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Hoplites Into Democracy Analysis

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In his 1996 work titled Hoplites into Democrats: The Changing Ideology of Athenian Infantry, Victor Hanson analyzes the timeline of the Athenian government as it transitions into a democracy and the effect this transition had on their warfare culture. Throughout the article, Hanson refers to the seventh and sixth century BC as the ‘normative polis’ before democracy when the government was timocratical and Athens was an early agrarian polis; and then continues his article to emphasize the fifth and fourth centuries BC during the political reforms and the emergence of democracy as the main form of government. Hanson mentions the tensions that arose between landowners and non-landowners as the government transitioned from timocratic to democratic, …show more content…

There were five enemy invasions during the fifth century, including the Spartans, and little to no harm came upon the farms (297). The democracy acknowledged the importance of domestic farmers and “took pains to ensure that cavalry patrols; light armed sorties, and overseas actions were designed to relieve pressure from local farmers’ property” (298). Farmer’s still considered themselves to have hoplite pride and wished to hold up the “integrity of their property” (298). Despite their self-identification as hoplites, with an excess of military aid and domestic powers, the farmers need not worry about battling or protecting their own land from enemy forces as the government ensured protection and aid to protect the countryside. Another instance of government protection was Periclean defense. This exemplified the shift of duties from hoplites to other infantrymen as the Athenians attempted to “protect their farms by means other than pitched hoplite battle” (298). With a decline in pitched battle, the lives of farmers were preserved since Hanson estimates that in 431 BC a pitched battle between the Athenians, the Peloponnesians, and the Boetians, “would probably have led to at least one or two thousand dead attic farmers.” (298). Instead the role of a hoplite became more complex during …show more content…

With continuous war and battles being fought, the Athenian farmers gained profits because of “greater opportunity for theft” (301). Hanson pulls from the fragmented works of an anonymous Oxyrhynchus Historian to support his plundering claim. The historian writes that “the Athenian countryside was ‘the most lavishly furnished’ in Greece” (300). Hanson draws to the conclusion that “Attic farmers in the fifth century BC often took rural property from conquered subjects and then re-employed it on their own farms” (301). With money being the new standard of privilege, as stated earlier, farmers utilized the lavish material items they plundered to gain economic status within their culture. Another policy that Attic farmers enjoyed under democracy was the “introduction of pay for hoplite military service… sometime around the mid-fifth century BC” (301). Hanson notes that Athenian farmers “were discovering the attractions democracy had to offer” (301) since compensation was nonexistent during agrarian warfare because it was a necessity to fight to save the farm. The burden of battle shifted between the old regime, where the agrarian community faced battle alone, and the new regime, where the burden was on the entire polis to fight for each other’s land (301). As generations continued, a new kind of self-interested Athenian hoplite became prevalent due to their

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