Talk:Ancient Greek warfare

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Esterbka. Peer reviewers: Joe Sygulla, SELJEJL3219.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Missile Troops VERY IMPORTANT in Ancient Greece
The hoplites were used to 'hold the line', but an awful lot of the damage done to the enemy came from the 'light troops'. If you read Thucydides, the number of light troops was often the same or more than the heavy troops. He praises the light troops as particularly effective in combat, since they are more mobile than the hoplites and can do damage at a distance. We must at all costs NOT let Hollywood get in the way of real historical understanding. Light troops included archers, slingers, stone-throwers and peltasts. Peltasts were soldiers equipped with several javelins and a light shield to deflect missiles. You will find these troops often played the decisive role in battles, if you read the original sources. 24.215.32.42Kozushi

At Close Range Hoplites Used Swords not Spears
When the hoplites smashed into each other, the front lines used their short swords to stab and hack the enemy, while trying to knock them down with their shields. Spears are too long to use if you are in the front line. Second and third lines would use their spears overhand to stab at the enemy's faces over their shields, since their swords are too short to reach the enemy. It was the same case with the Macedonian Phalanx.Kozushi
 * Sauce? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.237.98.9 (talk) 16:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Unless there's a source for this, I'm going to say it's simply not true. The generally accepted understanding of Hoplite warfare is not only that spears were used by all soldiers, they weren't even used overhand at all! Most historians of ancient greece think that they were used underarm (think about it: overarm would be striking at the most heavily armoured body parts!). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:50, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Roman Improvements Subtle
The Romans made many small changes in hoplite warfare. One of them seems to have been to give every heavy infantryman two throwing spears, to enable missiles to be discharged very close to the enemy, almost upon contact, closer than light troops could discharge them, since light troops had to keep a safe distance away. The Roman shield was longer, and they relied on missile support rather than spear jabbing from the second and third (and further back) lines, according to Vegetius and others. Jabbing spears were left for 'auxiliaries' who were, essentially, more cheaply equipped: their spears being kept for jabbing, and not thrown away. Kozushi —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kozushi (talk • contribs) 04:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Well...
I hate these types of articles&mdash;extremely competent yet totally unreferenced. 24.185.37.213 (talk) 00:06, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Then reference it. This is, after all, "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit". Coldmachine Talk 08:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Tried adding citations to some of the most well-respected scholars... People said I was "vandalizing" it.  143.71.12.233 (talk) 11:42, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Major shaping up and maybe merging necessary
We have many articles dealing with ancient Greek warfare on their own. We should either try to give only basic information in this article and link for more info to the respective more analytical articles such as hoplite, phalanx formation, Ancient Macedonian army etc or merge these with this one. I, personally, would be in favor of the first solution. Do look into these articles and you will see that info most times overlaps, refs could be combined, sometimes different views are presented on the same matter... What do you think? GK (talk) 23:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

A number of dubious claims
Okay, the article as written makes a number of dubious claims:


 * Practically all of these are explored in extreme detail by Hanson in "The Western Way of War." I have attempted to add many citations here. 143.71.12.233 (talk) 11:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Running into combat
As written, the article weasels around the fact that running into combat would mean losing formation. It's possible that hoplites sometimes ran into combat, sometimes walked. Citations would help. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Interlocking shields
Some theories include this, some don't. As I.P. Stephenson has noted, later references to shield walls don't imply interlocking shields. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Rear rank spears
Some theories imply that these could be significant, others do not. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Shoving match
As written, the article implies that this is an established fact. It is extremely controversial, and if it is physically possible, it would kill more hoplites through crushing and smothering than through weapon use. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:12, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Length of Battles
Phillip Sabin has argued that other ancient battles could be quite long, even several hours. This needs citation, and good arguments why hoplite battles were shorter than other ancient battles 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Article Lead
The article begins by saying that the development of the Poleis was the change which begun the archaic period. Poleis developed through the archaic period, though -- we don't see anything in Hesiod recognisable as a city state, but by Alkaios Mytilene quite clearly is a city state.

Equally, suggesting that large-scale warfare wasn't possible in the Greek Dark Ages is... interesting...

And in general, the lead reads more like a school essay than it does an encyclopedia article... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caeciliusinhorto (talk • contribs) 09:58, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

General Notes for Ancient Greek Warfare
The Military structure and methods section is comprised of two whole subsections on Hoplite Warfare, and though this may be because it was very important at the time, it seems to have much more detail and expansion put into it than the section about other elements of Greek armies. There are so many places that are lacking citations as well, it may be a good idea to actually reference where that information came from. There are a lot of references to other Wikipedia pages, which is nice because it allows people to look further into a specific topic if they don't know what it is or if they are simply more interested in that than anything else. As a last suggestion, why is there not a section devoted to representations of Ancient Greek warfare in art? Artistic depictions can give insight into how battles and warriors were viewed to the general public, which might be an interesting perspective to lay out.Saostrom (talk) 16:34, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Parallel article in Wikipedia
Article Military tactics in Ancient Greece also exists; although that title claims to cover the much the same ground as this article, it is focused on naval tactics, whereas this article emphasizes terrestrial combat, including both tactics, campaigns, and economics. Neither article says anything about training officers or selecting generals, which becomes a philosophical interest in Socrates, who draws attention to the irrational ways in which competence is assessed in the Athenian democracy. The other article has no following on foreign language wikis, whereas there are 8 other-language versions of this article. Merge would be one option; moving land tactics from that article to this one, and leaving it as an article on naval tactics is other (would it not then need a new title?). Vagabond nanoda (talk) 07:39, 4 August 2022 (UTC)