Men of Bronze

Reviewed by: Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece ed. by Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano Carey Fleiner Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano (eds.). Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Pp. xxv, 286. $35.00. ISBN 978–0-691–14301–9. In his contribution to this volume Victor Davis Hanson writes, “There are few controversies in Greek history as spirited as those over the origins and nature of [End Page 146] hoplite battle” (256). Indeed, this collection of essays, a result of a conference on early Greek hoplite warfare held at Yale in 2008, aptly demonstrates that statement. The intended purpose of that conference was to resolve the questions of whether there was a sudden “hoplite revolution” during the Archaic Age of ancient Greece (800–500 b.c.) or whether the development of the phalanx and hoplite warfare was a gradual process. If nothing else, the organizers anticipated that the conference would stimulate a lively debate. This was indeed the chief end result, as scholars vigorously defended the traditional view of a sudden “revolution” (based on literary sources); the revisionist argument for a gradual development of hoplite tactics (using archaeological remains); and a third, most recent strand of scholarship that supports a hybrid of the two. The resultant essay collection presents all three lines of debate and the current state of scholarship, with the aim of stimulating further discussion both in the classroom and in the conference hall. Men of Bronze is an excellent resource for students and teachers alike, not only for its discussion of the development of Greek warfare tactics, but also as a model for discussing the development of the historiography of a topic with divided scholarship. For example, scholars at any level will benefit from Kagan and Viggiano’s clearly presented breakdown of the scholarship and evolving arguments on the hoplite debate in chapter 1, “The Hoplite Debate.” This essay clearly lays down the foundation of the hoplite revolution beginning with George Grote’s seminal mid-nineteenth-century work History of Greece. Working from Grote, who relied almost exclusively on Homer and literary sources for his evidence, the authors then present key texts and scholarship into the twenty-first century, and they map out clearly the evolution of the debate. This survey also includes newly discovered primary evidence and its effects on the study of hoplite warfare, particularly the introduction in the twentieth century of archaeological sources such as the remains of arms and armor, surveys of battle sites, and even recreations of the ancient battlefields and conflicts. Before dipping into the subsequent chapters, the reader might next look at Hanson’s chapter on “The Hoplite Narrative,” the last chapter of the book. Hanson complements Kagan and Viggiano’s literature survey by tracing the evolving hoplite debate itself from Grote’s “grand hoplite narrative” through to multidisciplinary approaches on the study of hoplite warfare and its subsequent impact on the institutions within the Greek polis. In between these two framing essays there are no superfluous chapters. There are discussions of arms, armor, and artwork by Viggiano and Hans van Wees, a chronological framework by A. Snodgrass, and assessment of the correlation between the hoplite revolution and the rise of the polis by Viggiano. Other chapters consider fighting tactics and weaponry (by P. Cartledge, K. Raaflaub, P. Krentz, and L. Foxhall) or consider the social implications of who exactly made up the ranks of the hoplite infantry (John Hale on the one hand and van Wees on the other). As someone who was schooled by instructors who stressed the hoplite revolution and the impact of phalanx fighting on the development of political, social, and cultural institutions in (especially) ancient Athens, I found Men of Bronze a fascinating and useful book for teaching my own students. The debate is not presented here as having a “winning” or a “losing” side—as Kagan and Viggiano note, both the traditional approach of “Suddenly, hoplites!” and the “younger” argument for a gradual development still both strongly hold water. If nothing else, the strength of research and arguments behind both debates is reminiscent [End Page 147] of the ultimate goal of hoplite

Ancient history · Argument (complex analysis) · Battle · Bronze · Nothing · Political science · Scholarship · State (computer science) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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