Sparta
SpartaIn the 7th Century BC a new era of warfare strategy evolved. Before this new strategy, foot soldiers
(known as hoplites) engaged in battle in the form of one mob for each army which on the command
of their generals runs at each other and proceeds to hack blindly at the enemy with little to no direction
other then to kill the enemy in front of them. This proved to be very messy and the tide of battle
depended mostly on emotion and size of an army. In the name of strategy and organization, the
phalanx was developed. A phalanx is simply defined as a line formation with its width significantly
larger then its depth. The depth of the phalanx is a variable which some suggest was decided by the
army itself rather then by the leaders of the army. The smallest depth appears to have been that of
one man deep. However this was a unique occurrence which is widely believed to be fictitious. The
largest depth is that of 120 men deep which was fielded at one time by the Macedonians. On average,
the depth of the phalanx appears to be about eight men deep. During the time of Alexander the Great,
the phalanx was believed to be eight men deep, but some argue that it evolved into a sixteen man deep
phalanx. The Spartans purposely varied the depth of their phalanx so to confuse the enemy about the
number of soldiers fielded. The phalanx proved to be a very valuable weapon for the military at that time.
Armies which did not adapt to the phalanx formation were quickly slaughtered. The use of the phalanx
allowed the Greeks to win the Persian Wars.
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Many historians believe that the development of the phalanx led directly to social changes occurring
throughout Greece during the time of the phalanx’s implementation. The phalanx formation allowed men
to participate in the military who otherwise could not have because a much smaller investment in
weapons and armor was needed to participate in the phalanx. The combined increase in the number
of those participating in the army and the increase in importance of the common foot soldier lead to
the common man being increasingly treated better by the ruling classes.
Eventually this may have led to the invention of democracy.
The most noticeable difference between ancient Greek and modern warfare is the amount of “intelligence”
information. Today our military maneuvers are almost exclusively reliant on information we get from
satellites, scouts, or spies in the opposition. The ancient Greeks totally ignored this area of military
strategy. Countless tales of armies meeting each other by chance or armies passing within miles of each
other without knowledge of the other. Intelligence information seemed to have come by chance for the
ancient Greeks rather then by conscious effort.
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Surprise is also an element of war which in modern times is taken very seriously and...
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