| “ | In peace children inter their parents. War violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
— The Histories by Herodotus
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After the Greek Dark Ages that followed the Late Bronze Age collapse, what historians call the archaic period of Greece began. This period was marked by the spreading and settling of Greek peoples across the Mediterranean and the opening of trade routes that had been dormant since the Bronze Age. A significant change in this period was the development of the archaic Greek warrior, the first iteration of the hoplite that would come to dominate ancient Greek warfare.
The archaic Greek warriors, in contrast to the idealistic Mycenaean warriors that placed an emphasis on individual heroic deeds in battle and single combat, were instead based on discipline. The archaic warriors wielded standardized equipment in the form of a long spear and a large round shield known as an aspis or hoplon.
Around the mid-seventh century BC, the archaic warriors adopted phalanx tactics, a style of warfare that featured tightly packed rectangular masses of hoplites as the backbone. Hoplite phalanxes were heavily tied to the rise of the polis, the Greek city-state. Ritualized seasonal warfare was the solution to armed conflicts between separate city-states and was connected to the rise of the most prominant city-states of Athens and Sparta. The archaic period ended in 480 BC with the second Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes I, in which the new system of phalanx warfare would be put to the test.
Battle vs. Geometric Warrior and Mycenaean Warrior (by SkullinBones1)[]
No battle written.
Expert's Opinion[]
TBW