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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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This chapter takes aim at Victor Davis Hanson's The Western Way of War and its highly influential and popular conception of how hoplites fought. It critiques the orthodox view—especially the version of Hanson—concerning the actual weight of the hoplite panoply, which the chapter argues was far lighter than the traditional estimate of about seventy pounds. The chapter proposes a different interpretation of the various stages of hoplite battle, such as the hoplite charge into battle. In this view, the evidence supports neither the picture of a mass collision between armies nor the concept of a mass pushing of troops or the account of the othismos as a rugby scrum. Furthermore, this chapter contends that the phalanx did not consist exclusively of hoplites before Marathon. It suggests, however, that even in the fifth century hoplites never actually fought in a cohesive formation.

The second part of the Hellenika, covering the decade after the end of the Peloponnesian War, is Xenophon at his best. It unfolds in a series of discrete, often dramatic, episodes: The Thirty at Athens, the campaigns of Thibron and Derkylidas in Asia Minor, the Spartan War against Elis, the accession of King Agesilaos, the conspiracy of Kinadon, the campaigns of Agesilaos in Asia Minor, the outbreak of war against Sparta in Greece, and Agesilaos' recall. It includes several of Xenophon's best speeches, some of his wittiest dialogue, and several choice turns of phrase. This edition follows the pattern of the Hellenika III.3.10 (Warminster 1989). The commentary tries both to interpret the text and to assess its historical accuracy. Throughout the book uses the rest of Xenophon's works to throw light on the Hellenika. The edition presents Greek text with facing-page translation.