12 |
The Charge |
The Athenians made ready to move and advanced at a run against the Barbarians, who were not less than a mile away. The Persians, as they gazed on them approaching on the run, prepared to meet them. They attributed a suicidal madness to the Athenians who would risk such an attack without either cavalry or archers. In any case, that was what the Barbarians thought. Yet, the Athenians, nonetheless, all down the line closed with the enemy and fought worthy of record. Indeed, these were the first Greeks, as far as we know, who charged at a run, and the first too who endured to face Persian dress and the men who wore it. Up until that time, the mere name of the Persians brought on fear among the Greeks.
—Herodotus, on the charge at Marathon
C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre
—Marshal Bosquet, on the charge of the Light Brigade
After the men had drawn up in their formation, after they had heard the final battle harangue of their general, when there was now no apparent choice but to meet the enemy, there was left only the problem of moving the men across the plain. Yet, must we assume that a clear-cut, simple collision of opposing phalanxes on the run always occurred in the near center of no-man’s-land? Sometimes we hear of some final transference of troops along the battle line in an apparent effort to isolate one allied contingent who might be particularly well-matched against an enemy across the plain. (Hdt. 9.26–27) At other times initial cavalry engagements screened troop movements or created confusion among the enemy to aid advancing hoplites who followed. (Thuc. 7.6.3; 6.69.2; Xen. Hell. 6.4.1; Polyb. 2.66.4) It was not unusual to send skirmishers on ahead to probe an enemy phalanx (Diod. 15.32.4; Thuc. 4.33; 5.10), and there were also occasional retreats or collapses in toto before the battle had even commenced. (Thuc. 5.10; Xen. Hell. 3.2.17; 4.3.17; 7.1.31)
Still more baffling is the question why one side did not merely stay put, kneel down, cover with the shield, and extend the spear, anchoring its butt in the ground. This would have required the enemy to try his luck at crashing through such a virtually impenetrable wall of bronze and iron. The Persians had enjoyed some success with this tactic at Mykale, where their wall of interlocking shields blunted the Greeks’ charge for a brief time until they were finally overwhelmed. (Hdt. 9.993) In battle between Greeks the first rank, low to the ground and reinforced with seven rows to the rear, should have presented great difficulty for both man and beast, even massed in a column and charging on the run. After all, a stationary wall was just that—a line of unbroken bronze far more dense than the usual shuffling and bobbing shields of a phalanx approaching on the move.
In rare cases we do hear of just such tactics where the phalanx is stationary, “dug in” so to speak, and not to be dislodged. Yet, often in such instances, troops who adopted such a posture were not even attacked by the suddenly timorous enemy column. Perhaps that is why vase paintings show hoplites apparently awaiting the enemy on one knee or simply resting on their haunches. With the spear extended, they cover their bodies with the shield, which is either resting on the ground or hanging on the shoulder. (Ducrey pl. 84; Snodgrass 1967: pl. 38) When Chabrias and his outnumbered defenders of Boiotia in 378 found good ground and remained still, they rested their shields and awaited the Spartans’ charge. (Diod. 15.32.4–6) Wisely, Agesilaos and his Spartans backed off, apparently appreciating the difficulty of penetrating disciplined troops arrayed in such a secure position. At Pylos (425), too, the matchless Spartan army was confused when presented with an enemy that refused to advance; the Athenian heavy infantry “remained stationary” while their light-armed troops attacked the Spartan flanks, where the men finally became worn out without reaching the Athenian square. Thucydides’ account suggests that the Athenian army had initially marched forth against the Spartans, then suddenly halted, and, finding a secure position, sent out skirmishers, while they waited confidently for the expected Spartan advance. (4.33ff)
The circumstances at the first battle at Mantineia in 418 were similar: the Argives had taken up a strong position and again waited for the Spartan onslaught. Here, rather predictably, the unsophisticated Spartans continued to approach until “an old man” in the army cautioned Agis, their general, against this ill-advised advance; at that point Agis had no other choice than to draw his Spartans back in retreat. (Thuc. 5.65) Again, this rather unusual incident shows men deployed in a strong though by no means unapproachable position, who confidently desire to stay put in order to receive the enemy charge; in such circumstances, they are more than a match for the superior troops arrayed against them. The key to their success, if that is the proper word for what amounts to an avoidance of battle, is in part favorable terrain and sound tactics but more certainly the willpower of men able to show determination in the face of a charge by column. (E.g., Thuc. 4.73)
Nevertheless, these incidents were the exception rather than the rule: most armies drew up as if by mutual agreement and attacked simultaneously. That this was the usual Greek practice is well illustrated by examples where one phalanx clearly holds the superior ground, certain to withstand any advance of the enemy, and yet chooses to abandon that advantage and meet the adversary on the move. The best instance is found at the battle of the Piraieus in 403. There, Thrasyboulos’ outnumbered exiles were arrayed on a hill overlooking the superior forces of the Thirty Tyrants. His men were marshaled in column to the unusual depth of fifty shields, and had also brought along sufficient contingents of light-armed and missile-throwing troops. They then awaited the uphill charge of the enemy with grounded shields; before the engagement Thrasyboulos spoke to his troops of their numerous advantages, appropriately reminding them that men forced to advance uphill have difficulty in throwing the javelin and at the same time are easy targets for a shower of missiles that would inevitably rain down upon them. In short, it was an ideal situation for an army to stay put. Indeed, Xenophon’s account suggests that this was at first exactly the plan: superior morale, favorable terrain, shields grounded, troops both stationary and massed in unusual depth to absorb an enemy already on a difficult uphill advance. What followed makes no sense at all unless it is considered as an illustration of the ever-present, natural impulse, however misguided and unwise, for any Greek phalanx to charge forward. For at this point, after reminding his troops of the advantages of their position, Thrasyboulos suddenly struck up the order to advance, leading his men downhill into the phalanx of the enemy, and so rushing into the middle of their column. (Xen. Hell. 2.4.11–20) If Thrasyboulos’ behavior seems inexplicable, in that he exchanged a secure, stationary position for the dangers of breaking rank on a downward charge and therewith reduced the march for his tiring opponents, consider his enemies’ posture. They compounded their initial mistake by exhausting their troops in an uphill run. That same type of misguided attack was also undertaken by the Athenians earlier at Delion in 424 when they, too, charged uphill against Boiotian hoplites, men who already were running downhill to meet them (Thuc. 4.96.1)—so much for Epameinondas’ advice never to attack the enemy from an inferior position. (Xen. Hell. 7.5.8) If troops, then, were willing to risk defeat in an uphill charge, we can understand their normal desire to attack on the move when both sides shared the customary level ground.
The problems posed by an enemy who with grounded shields refused to advance, or who steadfastly held a superior position, may have bothered commanders, but did not usually deter most armies from trying to meet the enemy in motion. Four reasons, I think, account for this tendency of Greek hoplites to meet each other on the move if at all possible. The first, of course, still enshrined even now in Western military practice, is that the formation in column was designed specifically for attack, whatever the circumstances; it reminds us of the origins of hoplite battle, when small landholders decided to leave the safety of their walled cities and in concerted effort push the enemy off their croplands. We should not underestimate the tradition of the advance, for it is this same urge to attack, to “do something,” to put men on the move that has led to so many suicidal disasters like the charges at the Crimea, Gallipoli, and the Somme. To the classical Greek hoplite, digging in and waiting for the enemy phalanx to make its way forward must have seemed as inglorious as archery, skirmishing, or the supporting work of the light-armed trooper. All were a poor substitution for the pitched battle where both sides met head-on. This explains why armies seemed somewhat taken back by enemies who did not advance—as if the rules had somehow been broken. Agis, for example, is not sure whether he should charge uphill against the Argives at Mantineia, and Agesilaos in 378 hesitates before Chabrias in Boiotia, as if impelled to advance even under unfavorable circumstances in conformity with the comfortable old way of fighting.
In Greek warfare, which by convention was battle for a day, the prebattle environment—the yelling and singing that went on within the phalanx, the drink of wine before battle, the expectation of a speech by their leader—was more conducive to attack than to defense. This accustomed activity before battle was aimed at rousing the hoplite to advance, rather than calming him in an effort to keep steady, stay put, and wait for the enemy’s charge. The troops must have realized, too, that the lack of forward movement once the battle commenced was paramount to defeat. In all combat, the key was to push ahead. The first warnings of doom were not necessarily steps backward but, rather, the lack of any progress forward, which would give rise to the sinking apprehension that an inevitable, irresistible push backward was on its way. For Greek infantry to adopt that posture in advance was, in a strange way, to acknowledge that battle was already half lost, that the troops had already given up the initiative.
Thirdly, there were practical grounds for keeping men on the move. Experience taught the hoplites that the best way to push their iron through the bronze and wood of enemy shields and breastplates was to achieve momentum before both sides became entangled and the chance to drive home a running spear-thrust with real power was lost. This desire on the part of the spearmen to have one clear shot, to crash into the opposing side in one fell swoop, was an enticing narcotic; even the rational argument that the very momentum he gathered on the run might just as easily impale him on the propped spears of a kneeling enemy, or distort his advancing line of protective shields, would have fallen on deaf ears, since everyone knew that this was the best way to penetrate the enemy’s armor.
Lastly, there was always the fear of missile attack. Most infantry knew of the damage inflicted even to armored men by well-trained slingers, archers, and javelin throwers. There was no desire to stay still and so allow the enemy to fix his aim on a stationary target; that meant essentially to suffer pitifully in a sea of arrows like the Spartan remnants at Thermopylai. Running the last two hundred yards of no-man’s-land, as the hoplites at Marathon showed, limited such exposure to attack until the protective cover of the general melee could be reached. (Cf. Arr. Anab. 2.10.3)
After the troops had lined up into formation and the phalanxes had squared off on the agreed site of battle, Greek warfare suddenly lost the rigid conformity of finely tailored columns. The point of departure from the clear order of the battle squares did not begin—as most assume—when the two sides met together, but often much earlier at the very moment the men began to lumber forward at a trot of some four to six miles per hour.
Very rarely could the discipline of command extend down the line of allied contingents—a phalanx which might stretch on for nearly a mile. Consequently, as the tide of hoplites first surged forward, there was rarely uniformity in the moment of their departure, the rate of their advance, or the direction of their course. Among most Greek armies, the attack resembled more the rush of an armed mob than the march of disciplined troops in careful formation, though it is true from both ancient and modern sources we receive a picture of an ordered, deliberate advance of the Spartans. With reference to the literary evidence, Pritchett, for example, remarks:
The sequence of events seems to have been as follows. The commander-in-chief, whether general or king, gave the command to advance by beginning the paian. The trumpeter sounded the call. The soldiers joined in the song whether the advance was at normal or faster pace. All the evidence is that the paian was a sort of hymn or chant, and the use of the word “paian” in other connections favors this belief.… The song was begun when the armies were three or four stades apart. Once the battle was joined, the marching paian might be replaced by the war cry. (1.107)
Thucydides’ famous description of the Spartan advance at the first battle of Mantineia (418) may be the clearest picture of how the Spartans usually made their move forward.
And after this battle was joined. The Argives and their allies for their part went forward eagerly and wildly, but the Spartans slowly and in time to the many flute-players who were at their side—not out of any religious custom, but rather so that they might march evenly and their order might not disintegrate—a thing which large armies are prone to do as they march forward to battle. (5.70)
This progression of events is said to have occurred in most battles in which the Spartans, the only true professional soldiers in Greece, took part; but in truth, it remains an idealized picture of even the Spartan army, which often did not follow such a textbook procedure. At the Pactolos River, for example, Agesilaos ordered the first ten age groups to charge the enemy on the run. (Xen. Hell. 3.4.23) And, as Thucydides himself notes, most other armies, the Argives in particular, tended to be much more disorganized. Perhaps few ancient Greek armies could match the charge of a Swiss phalanx of pikemen, a model of both speed and discipline—no doubt indicative of both their lighter body armor and the uniform composition of their columns:
There was no pause needed to draw up an army composed of many small contingents in line of battle—a thing which led to so many quarrels and delayed feudal units. Each phalanx marched on the enemy at a steady but swift pace, which covered the ground in an incredibly short time. Reading the narratives of their enemies, we gather that the advance of a Swiss army had in it something portentous; the masses of pikes and halberds came rolling over the brow of some hill or out of the depths of some wood, and a moment later they were drawing near, and then—almost before the opponent had time to realize his position—they were on him, with four rows of pike-heads projecting in front, and the impetus of file on file surging up from the rear. (Oman 2.256)
The problems in the advance first originated because not all hoplites of the individual contingents—that is, the center and the two wings of the army—moved forward at the same time, nor were even the men in the same phalanx always aware that their own ranks ahead had begun to march. Of course, once the cohesion and uniformity of the army as a whole was disrupted, it could never be really restored, as the cautious, slow-moving Spartans knew so well. They apparently felt that increased exposure to aerial attack and the accompanying loss of impetus at the collision were not so important if the phalanx could at least arrive at the enemy line in its original formation. Their success on the battlefield until Leuktra (371) suggests that they may well have been right in their belief that a charge on the run was apt to create lethal gaps in the line of any phalanx. What gave the Spartans cause for concern were situations such as occurred at Miletos in 413. There, the Argives suddenly rushed their Milesian enemies across the battlefield, leaving the phalanx of the Athenians in the center of their allied battle line far behind, and thereby creating disorder in the planned attack. (Thuc. 8.25.3) Years later at Corinth, the Argives again went out ahead in frenzy, causing disruption in their own phalanx and in the line of advance of the entire army. Although they defeated a phalanx of Sikyonians stationed opposite, they were soon isolated in turn by the Spartans and overwhelmed. (Xen. Hell. 4.3.17)
Men of different allied city-states, encased in armor and separated by thousands of yards, even though they might fight on the same side of the battle, had their own particular views on the enemy contingents arrayed against them; many multistate armies were never more than a loose coalition and accordingly rarely coordinated their attack: they either did not hear, or deliberately neglected, the general trumpet signal to advance. Yet, even more importantly, men quite near each other in the same tribal contingent did not always know what was going on. That is what Thucydides implied when he remarked that large armies are not likely to march out evenly, but instead reach the enemy in disorder. The poor performance of the Syracusans in their first battle with the Athenian infantry in Sicily in 415 was caused by the initial confusion about the outset of battle; some men were not even in formation when the Athenians went ahead with their attack. Apparently, they ran up late, looking to find any place they could in the ranks as their phalanx moved on out. (Thuc. 6.69.1) Even the dreadful, chilling walk of the professional Spartans which so impressed Thucydides was known to disintegrate under the harsh reality of the battlefield. At Leuktra they never recovered their cohesion once they started off their advance in disorder. Xenophon relates that the Spartan king Kleombrotos led out his attack “before his own army even perceived that he was advancing.” (Xen. Hell. 6.4.13) His Peloponnesian allies on the other end of his battle line, if not many of his own Spartans nearby, were not even aware their commander had signaled the charge. If the general shouting and background noise made the order to advance difficult for the helmeted hoplite to hear, the alternative was to pass the command to move out down the line by word of mouth, a procedure which would have ensured some disruption in continuity at the very outset. (E.g., Plut. Arist. 18)
Once the men were on the move, we hear from a variety of sources just how difficult it was to keep them marching at the same step all the while preserving their formation. Xenophon, for example, describes how the mercenary soldiers of the Ten Thousand shouted to one another to keep their order and not run out wildly as they went after the enemy. (An. 1.8.9) Philopoemen, the general of the Achaean League in the late second century, Polybius says, was “careful to watch his order” when he commanded his phalanx to charge on the run at Mantineia. (11.15.2) This is not all surprising since the march forward must have quickly exhausted most hoplites, and tired them at varying rates, without regard to the general advance of the columns, but rather depending on the limits of each man’s own individual endurance—quite an uncertain process when we realize that there were some forty or so different age groups dispersed throughout the phalanx. We know now that Herodotus’ story of the Athenian “run” for a mile at Marathon is just that, a story. Modern studies of physical endurance under similar conditions have found that about 220 yards is about all men in heavy armor can manage at a speed of five to six miles per hour, and still maintain their shields in the chest-high position with enough reserve energy for battle. In these modern tests, after three hundred yards even a simple two-file formation disintegrated in exhaustion. (Donlan and Thompson 1976; 1979) The picture we have, then, is that hoplites in formation approached the enemy at a walk until they felt they had closed the distance to the point (roughly two hundred yards) where a final trot was possible. If both sides advanced at five miles per hour, they would collide in less than two minutes. The battle at Koroneia in 394 provides a good example. Both Thebans and Spartans walked to within two hundred yards of each other, at which point the Thebans began their run. When they had narrowed the distance to a hundred yards, their Spartan adversaries also rushed forth to meet them. (Xen. Hell. 4.3.17)
The decision when to begin the final charge on the run was bound to be only guesswork; most commanders could not accurately estimate at which point to launch the full-speed attack, since the exact speed of the enemy, also on the move, was difficult to gauge. The terrain, the condition of the soil, the time of day, the emotional state of the troops, and the ability to get the word out quickly were additional factors. In short, while in some instances armies waited too long to begin the final dash and were faced with an enemy mass moving faster with greater momentum, more often hoplites began too soon, in their eagerness to reach the enemy at top speed. If this occurred, they soon found themselves tired, struggling, and at a decided disadvantage when they finally began fighting. Those less hardy, perhaps soldiers either over thirty or slowed by old wounds and ailments, quickly fell out of step as the younger and less experienced men rushed on ahead. Thus, Diomilos and his six hundred Syracusans were easily routed by the Athenians since, Thucydides tells us, they were advancing “as fast as each man was able, but they had nearly three miles to march before reaching the enemy.” This poorly planned advance during the Athenian expedition to Sicily “in considerable amount of disorder” sealed their fate. (6.97.4–5) Thucydides makes it clear that when they finally reached the enemy the cohesion of their phalanx was long gone and they had become an army of individuals. This was an extreme case, but many armies reached their adversaries in some type of disorder. For example, at Amphipolis in 422, the Spartan general Brasidas remarked of the confused Athenian advance that troops in such a state “with heads and spears bobbing can never withstand the charge.” (Thuc. 5.10) That prospect of a running, confused advance concerned the Greek mercenaries at Kunaxa, when their commander Klearchos marched them forth at about eight hundred yards, but held off their final run until they were within bowshot—probably two hundred yards or less. Diodorus explains that Klearchos was intent on both keeping his men fresh for battle and yet limiting their exposure to the shower of enemy Persian missiles. (14.23.1–2; Polyaen. Strat. 2.2.3) Surely, Klearchos had seen many phalanxes break into a run too early, only to find themselves disorganized and worn out, without much of an offensive punch when they reached the spears of the enemy.
There were problems not merely in the speed but also in the direction of the advance. Only the men in the first three ranks of the phalanx had a clear view of the enemy and thus of the general point at which they would soon collide. Of course, while there was little chance that two phalanxes could ever miss each other entirely, the evidence is, nevertheless, that each side rarely charged straight ahead but came at each other obliquely. That characteristic, along with the difficulty of the run and the uncertainty of the initial start, added yet another dimension to the overall confusion. Most hoplites in the front ranks would realize that the men directly opposite, on the other side of the battlefield, were probably not the hoplites with whom they would actually collide. In his rich description of the battle of Mantineia of 418, Thucydides recalls the peculiar habit of most armies on the move to drift rightward, sometimes radically so, each hoplite wishing to shelter his own vulnerable right side within the protection of his neighbor’s shield. So at Mantineia each side found their left wing nearly enveloped by the enemy’s right. Later, at the battle of the Nemea River in 394, Xenophon tells us clearly that both sides “veered to the right in their advance” (Hell. 4.2.18), so much so that the Spartan right wing caught only a portion of the Athenian phalanx. More than twenty years later, at Leuktra, the Spartans apparently had moderated, or rather mastered, this natural drift and transformed it into a deliberate plan of envelopment from the right. (Plut. Pel. 23.1)
Opposing battle lines were not necessarily the same length. An army that was inferior in numbers or that had chosen to shorten its line by massing in column might find itself facing an enemy that stretched beyond both its wings. In most such cases, hoplites were probably forced to move at an angle, whatever their rightward urge, natural or deliberate, just to meet the enemy: those charging in superior numbers would have angled in on their outnumbered foe, while the outnumbered were forced to move in mass to the right to prevent being outflanked on both wings, or to drift outward at both flanks and thus risk leaving a gap in the middle.
At the moment of departure the silent, if not contemplative, lull before the storm was suddenly broken as the battlefield quickly was turned into a sea of dust and noise. Breathing and hearing were difficult enough for a bearded hoplite wearing the Corinthian helmet, and they worsened in the crowded ranks of the phalanx. Yet, once the march forward began, his senses would have been further limited and his own discomfort overwhelming, as thousands of feet shuffling under the weight of panoplies kicked up the dry ground of summer. Individual shouts crescendoed into the collective war cry, which was doubled by the similar sounds of the approaching enemy.
After the devastation of Attica by Xerxes’ army, Demaratos was said to have seen a vision growing from out of Eleusis, a cloud, Herodotus says, “such as an army of 30,000 infantry might raise” (8.65)—apparently he knew of the dust a host of armored men kicked up. We know of nearly the same thing in a skirmish between the Athenians and the Corinthians at Solygeia in 425 during the Peloponnesian War; although most of the Corinthians could not actually see the battle between their own kinsmen and the Athenian invaders, they quickly found out what was going on by the cloud of dust that rose up into the air. Their view of the fight, Thucydides points out, was obstructed by Mount Oneion, so we get some idea here just how large a cloud must have been raised by a few thousand men on the move. (4.44.4) And in the final battle between Antigonos and Eumenes, the successors of Alexander, Plutarch would have us believe the fine white sand of the battlefield rose into a cloud “like lime” which blinded the vision of all, allowing Antigonos to sweep into the enemy camp. (Eum. 16) That must have been the normal scene any time armored men met on the dusty fields of summer. Under unusual conditions, such as at Pylos, where ash was found to be, the dust and discomfort might become so severe that hoplites were actually blinded and stumbled aimlessly in confusion. (Thuc. 4.34.4; cf., e.g., Diod. 19.42.1–2; 19.61.1; Polyb. 5.85.12) Indeed, Homer first recorded the dust swirling over the Greek battlefield at the first engagement between the Greeks and Trojans:
And as when under the screaming winds the whirlstorms bluster on that day when the dust lies deepest along the pathways and the winds in the confusion of dust uplift a great cloud, such was the indiscriminate battle. (Il. 13.334–37)
It was impossible for men in hoplite armor to move without rubbing and jostling against their neighbors’ breastplates, shields, and spears. These sounds of clashing metal created the background or the foundation noise in the strange, mixed cacophony of battle. That hoplites in motion were extremely noisy is clear from the story of the Plataians in 429 who escaped their besieged city soon after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. They were careful to keep apart from each other so that the jostling sounds of their arms would be dispersed, and the night wind would muffle the sounds of the bronze weapons from the ears of the Spartan sentries. (Thuc. 3.22.2)
The snorting of horses mixed together with the clatter of arms also added to the din of the battlefield. (Diod. 19.31.2) On rarer occasions, falling rain or hail against the bronze could do the same, as the Carthaginian invaders learned at the river Krimesos in Sicily: “and no small part of the problem was the sensation of the claps of thunder, and also the clatter of both the driving rain and hail on the men’s armor, making it impossible to hear the orders of the battle commands.” (Plut. Tim. 28.2) Elsewhere, we hear of the intentional clanging of spear against shield (Xen. An. 4.5.18), the thud of missiles landing among the armor of the infantry as they marched (Xen. An. 4.3.28); both created the same effect: tremendous, inhuman noise arising from their very equipment in motion.
A second level of sound came from the men themselves who, of course, talked, sang, and yelled at each other as they walked and then ran. Here, they bolstered their spirits with chatter among individuals or private warnings and exhortations to keep in formation as the enemy neared. Homer, for example, remarked that the sound of the Trojan advance was like wildfowl,
as when the clamour of cranes goes high to the heavens, when the cranes escape the winter time and the rains unceasing and clamorously wing their way to the streaming ocean
(Il. 3.2–5)
In obvious admiration, Thucydides describes the personal exhortation within the Spartan ranks at Mantineia; unlike the Athenians, the private conversations and singing of familiar war chants, rather than the usual battle general’s harangue, were sufficient to steel their nerves for the advance. (5.69) The hero, Tyrtaios writes, “has well trained his heart to be steadfast and to endure, and with words encourage the man who is stationed beside him.” (12.18–19)
The greatest noise was produced not by individual talking and shouting, but by the collective war cry that the army uttered in unison—the ancient equivalent of the rebel yell, which was designed to make each soldier forget his own fear as he sent a message of terror to the enemy. (E.g., Aesch. Sept. 270; Xen. Ages. 2.10–11; An. 4.2.12) Aristophanes suggests that among the Athenians it resembled the strange sound “eleleleu.” (Av. 364) At Koroneia in 394, Xenophon tells us the Thebans finally moved against the enemy on the run, “yelling” as they went. (Hell. 4.3.17) And during the Spartan invasion of Arcadia in 365, after the troops of the Arcadian alliance had resisted the Spartan attack, they too went on the offensive; at this point in the battle, Xenophon says, “there was a great deal of shouting,” as if their sudden boldness had created a surge in confidence and drawn forth a collective scream. (Hell. 7.4.22)
As the two sides approached each other, the sound of armor in motion, the shouting among those on the move, and the collective yells of both armies (e.g., Xen. Hell. 4.2.19), all mixed in from every direction, became deafening. At Kynoskephelai in 197 the shouts and war cry of both the Macedonians and Romans, as well as the general cheering of the noncombatants, created a sense of rampant disorder throughout the battlefield. (Polyb. 18.25.1) No wonder that Homer had described the war cry of the advancing Greeks mixed together with that of the Trojans as:
Not such is the roaring against dry land of the sea’s surf
as it rolls in from the open under the hard blast of the north wind;
not such is the bellowing of fire in its blazing
in the deep places of the hills when it rises inflaming the forest,
nor such again the crying voice of the wind in the deep-haired
oaks, when it roars highest in its fury against them,
not so loud as now the noise of Achaians and Trojans
in voice of terror rose as they drove against one another.
(Il. 14.394–401)
At the Spartan debacle on Pylos in 425, Thucydides reminds us that “the loud shouting” of the enemy advance, along with the rising dust, destroyed the cohesion of their ranks. (4.32.2) The reasons for the Athenian collapse on the heights of Epipolai a few years later were not merely darkness and the terrain, but also the shouting of their victorious Sicilian attackers mixed in with the confused sound of their own men falling back in disorder. (Thuc. 7.45) In much the same way Polybius at one point describes the initial terror of the Romans when they were struck by the trumpets and wild war cries of the Greeks across the battlefield. (4.64.6–8) If we can believe Plutarch, the shouting and clashing of arms made it impossible for Dion’s troops in Sicily to hear any of his commands. (Dion 30.6)
Once the signal was given to advance, the Greek hoplite—if he could hear it—had to pay attention not to be left behind, to stick close to the men around. In closing the final distance across no-man’s-land, the formation of the phalanx was often disrupted as each man ran at a slightly different speed. And there were roars of men, animals, and equipment on both sides, as well as a general impairment of vision caused by the rising dust, the crests and spears of the men ahead, and the mass of moving humanity in general. In many instances the outcome of a hoplite battle was decided right here during the first charge when some men simply caved in to the fright and ruined the unity of their columns before they even reached the enemy. As we shall see, the key to success in a battle between phalanxes was to create a lethal gap in the enemy ranks, an initial hole through which troops could push, destroying the cohesion of the entire enemy formation. Some armies were rent before they even reached the spears of the enemy, the battle ending before it had even begun. Indeed, it is surprising that such a collapse in mass was not more common when we consider just how demanding, how awful that final move into the enemy actually was.