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Updated: June 1, 2025
He reached such a degree of depravity, and he had so little respect for you and so much fear of the enemy, and he had so great a wish to join the cavalry and cared so little for the laws that he disregarded the risk, and was willed to be fined and have his property confiscated and be liable to all these existing penalties, rather than to take up his position in the ranks with the citizens and be a hoplite. 10.
For he would be convicted of not being in the ranks, as when he was enrolled as a hoplite he did not go out with you in camp, and he did not let himself be placed in ranks, and of cowardice, for although he ought to have met danger with the hoplites, he chose to go with the cavalry. 8. But they say he will offer this defense, that in going with the cavalry, he did no harm to the state.
Unfortunately, however, they were no longer commanded by Epaminondas. Their present commanders were utterly incompetent. They were beaten and forced to retreat, and the army was in such danger from the active pursuit of the Thessalians and Athenians, that its destruction seemed inevitable. Luckily, however, Epaminondas was serving as a hoplite in the ranks.
But it may be regarded as certain that the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the Hellenes, As to the -scutum-, that large, cylindrical, convex leather shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper -clupeus-, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples; but the undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites.
So the heavy hoplite was supplanted by the legionary; the knight, clad in armor, had to give place to the light free-moving infantryman; and in a general way, in the evolution of life, just as in the evolution of human societies and of individual destinies, the greatest successes have been for those who have accepted the heaviest risks.
The battle itself was not without its marvellous side. Epizelus, the Athenian, used to relate how a huge hoplite, whose beard over-shadowed all his shield, stood over against him in the thick of the fight. The apparition passed him by and killed the man next him, but Epizelus came out of the battle blind, and remained so for the rest of his life.
But before effective aid could he rendered, the island of Eubœa, through the intrigues of Philip, revolted from Athens. It was in an expedition to recover that island that Demosthenes served as a hoplite in the army, under Phocion as general. It was not till the summer of B.C. 348 that this territory was recovered by Athens.
Infinite pains have been spent in the effort to show, on the one hand, that the equipment worn by the heroes of the Iliad was of the more ancient type, consisting mainly of a great shield of ox-hide large enough to cover the whole body, behind which the warrior crouched, wearing for defensive armour no more than a linen corselet and leathern cap and gaiters, and on the other that the hero wore practically the complete panoply of the later Hellenic hoplite, the small round shield, the bronze helmet, with metal cuirass, belt, and greaves; while the question of whether the offensive weapons were of iron or of bronze has been debated with equal pertinacity.
Historically it would probably be truer to say that the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which Socrates served with great distinction as a hoplite, marked the decisive turning-point. At any rate we now find him entirely devoted to the conversion of his fellow citizens, and we must try to understand what the message he had for them was.
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