Hello! Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History Episode 15, Light Infantry, Cavalry, and Mercenaries: What Were They, Chopped Liver? I’m Scott Emmons.

 In the middle of the last episode, I went down a deep rabbit hole to talk about the hoplite phalanx, which became the backbone of the classical Greek army. It was a game changer, because a bigger slice of the population serving in the main military unit was a step toward breaking the aristocrats’ monopoly on power in the early city-state. But in history, things are never quite as cut and dried as we’d like them to be. As important as the hoplites were, they weren’t the only ones fighting in Greek armies. There were others who played important roles and who didn’t get as much press in the ancient authors. So in this short episode, I’d like to look at some of those other troops and try to get a glimpse of things from their perspective.

 In addition to the hoplite phalanx, every city’s forces included light-armed infantry. Remember, to be a hoplite, you had to be at least fairly well off. You had to be able to afford your shield and spears, your helmet, the standard hoplite gear. If you were poorer, you’d still fight for your city in wartime as one of those light-armed troops. You might be an archer, a spearman, or a slinger. In some times and places you might be a special kind of light-armed soldier called a peltast — named after a Thracian type of shield called a pelta, which was crescent-shaped and made of wicker. That may sound flimsy, but just try hacking up an old piece of wicker furniture, and you’ll discover how tough that stuff can be. In any case, a light-armed foot soldier would use what they had, and that might amount to just throwing rocks — whatever you could do to cause some damage to an oncoming army. 

Compared to the hoplite phalanx, where it was crucial to stay in formation, light-armed troops were much more loosely organized. At least in the fully developed classical Greek army, they’d fight in separate units apart from the phalanx, probably most often out on the wings. And the fighting would be more free form. You’d advance to a point where your weapon could be effective, shoot your arrow or throw your spear, whatever you’re using, and then retreat to safety before your next attack. 

Now, even though hoplites are better protected, light-armed troops have the advantages of speed and mobility. They can move a lot more quickly and nimbly than hoplites, who are weighed down with their big wooden shields and body armor. There’s a revealing passage in Aristotle’s Politics where he talks about class warfare within a city-state, and he says the poorer members of the population, being lightly armed, easily win in battles against heavily armed hoplites. And you can imagine that when two armies face each other, if your light-armed troops can get to the rear of the opposing phalanx, they’ll have an easy time picking off hoplites. But that doesn’t happen very often, because of course the opposing army has its own light-armed infantry. So while you’re trying to disrupt the oncoming phalanx, you’re also facing off against your counterparts on the other side.

So light-armed forces were clearly important. But you wouldn’t necessarily know that from reading a general book about ancient Greece or even from a lot of accounts by ancient authors. Why not? I think a lot of it must come down to cultural bias based on class. The hoplite forces consisted of the well-to-do middle class and up. Anyone who had time to write history would have been a member of the leisure class, and they’d be predisposed to focus on the force that they saw as the most important one. If they interviewed people who’d taken part in battles, chances are they interviewed hoplites. So you often have to read ancient accounts pretty carefully to get any sense that light-armed troops were involved.

A great example of that is the battle that’s now a pop culture icon — the heroic last stand of the 300 Spartans against the enormous Persian army at Thermopylae. Our primary ancient source is Herodotus, and his account is so vivid, it’s no wonder Zack Snyder made it into a blockbuster film. Dan Carlin, in his Hardcore History treatment of the Persian Wars, casts Herodotus as a “screenwriter” because of his knack for compelling narrative. So Herodotus tells us a lot about the 300 Spartan hoplites, but he barely mentions their attendants. A hoplite typically had a servant called a “shield bearer” on campaign with him. The shield-bearer was sort of like a squire for a medieval knight. He’d carry the hoplite’s shield and weapons, help him get his armor on before battle, and so on. And if the going got tough, he could go into action and fight as a light-armed soldier. In the case of Spartan hoplites, the attendants were helots, the class of serfs that made up the underclass. When Herodotus describes the battle at Thermopylae, he focuses virtually all his attention on the hoplites. It’s only after the battle that he says a good number of the corpses scattered on the battlefield were helots. Presumably those attendants fought and died along with their hoplite masters, but in Herodotus’s narrative, they’re practically invisible.

 Later in his history, he describes the battle of Plateia, which finally drove the Persian invaders out of Greece. And in the run-up to the fight, he says the Spartans sent 5,000 hoplites — and 35,000 light-armed helots. Seven times the number of hoplites! And of course, there were troops from Athens and the other allied cities. But when he describes the battle, it’s all about the hoplites from those cities. It’s as if those thousands of light-armed soldiers don’t exist. There are similar instances in Thucydides, Xenophon, and others. To the guys writing history, hoplites were the ones who mattered.

 But there was another group that mattered, and that was cavalry. As you’d expect, cavalry forces do get a little more press in the historians. As far as class is concerned, horsemen would be the real upper crust. Only the wealthiest could afford to keep horses. So cavalry service would be an obvious status marker. Now, I mentioned in a recent episode that early in the archaic period, cavalry was often essentially mounted infantry. That is, the warrior would ride to the battlefield, dismount, and then fight on foot. I’m sure some wealthier hoplites in the classical period continued to show off by riding out to the battlefield, but by then there were more true cavalry units, with combatants fighting on horseback.

 But not everywhere and not always. A few places in Greece were good for horse breeding and training. Thessaly up in the northeast was famous for being good horse country. But much of Greece is rough, mountainous terrain that just isn’t, let’s say, “horse friendly.” And the Greeks didn’t have horseshoes, so that made the animals much more susceptible to injuries. The Athenian Xenophon wrote a treatise on horsemanship, and one of his recommendations was to have round stones put down in the stableyard so that the horses would stand or walk on them and that would toughen up their hooves. Greek horsemen also didn’t have stirrups or even saddles as we know them, so just staying on your horse while fighting would be a challenge. On top of all that, the horses that the Greeks bred were evidently on the small side. 

So when we talk about cavalry, we shouldn’t imagine anything like the 19th century U.S. army cavalry making big, dashing charges against enemy lines. When engaging in combat, Greek cavalrymen mostly threw javelins or in some cases fought as mounted archers. But it’s doubtful whether they’d have any real advantages over hoplites. Xenophon again, in his autobiographical account of military adventures in Persian territory, quotes his own speech to his hoplites about to face an army with a big cavalry unit. He tells them that ten thousand horsemen are just ten thousand men. As translated by Carleton Brownson, quote:

 For nobody ever lost his life in battle from the bite or kick of a horse, but it is the men who do whatever is done in battles. Moreover, we are on a far surer foundation than your horsemen: they are hanging on their horses’ backs, afraid not only of us, but also of falling off; while we, standing upon the ground, shall strike with far greater force if anyone comes upon us and shall be far more likely to hit whomever we aim at. In one point alone your horsemen have the advantage — flight is safer for them than it is for us. Unquote

 Now, of course, Xenophon was giving a pep talk, so he was allowing himself some exaggeration. Obviously, a javelin thrown by a horseman could be just as lethal as a jabbing spear from a hoplite. Cavalry could also be very effective for reconnaissance and for pursuing a fleeing hoplite unit after a victory. But it’s clear that cavalry wasn’t the kind of indispensable unit that the hoplite phalanx was. It could be very effective or less so, depending on the terrain and other conditions. Some cities had cavalry units, others didn’t think it was worth the trouble. For a long time, the Spartans didn’t use cavalry, until they decided they needed it to counter Athenian raids during the Peloponnesian War.

 But apart from its limitations in battle, there’s another serious drawback to cavalry. Yes, it’s a great status marker if you’re trying to project wealth. If you’re trying to project courage, not so much. There was always that Greek prejudice that fighting at a distance wasn’t the manliest thing you could do. Real men closed ranks and fought face-to-face with jabbing spears and swords. Cavalrymen threw javelins and then retreated. In that way, they were doing the same thing the light-armed infantry did. So hoplites could look at cavalry as avoiding the real brunt of the fighting. There’s actually a lawcourt speech by an Athenian orator named Lysias where he levels an accusation of cowardice against the defendant because when he should have shared the dangers of the hoplite phalanx, he chose to serve in the cavalry instead.

Well, so far, I’ve been looking at all these groups as citizen soldiers — hoplites, light-armed infantry, and cavalry all fighting for their polis. But cities often needed help in military operations, so they might bring in allies, or they might hire mercenaries. That sheds a different light on Greek warfare, because if you’re serving as a mercenary, you’re obviously going to have a different kind of relationship with the city you’re fighting for. You might develop some camaraderie with your fellow soldiers, but when it comes right down to it, you’re not fighting out of loyalty to this polis. You’re going to have a different attitude. And we can get a glimpse of a mercenary’s perspective from an early Greek poet by the name of Archilochus.

 Archilochus lived in the first half of the seventh century BCE. He came from the island of Paros, and he belonged to a noble family — although he may have been illegitimate. Some ancient authors claim his mother was a slave. Archilochus is important in the history of Greek literature because he’s widely seen as the first Greek poet to make his own personality and experiences central to his work. And the personality that he puts out there is a cantankerous, no-nonsense character. He was especially known in antiquity as a writer of invective — that is, poetry attacking certain individuals who got on his bad side. For our purposes, the important thing is that he often portrays himself as a mercenary. Or if not a mercenary, at least a soldier fighting far from his home turf. His family was involved with a settlement on the island of Thasos up in the north Aegean, and a good bit of his poetry has to do with battling Thracian tribes in that area. His descriptions of Thasos make it clear that he didn’t like it very much. With that background, he has a pretty cynical attitude toward traditional upper-class values and the ideal of a hoplite warrior.

 Now, all of that comes with a disclaimer. It’s questionable whether Archilochus was really relating his own life experience. For one thing — and this is true of almost all early Greek lyric poets — we only have fragments of his work. Fragments are usually either quotations in later authors or bits and pieces from papyrus rolls recovered from Egypt, which are usually badly damaged. So often, when we have a line from Archilochus, we don’t really know if it’s intended to be autobiographical or if he’s putting words into a character’s mouth. And even then, a lot of what he presents as autobiography may be just a fictional alter ego. It doesn’t make a huge difference for us, though, because even if he’s representing a fictional character, what he says can tell us a lot about the experience of a certain kind of soldier.

 In one fragment that seems to be autobiographical, Archilochus introduces himself as a man in the service of Enyalios, another name for the war god Ares. As translated by Douglas Gerber, quote: 

 I am the servant of lord Enyalius, 

and skilled in the lovely gift of the Muses. 

Unquote 

 That doesn’t sound to me like something a citizen hoplite would normally say about his role in war. Archilochus is essentially giving us his résumé. These are my vocations. I’m a fighter and I’m a poet. I serve two masters, the war god and the muses. Another fragment colorfully describes war as the way he makes his living. In my own bare bones translation, quote:

 In my spear is my kneaded bread, in my spear 

is my Ismaric wine, and I drink it leaning on my spear.

Unquote

 A great, pithy statement about how he gets his livelihood from war. But this couplet is a tricky one to translate, because the Greek word for “spear” in this case can also mean “ship.” So it may mean his bread and his wine are literally in the ship, not metaphorically in the spear. I want so badly for it to be “spear,” because it’s such an evocative metaphor. Unfortunately, the line makes much better grammatical sense if it means “ship,” so I think that’s probably the correct translation. It loses some of its force, but it still conveys the unsettled life of a soldier for hire.

 Archilochus’s iconoclastic spirit comes out in a well-known fragment about what makes a good general. Keep in mind that a general at this time would be an aristocrat. And Greek society, especially high society, always saw beauty and goodness as closely connected. There was a kind of shorthand phrase, “kalos k’agathos,” meaning literally “beautiful and good,” to refer to a gentleman. Someone who had the looks and the character of a nobleman. So, when leading the troops, a general would be expected to cut an impressive figure. Well, here’s what Archilochus has to say about that, in the translation by Douglas Gerber. Quote:

 I have no liking for a general who is tall, walks with

a swaggering gait, takes pride in his curls, and is 

partly shaven. Let mine be one who is short, has a

bent look around the shins, stands firmly on his feet,

and is full of courage.

Unquote

 A general’s majestic bearing means nothing to Archilochus, the servant of the war god. All that counts is the qualities that make him effective in battle.

 While he’s at it, Archilochus shatters another norm, one that borders on sacred. The ideal of a hoplite was that he’d hold onto his shield and stand firm in battle even at the cost of his own life. Throwing away your shield meant you were running away. It was synonymous with cowardice. Plutarch tells the story that when Spartan mothers sent their sons off to war, they’d tell them, “Come back either with your shield or on it.” Meaning either you come back victorious or your attendants use your shield as a stretcher to bring back your dead body. And then there’s Archilochus. Here he’s talking about fighting against one of those Thracian tribes I mentioned earlier. Again in the Gerber translation, quote:

 Some Saian exults in my shield which I left — a

faultless weapon — beside a bush against my will.

But I saved myself. What do I care about that 

shield? To hell with it! I’ll get one that’s just as good

another time.

Unquote

 To a citizen hoplite, throwing away his shield means throwing away his commitment to his polis. For Archilochus, it’s just an object that can be replaced. He doesn’t like losing it, but if it means he can save his own skin, that’s the better bargain. The contrast couldn’t be sharper with the Spartan poetry of Tyrtaeus that I quoted last time, extolling the glory of dying for one’s city. And in fact, there’s an ancient anecdote — very unlikely to be true, but the story went around — that Archilochus tried to visit Sparta and they kicked him out immediately because he’d written that poem about throwing away his shield.

 These few scraps of Archilochus give us a very different perspective on Greek warfare than we get from most sources. Which is the whole point of this episode, really. There’s no doubt that the citizen hoplite was enormously important in the development of Greek military practice and in the city-state. But it’s also important to acknowledge that others, like light-armed infantry, cavalry, and mercenaries, played their part too. Even if not all of them ever got a chance to tell their stories.

 And that’s a wrap for Episode 15. As always, I’d be very glad to get your feedback. If you have comments, questions, corrections, or additions, please shoot me an email at scott@epicgreekhistory.com. Or you can always leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and recorded by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork were created by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε, be well. And as they say in Greece today, Χρόνια Πολλά! Happy Holidays!