90 Conquest
A small army of horse-borne raiders would not, however, have been ade-
quate to Sparta’s needs in the second quarter of the seventh century. We do not
know at what moment the hoplite phalanx was introduced and by whom, but
there is suggestive evidence. The aspís had another name. It was also called the
Argive shield,^60 and it was at Argos in about 720 or even before that we have
the earliest evidence that warriors were being buried with the full hoplite pan-
oply.^61 This suggests that, in Hellas, the Argives may have pioneered the use
of the aspís, and this in turn may explain Argos’ reported rise to preeminence
within the Peloponnesus in the first half of the seventh century.
An Empire Under Siege
Argos’ accomplishments in this regard had implications for Lacedaemon.
Sparta and Argos were sworn enemies. Tradition reports that the Argives—
and the Arcadians—gave aid and comfort to the Messenians during the First
Messenian War. We are also told that Argos and Lacedaemon were at odds over
Cynouria, a district situated on the Aegean coast of the Peloponnesus south-
west of the Argolid and northeast of Laconia. It was presumably with this fer tile
territory in mind that, at some point early in the second half of the eighth
century, the Eurypontid king Nikandros marched north and ravaged the Ar-
golid with the help of the citizens of Asine living on its coast, and the same aim
can surely be ascribed to the Spartans who marched north toward the Argolid
from Cynouria in 669 and were laid low by the Argives at Hysiae on the north-
ern edge of the Thyreatis plain. It was perhaps at this time that Pheidon, the
Heraclid king of Argos, restored the fortunes of his house and reestablished
Argive hegemony within the Peloponnesus. It was perhaps at this time that a
diminutive Greek pólıs elicited an oracle from Apollo at Delphi in which the
Pythia initially singled out as “best” the soil of Pelasgian Argos, the steeds of
Thessaly, the women of Lacedaemon, and the men of Chalcis, victors in the
late eighth-century Lelantine War—and then added as an afterthought: “Bet-
ter even than these are those who reside between Tiryns and Arcadia, rich in
flocks: the linen-corslet-bearing Argives, the sharp goads of war.”^62
We do not know whether the Argives deployed a hoplite army at Hysiae,
but that they did so does seem likely given the battle’s timing, its location, and
the ethnic name given the hoplite shield. We do not know whether the Spar-
tans were caught flat-footed on this occasion, fighting with equipment and
tactics sadly out of date. But if they were not, their loss can perhaps be chalked