The Homeric Way of War: The Iliad and the Hoplite Phalanx (I)
202 /
The Homeric Way of War: The Iliad and the Hoplite Phalanx (I) H.J. van Wees ^Source: Greece & Rome, voi. 41, 1994 , pp. 1 - 18 .
Irene J. F. De Jong (eds.), Homer, Critical Assessments: Vol. II: The Homeric World, London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
I believe we may be able to come up with an even better reconstruction, which entails a reassessment of the historical date of Homeric combat and the development of phalanx-warfare. (p221)
1. Multitudes of Champions: Mass Combat in Open Formation
if one assumes that a text is inconsistent, one can simply select evidence to suit one’s purposes, and discard anything that does not fit. (p222)
For methodological reasons, therefore, we should in this respect treat the Iliad as we would any other source, and attempt to reconstruct from it a meaningful, coherent picture, based, if possible, on all the evidence.
We may begin with an issue, and a crucial issue at that, on which Latacz is undoubtedly right.
Latacz has shown that, contrary to appearances, the nameless mass of warriors does not remain passive, a mere backdrop to the exploits of a few heroes, as many have believed.
The poet constantly hints and implies, and sometimes says outright, that the mass plays an active and decisive role. (p222)
While it seems to me beyond question that the efforts of the mass of warriors do determine victory and defeat in a Homeric battle, Latacz’ ideas on how the mass plays its part are unconvincing. (p223)
He argues that,after preliminary skirmishing, a Homeric army proceeds to fight in exactly the same way as an Archaic or Classical hoplite phalanx: the men form up in dense formation and join massed hand-to-hand combat.
The nature of Homeric battle and military organization, in fact, makes it impossible for any sort of massed formation to remain intact for long.(p224)
Frequently it is small groups of warriors rather than individual men who leave battle.
Army contingents consist of many bands, each comprising a leader and his retinue, and when the leader leaves, his followers go with him.
Furthermore, when a breakthrough occurs, armies disperse in flight and pursuit.
I conclude that, although certain passages in the Iliad may put one in mind of the hoplite phalanx, such passages are neither interpolations nor evidence that the presence of a phalanx-style formation is assumed throughout. They merely show that warriors stand together in dense crowds before battle, while during battle they tend to disperse but at times flock together again to form thick clusters of men.
We may now turn to the evidence for masses engaging in hand-to-hand combat. (p224)
Alternatively, the mass could be doing battle in open formation, with the warriors dispersed sufficiently widely to allow some men to fight their opponent from a distance, using javelins, arrows or stones, while others move in closer and strike their opponent with spear or sword. (P225)
An even more conspicuous problem is that the great majority of battle scenes does not depict mass action at all, but the deeds of individual warriors who appear to fight in relative isolation.
These ‘champions’ have enough freedom of movement to seek out particular opponents, and they can choose their means of attack, variously firing arrows, throwing rocks or javelins, or engaging the enemy at close range. (p225)
The only explanation I can see, apart from after all declaring Homer wholly inconsistent in his portrayal of battle, is that scenes of mass and of individual combat depict one and the same thing from different perspectives.(p226)
Mass scenes featuring countless arrows flying, men ‘rushing forward in throngs’, or general slashing and stabbing, do not picture a massed, close formation in action. They describe simply a large number of men each shooting, striking, and running back and forth in the manner of the heroes in scenes of individual combat.
Conversely, accounts of one-to-one clashes between heroes are simply close-ups of men doing battle amidst a dispersed mass of warriors who fight in just the same way.
In an open formation every single man in the army would have his chance to meet the enemy face to face, since any individual could find enough space within the ranks to allow him to go forward and attack. The distinction between promakhoi and ‘the multitude of their companions’ behind them does not imply two separate categories of soldier, those who do all the actual fighting and those who stand back and watch.
The promakhoi are simply that section of the mass (p226) which at any given moment is closest to the enemy, and engaged in actual combat, while the ‘multitude’ are those who at that particular moment are keeping their distance from the fight. (p227)
A Homeric army, then, operates as follows.
As the warriors, who form a dense crowd before battle, advance towards the enemy, they gradually disperse.
Some men quickly advance right up to the enemy and from the very start fight hand to hand with opponents who have likewise ventured far forward, while other men more cautiously advance to barely within missile range, and yet others hang back out of danger altogether.
The latter may go forward when the spirit takes them, and the former may drop back; the army is in a constant flux.
When in the course of battle crises occur which require a concentration of forces, a larger proportion of men will be drawn into active combat, and troops may be called together from all along the front.
Thus the fighting may temporarily become more intense as denser crowds gather and then scatter again when the crisis has passed or a breakthrough has been achieved, but there will be no fundamental change of tactics.
This is how the anonymous multitude and the famous heroes fight in Homer, and this is how the mass plays its decisive role in battle. (p227)
2. Show, Speed and Space: Chariots in Battle
There is a curious consensus that Homer does not know what he is doing when he has his heroes drive around in war-chariots. (p228)
We shall see, however, that there is nothing wrong with the way the heroes use their chariots, and that it easily fits our reconstruction of epic battle. (p228)
It has gone largely unnoticed that the picture presented by Homer is in itself consistent and plausible, because scholars have been preoccupied with the idea that war-chariots ought to be used quite differently. (p229)
The conclusion generally drawn is that epic poets knew that war-chariots had once existed, but had no idea of how they operated. (p230)
It is, as I said, curious that such a broad consensus exists, for the reasoning behind it is fundamentally flawed.
It is a mistake to think that only considerations of military efficiency determine the ways of war in any society.
Homer’s chariots do not fight in battalions for the very good reason that they belong to leaders, each of whom stays in the company of his own band of followers, who fight on foot.
Nor is it hard to understand why chariots are ‘improperly’ used as mere means of transport.
Unlike the chariots of the Near Eastern armies, the Homeric chariot is not designed specifically for use in war, but is an allpurpose vehicle used for peace-time travel and racing as well as in battle.
It is also a great status symbol, since it is drawn by two or more expensive horses. Not being made for exclusively military purposes, the chariot’s role in battle is a simple extension of its role at home.
It retains its function as a means of transport — not only to and from, but also ivithin battle. (p230)
Moreover, the chariot’s function as a status symbol is undiminished in war. (p231)
If the heroes do not use chariots in the theoretically most effective way, it is because their fighting habits are shaped by social, cultural, and economic conditions. The cultural pressure to attain prestige drives men to acquire chariots and use them even in battle; the social fact that these men are leaders forces them to use their chariots singly, rather than in battalions; and the economic fact that they can ill afford to lose their horses makes them employ their chariots with great caution. (P231)
202
/
