Greek Naval Battle Analysis

probably the most well-known Greek battle strategy, they had a number of naval strategies that they used. The Greek’s used the abreast formation during naval battles, and like the Phalanx formation it was used for attacking and defending. In this formation the ships would line up beside each other while looking at the enemy. The Diekplous tactic was used while in this formation. This tactic was successful as it consisted of the Greek’s getting behind the enemy front and then attacking the back side of the enemy’s ships.7 The abreast formation also made it easy for the ships to ram the opponents.7 The final naval strategy that is worth mentioning is that these battle ships had archers on the ships so they could attack enemy ships or enemies

On the front of the ships the Greek’s had a giant piece of timber coated in bronze and it was placed at the bow and was used for ramming. Also as stated above the ships had archers on them. In J.F. Lazenby’s book “The Spartan Army”, he talks about weapons and armor that were common for a Greek Solider to use. He first discusses their armor and says, “there would have been little if any metallic armor.” He then when on to state that most likely the armor was made of bronze or leather. Joshua J. Mark contributes to this topic as he says they wore “breast plate, helmet and greaves.”5 On to the subject of weapons, Lazenby states, “Offensive weapons were probably predominantly-throwing spears and swords.”10 These spears were named ‘Dour’ and were roughly seven feet long.10 Dour spears were not only used for throwing but they were crucial for the success of the Phalanx

In today’s terms the Hoplite was a standard infantry unit. They were the ones that used the Phalanx formation with the shields and spears in hand. Hoplites were also trained in solo combat and with their sword they had the ability to kill an enemy in close combat. It is uncommon for people to think of hoplites as anything but soldiers but in reality they were also citizens of the city state. This is shown by the quote from Ronald T. Ridley’s book, ‘The Hoplite as citizen: Athenian military institutions in their social context’, which says “We have forgotten to ask what it was like to be an ordinary – or wealthy and important – citizen called upon to serve the phalanx.” The hoplite was formed due to the alliances that the city states were forming with each other. At the time they didn’t have trained armies so normal citizens, wealthy ones so they could afford weapons and armor, decided to take it upon themselves to protect the state. This was the case for most city states but it was not the case for the Spartans, who are arguably the most famous hoplites. The Spartans were a much more militaristic city state and this result in them being one of the most successful armies in ancient Greece. To give some illustration to this, Paul Anthony Rahe states, “by turning the city into a camp, the polis into an army, and the citizen into a soldier.” Due to the more militarized society