The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite

[Vindex]

New book:

The psychology of the Athenian hoplite : the culture of combat in classical Athens / Jason Crowley.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Anyone read it or seen a review please?

[Lyceum]

Hi,

Got a copy, only flicked through it. Was hoping it would mesh with some of research...unfortunately not quite from what I've seen since it doesn't ask the same questions. Thought about doing a review but I don't have the time for something so auxiliary to my research directives and will pass it on soon.

Any particular questions or?

[Vindex]

Just want to know whether its worth adding to the library or borrowing a copy to read instead.

Is is fixed in a particular period or all encompassing?

[Lyceum]

Right, I feel very weary about just putting my thoughts out there outside of a proper review context, especially since I'll inevitably bump into this guy, so as a MAJOR caveat I wish to re-iterate that I've only briefly flicked through this book, if I eventually read it cover to cover a few times I'm sure my opinion is liable to change.

Ok, firstly, as a Classicist I'm interested in Greek culture(s) e.g how we can read and understand Greek poetry in its context, how Greeks thought etc, so there's a heavy emphasis on Greek religion etc. I'm part of the contextual school and fiercely so, so bear that in mind.

This book is...well its not bad. It focuses mainly on the "Classical" period but can happily adduce evidence from elsewhere.

Now, I'm wary about the amount of modern psychological theory, you see this stuff a lot usually in the American schools...Victor Davis Hanson is a prime example of simply not being able to interact with your sources on their own cultural level, no matter how unpleasant that may be.

The author claims that via his paradigm one can, fruitfully, compare "a Athenian Hoplite, a Medieval Archer, and the Modern Infantrymen" - I would contest this fiercely, indeed later in the book he does stress that the hoplite was diametrically opposed to the modern western infantrymen. Still, the constant use of modern theory can jar.

Throughout the book there is some wonderful refutation of VDH's ideas. Which is great...except that Classicists never really took VDH that seriously....so who is this book for?

The middle section is probably the most valuable, its a technical exposition of how hoplites were recruited and, roughly, the tactical capabilities of the phalanx. Its good stuff if you're after that (personally don't care).

I really worry about his...Athenian exceptionalism. He constantly harps on about this and glosses Athenian culturally ludicrously. He talks broadly of the Athenian consensus too, whatever the hell that means. The recent work on looking at the various layers within Greek cultures are basically ignored. In general, this book heavily simplifies in this area.

Also, the Religious section is bad. In particular reading Ares as "marginalised" is shocking! He's a very important Mycenaean deity, despite the famous scenes in the Iliad and the Odyssey he's important to Homer too (the formulaic system), he was an important civic deity too! look at his distribution of sanctuaries, Platon considered a temenos for him imperative for any sensible city. The entire section is very... Nietzsche, you know, Ares vs Athena and all that bollocks. Basically pre Burkertian analysis.

The other section on politics does well in explaining authority, exclusion, inclusion and all that but again its simplified (arguably for reasons of space?). Overall, its not a bad book. If you're the kind of person who puts serious weight on the technical aspects of war the middle section is useful.

I don't know if I suggest buying it, it is good, but then I've spent about an hour or so with it. Erm...I think it could be useful if read besides Chaniotis' "War in the Hellenistic World" and Van Wee's "Status Warriors". I think it glosses Athenian culture too much (seriously? normative consensus?!?!?!?!?!?!) and the religious section is bad.

Its also notable that Simonides and some of the more pertinent attic comedy bits are absent. As I said, I guess its good...but I don't feel the need to worry about Athens.

Sorry if that doesn't make total sense, its been a long day lol.

[Vindex]

I thank you very much for your effort and taking the time to write all that down.

[Sean Manning]

There are a number of Americans right now trying to make universal claims about human behaviour in and attitudes to combat based on less cross-cultural data than would be ideal (Hansen, Grossman, Miller). It sounds like this book may be a reaction to them which tries to combine modern psychology and the historical, contextual approach. I think I will read it when my current research project on the revolt of Cyrus the Younger is finished.

There is something to be said for the idea that we tend to postulate Athens as the norm, with Sparta as the outlier, when Athens may have been just as idiosyncratic as any other polis but happens to dominate our evidence.

[Vindex]

There is something to be said for the idea that we tend to postulate Athens as the norm, with Sparta as the outlier, when Athens may have been just as idiosyncratic as any other polis but happens to dominate our evidence.

Good point. I have always considered her to be, perhaps, the "norm" plus something extra due to her prominence which, as you say, dominates the evidence which in itself is pertinent.

[Lyceum]

Well yes I think that was part of what confused me Sean, a lot of this work is clearly aimed at those sort of American scholars. Fair enough, that's fine. Its just that serious Classicists seem to ignore them...so why write a rebuttal on an academic press like CUP?

BTW speaking of CUP they are to be commended for putting out yet another awesomely turned book, the paper...the cover...everything is gorgeous. I know that's irrelevant, but still, its nice.

So one of the thing that gets me is he does try to make this universal statement, that we can fruitfully cf data from hoplites, medieval archers etc...and it just never bears out. He asks the question "how did the Athenian amateur deal with the stress of combat?" and goes into all this psychological stuff.

The thing is, he also points out elsewhere that the mindset of the Greeks was a lot different: they literally walked on shit and piss and offal, they saw death daily, they had a civic system that was ok with the idea of death (though the accumulation of miasma was a problen, see Parker for that). He could have happily postulated all that without trying to aim for stuff like the "normative consensus".

Also, the other bare fact is, most hoplites would not really be veterans in our sense of the word. One of the massive shifts in the Hellenistic age (starting with Alexander actually) is that soldiers would campaign...and campaign...and campaign....and indeed this DOES have a marked shift on the culture of the time, but we're dealing with Classical Athens.

Viewing Classical Athens is a discrete entity is dangerous incidentally, we do tend to think of the "aristocracy" as international: that is the whole point of wide-scale euergetism like the Alkmaionidai and Delphi etc, in fact people like Pindar and Bakkhylides would have been out of work otherwise....in the earlier periods many of these people would have been married to those in other polities too. So you have a highly mobile elite class, trans-Hellenic, who would have been much more at home with one another than the, say, the farmers of their "own" polity.

Things change during the Classical period, obviously, in fact we can interpret Perikles' citizen law basically trying to stop elites like the above have so much power over Athens, but none the less we can discern different strata and classes within Athens. Is there any evidence that the Eupatridai like the Eteoboutadai shared many values with those we conventionally call Nothoi? Well...not to the extend we can call anything consensus, certainly by the time we involve tradesmen, farmers, veterans, the disenfranchised etc. Athens, any Greek polity, was far too complex to think of in such ways.

As for Athens as the norm vs elsewhere, yes this is tedious but an accident of the evidence I guess, but obviously we know that it wasn't the "norm" and that no such thing existed. It's always worth bearing in mind though, in serious terms, that much of what we associate with Greek culture was spawned in Asia minor, places like Ephesos and Halikarnassos etc, that certain "outlyers" like Kyrene and most of Sicily were also massive power players and that the Hellenistic polities like Alexandria reached something Athens never could.

Athens was/is awesome, but outside of their brief empire the reason we focus on them so much is because they a) made the shift to literary models early, therefore when the oral traditions (still productive elsewhere) died Athens had a tremendous literary output and b) They were sort of retroactively fashioned into this idea of "classical Greece" partly by the Alexandrians but largely by the Romans.

[Lyceum]

Second post, because the other was getting too long for people to read, especially since its a bit rambling.

Basically I would like to re-iterate that I like the book overall, despite some disagreements, and had it been done a little bit differently I would have recommended it much more fiercely.

The section on religion particularly suffers but that's understandable I guess given the highly specialised nature of the subject, I also like the fact that there is some citation of Athenian Laws and what not. On culture more generally it really needed to take in work by J Hall, Antonaccio, Higbie and especially Kurke. On the other hand given my research aim and obsession with cultural context etc I would say that. For many, the psychological theories, diagrams, modern parallels and charts will be great.