The Nature of Hoplite Battle

Abstract

The Nature of Hoplite Battle How WAS a hoplite battle fought? Present orthodoxy holds that the two sides, after each stationed its soldiers about three feet apart and (usually) eight ranks deep, met in the so-called othismos or "shove."1 The object was literally to push through and break up the opposing line. Once their formation broke, hoplite soldiers could be attacked by light-armed troops and cavalry, as well as by pursuing hoplites. George Cawkwell recently challenged this view, calling it 'wildest folly," since "the front ranks would have been better able to use their teeth than their weapons when a broad shield was jammed against the back with the weight of seven men" and since the othismos appears to come in a second phase after a period of individual combats which sometimes lasted a long time.2 Cawkwell I would like to thank Davidson College for a summer travel grant which enabled me to write down the ideas presented here. They have been improved by presentation and discussion at the U.S. Naval War College and have also benefited from the criticisms of Donald Kagan, E. Badian, John Buckler, Ira Gruber, and several anonymous readers. Jacques Harmand, La Guerre antique, de Sumer i Rome (Paris 1973) 151; J. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley 1970) 174-76. 2. Philip of Macedon (London 1978) 150-53. Johannes Kromayer gave a similar interpreta tion of battle in three phases, though he did not employ the terms pyknosis and synaspismos, in

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