Hoplite: The citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states

Civilized warfare on a grand scale in Greece began with the rise of Mycenaean civilization during the 2nd millennium BC.

In the Archaic periods, weapons, equipment, and tactics changed significantly with the appearance of the Greek hoplite and the invention of the phalanx formation (massed ranks and files of hoplites).

Hoplites were the heavy infantry soldiers of the armies of the Greek city-states from about 650 B.C. until the end of the Hellenistic Age, about 30 B.C. Hoplites were protected usually by helmets; breastplates; greaves (armor worn from the ankle to the knee), and large, round, bronze shields. These shields, called hoplons, were approximately three feet in diameter.

The hoplite was part of a whole formation of phalanx. He did not stand in his chariot literally above the masses of foot soldiers. The phalanx could only succeed insofar as all stood their ground together, insofar as no one stood out from the entire formation. Hoplite:
The citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states

Battle of Olpae in 426 BC

Olpae was a stronghold near Amphilochian Argos. The battle of Olpae (426 BC) was an Athenian victory that ended a Spartan campaign aimed at the conquest of Acarnania and Amphilochia.

In the winter of 426 BC the Ambraciots invaded Amphilochia and took Olpae. The Acarnanians hastened to the defense of Amphilochia and asked Demosthenes to come from Naupactus to join their central command.

It has been suggested that the Acarnanians were impressed with Demosthenes’ military skills. Soon after the arrival, Demosthenes took part in the battle of Olpae.

Demosthenes gave battle to the enemy between Olpae and Argos and by skillfully contrived ambuscade annulled the advantage which they had in superior numbers.

According to Thucydides, Demosthenes’, generalship was responsible for the major victory of the Acarnanian-Athenian force over the Ambraciot-Peloponnesian enemy.

The victory cost the conquerors about three hundred men. On the other side the loss was great; and Menedaius (Spartan), on whom the command devolved after the death of his colleagues, found himself reduced to the embarrassing alternative of sustaining a blockade both by land and sea.
Battle of Olpae in 426 BC

 

Battle of Plataea

Plataea was a city of southern Boeotia situated in the plain between Mount Cithaeron and the Asopus river.

As a result of an attempt by Thebes to force it into the Boeotia Confederacy, the city joined an alliance with Athens in 519 BC. It subsequently provided support to the Athenians against the Persian at Marathon (490), Artemesium and Salamis (480), before being sacked by the Persian in 479.

Plataea was the scene of the great final battle between the Persian forces and the assembled Greek resistance in 479 BC. The two forces met in Boeotia on the slopes of Mount Cithaeron near Plataea.

In this battle a largely Greek force including Helots, defeated the Persian army of Xerxes I, led by Mardonius, brother in law of King Xerxes; the victory marked this battle as the final Persian attempt to invade mainland Greece.

Location of Plataea

The Persian force numbered about 50,000 men, including 15,000 from northern and central Greece. The Greek army, led by King Pausanias of Sparta, totaled about 40,000 men, including 10,000 Spartans and 8,000 Athenians.

The Persian not only had the advantage in total numbers but also had more cavalry and archers. Two sides faced one another for several days.

Mardonius attempted to force the Greeks to fight on a flat plain, where the Persian cavalry would be most effective. When the Greeks tried to change their position, Mardonius believed they were fleeing.

He attacked but the Greeks proved superior at close quarter fighting. Persian lost and Mardonius was killed.

Causalities are difficult to estimate, but the Persian probably lost about 10,000 non-European warriors and 1000 Medizing Greeks. The Greeks forces suffered causalities of perhaps just over 1000 men.
Battle of Plataea

Fourth Sacred War

In the fourth Sacred War, Philip II of Macedon defeated the Athenians and Thebans. This victory paved the way for domination over Greece by Philip and later by his son Alexander, whose conquests were of vast historical consequence.

Fourth Sacred War (339–338 BC) was short. The Athenians were accused in the Amphictyony in impiety by the Amphissans; Aeschines, representing the Athenians, reacted with a counter charge that the Amphissans had been cultivating the cursed land of Cirrha, dedicated to the god Apollo in the First Sacred War.

A dispute between Athens and Thebes escalated when ambassadors to the Amphictyonic meeting, including Aeschines were attacked by the men of Amphissa during an inspection of the sacred plain. 

The next day the Amphictyony attacked Amphissan houses and port facilities on the sacred plain. Amphictyony declared war on Amphissa and appointed Philip as a military leader of the Amphictionic League in the fall of 339.

Philip brought his army south through Thessaly into Doris but instead of continuing south to Delphi he turned east and occupied Elateia, close to the border with Boeotia.

This provocation convinced Athens and Thebes to resolve their differences and mount the final resistance to Philip.

A few months later the war was renewed, but was overshadowed by the alliance made between Athens and Thebes and the resulting conflict with Philip at Chaironeia in 338. The alliances which were including Athens, Thebes the Euboean cities, Megara, Corinth, Achaea and several other islands was defeated at the Battle of Chaeronea in August 338.
Fourth Sacred War

Battle of Salamis (September 480 BC)

The Battle of Salamis was the most important naval engagement of the Greco-Persians Wars. When the news came of the Greek defeat at Thermopylae, the remaining Greek triremes sailed south to Salamis to provide security for the city of Athens.

Although outnumbered by the Persians, the Athenian admiral, Themistocles (524-459 BC), lured the Persian fleet into the narrow waters between the mainland and the island of Salamis, while would prevent the Persians from exploiting their numerical advantage. Xerxes also could not make full use of his stronger fleet due to the geographical limitations of the bay.

On August 29 the Persian fleet of perhaps 500 ships appeared off Phaleron Bay, east of the Salamis Channel, and entered the Bay of Salamis.

The Greeks relied on superior fighting qualities, and in a desperate and confused battle they inflicted heavy casualties on the Persians. In this battle, Themistocles fleet sunk about 200-300 Persian ships.

After the setback at Salamis, Xerxes returned to Persia with some of his army, although powerful forces remained in Greece ready to resume the campaign.
Battle of Salamis (September 480 BC)

Third Sacred War

The Third Sacred War was the last great internecine conflict of the classical Greeks, the culmination of continuously series of wars that began as early as 465 BC, only to be ended by Philip of Macedonia in 346 BC.

In the twenty years after the mutually disastrous battle of Mantinea, the leaderless, Greek city-states further exhausted themselves in continued and confused civil warfare.

The so-called Social War (357- 55 BC) or ‘War of the Allies’ of Athens, only weakened the Athenian fleet.

From small beginning, this war threatened to involve all of Greece. Thebans and other Thessalonians in the Amphictyonic League charged their ancient enemy Phocis with cultivating lands sacred to Apollo.

Phocis was fined as was (belatedly) Sparta for its seizure in 382 of the Cadmea at Thebes.  Under Philomelus, Phocis refused to pay; it armed, captured the Delphic shrine and its treasury in 355. The Phocians had taken possession of the sanctuary and were meting down the offerings and the contents of the treasury for their military expenses and the service of the oracle had been almost suspended.

Thebes declared war in 355, defeating Philomelus at Neon in 354 and causing a Phocian retreat in 353. Philip helped Thebes conquer Phocis from 351 to 347, seeking peace with Athens at the same time.

The Third Sacred War lasted until 346 BC, where King Philip II of Macedonia gained control of Delphi. The war was concluded with Peace of Philocrates and Philip II became the chairman of the Amphictyonic League.
Third Sacred War

Battle of Artemisium

The Battle of Artemisium, or Battle of Artemisium, was a series of naval engagements between the Greek and Persian forces early in the Greek campaigns of Xerxes I Shah Achaemenian, in 480 BC.

The Greeks were commanded by the Spartan Eurybiades. The battle of Artemisium was fought nearly simultaneously with the land battle of Thermopylae, 40 miles away and was part of Greek strategy to block the Persian southward advance at two neighboring bottlenecks, on land and sea, north of central Greece.

The battle of Artemisium was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and others, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I. The Allied Greek fleet has about 380 ships, with the largest contingent supplied by Athens about 180 ships.

The Persian ships – which in fact were manned by subject peoples, such as Phoenicians, Egyptians and Ionian Greeks may have numbers 450 or more.

The Persian suffered a loss of 400 ships near the coast of Magnesia in a storm which caught them unprepared. In the same manner they lost another 200 ships which has been sent around Euboea to seal the straits separating the island from the mainland.

The fight was something of an infantry battle on the water. The Persian preferred boarding tactics to ramming. They fight by bringing their ships alongside the Greek’s and sending over the thirty Persian foot soldiers who ride aboard each ship. The Greeks fought back with their own ship’s soldiers, about 40 per vessel.

In the final encounter, the Greeks broke the news of the forcing of Thermopylae was received. The Persian failed to capitalize on the situation and so the series of engagements were essentially indecisive.

The Battle of Artemisium inspired the Greeks the new confidence, and the second naval action at Salamis, two thousand Persian vessels were engaged against three hundred and eighty Greek, terminated in the defeat of the Persian.
Battle of Artemisium