07-08-2009, 03:46 PM
I am sorry.
First, I hate it when folks on line misunderstand and.or mis-state my argument, so as I'm guilty of that, I apologize.
I committed another sin in attacking your argument while failing to provide my argument--somethign that smacks of criticism without redeeming value.
So--I still think that the long spear argument is backwards, and I've face competent opponents with every spear length--some far more competent than me. that's why I'm rock solid in my assertion--the long spear is about morale, not about fighting.
I'l go further and state what I believe. I am not a technological reductionist. I don't think weapons play very much role in war, beyond the obvious. i don't think that one army defeats another because their kit is better--that's a modern view born of the discrepancies Westerners began to note starting with the cartridge rifle, and then reasoned back over the ages. Wargamers love such arguments. But weapons, and armor, as such, don't have much impact.
What they DO impact is morale. Armor IS morale--the better armoured a man is, the safer he feels,and more likely he is to face fire and/or spearpoints. Armoured cap a pied, a man may even feel invulnerable. I always find, when I face a 2nd C. AD legionnaire, that they must have had awesome morale, and caused fear in their opponents--just from the quality of their kit.
That said, what I do believe is that sociological and cultural factors outweigh the technological and the intellectual (like drill, or martial arts). Cultures and societies win wars because the infrastructure of one society can support the pace and strain of conflict better than another. weapons and technologies reflect society--seldom the other way around. As an extreme example, Rome would conquer Gaul, not because her soldiers were better, or even better armed and armoured, but because Rome could better arm and armour EVERY man, and send an apparently inexhaustible supply, whereas any individual Gallic chief had only so many men with a chain shirt and a good sword--and so on. This argument is familiar and I won't labor it.
In Archaic and Classical Greece, it seems to me, all states (but Sparta was the best example) had some (fairly small) number of aristocratic warriors (that's their perception, and perhaps Hanson would call them middling farmers and perhaps other people would call them something else.) As the power of the emerging polis expanded, the need for soldiers increased, and various political and social ways were sought to increase soldier numbers and capability--again, Sparta is the most extreme example. Sparta created a system that allowed the largest possible number of men to behave like traditional aristocrats--to live by hunting and war.
Other states sought other solutions the the problem--in Athens, the gymnasium/Palestrina system was generated to allow the largest number of men to have the best possible athletic training.
I would suggest that all of that training was to allow men to bear the weight of armor for the longest time. Late Archaic hoplites wear bronze breastplates, greaves, and sometimes thigh guards, occasionally arm guards, full Corinthian helmets, and, of course, the aspis. As you know, wearing armour for any length of time requires conditioning and practice. Fighting in armour is very different from fighting without.
Of course, as early as Marathon, we read that the desperate Athenians began to put slaves or newly freed men in the rear ranks... they could not have been trained or armoured, and perhaps they started an opposite social trend--toward the unarmoured, virtually untrained hoplite. Certainly Thebes in the 360s was arming slaves.
To my mind, the "democratization" or the warrior--whether it was a phalanx, whether that warrior is called a hoplite--probably led to a massive diminution in fighting skills--and in armour ownership and armour wearing. As fewer men owned armor, the athletic skills that set fitness at a societal premium also probably waned--certainly did, if we believe Isocrates and such speakers in the fourth century, the level of fitness was waning. When the 30 Tyrants tok over, they wantesd to restrict hoplite status to just 6000 citizens. While this is always sited as a sign of their oligarchy, you have to wonder if they aren't just trying to put the clock back in terms of "hwat makes a hoplite."
This would fit with other changes in society--the secularization of wealth, for instance. The decline in political volunteerism that led to the changes in the way choirs were run and paid for, or naval expenditures--or the training of ephebes, all of which are part of the same trend that can be seen, for example, in Menander's comedies--a decline in civic awareness and a desire to avoid duties that had been viewed as privileges just a few generations before.
If you accept this (and I don't expect anyone will without a good scrap!) then it seems likely that the longer spear is a sign of less armor and badly trained hoplites--badly trained as individuals, that is, lacking in the physique and the money to carry off the armor and the hand to hand fighting which (I think) characterized the Persian Wars and before. They may have been much better trained en mass--heck, by 380 they may even have drilled!
First, I hate it when folks on line misunderstand and.or mis-state my argument, so as I'm guilty of that, I apologize.
I committed another sin in attacking your argument while failing to provide my argument--somethign that smacks of criticism without redeeming value.
So--I still think that the long spear argument is backwards, and I've face competent opponents with every spear length--some far more competent than me. that's why I'm rock solid in my assertion--the long spear is about morale, not about fighting.
I'l go further and state what I believe. I am not a technological reductionist. I don't think weapons play very much role in war, beyond the obvious. i don't think that one army defeats another because their kit is better--that's a modern view born of the discrepancies Westerners began to note starting with the cartridge rifle, and then reasoned back over the ages. Wargamers love such arguments. But weapons, and armor, as such, don't have much impact.
What they DO impact is morale. Armor IS morale--the better armoured a man is, the safer he feels,and more likely he is to face fire and/or spearpoints. Armoured cap a pied, a man may even feel invulnerable. I always find, when I face a 2nd C. AD legionnaire, that they must have had awesome morale, and caused fear in their opponents--just from the quality of their kit.
That said, what I do believe is that sociological and cultural factors outweigh the technological and the intellectual (like drill, or martial arts). Cultures and societies win wars because the infrastructure of one society can support the pace and strain of conflict better than another. weapons and technologies reflect society--seldom the other way around. As an extreme example, Rome would conquer Gaul, not because her soldiers were better, or even better armed and armoured, but because Rome could better arm and armour EVERY man, and send an apparently inexhaustible supply, whereas any individual Gallic chief had only so many men with a chain shirt and a good sword--and so on. This argument is familiar and I won't labor it.
In Archaic and Classical Greece, it seems to me, all states (but Sparta was the best example) had some (fairly small) number of aristocratic warriors (that's their perception, and perhaps Hanson would call them middling farmers and perhaps other people would call them something else.) As the power of the emerging polis expanded, the need for soldiers increased, and various political and social ways were sought to increase soldier numbers and capability--again, Sparta is the most extreme example. Sparta created a system that allowed the largest possible number of men to behave like traditional aristocrats--to live by hunting and war.
Other states sought other solutions the the problem--in Athens, the gymnasium/Palestrina system was generated to allow the largest number of men to have the best possible athletic training.
I would suggest that all of that training was to allow men to bear the weight of armor for the longest time. Late Archaic hoplites wear bronze breastplates, greaves, and sometimes thigh guards, occasionally arm guards, full Corinthian helmets, and, of course, the aspis. As you know, wearing armour for any length of time requires conditioning and practice. Fighting in armour is very different from fighting without.
Of course, as early as Marathon, we read that the desperate Athenians began to put slaves or newly freed men in the rear ranks... they could not have been trained or armoured, and perhaps they started an opposite social trend--toward the unarmoured, virtually untrained hoplite. Certainly Thebes in the 360s was arming slaves.
To my mind, the "democratization" or the warrior--whether it was a phalanx, whether that warrior is called a hoplite--probably led to a massive diminution in fighting skills--and in armour ownership and armour wearing. As fewer men owned armor, the athletic skills that set fitness at a societal premium also probably waned--certainly did, if we believe Isocrates and such speakers in the fourth century, the level of fitness was waning. When the 30 Tyrants tok over, they wantesd to restrict hoplite status to just 6000 citizens. While this is always sited as a sign of their oligarchy, you have to wonder if they aren't just trying to put the clock back in terms of "hwat makes a hoplite."
This would fit with other changes in society--the secularization of wealth, for instance. The decline in political volunteerism that led to the changes in the way choirs were run and paid for, or naval expenditures--or the training of ephebes, all of which are part of the same trend that can be seen, for example, in Menander's comedies--a decline in civic awareness and a desire to avoid duties that had been viewed as privileges just a few generations before.
If you accept this (and I don't expect anyone will without a good scrap!) then it seems likely that the longer spear is a sign of less armor and badly trained hoplites--badly trained as individuals, that is, lacking in the physique and the money to carry off the armor and the hand to hand fighting which (I think) characterized the Persian Wars and before. They may have been much better trained en mass--heck, by 380 they may even have drilled!
Qui plus fait, miex vault.
