control of the state and of the wealth that could be gained thereby had lain with one aristocratic clan, the Bacchiadae. In 657 a half-member of the clan, Cypselus, collected sufficient support to kill or expel them
and to take over as what later Greeks call 'tyrant'. Of the nature of Cypselus' government nothing is known except that enough of his support came from people experienced and competent enough to provide the
city with uninterrupted, indeed increasing, prosperity. Nor can we tell what Cypselus had promised to them except a share in government, or to the wider circle who followed, except that his propaganda used a
word, dikaiosei, which can mean anything between 'put [Corinth] to rights' through 'give [Corinth] a set of rules' to 'give Corinth justice'. Whatever the precise meaning, there is more than a hint here of that
same desire for 'equality' which had excited Spartans, even if that equality was limited to equality before the law and, paradoxically, was to be won under that most unequal of regimes, 'tyranny'.
No doubt Corinthians had other reasons for supporting Cypselus, at the lowest level a simple desire to beat up the Bacchiads; and in other cities of which we know less, where tyrants appeared or tried to appear,
their supporters will have had their private reasons. But a widespread phenomenon invites some general explanation, and the theme of justice in some form or other is alluded to often enough in the seventh
century to suggest that it was the first constituent in the Greeks' slow and uneven expansion of the idea of what it was to be a polites, a full member of a. polis. It was the arbitrariness of what passed for justice
that had irked Hesiod; 'Justice done and seen to be done' (in Sparta) won confident praise from the seventh-century poet, Terpander of Lesbos.
But what had happened to turn despair into confidence, to produce this first crack in the aristocratic fabric? And what tools were used to produce it? The answer to the second question has been thought to lie,
and probably does lie, in the murky area of military history. The basic unit of an early Greek army was the aristocrat and his entourage, collectively a 'phratry', members of his family, lesser dependent nobles,
richer farmers, and so down through the social scale. The spearhead, literally, of this unit was the aristocrat, well armed, well trained, standing out in front of the rest, which was itself protected as its affluence
permitted, or unarmed as poverty dictated, giving its moral or physical support by whatever methods or with whatever weapons came to hand. The developed army, on the other hand, while it might still contain
some elements of cavalry and more of light-armed troops, depended for its effect on some thousands of heavily, and more or less uniformly, equipped infantry called hoplites. The hoplites were still often
brigaded by phratry, though there was a shift in some places towards more firmly defined geographical units; but success required cohesion of the whole force, a line usually eight deep, helmeted, corsleted,
greaved, presenting a solid front of round shields and thrusting, no longer throwing, spears, winning by co-operative weight. As the mid-seventh-century Spartan poet, Tyrtaeus (below, p. 102), put it: 'Stand
near and take the enemy, strike with long spear or sword, set foot by foot, lean shield on shield, crest upon crest, helmet on helmet
Ranks Of Hoplite Soldiers depicted on a Corinthian vase of about 650-640 B.C. They advance on each other, with a piper to help keep the step. This style of warfare replaced the Homeric duels of leaders
supported by light-armed rabble, and was generally adopted in Greece during the seventh century B.C. The men are well armoured, with helmets, shield clamped on to the left arm by two grips, corselet and
greaves. The main weapon is a thrusting spear, and victory lay with the ranks that kept their order, were not outflanked, and did not break.
This is hoplite fighting in spirit, but how sophisticated in form? Here we appear to be faced with a paradox. Some random elements of hoplite equipment were being fashioned as early as the eighth century, but
the earliest representations of an organized phalanx in vase-painting do not antedate by much the middle of the seventh century. Yet an individual hoplite is a curious object to imagine in aristocratic battle,
while the creation of the phalanx with its practised cohesion surely demands one moment of decision. But the puzzle is not, perhaps, too real. It is the result of too easy a slide from thoughts of the single
champion to pictures of the massed infantry of later years; of failure to recognize that an easier supply of metal and more wealth to make use of it could gradually lead to a multiplication of 'champions'; of
collaboration between small numbers of them; of not asking what minimum number might be needed to form an effective unit of hoplite type (surely some hundreds, not thousands). The change could well be in
train and even far advanced in the first half of the century, years before the painters appreciated it or mastered the technique of depicting a hoplite army on a pot.
If this is so, it becomes easier to answer the more important question. What, if anything, did military innovation have to do with political revolution? In Corinth in 657 Cypselus had the army behind him; he