The Killing Zone

Lazenby, John F.

doi:10.4324/9780203423639_chapter_4

Cited by 32 publications

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“…The volunteers were asked to undertake repeated thrusts from the three different thrusting positions identified by scholars from the artistic and literary evidence (e.g. Hanson ; Lazenby ; Schwartz ; Matthew ): the overhead, the underarm and underhand positions (Fig. ).…”

Section: Testing the Combat Effectiveness Of The Hoplite Shieldmentioning

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‘Twas When my Shield Turned traitor’! Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield

Groote

2016

Oxford J Archaeology

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Greek hoplite warfare has traditionally been explored through the extant textual and pictorial evidence. This has resulted in an incomplete picture, with much of the focus on the strategic and tactical aspects of battle, to the neglect of practical and functional considerations of combat. As a consequence, many of our understandings of the nature of hoplite combat, the how, remain deficient. In this paper, I explore the structural and functional aspects of the hoplite shield, the single most important item in the Greek hoplite's panoply, to determine its efficacy in a combat environment. Through a set of controlled practical experiments, the effectiveness of the hoplite shield is tested to establish its defensive qualities vis-a-vis the long thrusting spear, the hoplite's primary offensive weapon. Hayward (1968, 316) defines combat effectiveness as 'the probability of success in combat operations'. Consequently the combat effectiveness of the hoplite shield can be determined by establishing the probability of achieving success (defending/ striking an opposing hoplite) in a combat environment.

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Section: Testing the Combat Effectiveness Of The Hoplite Shieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Investigations into the practical use and effectiveness of the weaponry, which are few and far between and have come primarily from Classical scholarship, have been largely reliant on the surviving pictorial and textual evidence (e.g. Hanson ; Lazenby ; van Wees ; ; Schwartz ; Matthew ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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‘Twas When my Shield Turned traitor’! Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield

Groote

2016

Oxford J Archaeology

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“…First, these texts regularly use forms of κινδυνεύειν (kinduneuein), the verb form of κίνδυνος (kindunos), "danger," as a direct synonym for fighting a battle. Second, they use various expressions to un-3 Culham (1989), 199;Hanson (1989), 177-183;Lazenby (1991); Echeverría (2011), 70-72; Van Wees (2011), 71-76; Millender (2016), 166-167; Konijnendijk (2018), 178-188. 4 Krentz (1985, 58-59; Crowley (2012), 49-53.…”

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Risk, chance and danger in Classical Greek writing on battle

Konijnendijk

2020

Journal of Ancient History

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This article highlights two aspects of the language used in Classical Greek literary sources to discuss pitched battle. First, the sources regularly use unqualified forms of the verb kinduneuein, “to take a risk,” when they mean fighting a battle. They do so especially in contexts of deliberation about the need to fight. Second, they often describe the outcome of major engagements in terms of luck, fate, and random chance, at the explicit expense of human agency. Taken together, these aspects of writing on war suggest that pitched battle was seen as an inherently risky course of action with unacceptably unpredictable results, which was therefore best avoided. Several examples show that the decision to fight was indeed evaluated in such terms. This practice casts further doubt on the traditional view that Greek armies engaged in pitched battles as a matter of principle.

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2021

A Companion to Greek Warfare

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The Killing Zone

Cited by 32 publications

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‘Twas When my Shield Turned traitor’! Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield

‘Twas When my Shield Turned traitor’! Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield

Risk, chance and danger in Classical Greek writing on battle

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