Conquest 87
“men don helmets and breastplates for their own sake, but the aspís they take
up for the sake of the formation which they and their fellows share.”^52 Were it
not for the particular advantages that the aspís equipped with a pórpax and an
antılabē ́ afforded an infantryman deployed in a closed formation, the Greeks
would never have adopted it in the first place. Instead, they would have stuck
with the round shield equipped with a single grip in the center that, as the
Assyrians had demonstrated, could be used to good effect in almost any cir-
cumstance—which, in fact, we know, some of the Greeks in and for a time
after the seventh century continued to employ. Given the relative uselessness
of the center-armband-and-rim-grip shield in the absence of the phalanx,
however, the sudden appearance of the aspís on vase paintings in the late
eighth and early seventh centuries powerfully suggests—and arguably proves—
the presence of the phalanx, and this in turn implies the employment, at least
in certain circumstances, of the hoplite tactics for which this shield was so
obviously designed.^53
A Moral Revolution
Initially, having those heavily armed form up in a phalanx was but one
tool in the infantry commander’s kit. The old ways lived on. The vase painters
of the seventh century frequently depict soldiers in the hoplite panoply carry-
ing two spears of different length—a javelin for hurling and a thrusting spear.
The Mytilenian poet Alcaeus notes the usefulness of greaves as a protection
against such missiles, and his fellow lyricists Callinus of Ephesus and Archilo-
chus the mercenary allude to the characteristic thud heard when such missiles
landed nearby. The vase painters also depict archers sheltering behind the
shields of those more heavily armed, just as bowmen did in Homer’s Iliad;
and tellingly, in one battle description, Tyrtaeus describes light-armed troops,
armed with javelins and stones, doing the same. It is also conceivable that, at
first, the phalanx consisted of a single rank of hoplites seconded by a host of
archers and other light-armed troops. This is, in fact, what one should expect—
for human beings are creatures of habit; and in warfare it is rare that new tactics
immediately and comprehensively displace the old. The eighth and seventh
centuries constituted a time of transition and experimentation. None of this
alters, however, the essential fact—that, where the shield wall was employed,
battles were no longer decided by prómachoı hurling javelins and light-armed
troops sheltering behind their shields.^54