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Short description

Though military service has become voluntary in Hellenistic Athens, its young men are still trained as Hoplites and will take to the battlefield in their traditional armour when called upon.

Description

Even though military service had become voluntary in Hellenistic Athens, its young men were still trained as Hoplites and would take to the battlefield in their traditional armour when called upon. Protected by Phrygian helmets, metal greaves, a linothorax and a round shield spotting the owl of Athena, these Athenian Hoplites are well equipped for a battle in the traditional phalanx.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

Once, to serve as an Hoplite was the greatest honour for an Athenian, as it was in most of the other 1200 Greek city-states. By the early 3rd century, however, military service in Athens had become voluntary, its standing force reduced to 1000 Hoplites – the Epilektoi (picked ones), who had been selected as the bravest citizens of the Hoplite class (for more information on this, see the description of the Epilektoi), as well as 200 to 300 horsemen (see the description of the Athenian Xystophoroi). The forts of Attica were manned with Greek and foreign mercenaries, whose numbers may have exceeded those of the professional citizen soldiers.

Even though Hellenistic Athens undertook few expeditions outside of its borders and abolished the duty to serve in the army, it could still fall back on its large number of male citizens (at least several ten thousands) to defend their territory in times of need. Upon his eighteenth birthday, every Athenian man who was the offspring of two Athenian parents entered into the Ephebeia (as it is described in detail in Aristotle’s “Athenaion Politeia”). All the way down to the conquest of Athens by Sulla in 86 BC, the Ephebes still spent two years of training as Hoplites, Akontistai (javelinmen) and Toxotes (archers) as well as with the catapult (Reinmuth, Ephebic Texts from Athens 1961, p. 15). Ephebes were also at times drafted, and as such used as garrison troops at the Mouseion in 267/266 BC during the early stages of the Chremonidean War (IG II² 665, l. 11-13). After the final ejection of the Macedonians in 229 BC, the Ephebes probably became a proper military force again, who would also serve in the forts and participate in actions outside the city and its chora (Bugh, Horsemen of Athens 1988, p. 192).

Having completed their service as Ephebes, Athenian citizens would be at the ready for future call-ups, just like reserve soldiers in countries with mandatory military service today. According to their social status, their performances as Ephebes and their personal fortune, they would fight as Hoplites, archers, javelinmen or artillerymen. The highest office of Hellenistic Athens below the Strategos was the Hoplite general, a position filled by the foremost men of their time, such as Eurykleides, the son of Mikion of Kephisia at the end of the 240s BC (SEG XXXII, 169). From the early 3rd century, the Hoplite general also became the principal supervisor of the Ephebes and joined them and their commanders in religious and political ceremonies (Henderson, Ephebeia 2020, p. 211). All this attests to an ongoing importance of the Hoplite, with a majority of former Ephebes probably equipping themselves as Hoplites when called upon.

Various inscriptions show that Hoplite Generals existed in Athens well into the 1st century BC and possibly beyond, but the last Athenians in Hoplite armour probably disappeared after the fall of the city in 86 BC. Athenian history did not end in that year, however: the city remained an important cultural centre, with young Romans such as Cicero and Caesar studying there in the 70s BC, and, as the geographer Strabon of Amaseia (ca. 63BC-24AD) states, retaining a certain degree of liberty: “(...) and to this day it is free and held in honour among the Romans” (Strab. IX, 1, 20, C398).