specifics in Spear fighting combat

[Sean Manning]

Christian wrote:-

My memory is that Athenian ephebe training was only instituted in the late 4th century, as I noted in my post. Is there any other source that speaks to hoplite training earlier?

Yes, Xenophon mostly, but also Thucydides, Plato's Laches and many other sources refer to Hoplite training ( or rather, lack of it ! ) so we have a fairly good picture of what Hoplites could and couldn't do....
Prior to the ephebic reform (reform in recruitment) at Athens in 335 BC, Athenian hoplites were generally expected to provide their own arms and armour, and responsible for their own training ( see for example, the discussion in Plato's Laches, where the pros and cons of professional teachers of Hoplomachia = hoplite fighting, are discussed.).
While their defeat at Macedonian hands at Chaeironea in 338 caused the Athenians to rethink how to assure their military preparedness, little was done until Alexander the Great departed for the Near East in the spring of 335. The resulting ephebic reform involved a massive increase in the city's hoplite forces, with the thetes, the poor of Athens, admitted to the hoplite ranks for the first time. The need to equip the thetes(lower class citizens) as hoplites resulted in the likely adoption of a system of issue-and-return, which was the most economical one available. Each of the ephebes, the new recruits to the system, was given a shield and spear at state expense, trained for a year and was then sent on garrison duty for a year.

Great thread, everyone. Paulus, do we really have any descriptions of collective hoplite training before the late fourth century? I thought that there was none, just talk of hoplomachia and young aristocrats learning tactics and drill. Which leaves the fact that they could form up and move forward as a unit, but how they learned this (and how good most citizen hoplites were at it) rather vague.