The greatest warriors The World Has Ever Known

[jasonxx]

Id like to pick up on a line in the movie 300 with comparison to world warriors.

A line in the movie promotes the Spartans as the greatest warriors tthe world has ever known.

Id like to take issue and wonder if we can really come up with such a thing. I guess the basis of a Spartan warrior is toughness etc. But does toughness create the best I say definately not. I guess it helps in push on push Hoplite warfare.

How can the Spartans be put above. Romans. Macedonians. Thebans. Monghuls samurai Thebans etc.

Id say a measure of brians tactics and other things create the best and finest.And somewhat the Commanding brain and structure at the head.

Ive always argues brawn helps in a tough scrap but its always brains that wins the day. I recall Rambo all muscle and head band wiping out minions with a machine gun. I always hoped to see a little 5.6 SAS soldier calmy taking aim with a long range rifle and blowing his head off.

Can we really measure the Greatest Soldiers. Id say each period in history has had its defining soldiers. Romans. Macedonian. Carthaginian . Monghul etc etc. they all had one several things in common.

Organisation. Tactics. Discipline and above all in most cases the Commander with that little bit extra. Its fair to say Spartan soldiers were tough and rigid but i guess it was only a matter of time for someone like Emaminondas to work it out and give it a kicking.

Pretty much like Mike Tyson he was invincible until some one learned not to be afraid and out box him.

Kenny

[marcus]

A line in the movie promotes the Spartans as the greatest warriors tthe world has ever known.

They were the greatest ever known at the time; and, although I don't remember the line, I assume it was a Spartan who says it.

ATB

[Phoebus]

I have a few issues with such a subject, personally.

To begin with, our knowledge of hoplite combat is neither complete nor definitively clear. There are certainly episodes that point to an othismos model, but there are also examples that point to what we would interpret as more "traditional" combat--e.g., less push, more hand-to-hand. Given this, what does "best" indicate? A warrior large enough and strong enough to best aid in a rugby-like scrum? Or a warrior not just physically exemplary, but also trained well in the arts of spear-and-shield or sword-and-shield combat?

Movie quotes aside, I would say that the greatest value of the Lycurgan system was in creating an ideologically-driven soldier. Much like the later Samurai, the Lacedaemonian Similar/Peer/Homoios at the height of his state was renowned in his time because the traits his society engendered in him most aided him in the hoplite phalanx-centric mode of warfare prevalent in Hellas. That is, a soldier who would hold the line and maintain his place in the phalanx--neither shirking from the enemy nor overpursuing.

Once that mode of warfare was changed and/or abandoned, the worth of the Homoios decreased. His state's reluctance to address those changes left him increasingly obsolete. Case in point? Leuctra and Mantinea. However physically endowed, ideologically driven, or martially trained, the Homoios was locally overwhelmed by depth in numbers and shock of charge.

As his status decreased, so, likely, did his quality as well.

Incidentally, the Rambo character from the original "First Blood" was not the sad caricature seen in the other two movies. Hardly a "muscles and brawn" type, he often exhibited the sort of tactical (ambushes, traps, distractions) and survival thinking your SAS example might have admired (the final, improbable sequence where he explodes an entire town aside, of course).

[marcus]

Incidentally, the Rambo character from the original "First Blood" was not the sad caricature seen in the other two movies. Hardly a "muscles and brawn" type, he often exhibited the sort of tactical (ambushes, traps, distractions) and survival thinking your SAS example might have admired (the final, improbable sequence where he explodes an entire town aside, of course).

I know that this is off-topic, but I have to agree with you here. After all, Rambo was supposed to have been a Special Forces soldier who survived X tours of duty in Vietnam - and no-one did that without being extremely good at their job.

The first film was, of course, adapted from a serious novel about the home-coming experience of Vietnam veterans, written when the War was still extremely raw for both veterans and civilians. The aim was to try to make civilian readers understand the soldiers' mentality, and also, to some extent, to show the soldiers why the civilians were so "scared" of them.

Whether it worked or not is a different matter - but certainly the civilian attitudes to the Vietnam War were very different from those of the Spartan women ...

ATB

[Paralus]

Once that mode of warfare was changed and/or abandoned, the worth of the Homoios decreased. His state's reluctance to address those changes left him increasingly obsolete. Case in point? Leuctra and Mantinea. However physically endowed, ideologically driven, or martially trained, the Homoios was locally overwhelmed by depth in numbers and shock of charge.

As his status decreased, so, likely, did his quality as well.

One might describe othismos as the perfect hoplite phalanx battle. The pressure wave that breaks the opposing force. A time machine would be of immense benefit I feel.

Saprtan "deterioration" in the fourth century owed less to tactics pers se, or changes in them, than to the oliganthropy enshrined in the Lycurgan system. Put simply, by the time of Leuktra, there were precious few homoioi that she could put into the field. Indeed by the time of "first" Mantinea (418) she was refusing truces until her dead were removed so as to cover the losses.

At Leuktra she managed 700 homoioi on the field. The estimated population was some 1150 or so (after Cartledge). A century earlier she had some 8-9,000.

The days of there being sufficient homoioi on the field to frighten the opposition off had passed.

Their discipline must not have waned terribly: they were still able to remove their dying king from the field and make a retreat to the fortified camp with some three hundred still walking.

[Phoebus]

One might describe othismos as the perfect hoplite phalanx battle. The pressure wave that breaks the opposing force.

At times, yes, certainly. And then, in others, it seems othismos would not allow for what's described. An example, off the top of my head (and I'm preemptively asking for forgiveness as I'm working from memory) would be from Thucydides, during a skirmish near Corinth, where he describes a downhill charge followed by an orderly withdrawal. Methinks the chaos caused by a constant downhill push would have made it a bit tough for the othismos model to back off without being first broken.

A time machine would be of immense benefit I feel.

Agreed!

Saprtan "deterioration" in the fourth century owed less to tactics pers se, or changes in them, than to the oliganthropy enshrined in the Lycurgan system. Put simply, by the time of Leuktra, there were precious few homoioi that she could put into the field. Indeed by the time of "first" Mantinea (418) she was refusing truces until her dead were removed so as to cover the losses.

To be sure, and I wasn't arguing against that.

Basically, I was pointing at the fact that the Homoioi became increasingly irrelevant in a battlefield that was looking beyond hoplite formations.

Beyond that, I was also pointing at their insistence on largely conventional formatons and tactics in the face of evolving foes. Certainly there were only 700 Homoioi, but they were nonetheless the part of their army that was the focus of the oblique Theban assault. In that sense, we're still talking about an insistence of 8-man depth versus a much deeper formation achieving localized superiority.

As for their qualitative drop, I was looking a bit further down the timeline.

[Paralus]

An example, off the top of my head (and I'm preemptively asking for forgiveness as I'm working from memory) would be from Thucydides, during a skirmish near Corinth, where he describes a downhill charge followed by an orderly withdrawal. Methinks the chaos caused by a constant downhill push would have made it a bit tough for the othismos model to back off without being first broken.

Now, there is a difficul battle to recall. First thought of some of the sharp clashes in the Magarid but none fit the description. A quick scan brought little to light about Corinth. Sure you're not thinking of the Corintian War and Xenophon? If not, possibly Demosthenes campaign in Acarnania. A most underrated general Demosthenes. Thucydides' seeming lack of understanding of( or interest in) tactics sees him vastly underrated in his narrative. One of the best generals of the fifth century.

Beyond that, I was also pointing at their insistence on largely conventional formatons and tactics in the face of evolving foes. Certainly there were only 700 Homoioi, but they were nonetheless the part of their army that was the focus of the oblique Theban assault. In that sense, we're still talking about an insistence of 8-man depth versus a much deeper formation achieving localized superiority.

We do not know for certain the depth of the Spartan phalanx at Leuktra. Xenephon says only "not more than twelve deep" - which would be normal. We do know that even undone by different tactics - Diodorus describes the Spartans and their allies attacking in "crescent formation" to combat the Theban "refused" left - the fighting was desperate and, if we take Plutarch at his word, Pelopidas and the Sacred Band charged and broke the front. It likely was a combination of the refused left and cavalry.

Either way, Spartan prowess on the field had not diminished entirely. They fought their way back to camp - at a horrible cost. Also, in 391, their performance at Nemea is an outstanding example of their battlefield drill and discipline.

Later in the fourth century - by Alexander's time - they are a second rate pugilist struggling to remember the championship bouts of their splendour.