Lately I have been keeping my eyes open for chariots and hoplites in use at ancients tournaments, with the hope of getting article material. Cold Wars '93 at Lancaster, PA was one of these occasions. My ears perked when I heard that someone was playing a hoplite Greek army in the team competition. I thought I might see something interesting in NASAMW's less intense 'open' competition, but here was a rumor of Greeks in the sometimes intense team tourney. Either the rumor was false, or else some novice had stumbled into the event without knowing of the almost universal contempt WRG gamers have for hoplites.

To my surprise, the hoplite general was none other than Alan Spencer. Alan had taught me a few things about phalanx warfare with his Lysimachid army in one of my first ever WRG 7th attempts and I knew he should have known better than to bring hoplites to a competition. To my dismay, he informed me that he was using one of the new WRG lists which allowed irregular A Athenian hoplites!

In WRG 7th, irregular A status denotes barbarian fanatics such as Gauls, Galatians, and Viking berserkers, etc. and I had never pictured a Greek hoplite in this role before.

Battle of Marathon

Apparently the list author gets his justification from Herodotus' account of the Athenian charge at Marathon, a mad dash over one mile of terrain to close at the run with the invading Persians. In the past I have been critical of WRG 7th when it comes to recreating hoplite battles, and the Marathon scenario is one that is difficult to recreate with the WRG rules. In fact its very difficult to get hoplites (or any regular foot) to charge into combat against irregular foot. They are often stopped in their tracks from the effects of the irregulars' impetuous charge. Making the hoplites irregular A helps eliminate this problem and allows the Greeks to charge home against the Persians, but I do not like the feel.

Most historians discount the mile long charge in full armor as an exaggeration and a physical impossibility. Instead the charge is seen a quick advance with only the final two hundred yards taken at the run, the typical hoplite practice. Thus the Athenians did not possess superhuman endurance or exhibit any particularly unusual behavior.

Fanatics usually have a reputation of being uncontrollable and charging at first sight. Far from this, the Athenian advance at Marathon was undertaken only after a waiting period of several days where the two armies camped across the Marathon plain while the Athenian generals debated the best course of action. The advance was not prompted by fanatical soldiers but by the Athenian commander (Militiades), who made a seemingly calculated and logical decision that if the Greeks were to win, the advance must be rapid so as to come to contact before one or all of the following occurred: the enemy completed the deployment of his troops; the Persians fell on the Greek flanks; the Persian missile fire took its toll on the advancing Greeks.

Fanatics tend to be an elite warrior class or at least an unbalanced portion thereof. The Athenian muster at Marathon, quite typically was "... a mass levy of citizens, farmers, charcoal burners, and fishermen, up to the age of forty- five or fifty." Delbruck pp. 74-75. "The Greeks, with the exception of the Spartiates, represented citizen levies that did not even have a strong military tradition. The heroic period was already long past, and the last generation had, it is true, seen many a quarrel between neighbors but had nonetheless brought up the mass of the people for peaceful occupations." Delbruck p. 70. In other words this was a collection of average Joes coming out to defend their homeland, not a special class possessed by some battle lust.

So, while I appreciate the attempt to bring some historicity to a list, I think this one misses the mark. However I do find at least one aspect of the list interesting -the classification of the hoplites as irregulars. (The list classifies up to half of the Athenians as irregular A leaving the remainder/second rank as irregular D.) In the past I have always looked at the Greeks as a well trained militia operating in smart formations. This image is reinforced by most existing lists which class the Greeks as drilled or regular. This new list caused me to rethink this.

Hoplite Phalanx

The hoplite phalanx has been described as the "... logical tactical formation for citizen militias ... placing very simple demands on individuals and requiring only a little training and no elaborate drills." Delbruck p. 123.

A typical hoplite phalanx could be a mile long and "very rarely could the discipline of command extend down the line of allied contingents ... there was rarely uniformity in the moment of the departure, the rate of their advance, or the direction of their course. Among most Greek Armies, the attack resembled more the rush of an armed mob than the march of disciplined troops in careful formation. " Hanson p. 141. An exception was the Spartans who were the only true professional army in ancient Greece. ibid. A hoplite phalanx usually reached its enemy in some type of disorder and their shields were not necessarily overlapped by the time of contact. ibid. pp. 145, 168.

These are just some examples of comments that cause me to wonder if irregular status for Athenian hoplites at Marathon is not too far off the mark. Of course, one can find numerous examples in contemporary accounts and modern commentaries where Greeks give evidence of behaving much closer to professionals than to the barbarian warbands of the Celts, Franks, Vikings, etc. The Greeks certainly exhibited more order and discipline than the "you lot go over there and do so-and-so!" type troop intended by the WRG 7th irregular classification.

But we are dealing with a set of rules covering approximately 5000 years of warfare. Some generalizations and sacrifices have to be made to cover such a broad scope. In truth, the Athenian hoplites probably do not deserve to be grouped under the same class as Imperial Roman legionaries or Celtic tribesmen, but somewhere in between. But since a rules set which fit every troop type into precise categories would be infinitely complex and unplayable we are faced with a practical choice of one of two classes.

In the whole of the 5000 year period of ancient warfare, the Athenians at Marathon probably more closely resemble the Roman legionary than the wild barbarian. But in the microcosm of the ancient Greek world, irregular classification may be closer to reality. Irregular classification of Greek militia hoplites has several benefits:

1) it reduces the occurrence of a hoplite phalanx being forced to take Persian (and other contemporary foot) charges at the halt;

2) it reduces the freewheeling maneuverability forcing the Greek commander to rely on more of a battle-line approach;

3) it accentuates the differences between Greek militias and Spartan professionals.

I find two somewhat paradoxical themes in contemporary Greek accounts of the Persian Wars. One is that of the civilized Greeks and their small, quality armies fighting hordes of Persian led barbarians. The other is that of the Greek citizen militia overcoming the professional soldiers of the Persian army. Those wishing to emphasize the first theme in their battles might want to keep the militia hoplites as regulars; those interested in the second might consider irregular classification.

For those not comfortable with irregular hoplites but nonetheless unsatisfied with their performance under WRG 7th, you may want to try the following rule adjustment which I have seen used to good effect in historical match-ups: add to the listed causes of unease "Irregular foot if frontally charging steady, close-order foot armed with LTS." This cuts down on the ability of Persians and the like to charge impetuously and force the Greeks to halt without being as radical as making the Greeks irregulars. In contemporary battles however, I am now leaning toward the irregular classification (C-class) with most hoplites and keeping the Spartans as regulars. Preliminary playtests look promising (including a replay of Marathon).

Cited Sources

History of the Art of War Vol. 1, Hans Delbruck (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press) 1982
The Western Way of War, Victor Davis Hanson (New York: Knopf) 1989