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The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens,aided by Plataea,and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia,under King Darius I,to subjugate Greece. The Greek army inflicted a crushing defeat on the more numerous Persians,marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.
Hoplites were citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states who were primarily armed with spears and shields. 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. The hoplites were primarily represented by free citizens –propertied farmers and artisans –who were able to afford a linen or bronze armour suit and weapons. It also appears in the stories of Homer,but it is thought that its use began in earnest around the 7th century BC,when weapons became cheap during the Iron Age and ordinary citizens were able to provide their own weapons. Most hoplites were not professional soldiers and often lacked sufficient military training. Some states maintained a small elite professional unit,known as the epilektoi or logades since they were picked from the regular citizen infantry. These existed at times in Athens,Sparta,Argos,Thebes,and Syracuse,among other places. Hoplite soldiers made up the bulk of ancient Greek armies.
A peltast was a type of light infantry originating in Thrace and Paeonia and named after the kind of shield he carried. Thucydides mentions the Thracian peltasts,while Xenophon in the Anabasis distinguishes the Thracian and Greek peltast troops.
Ancient warfare is war that was conducted from the beginning of recorded history to the end of the ancient period. The difference between prehistoric and ancient warfare is more organization oriented than technology oriented. The development of first city-states,and then empires,allowed warfare to change dramatically. Beginning in Mesopotamia,states produced sufficient agricultural surplus. This allowed full-time ruling elites and military commanders to emerge. While the bulk of military forces were still farmers,the society could portion off each year. Thus,organized armies developed for the first time. These new armies were able to help states grow in size and become increasingly centralized.
Iphicrates was an Athenian general,who flourished in the earlier half of the 4th century BC. He is credited with important infantry reforms that revolutionized ancient Greek warfare by regularizing light-armed peltasts.
The phalanx was a rectangular mass military formation,usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears,pikes,sarissas,or similar pole weapons tightly packed together. The term is particularly used to describe the use of this formation in ancient Greek warfare,although the ancient Greek writers used it to also describe any massed infantry formation,regardless of its equipment. Arrian uses the term in his Array against the Alans when he refers to his legions. In Greek texts,the phalanx may be deployed for battle,on the march,or even camped,thus describing the mass of infantry or cavalry that would deploy in line during battle. They marched forward as one entity.
A shield wall is a military formation that was common in ancient and medieval warfare. There were many slight variations of this formation,but the common factor was soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder and holding their shields so that they would abut or overlap. Each soldier thus benefited from the protection of the shields of his neighbors and his own.
The army of the Kingdom of Macedon was among the greatest military forces of the ancient world. It was created and made formidable by King Philip II of Macedon;previously the army of Macedon had been of little account in the politics of the Greek world,and Macedonia had been regarded as a second-rate power.
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Miltiades,also known as Miltiades the Younger,was a Greek Athenian citizen known mostly for his role in the Battle of Marathon,as well as for his downfall afterwards. He was the son of Cimon Coalemos,a renowned Olympic chariot-racer,and the father of Cimon,the noted Athenian statesman.
The Battle of Lechaeum was an Athenian victory in the Corinthian War. In the battle,the Athenian general Iphicrates took advantage of the fact that a Spartan hoplite regiment operating near Corinth was moving in the open without the protection of any missile throwing troops. He decided to ambush it with his force of javelin throwers,or peltasts. By launching repeated hit-and-run attacks against the Spartan formation,Iphicrates and his men were able to wear the Spartans down,eventually routing them and killing just under half. This marked one of the first occasions in Greek military history on which a force of peltasts had defeated a force of hoplites.
Classical reenactment tends to focus on portrayals of the Greco-Roman world,and especially on modern recreations of Roman legions and ancient Greek hoplites.
Heavy infantry consisted of heavily armed and armoured infantrymen who were trained to mount frontal assaults and/or anchor the defensive center of a battle line. This differentiated them from light infantry who are relatively mobile and lightly armoured skirmisher troops intended for screening,scouting,and other tactical roles unsuited to soldiers carrying heavier loads. Heavy infantry typically made use of dense battlefield formations,such as shield wall or phalanx,multiplying their effective weight of arms with force concentration.
The Spartan army stood at the center of the Spartan state,citizens trained in the disciplines and honor of a warrior society. Subjected to military drills since early manhood,the Spartans became one of the most feared and formidable military forces in the Greek world,attaining legendary status in their wars against Persia. At the height of Sparta's power –between the 6th and 4th centuries BC –other Greeks commonly accepted that "one Spartan was worth several men of any other state."
Warfare was a common occurrence in Greece from the Neolithic Period through its conquest by Alexander the Great and until its conquest by the Roman Empire. Because of this,warfare was a typical theme in many pieces of ancient Greek art. Many works of art,like the Doryphoros or the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos,used military objects in their composition,and many others,like the Chigi vase,had warfare as their main subject. Ancient Greek art is an important aspect of not just the history of art,but the history of warfare as well,due to its frequent spot on many works of ancient Greek art. As each different period in Greek history occurred,more and more types of art formed,as well as differing depictions of warfare.
The hoplites were soldiers from Ancient Greece who were usually free citizens. They had a very uniform and distinct appearance;specifically they were armed with a spear (dory) in their right hand and a heavy round shield in their left.
The Macedonian phalanx was an infantry formation developed by Philip II from the classical Greek phalanx,of which the main innovation was the use of the sarissa,a 6-metre pike. It was famously commanded by Philip's son Alexander the Great during his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire between 334 and 323 BC. The Macedonian phalanx model then spread throughout the Hellenistic world,where it became the standard battle formation for pitched battles. During the Macedonian Wars against the Roman Republic,the phalanx appeared obsolete against the more manoeuvrable Roman legions.
Classical Greek Tactics:A Cultural History is a 2017 non-fiction book by Dutch historian Roel Konijnendijk,published by Brill Publishers.
The military tactics of Alexander the Great have been widely regarded as evidence that he was one of the greatest generals in history. During the Battle of Chaeronea,won against the Athenian and Theban armies,and the battles of Granicius and of Issus,won against the Achaemenid Persian army of Darius III,Alexander employed the so-called "hammer and anvil" tactic. However,in the Battle of Gaugamela,the Persians possessed an army vastly superior in numbers to the Macedonian army. This tactic of encirclement by rapid shock units was not very feasible. Alexander had to compose and decide on an innovative combat formation for the time;he arranged his units in levels;he pretended to want to encircle the enemy in order to better divide it and thus opened a breach in its defensive lines.
References
- 1 2 "About our staff". 26 January 2024.
- ↑ "Professor Hans Van Wees". UCL | University College London. 2 July 2018. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
- ↑ "Dr Roel Konijnendijk". www.classics.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
- ↑ "Roel Konijnendijk | New College". www.new.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
- ↑ "Lincoln College: Dr Roel Konijnendijk".
- ↑ Meadows, David (2021-11-10). "#Thelxinoe ~ Classics News for November 10, 2021". rogueclassicism. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ "Bryn Mawr Classical Review: 2017.02.18". www.bmcreview.org. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ Whately, Conor (August 8, 2020). "Commemorating War and War Dead: Ancient and Modern" (PDF). The Classical Journal .
- ↑ Taylor, Richard (2022-01-31). The Greek Hoplite Phalanx: The Iconic Heavy Infantry of the Classical Greek World. Pen and Sword Military. pp. 500–524. ISBN 978-1-5267-8859-7.
- ↑ Dowdall, Alex; Horne, John (2017-12-12). Civilians Under Siege from Sarajevo to Troy. Springer. p. 200. ISBN 978-1-137-58532-5.
- ↑ Różycki, Łukasz (2021-06-22). Battlefield Emotions in Late Antiquity: A Study of Fear and Motivation in Roman Military Treatises. BRILL. p. 78. ISBN 978-90-04-46255-7.
- ↑ "Visualising 'Western War'?". University of St Andrews .
- ↑ Taylor, Richard (2022-01-31). The Greek Hoplite Phalanx: The Iconic Heavy Infantry of the Classical Greek World. Pen and Sword Military. pp. 490–494. ISBN 978-1-5267-8859-7.
- ↑ Rop, Jeffrey (2019-06-20). Greek Military Service in the Ancient Near East, 401–330 BCE. Cambridge University Press. pp. 2, 18, 59, 60, 105, 246. ISBN 978-1-108-49950-7.
- ↑ "Review of: Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. Mnemosyne, supplements, 409". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.
- ↑ Vlassopoulos, Kostas (October 2018). "Greek History". Greece & Rome. 65 (2): 253–259. doi:10.1017/S0017383518000190. ISSN 0017-3835. S2CID 232179261.
- ↑ Foster, Edith (December 2, 2018). "BOOK REVIEW: Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History. By ROEL KONIJNENDIJK" (PDF). The Classical Journal .
- ↑ Nývlt, Pavel (2020-01-01). "(review) R. Konijnendijk: Classical Greek Tactics". Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina.
- ↑ Brill's Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx. Brill. 2021-11-29. ISBN 978-90-04-50175-1.
- ↑ "New Academic Publications on Greek and Roman Warfare". Book and Sword. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
- ↑ "Lincoln College Record 2023" (PDF). Lincoln College Oxford. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
- ↑ Devereaux, Bret (2021-01-15). "Miscellanea: Insurrections, Ancient and Modern (And Also Meet the Academicats)". A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ "The Spartans at war - Myth vs reality". Ancient World Magazine. 20 March 2019. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ Thallon, Carter; Gandhi, Siddharth. "Ancient warfare expert rates 10 battle tactics in movies and TV shows". Insider. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ Thallon, Carter; Medroumi, Sarah. "Ancient-warfare expert rates 10 more battle tactics in movies and tv". Insider. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
- ↑ Thallon, Carter; Shardlow, Ju; Ibekwe, David. "Ancient-warfare historian rates 10 more battle scenes in movies and television". Insider. Retrieved 2022-12-28.
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