the question is asked partly by the title

my qurstion is mostly spurred by the recent total war game by creative assembly (which is centred around the punic wars and begins its campaign in 270BC)

the question being, how prevelant were hoplites, aka aspis and spear wielding spearmen, used in the hellenistic period , by around the time as the punic wars, in addition to that, were hoplite, -like/ inspired, armies stilll being used by, say, the carthaginians? i know that the italians obviously abandoned hoplite style warfare by the punic wars, ad were instead using the maniple system..

as it is in game, massalia, athens, pergamon, sparta (wernt they pretty much neutered after luectra ?) and to a lesser extent epirus, as well as every other hellenic style faction, playable or not, will feature aspis and dory wielding, hoplites,athens, syracuse, etc feature almost purely hoplite armies, with phalangites and such taking a backseat...

unless i am sorely mistaken, even if athens and sparta and epirus could somehow been seen as seperate entities


would i be right i thinking that their army roster would be, pretty much indistinguishable from the macedonian style of combat, their levies, once being hoplites, now being trained to fight in the macedonian style as phalangites?

or was there perhaps even a resurgance in the greek city states of fighting in the hoplite style at the hellenistic period dragged on and the successor kingdoms started to fracture after the constant civil wars?

Just to complicate matters, "hoplite" means an armed man, and was apparently used at times to describe what we would call a phalangite. That's probably contributing to the debate.

BUT it does seem that the old-style hoplite armed with aspis and spear never entirely went away. And no reason he should, given that many troops were spear-armed thureophoroi, or "peltasts" that had no real resemblence to the old-fashioned Thracian javelin-chuckers.

On the other hand, during the Roman invasion of Greece in the second century BC, at least some local levies were indeed pike-armed phalangites, so it seems safe to assume that individual cities such as Athens were fielding such troops on a normal basis.

Carthage is even more tangled. Connolly and Warry follow the idea of the native Carthaginian troops being strictly Hellenistic pikemen. But apparently the main description on which this is based (from Cannae?) is a little more ambiguous and could be interpreted as something much more Roman-looking, basically thureophoroi with javelins. There was some kind of essay online about that, a few years back, probably long gone. And I probably didn't save it, but I can dig around and see. Bottom line, the idea of Carthaginian pikemen is far from certain. Of course, most of Hannibal's army was Celtic, in any case.

Dunno if this old discussion will help:

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/25-allies-a-enemies-of-rome/143071

It shames me to admit it, but I'm having trouble remembering my early Roman history. *Were* there any Greek city-states in Italy at Hannibal's time that were NOT official Roman allies? I know there were some that deserted the Roman side--I don't *think* there were any that were still completely independent but I honestly don't recall. In any case, cities like those might still retain more Greek or Hellenistic vestiges than the Roman and allied armies did. Aspis shields and images of them are common features of Italian tombs, but those may all be earlier than the late 3rd century BC.

Hopefully that muddies the water some, ha!

Matthew

I thought this topic is on the use of hoplites in real battles during the Hellenistic period before realizing that this is about the video game Total War: Rome II. Anyway, you guys can continue with your discussions and I apologize for the interruption. ;)
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:p Silly man! I was trying to ignore the gaming references and be all historical-wise! But now I'm going to go play Assault Cube for a while. With grenades.

Matthew

I thought that the Macedonian hypaspists were equipped as old-style hoplites and fought as hoplites.

We . . . don't know for sure.

That might sound trite coming from me, but it's true. This thread made me read Polybius for the nth time (still haven't managed to read his histories from start to finish, but I think I've read his comparison between the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legions repeatedly) and confirm that he uses "hoplites" for the phalangites and "thyreophoroi" for the legionaries. So when he mentioned "hoplites" repeatedly in his account of the battle of Sellasia (mentioned in some wargames as the last battle that saw the appearance of Classical hoplites with aspis and spear), there's really no way to tell whether he really meant hoplites in the classical style or Macedonian-style phalangites (although Occam's razor favours the latter).

Epirus having so many old-style hoplites is definitely a little odd, since the battles between Rome and Pyrrhus are traditionally cited as some of the main examples of interactions between Roman legions and the Macedonian-style phalanx.

And no, Lacedaemon/Sparta wasn't entirely knocked out after Leuctra. It lost a great deal of prestige, but it was still a significant power at the local level. It had a brief resurgence under Cleomenes in the 220s (BC) until the defeat at Sellasia and the fall of Lacedaemon itself to the Antigonid Macedonians. Afterwards it was ruled by a series of petty tyrants, including Nabis who ran afoul of Rome a couple of decades later. It's worth noting that Plutarch said Cleomenes changed the way Spartans fought by replacing their arms and teaching them to fight with the sarissa, but we don't know how true it is since I don't think we have any corroboration of this from earlier sources written closer to the time of Cleomenes' life.

And that's enough rambling for one night, I guess....

Great stuff, Lafayette, thanks!

Matthew

the other thing that i was unsure about is the nature and political affiliation of the greek city states around that 270bc mark,

and also the status of sparta, my assumption is that sparta lost it's ability to creat it's famous fighters when a large chunck of the spartan soldiers were destrroyed at luectra. did they keep supplying troops to the macedonians anmyway?

Re: Macedonian hypaspists as being armed as hoplites, I've heard many arguments about why they "must have been" armed this way, but no real evidence for it. Arguments in favor include that they were supposed to be a more mobile hinge between the sarissa phalanx and the companion cavalry (are hoplites really that much more quick and maneuverable than sarissa-armed troops?), that they covered the vulnerable flank of the phalanx (apparently the left flank didn't need such protection), and that they were used in siege assaults and in rough terrain (I would think that the heavy hoplite shield could be a disadvantage in these situations). I don't really see any reason why the hypaspists would need to be armed that differently from the phalanx, except maybe using javelins or other lighter spears for certain missions, which the rest of the pezhetairoi may have done as well (unless they just sat out sieges and the like).

Some have argued that the infantry depicted on the Alexander Sarcophagus were hypaspists, but I don't see how this is necessary. They are certainly carrying hoplite-style shields (as are some of the Persians), but it could be members of some other unit (more on this presently) or just that the Greek sculptor(s) were more used to the hoplite shield.

There is also the issue of several unit names that have (to me) slightly unclear roles and degrees of overlap. There are the hypaspists, the royal hypaspists, and the somatophylakes. Some have argued that the hypaspists and royal hypaspists are one and the same, some have argued that the royal hypaspists and somatophylakes are one and the same, and some believe them all to be separate units. In any case, it seems possible that there was a small "core" guard unit that actually defended Alexander, and these could have been armed in hoplite fashion, rather than with the sarissa. These could be the men depicted on the sarcophagus. Arrian gives two versions of the murder of Cleitus, in one Alexander takes a longche from a somatophylax ("bodyguard") and in the other he takes a sarissa from a phylax ("guard"). This brings up the question of if either the bodyguard or the plain guard are hypaspists. Some see the phylax as synonymous with the hypaspists and use this as evidence for their use of the sarissa.

Moving on to the Spartan army under Cleomenes III, I see no reason to doubt Plutarch's claim that this king rearmed the Spartans in Macedonian fashion. The passage is oddly full of detail--he taught them to use the sarissa with two hands instead of the spear ("doratos"), and to carry their shield by the strap("ochanis") rather than with the porpax. It would seem strange to me for Plutarch to put in this amount of specificity about the rearmament process unless he took the info from a source that he trusted. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary it seems safest to assume that Cleomenes did indeed rearm the Spartan citizens in the Macedonian style.

Regarding the shrinking Spartan citizen army, Plutarch ascribes this largely to the increasing concentration of land and wealth in the hands of a few Spartans, which led to the majority of the citizens being dropped out of full citizen status. Agis IV and Cleomenes III aimed to restore the citizen army by redistributing land, cancelling debts, and allowing perioikoi and foreigners to be enrolled as full citizens.

Thanks, Michael! That's also great stuff. Yeah, I kinda suspected that was the case with the hypaspist identification.

I will say that, having handled a sarissa, and (17th century) 12-foot pikes in formation, the old-fashioned hoplite kit does seem pretty maneuverable by comparison! Not that they were exactly *reknowned* for maneuverability--I agree that one would expect thureophoroi or skirmishers to be better in those roles.

History's mysteries!

Matthew

so to sum up., my suspicions about the unit rosters of sparta, athens, massilia, syracuse and other 'greek' city states ( http://www.honga.net/totalwar/rome2/faction.php?f=rom_athens to give an idea of the 'athenian' faction roster ) being something more suited to the pelleponesion war, not the hellenistic period, and therefore being more or less completely anachronistic...

were pretty much dead on

(probably the developers going, theyre greeks, they need hoplites, and we need spartans because everyone loves the spartan hoplites)