The ancient Greeks at war: hoplites, the phalanx and the greatest battles (2024)

The resulting conflicts produced some of the most celebrated clashes in history – the Athenians’ victory over the Persians at Marathon (which, prior to the battle, reputedly saw Pheidippides run 150 miles from Athens to request help from the Spartans), and Lysander’s brilliant naval triumph over Athens to end the Peloponnesian War, to name just two.

Just as Classical Greece saw enormous leaps forward in politics and culture, so it also witnessed advances in military technologies. These included the trireme, the galley that helped Athens rule the waves in the fifth century BC, and the fearsome Macedonian phalanx.

By the end of the Classical period, Alexander the Great was using these advances to turn the tables on the Persians and forge an enormous empire. Greek warfare would now be exported across the known world – with history-shaping consequences.

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The Spartan war machine

All Greek city-states took their military seriously. But only one lived and breathed martial prowess, and that was Sparta. Sparta was a true warrior-society, as men discovered at the earliest of ages. At the tender age of seven, boys were plucked from their families and entered into a 23-year military training regime designed to turn them into consummate warriors.

From the outset, the trainee fighters were taught that loyalty to their city should always take precedence over self-preservation. This mantra was reflected in the austere nature of their training: they were subjected to continuous (often violent) competitions, given meagre food rations, and encouraged to steal food in order to prepare themselves for life in a warzone. Worse still, they were often encouraged to mistreat the helots, Sparta’s slave class.

Women, too, bought into the warrior ethos. They were expected to keep physically fit, while mothers reportedly told their sons before they left for battle, “Come back with your shield, or on it.”

This unstinting dedication to war made the Spartans feared opponents, famed for their bravery. Such courage earned them a place in history: 300 Spartans were famously among those who fought against a massive Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae.

In 404 BC, the Spartans used their martial prowess to unseat Athens as the dominant power in the Greek world at the climax of the Peloponnesian War. Just over 30 years later, the Thebans invaded the region of Laconia and freed many of the helots. For all their military acumen, the Spartans’ spell at the top table of Greek powers was to be short-lived.

Hoplites and the phalanx: the footsoldiers of ancient Greek armies

When the Greek city-states went to war, it was the hoplites who formed the backbone of their armies. The hoplites were not professional soldiers but primarily free citizens (often farmers and artisans) able to afford linen and bronze armour. From the eighth or seventh century BC, hoplites started fighting in the phalanx, a formation that helped them achieve a string of notable victories over the Persians, such as the triumph at Marathon in 490 BC.

Hoplites went into battle carrying a long spear called a dory. This was eight feet of iron-tipped brutality, with a deadly blade at the top end and a spike at the bottom end, which acted as a counter-weight and a secondary killer. The spears used in Alexander the Great’s Macedonian phalanx were even longer: 13–21 feet.

In his left hand the hoplite carried the aspis, a heavy wooden shield measuring around one metre in diameter. The shield rested on the fighter’s shoulders – and, courtesy of a leather fastening for the forearm, was particularly manoeuvrable.

If his spear snapped or the chase was on for a routed enemy, the hoplite often turned to his short sword: the xiphos. The xiphos featured a blade of around two feet and was usually carried on a strap under the fighter’s left arm.

Their bodies were protected by a cuirass, a breastplate and backplate fastened together. This was sometimes fashioned from bronze but was more often made up of layers of canvas or linen glued together to form a stiff shield. Their helmets werer often decorated with a horsehair crest – these could be black and white, or multicoloured. Helmets were sometimes decorated with bronze animal horns and ears, and could even be painted as well.

If one hoplite was a fearsome prospect, then how about 256? That was the number that joined forces to form the Macedonian phalanx, a square infantry formation that was a cornerstone of Alexander the Great’s extraordinary conquests in the fourth century BC.

Triemes: the galleys that helped Athens rule the waves in the fifth century BC

No ancient Greek city-state could hold its own without some degree of mastery of the seas – and at the heart of the quest for maritime power was a war galley called the trireme. The trireme was the dreadnought of its day, a state-of-the-art killing machine that could race into battle at top speed and pack a destructive punch when it got there.

It’s thought to have been crewed by around 170 oarsmen in three tiers (known as thranites, zygites and thalamians) along each side of the vessel, propelling it across the waves at speeds of up to 8mph. But it really came into its own in the heat of battle, courtesy of a bronze-sheathed battering ram affixed to the prow, which was used to sink enemy ships. And if that didn’t do the trick, the oarsmen were complemented by a posse of hoplites and archers primed to board enemy ships.

Excavations suggest that the Athenian trireme was the epitome of the type, playing a crucial role in the Greek victory over the Persians in the battle of Salamis. Can it be any coincidence that the vessel’s heyday – the fifth century BC – coincides with the height of Athens’ power?

There were two trireme masts and sails – a mainmast and a mainsail amidships (in the middle) and a boatmast and boatsail forward. If a trireme went into battle, the sails were left on land and the masts were taken down and laid in the boat.

Three of the most significant clashes in Greek history

The Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War (460–404 BC) saw Sparta and Athens squaring up for a clash that changed the course of history. The war can be divided into three stages: the first a 10-year series of inconclusive clashes; the second, a six-year truce. Yet there was nothing inconclusive about the third phase. In 405 BC the Spartan general Lysander defeated the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, leading to Athens’ surrender. Sparta was now the undisputed top dog in the region.

The battle of Marathon

When Athenian forces attacked a huge Persian invading army at Marathon in 490 BC, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. Victory would provide a huge shot in the arm for the nascent Athenian democracy; defeat would see it swallowed up by the Persian empire. Fortunately, the Athenians’ commander Miltiades executed a brilliant battle plan, drawing the best Persian troops into his army’s centre before surrounding and routing them. The scene was now set for ancient Greece’s golden age.

The Macedonian Wars

These four conflicts, fought between the Greek kingdom of Macedonia and Rome in the third and second centuries BC, saw a dramatic reversal in fortunes. Macedonia under King Philip V bested Rome in the first war, but suffered defeats in the second and third. The fourth saw Macedonia turned into a Roman province in the second century BC; Rome would remain the dominant force in the Mediterranean for generations.

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This article first appeared in BBC History Revealed’s essential guide to ancient Greece

The ancient Greeks at war: hoplites, the phalanx and the greatest battles (2024)

FAQs

What was the best thing a hoplite phalanx could do to avoid defeat in battle? ›

The hoplites would lock their shields together, and the first few ranks of soldiers would project their spears out over the first rank of shields. The phalanx therefore presented a shield wall and a mass of spear points to the enemy, making frontal assaults against it very difficult.

What was the hoplite phalanx quizlet? ›

HOPLITE PHALANX = came around the end of the 8th century B.C.E. - The basic unit of Greek warfare in which infantrymen fought in close order shield to shield, usually eight ranks deep. The phalanx perfectly suited the famer-soldier citizen who was the back bone of the polis.

What were the 3 wars the Ancient Greeks fought in? ›

Warfare moved away from one-off battles fought in a few hours to long-drawn-out conflicts which could last for years, the most important being the Persian Wars (first half of the 5th century BCE), the Peloponnesian Wars (459-446 & 431-404 BCE), and the Corinthian Wars (394-386 BCE).

How did hoplites fight in battle? ›

They fought primarily in a phalanx, a tightly packed shield and spear formation that might be several ranks deep and many soldiers wide. A highly successful 'war machine', the phalanx was used primarily against other Greeks who obeyed the same honor-bound rules of warfare.

How to defeat the phalanx? ›

Phalanx is incredibly weak to Fire damage, so it would be a good idea to have some Firebombs and Pine Resin ready to go before the battle (dropped by the nearby fire sword enemies, purchasable from the Dregling Merchant).

Why did the phalanx fail? ›

At the Battle of Cynocephalae in 197 BCE, the Romans defeated the Greek phalanx easily because the Greeks had failed to guard the flanks of their phalanx and, further, the Greek commanders could not turn the mass of men who comprised the phalanxes quickly enough to counter the strategies of the Roman army and, after ...

What was the hoplite phalanx and its importance? ›

A phalanx tended to be 8 rows or more deep, each row with a leader, and a rear rank officer, the ouragos (meaning: tail-leader), who kept order in the rear. The phalanx is an example of a military formation in which single combat and other individualistic forms of battle were suppressed for the good of the whole.

What was phalanx known for? ›

phalanx, in military science, tactical formation consisting of a block of heavily armed infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in files several ranks deep. Fully developed by the ancient Greeks, it survived in modified form into the gunpowder era and is viewed today as the beginning of European military development.

What is the phalanx or hoplite? ›

Hoplites were organized into groups of several hundred men. They fought in ranks of eight or more men deep, known as a phalanx. The hoplites stood close together so that half of a man's shield helped cover and protect his partner to his left.

What were the greatest Greek battles? ›

Culminating in the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, the Persian Wars and their commemoration loomed large in Greek history and culture for many centuries.

Who was Greece's biggest enemy? ›

Conflicts between the Greeks and Persians remained until Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire. This was the main enemy of the Greeks in the East.

Who is the greatest Greek warrior? ›

Achilles. Achilles was the Greeks' finest warrior during the Trojan War. His mother, the nymph Thetis, dipped him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable in battle—except for his heel, where she gripped the baby. During the Trojan War, Achilles achieved fame by slaying Hector outside the city gates.

What made the hoplites successful? ›

Hoplite soldiers used the phalanx formation to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged the soldiers from acting alone, for this would compromise the formation and minimize its strengths.

Were hoplites effective? ›

While the phalanx formation was unwieldy, the equipment heavy, and pursuit difficult, Greek hoplites were the best fighters in the Mediterranean world and in great demand as mercenaries in Lydia, Babylonia, and Egypt.

Who defeated the hoplites? ›

A force of Athenian peltasts defeat Spartan hoplites on Sphaktria in the Peloponnese. Spartan general Brasidas employs Myrkinian and Chalkidian peltasts to defeat a force of Athenian hoplites at Amphipolis. Athenian leader Iphikrates employs peltasts to defeat Spartan hoplites at Lechaion near Corinth.

What is the weakness of the phalanx? ›

The major weakness of the phalanx is that it had little to no protection on its sides and rear. Since men were marching forward, and everyone's spears were pointed in the same forward direction, hoplites were pretty much defenseless on the flanks and rear.

What is the phalanx battle strategy? ›

phalanx, in military science, tactical formation consisting of a block of heavily armed infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in files several ranks deep. Fully developed by the ancient Greeks, it survived in modified form into the gunpowder era and is viewed today as the beginning of European military development.

What made hoplites so effective? ›

Hoplite soldiers used the phalanx formation to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged the soldiers from acting alone, for this would compromise the formation and minimize its strengths.

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