02 The Greek Way of War

The two great wars of the 5 th century B.C.—the Persian War (499–449 B.C.) and the Peloponnesian War— are by far the best-documented, yet ironically they did not conform to the classic rules of warfare among Greek city-states. In the late 8 th century B.C., citizens of moderate property armed themselves with heavy armor and shields and fought as hoplites: spearmen standing in a dense formation or phalanx. Citizen hoplites asserted the power of the popular assembly over the aristocratic council and elected officials. Tyrants, backed by such citizen armies, overthrew aristocracies, and tyrannies, in turn, fell as citizen hoplites created broader-based governments—in the form of oligarchy, timocracy, or democracy. Greek city-states fielded armies that fought decisive battles in seasonal conflicts. Fighting was at close quarters, brief, and violent. Sparta, through its network of alliances among Peloponnesian and central Greek city- states, fielded a formidable army of hoplites, and was able to impose an era of peace in the Greek world in 546 B.C. In 490 B.C., Athenian citizen hoplite forces decisively defeated the imperial armies of Persia, and Peloponnesian hoplites did the same in 480–479 B.C. These victories preserved the order of free city-states and Hellenic civilization.