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REINSTATING THE HOPLITE: ARMS, ARMOUR AND PHALANX FIGHTING IN ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREECE. By Adam Schwartz. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2009. Pp. 337.
Anyone who has been following the long debate over the evolution of hoplite warfare will find this book a "must-read." Anyone who is expecting to teach courses in Greek civilization and history or ancient military history in general will want to have a look too. While I feel that there are problems with aspects of this book, the main argument - that our most basic understanding of hoplite warfare must depend on the evidence of the surviving armour, the texts that refer to hoplite combat, and representations of hoplites in Greek art - is sound: the armour and the shields in particular tell us how hoplites fought because how men seek to protect themselves indicates how they expect to be harmed. The feature of this book that will interest those who teach about hoplite warfare is Schwartz's attempts to understand what it must have been like to fight as a hoplite: hot, sweaty, and most unpleasant.
Schwartz divides his material into three chapters preceded by a short introductory chapter that sets out his aims, sources, and methodology. The volume is filled out with a brief conclusion and a substantial appendix, which provides a catalogue of known hoplite battles. Chapter Two discusses every aspect of hoplite armour, beginning with the shield, moving on to the helmet and body armour, and finishing with the hoplite's weapons. Schwartz looks at surviving examples of armour and analyses how they worked (or did not) to protect the body. Even though we possess relatively well-preserved helmets and breastplates, the decay of the metal means that we do not have an exact idea of how much they weighed. The loss of padding also prevents us from knowing how well armour fitted and to what degree blows were softened. In spite of these difficulties and the...