Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

[Kiero]

I was busy and lost track of this.

You are thinking of the democratic period. Things were different during the aristocratic period: During the aristocratic period usually only as small aristocratic elite actually fought, there weren't real armies, and aristocrats fought whatever way it was most convenient for them. Most of the fighting was done on foot, but it wasn't related to cavalry being looked down.

Eventually certain non-aristocratic groups gained power in cities, and pushed aristocrats out of power, largely because they found that 500 merchants/artisans/whatever with armor, shields and long spears could defeat 10 aristocratic warriors.

Perhaps I'm blurring the two. It was certainly the case in the democratic period, running right up to the rise of Makedon, that there was a suspicion of aristocrats choosing to fight on horseback.

Maybe. It doesn't change the fact that merchants and artisans didn't have as much free time to spend training as nobles did. Plus many people who could afford armor weren't able to afford horses.

There's no maybe about it, the notion that stirrups are required for a couched charge is nonsense. Alexander's Companions were charging-home, heavy cavalry, none of them had stirrups. Their primary purpose was to give horse-archers a good seat.

That came later, starting during the Greco-Persian Wars and the rise Athenian power. Only Athens and Corinth developed huge warfleets, but most Greek states developed armies of citizen-soldiers.

There isn't really a lot of time between the re-establishment of democracy in 510BC and the Ionian Revolt in 499BC, so I think the point is rather moot.

Greek warfare became increasingly sofisticated over time, eventually evolving into fully professional armies during the Macedonian and Hellenistic period. At the beginning, when they toppled the nobles during the VII-VI a.C, they had just enough training to stay in formation and move towards the enemy.

We tend to see Greek history as an homogeneous thing, but there were around 160 years between Maraton and the conquest of the Persian empire.

I'm pretty clear on the differences between Greco-Persian Wars and Hellenistic era. I was already distinguishing in that part you quoted between the Greco-Persian Wars, the wars of the Delian League and those of the Peloponnesian War. The Hellenistic era is often ignored altogether, except as the prelude to the era of Roman dominance.

For the most part, Greece itself didn't have professional armies in the Hellenistic era, it still relied on citizen-militias. They changed back and forth between hoplite/pike/thureophoros models as they won and lost in conflicts. The closest anyone came to professionalism was if they turned mercenary.

Even Alexander didn't have a lot of use for Greeks on his campaigns; the fighting was done by Makedonians and various allied nations, Greeks might be put on a flank or more often used as garrisons to hold strong points while the rest of the army moved on.

The professionals in the Hellenistic were Makedonian settlers and other Hellenes and Hellenising peoples given grants of land in return for service. And mercenaries.

Being and athlete is very different from being a martial artist, and even more different from being a trained soldier. Training with sword and spear was, surprisingly, unpopular in Athens during the classic period.

No they weren't different, that's a modern division that doesn't apply. Athletes trained for the Olympics and other major games, which contained a host of martial events in them; running in and out of armour, throwing javelins and discus, boxing/wrestling (pankration), fighting in armour, horse-racing. All those events were practise for war. We have the example of the athlete Dioxippus famously beating one of Alexander's soldiers in a set-piece bout.

And not everybody could afford to spend a lot of time training in the gymnasium. There is a difference between the ideal the Greek set for themselves and their reality. People like Socrates and Plato actually had an aristocratic mindset, and the ideal citizen they described was modelled after the athenian upper class, but many artisans, merchants and farmers had to work long hours.

Also, the term "yeomen" isn't really appropiate for Greece. During the classic period Athenian society was, roughly speaking, divided into rich landowners who had labourers work their land, city-dwelling merchants, artisans and sailors, and poor farmers who owned their own land but had to word hard and didn't had leisure time. Free farmers became poorer and poorer during the classic period, losing a lost of land to rich landowners, creating social tensions, until most free farmers were very poor people working the worst lands who couldn't afford to buy hoplite armor.

Maybe, but the minimum requirement for a hoplite wasn't a full panoply, but a shield, helmet and spear. That isn't as high a bar as also having cuirass/thorax, greaves, possibly arm and thigh plates.

Do you have a source for this?

I was thinking of countless Athenian and other Greek generals, from Miltiades down, who all fought on foot (often in the centre of the front rank) even though they were of the highest social classes and could ride.

Add to that the low proportion of cavalry in the battles of the Peloponnesian War compared to those of Philip/Alexander. There's no way the aristocracy were only represented in the tithe of cavalry present.

I don't believe anyone would have cleaved strictly to the Solonian divisions, there would be aristocrats too impoverised to fight in the saddle and richer artisans who nevertheless continued in the traditions of their fathers and fought in the phalanx.