The Last Full Measure (6 page)

A modern baseball player can deliver a fastball at about 95 miles per hour, and one can imagine that a somewhat heavier rock, although delivered at a slower speed, could indeed be lethal as a head shot. But nevertheless it seems anomalous that Homeric heroes, so wedded to the notion of up-close dueling, resorted to as basic and as earthily crude a form of death dealing as pitching rocks.

The most vulnerable areas for the Homeric warrior in terms of fatalities were first the trunk (stomach and chest), which although partly protected by a brass breastplate offered the largest target and contains most of the major organs. Death would probably have been swift, but even those who survived the initial damage to vital organs would have succumbed to lethal infections. Second was the head because brain injuries would have been certainly fatal (although trepanning had been widely practiced for many centuries). This would have included blows to the face that penetrated the cranium, as when Ajax, for example, speared the Trojan Acamas “tall and staunch”:

The horsehair crest on the helmet served not only as an intimidating height magnifier (an important function of military headgear throughout history; one thinks, for example, of the plumed headdresses of the Aztecs, of the Plains Indian bonnets, of the wondrous horned helmets of medieval samurai, or of the towering bearskins of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard) but also as a blow deflector (Alexander the Great would be saved at the battle of the Granicus in this way). A strike to the helmet that stove it in and penetrated the cranium would cause massive and fatal bleeding. The helmet did not have to be ruptured for the blow to prove deadly. Archeological finds from the classical and Hellenic Greek eras confirm the sometimes limited protection a helmet offered:

The third most vulnerable area was the neck, which was only partially protected at the nape and, to some extent, at the side by the long cheek protectors:

The fourth most vulnerable was the arm:

And last, the leg:

The rise of the Greek city-states during the seventh century BCE (some five hundred years after the fighting for Troy and perhaps two hundred years or so after Homer wrote his epic account of it) introduced a type of military organization and method of fighting that reflected the civic, political, economic, and social expectations of the states of southern Greece. It was a style of predominantly infantry combat—phalanx warfare—that was adopted around 700 BCE.

The Greek infantry, called hoplites (from
hopla
, “shield”), who made up the phalanx (derived from reeds bound into a tight bundle) were property-owning citizens, many of them small farmers. Their obligation was to defend their territory should it be threatened by an invading force. It was a sacred duty—and one in which every citizen had a say—but it had to be reconciled with their primary obligation to make a living, and so it was in their interest to limit the amount of time spent fighting. The style of warfare they developed reflected their civic obligation as well as their self-interest and was designed to produce short, sharp battles that had, to some extent, been arranged and would be fought by certain rules.
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Although there was a ritual element in these combats, they could be very bloody: “Hoplite conflict was by deliberate design somewhat artificial, intended to focus a concentrated brutality upon the few in order to spare the many.”
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The opposing closely ordered block formations (phalanxes) were drawn up, usually on preselected and mutually agreed-upon flat terrain, and faced off. At some point the tension was broken and one of the
phalanxes started to move toward the other, at first quite slowly, then gathering speed in order to maximize impact.

Each hoplite warrior supplied his own weaponry and armor, and therefore its quality was a reflection of the man’s financial means (as, for example, with the militia of the American War of Independence). He wore a thick cuirass (breast- and backplates) weighing about 11 pounds (some modern authorities cite weights as much as 50 pounds)
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and a helmet of iron or bronze, which if worn by rank-and-file hoplites was heavier because it was cast and weighed 12–15 pounds,
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while the wealthier wore forged helmets that weighed only 5–8 pounds. The lower leg was protected by brass greaves (shin guards) so molded to the calf that they could be snapped into place without the need for straps (bronze, although heavier than steel, is much more elastic); a pair weighed about 3 pounds. His 3-foot-diameter shield weighed about 16 pounds.

The total weight of the armor, without weapons, was somewhere in the region of 45 pounds. (By comparison, a medieval knight’s armor weighed between 60 and 70 pounds, and it is interesting to note that the modern infantryman, far from having his burden lightened by modern materials, is often expected to hump gear weighing more than that of a knight in armor.)
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But because each man tailored his armor to his individual needs and means, there would have been considerable variation. In addition, a hoplite would often have been accompanied by a servant, who carried his shield and spear and acted as a forager, a dispatcher of enemy wounded, and even as a light infantryman. Nevertheless, there are many references to the excessive weight of the hoplite’s armor, and under a burning Greek sun it was no wonder that many incidents of heatstroke are recorded.
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Hanson speculates that it was the discomfort of fighting in the sun that prompted the Spartan Dienekes at Thermopylae in 480 BCE to coolly remark that the
expected avalanche of Persian arrows, massive enough to blot out the sun, would merely provide some much needed shade.
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The military historian Jack Coggins tested the protective properties of a breastplate made to the approximate specification of a hoplite piece: “A modern hunting arrow (with a head probably far superior to anything the ancients had) shot at very close range from a 50-pound bow dented the plate and penetrated about 5/8 of an inch. With existing equipment [a bow of the period], at battle ranges, a cuirass made of similar material should have been impenetrable.” Coggins concludes that “the hoplite, with Corinthian helm, shoulder-to-knee-length shield and greaves, presented little target vulnerability to the average archer.”
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The armor of the hoplite and the tactics of phalangite combat were a compromise between mobility and weight. The warrior certainly carried a heavy load, but the design of his armor afforded more physical flexibility than might at first be thought. His limbs were unencumbered (except for light greaves) so that running, bending, and turning, as well as a dexterous manipulation of shield, spear, and sword, would have been possible. (Similarly, the popular perception of, for example, the medieval knight is essentially that of a steel-bound Michelin Man, about as agile as a turtle, but we know that well-crafted suits of armor allowed considerable freedom of movement.)
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Although the panoply (the technical term for a suit of ancient armor) allowed the hoplite flexibility, the phalanx was a place for corporate rather than individualistic combat; tactically there was little fancy footwork—the mighty shove of pikemen against pikemen would determine the outcome.

Phalangites had an obligation to the group; many would have been blood relatives; all would have had a civic bond. The phalanx, like all crowdlike masses, had its own dynamic, often reflected in the tendency of the whole group to drift to the right as each man
sought the protection of his neighbor’s shield for his unprotected right side.
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For amateur soldiers the mass of the phalanx maximized the advantages of corporate heft and helped compensate for an individual’s lack of training and experience.

If Homeric mythology provided the duelist with a compelling narrative as the center of heroic combat, the honest burghers and spear carriers, the necessary but unnamed, also needed their sustaining legend, their inspiring vocabulary. And that heroic vocabulary usually revolved around the ideals of steadfastness, tenacity, obligation, loyalty to the greater cause, and the welfare of one’s comrades. Standing fast even unto death is a heroic ideal fashioned specifically for the group. It is the heroicizing of a necessary but not necessarily romantic reality, and one specifically fashioned for citizen-warriors. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus describes this stoic ethos:

As the phalanx drew up against the enemy (perhaps 200 yards away) there may well have been a good deal of barracking, swearing, and general ribald encouragement. When men are tense they tend to mouth off; it lifts the spirits. At some point the psychological trigger would be pulled and one side would move into a steady trot, then into a full-blooded running charge. The point at this stage is to gather momentum, and as the momentum increases so does the level of adrenaline; glucose is released by the liver for extra muscular exertion, all of which incites the charging warrior to greater effort:

The charge also had a protective function. The quicker the warrior covered the last 200 yards or so, the less exposed he was to missile fire by javelin-throwing peltasts (the name derives from their crescent-shaped shield, the
pelte
), archers, or slingers. Missile fire, although disdained by hoplites, could be devastating, as the Athenian general Demosthenes discovered in 426 BCE when his force was routed by Aetolian peltasts who, refusing to close with the Athenian phalanx, destroyed it from a distance, and more than thirty years later it would be the turn of peltasts under the Athenian general Iphicrates to destroy a Spartan
mora
(battalion) at Lechaeum.
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The side receiving the charge may also have moved forward—aggression tends to invite aggression—or it may doggedly and determinedly have shaped up to receive the impact. Given that modern warfare is so removed from the collision of massed bodies, one can only imagine the stupendous chaos at impact. Xenophon says that there was no yelling, “but there was not silence either; instead that particular sound was present which both anger and battle tend to produce.”
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Individual noises amalgamated into a great roar. Livy’s description of a Roman battle scene would have been applicable to all ancient warfare: “But due to the very din and tumult neither any encouragement nor orders were able to
be heard, so much so that the infantry could not recognize their maniples, centuries, or even their own assigned places … there was such a cloud of fog that men relied on their ears rather than their eyes. They turned their faces toward the groans of the wounded, the blows of flesh and arms, and the mingled cries of both the frightened and the panicked.”
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At the moment of impact, the attackers’ spears (6–8 feet long, weighing about 4 pounds) would have been held underhand in order to thrust upward into the unprotected groin, the thigh, or the gut under the breastplate: