By Andrew Yamato

Emerging in the 7th century BCE from the “dark age” which followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, the Greek hoplite was a new kind of warrior. Unlike Homer’s aristocratic Mycenaean heroes, who fought individually for personal glory, hoplites were essentially militiamen who fought shield-to-shield beside fathers, sons, brothers, and friends for the collective security of their polis (city state).

Largely drawn from a “middling” class of yeoman farmers and artisans able to purchase their own panoplies of bronze armor, hoplites fought in phalanxes — dense formations generally eight ranks deep which could extend over a kilometer — in which personal heroics were actively discouraged in favor of collectively holding the line. Historians are divided about precisely when this “Classical” phalanx emerged to supplant looser “warband” armies like those described in Homer’s Iliad, with some believing it developed as early as the 7th century and others insisting it was created in response to the Persian invasions of Greece in the early 5th century. The nature of phalanx battle itself is also highly controversial: did these formations charge to collision, trusting their momentum and a collective shield-on-shield othismos (“push”, “press”, or “crush”) to help break the enemy line? Or did they more cautiously stand off to “fence” at spear’s length, only later closing to othismos, if at all? (These are questions which we as diligent reenactors can offer some insight into, and experimentation with various approaches to combat is an important part of our living history presentation.) In any case, however they fought, hoplites most frequently opposed fellow Greeks over centuries of frequent inter-polis warfare, and Greek hoplite mercenaries were highly sought by Persia, Egypt, and other Mediterranean powers of the Classical era. The end of hoplite supremacy came with the Greek defeat by the Macedonian King Philip II and his son Alexander.