more often attested than others. Nothing indicates there was a standard depth.
The Spartans, in particular, NEVER deploy 8 deep (the closest they come is "as each officer wanted, but 8 deep on the whole" at Mantineia in 418).
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It is particularly dangerous to go on speculating about why the Spartan depth "dropped" to 6 in the C4. A lot of scholars do this. You are working with unexamined assumptions my friends.
Don't.
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For the record, known Spartan formation depths (each attested only once) are 1, 8-ish, 4, "extremely deep", "9 or 10", 12, and an implied 6. Feel free to discern any pattern you wish from this data set!
Speculation is fun.
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The assessment of Spartan tactical abilities is actually great. Full marks. I particularly like the phrase "tactically uncreative".
The only minor quibble there is that Amompharetos' refusal at Plataia did not precipitate anything. He had rejoined the line at dawn.
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The notion that Greeks were bad at combined arms, though...
Please name me a battle in which hoplites fought without support.
Marathon. Sphakteria. Tegyra?
That's it.
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Read any Thucydides or Xenophon. These guys were OBSESSED with combined arms warfare. They wouldn't shut up about it!
We have more detailed descriptions of the fighting style of peltasts than we do of hoplites. They mattered.
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This idea that the Greeks didn't know how to hammer-and-anvil until Alexander revealed it to them is old-fashioned, Prussian-schematic nonsense. You want hammer-and-anvil? Try the battle of Malene in 493.
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The Spartans didn't have good cavalry until c.350, it's true.
Because they relied on their allies to supply it.
Thucydides says this explicitly (2.9.3). That's not pig-headedness, just the luxury of specialisation.
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Fifth (?) (where were we?)
This is the other old internet nerd chestnut: the slow-motion fights in 300 are unrealistic. Guess what though. This is the ONE PART of the way this movie does Thermopylai for which we DO have evidence.
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At Plataia, Aristodemos (survivor of Thermopylai) charges alone at the Persian line to redeem himself. He is not the only Greek to fight like this; Sophanes the Athenian does the same. This is praised b/c it is Homeric (and Tyrtaic). (is that a word?)
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At Thermopylai, the Spartans made such attacks on purpose, probably to provoke the Persians into foolish attacks, prying apart their formation.
This is one of the main indications that the Spartans HADN'T fully 'gone hoplite' yet.
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Sixth - and this is a point where I believe the orthodoxy is just wrong - there is no reason to assume that a hoplite shield MUST mean formation fighting. It was useful for that, sure. But it is also good for individual fighting.
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There are still many theories out there as to why the Greeks adopted this weird shield. Better against missiles? Easier to hold longer? Easier to carry on horseback (Brouwers, 'Horsemen to Hoplites' (2007))? Better for pushing?
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Since we just don't know the answer, and a lot of it will have to do with social status and cultural symbols, we can't speculate as to what it would or would not be optimised to do.
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ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/aspis…
I don't consider this criticism, but there is also a missed opportunity here - citation of Demaratos' speech to Xerxes (Hdt. 7.104), in which the Spartan king specifically disavows individual skill, but claims Spartans together are the best.
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Similarly, on whether Spartans fought more than others, there is now Hodkinson 'Professionalism in the Spartan Army' (2020) proving they didn't. It's nice when new research has your back!
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academia.edu/44057481/Profe…
Referring to Anderson (1970) as the key text on Spartan training, when Anderson was happy to just assume whatever he needed to make his argument work?
I'm tooting my own horn here, but I examined the evidence more recently and at greater length (2018)
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I won't get into the detail of the list of battles - there are always minor points of interpretation, addition and subtraction - but BD reaches slightly different %s than Ray ('Land Battles' (2009)) who did this exercise in much more detail.
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It is more objectionable to paint Herodotos as the culprit in spreading this part of the Spartan myth, when (as Van Wees has shown) he actually did a lot to correct its more fantastical elements. Can't get a break though, can he.
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