92 Conquest
modicum of democratization in the conduct of war, we should believe him;
and we should do the same both when considering his observation that, in a
Greek setting, warfare’s democratization could hardly be sustained for long if
men of middling wealth were excluded from political influence and when
pondering his report that the early tyrants were nearly all populists who owed
their stature to their experience in the conduct of war.^64
As Sarpedon’s speech in the Iliad implies, deference has to be earned over
and over and over again, and one cannot expect that a smallholder or even
a gentleman farmer trained and accustomed to put his life at risk in precisely
the same manner as the aristocrat alongside him in the phalanx will be be-
hindhand in demanding an equal share. In a world where men like Sarpedon
and Glaukos stand out and really earn their keep as a consequence of their
prowess as prómachoı on the field of the sword, no one will mount a serious
challenge to their authority. In such circumstances, men like Hesiod in Boeo-
tia, even when justifiably discontent, will be profoundly reluctant to defy the
well-born. In such circumstances, no one will listen to the complaints of a
Thersites or defend him from abuse at the hands of an Odysseus.^65 But, in a
world in which well-born equestrians are outstanding only in the pretensions
and arrogance they display and not at all in the services they perform, defer-
ence will not survive serious dissatisfaction; the legitimate complaints of a
Thersites will be given a hearing; and some ambitious individual from among
the well-born will emerge to take advantage of the discontent.
Plato, who was thoroughly familiar with the ethos of hoplite warfare and
who witnessed a great deal of social conflict, knew what he was talking about
when he invited his readers to consider the thoughts that “a wiry man, bereft
of wealth and burnt by the sun,” is likely to entertain when he is “ranged in
battle next to a rich man, reared in the shade and possessed of a great deal of
superfluous flesh, and then observes the latter out of breath and completely
at a loss.” In such circumstances, he tells us, the impecunious are likely to
mutter to one another in private regarding the oligarchs who lord it over them.
“These men are ours,” they will say. “For they are nothing.” Soldiers who are
not retainers and who actually own the land they till may be obedient on the
day of battle. But almost never are they servile. The spiritedness required of
them in battle rules out submissiveness on their part in times of peace.^66
Hoplite warfare was a brute fact that the Spartans had to confront. They
could not ignore the implications of the new military technology. No political
community has ever been able to do the like—not if its members were to have