Antiquity History

Deep Dive · Ancient Warfare

Greek Hoplites: Soldiers of the City-States

The Greek hoplite was the dominant infantry soldier of the eastern Mediterranean from about 700 to 350 BCE. Armed with a thrusting spear, a short sword, a large round shield, and a bronze helmet and breastplate, the hoplite was the citizen-soldier of the Greek city-state, and the phalanx — the tight formation of hoplites that he fought in — was the principal military innovation of the Greek world. The hoplite phalanx defeated the Persian Empire at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea, fought the long and ruinous Peloponnesian War, and gave the Greek world its characteristic way of war.

This cluster page is a guided tour of the Greek hoplite: his arms, his armor, his training, his tactics, and his legacy. It links out to the Ancient Warfare pillar, the Persian Wars, The Battle of Marathon, and the Battle of Thermopylae.

The Hoplite

The word hoplite (Greek hoplitēs) comes from the noun hoplon, the large round bronze shield that was the hoplite’s most distinctive piece of equipment. The hoplon was about a meter (three feet) in diameter, made of wood with a bronze facing, and held by a central arm band (the porpax) and a hand grip near the rim (the antilabē). The shield was heavy (about 7–8 kg / 15–18 lbs) and required a strong arm to wield, but it was also the most effective protection a Greek soldier could have.

A hoplite’s basic equipment was:

The total weight of the equipment was about 22–30 kg (50–65 lbs), and the hoplite had to march, fight, and run in it. The cost of the equipment was high — a suit of bronze armor cost the equivalent of several months’ wages for a skilled craftsman — and only relatively prosperous citizens could afford it. This is one of the reasons that the hoplite class was limited to free citizens of the city-state.

The Phalanx

The hoplite fought in a formation called the phalanx (literally, “log” or “row”). The phalanx was a rectangular formation of hoplites, usually eight ranks deep, with each man’s shield protecting not only himself but also the man on his right. The rightward bias of the shield meant that the phalanx had a natural tendency to drift right as the soldiers tried to keep their shields over their neighbors; experienced commanders used this to their advantage.

The classical Greek battle was essentially a shoving match. The two phalanxes marched at each other, often at a slow walk, and crashed together with a great shout (the alalagmos). The front ranks of each phalanx tried to push the enemy back; the rear ranks of each phalanx tried to keep the front ranks from being pushed back. When one side’s formation broke, the soldiers would rout, and the victors would pursue, killing as many of the fleeing enemy as they could.

The phalanx was effective because it concentrated the force of many men in a small area, it protected each man with his neighbor’s shield, and it presented a wall of spear points to the enemy. The phalanx was vulnerable, however, to attacks on its flanks, to rough terrain, and to the breakdown of cohesion. Once the phalanx broke, the individual hoplite was vulnerable to cavalry and light troops.

The Hoplite as Citizen

The hoplite was not a professional soldier. He was a citizen of a Greek city-state, and he was called up for military service only when the city was at war. In most Greek cities, all free adult male citizens were expected to serve in the phalanx, and military service was considered a right and a duty of citizenship. The Greek word for the citizen army was the stratos, and the Greek word for the assembly of citizens who decided on war and peace was the ekklēsia.

The hoplite-citizen was a farmer, an artisan, a merchant, or a craftsman in peacetime. In wartime, he marched with his phalanx, fought pitched battles, and then returned to his fields. The Greek city-states did not maintain large standing armies until the fourth century BCE, and even then, mercenaries and allied troops were heavily used.

The Persian Wars

The hoplite phalanx reached its highest point of effectiveness in the Persian Wars. The Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE was won by about 10,000 hoplites (the Athenians and the Plataeans) against a much larger Persian army. The Greek victory was not just a matter of superior arms or training: it was also a matter of superior discipline, cohesion, and political unity.

The full story of the Persian Wars is told in the Persian Wars cluster and the Battle of Thermopylae long-tail.

The Peloponnesian War

The long Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) was the first great test of the hoplite phalanx in a long, exhausting war. The war was fought mostly by phalanx battles in the open field, with the occasional amphibious operation or cavalry raid. The war was won by Sparta, partly because of Spartan discipline, partly because of Persian money, and partly because Athens was destroyed by the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 BCE. The war exhausted both combatants and left the Greek world open to the rise of Macedon.

The Decline of the Hoplite Phalanx

The hoplite phalanx was eventually replaced by a longer, more flexible infantry formation. The Theban general Epaminondas, at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, massed the Theban phalanx 50 ranks deep on the left wing, leaving the right wing thin. The concentration of force on the left wing broke the Spartan phalanx, which was arrayed in the traditional 12 ranks. The Macedonian king Philip II went further, equipping his infantry with the sarissa, a pike up to 6 meters (20 feet) long, and arraying his phalanx in deeper, more flexible formations. The Macedonian phalanx was the army that Alexander the Great used to conquer the Persian Empire.

The Legacy of the Hoplite

The Greek hoplite was one of the most famous and most influential soldiers in history. The idea of the citizen-soldier, the citizen who is also a soldier and the soldier who is also a citizen, has shaped Western political and military thought ever since. The phalanx, as a military formation, has been compared to (and contrasted with) the Roman legion, the Macedonian phalanx, the medieval pike square, the Renaissance pike block, and the modern infantry platoon. The hoplite’s equipment has been studied, copied, and idealized by reenactors and historians for two and a half thousand years.