The Mystery of Greek Warfare - What You 'Know' is Wrong (Part 1 of 4) DOCUMENTARY

What you think you know is most likely wrong. The problem with our understanding of ancient Greek warfare is that no one has been a hoplite or seen them fight. We are therefore left to reconstruct models of combat. This is complicated by the fact that Greek hoplites themselves evolved over the years as have the schools of thought for interpreting clues from the past. To break this impasse, our friend, professor Paul Bardunias, has pioneered experimental research meant to validate or falsify the claims of historians.

In this first episode we will set the foundations for this discussion by exploring the evolution hoplite and comparing the competing schools of thought regarding their warfare.

Reenactment provided by the awesome team at the Greek Phalanx:

Video Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:54 What is a Hoplite
05:20 Hoplites (Early Archaic)
10:44 Hoplites (Late Archaic)
12:42 Hoplites (Classical)
15:18 Hoplite Recap
15:38 How Hoplites Fought
17:10 "Prussian" School of Thought
19:41 "Orthodox" School of Thought
21:53 "Heretic" School of Thought
24:03 Who is right?

Sources and Suggested Reading:
"Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History" by Dr. Roel Konijnendijk
"Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities" by Hans van Wees
"The Western Way of War" by Victor Davis Hanson

#history
#documentary
#military

[ariebrons]

Dear Invicta,

Where is part 2 of this fascinating documentary?

[InvictaHistory]

What do you think of the new format? I think its a great way to bring on academics and serve as a platform for more dialog with the general public.

[javiersoria]

I have a History degree, and I have to admit that I never understood how exactly battles were fought. I tried to find a convincing answer many times, but it was never clear enough to me, neither in primary sources nor in historiography. Thanks for this series, it's very promising.

[paxromana]

Huge thanks to Invicta team! Also, special thanks to Professor Bardunias, appreciate his commentaries and explanation of this new approach. Can't wait to see part 2 and 3.

[AkosJaccik]

I do have to say, Invicta, it always pains me a bit when these historical topics get less views compared to fantasy etc. videos of yours, because these are of exceptional quality, hugely important and much needed discussions.A lot of pop-history on YT is unfortunately either hastily "researched", biased, or both; and in some cases do more harm than good. I know you and your team are dumping a disproportionate amount of work into these historical series compared to low-key content factories, and I want to emphasize how much I appreciate it. Keep it up!

[LeonidasSparta-Fun-History]

Always a pleasure to be apart of these videos! Great job Invicta team!

[r.h]

The visual quality and structure of this presentation is highly professional! Congrats and respect to everyone in the invicta team who participated! This would be a joy to watch even if i wasn’t interested in history.

[the-artistocrats]

As a game developer focusing on strategy games and with a passion for history, I'm very curious about the rest of this series.

[rotwang]

I think that one aspect that is often overlooked is the crowd management. It seems to me that formations and tactics were mostly designed to prevent masses from doing what great masses of people do, like trample each other in times of panic.

[TheScourge]

I think experimental approaches to these kinds of questions can add interesting points, but I just want to caution about over reliance on them.

1) It's unethical to do the kinds of experiment that would match real battle conditions the most: namely that there is a real chance of death. Any re-enactment will have limits based on the participants knowing their opponents are not going to try and kill or seriously injure them.

2) The participants are not growing up in the culture that uses this kind of warfare. This can have all kinds of unpredictable implications with differing levels of fitness, differences in what kinds of movements are common, and differences in the expectations coming into a battle. Only some of this can be gleaned from the sources we have, and generally the most basic assumptions that seem most obvious to people at the time may not be written down since there would be an assumption everyone knows these things.

As a practical modern example I can think of, many cultures in the world have people common squat (think the whole "slav squat" meme though it's not just a slavic thing) but that is highly uncommon in say the US. So even if you take a physically fit American and have them do that squat, it will generally feel unnatural and uncomfortable compared to even a less fit person from a culture that does that commonly from childhood. An adult American can get used to that kind of movement, but only with practice and only if they know to try practicing it in the first place. And we don't know all the kinds of physical movements that might have been common back then.

3) We need to be careful not to assume the Greeks actually optimized their way of fighting. What I mean by this is to caution against any assumption that the Greeks always avoided less efficient choices of how to fight in favor of more efficient options. People aren't perfect optimizers, even when their life is on the line. Clearly evolution did happen and so we can be on safe ground assuming they were trying to find ways to fight better, but social concerns, cultural mores, and just people's eccentricities can cause groups to do things that are not optimal for winning a battle, but did meet some other belief or objective.

All this is not meant to discourage the experiment, there are some limitations that transcend cultures and there is value in just going out and trying, but just that we should be cautious about how firmly we hold to any findings that come from this.

[rahjah]

I imagine greek warfare to be 1700 English gentlemen with top hats and a pocket watch saying “good day sir” as they take swipes at each other in duels

[cpcupcake]

The experiment you are planning reminds me a lot of some of the stuff Lindybeige did, like his theory based on reenactments he did with pikeblocks. He theorized that the number of people who would die or be heavily injured once they closed to engagement range would usually cause one side or another to break relatively quickly and the Swiss probably had the best pikes because they would stand and fight, continuing to cause heavy casualties to their enemies.

He also noticed that proper spacing was really important since you can really easily pack too tightly and end up being unable to fight at all.

[theknave]

As a layman, if I've learned anything about history is that things are *always* more complex than you had ever imagined.
Anyone who offers a simplistic answer to historical events is either wrong or they are trying to sell you something. ;)

[brokenworld]

For some reason I really enjoy my perceptions of combat and warfare in general being challenged, if not outright shattered. Based on various things seen, read, and engaged with, I have in my mind a rather specific conception of hoplite warfare which I'm kinda excited to see destroyed. Really looking forward to the next parts. Thanks.

[haldorasgirson]

I am loving this episode. I have ~20 years experience fighting in heavy armor (Society for Creative Anachronism) and being 6'4" I specialized in spears and polearms for melee battles. We normally fought in thinner formations, typically a single row of shields closely backed up by spears and pole-arms. I did learn that heavy counterweights reduce point control on spears and make them less accurate at hitting weak points. Heavy counterweights also rob pole axes and great swords of impact. I normally used a larger diameter, wooden ball screwed to the end of my spear as a hand-stop to make it easier to retain hold of the spear.

[StoptheHateJustDebate]

This is an excellent presentation of Greek armor and fighting principles as we understand them! I took part in one of these experimental archaeological hoplite battles in Athens in the 1990s. Very intense.

[firestorm]

Really shows how much historians, even today, need to be aware that, no matter how hard they try to be impartial, the present they live in will always cloud their interpretation of the past.

[jeremymorris]

Part 2? It was just getting to the good part.

[sacagaweya]

Y’all make some of the most interesting and thoughtful historical videos I’ve ever seen. Bravo!

[JRyomaru]

This is the second source I hear this from in the last year, and as a Greek I was dumbfounded when I heard. Thanks for adding sources, I definitely want to learn more about this.