The strength of Spartan Units

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agesilaos
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The strength of Spartan Units

Post by agesilaos »

Over on the Taktike thread there was much made of the size of the Spartan mora with it being asserted that this formation was not one of about 600 men but one of 1200 or so.

The ancient evidence is fairly clear,
1. Herodotos has Demaratos tell Xerxes that Sparta had 8,000 men.
2. Herodotos gives the Spartan strength at Plataia as 5,000 with 5,000 periokoi in support
3. Herodotos mentions a ‘lochos of Pitane’
4. Thukydides describes the organisation of the Spartan army at Mantinea as six lochoi each of sixteen enomotiai
5. Xenophon describes the army as consisting of six morai each of sixteen enomotiai
6. Xenophon gives the strength of the mora attacked at Lechaion as ‘about 600’
7. Plutarch says Ephoros gave a mora a strength of 500, Kallisthenes 700 and Polybios ‘among others 900.
8. Hesychios defines mora as a unit in the Spartan army of 500 or 1,000.

In order to double the size of a mora it is necessary to assume that both Xenophon and Thukydides got their numbers wrong or their organisations, which given Xenophon’s intimate knowledge and Thukydides’ expressed care in discovering the organisation of their army this does not seem likely. Suggestions that Xenophon has been corrected from Thukydides fall because his organisation is different in other respects. If one chooses to reject a figure, sixteen enomotiai, given by our two best authorities independently, one had better have very good reason.

The main reasons given by Lazenby, a main proponent of the doubling theory, are that these figures make the Spartan army too small both for a great power and for the description of the battle of Mantinea make sense.

Now the first point is no point at all; the Spartans did not go to war alone but as part of the League they dominated, in the same way that the Thebans, with a contribution of only 2,000 hoplites dominated the Boeotian Confederacy. It also ignores the fact that the Spartans would double their own force by drawing on the periokoi as they are stated to have done at Plataia. And therein lies the solution to the problem of numbers at Mantinea.

But before getting on to that let us address the likelihood of manuscript corruption, numbers are second only to Proper Nouns in susceptibility to mis-transmission. Lazenby points out that the text of the Hellenika implies that there were two lochoi per mora but the Constitution of The Lakedaimonians gives four, and, sensibly suggests that ‘duo’, two, may have been misread as ‘d’ which represents four; this is a possibility and would bring the Xenophontic organisation into line with Thukydides’. No such reasoning is presented for misreading leading to ‘sixteen’ rather than ‘thirty-two’, however; quite sensibly too, as no reasonable paleographic argument for such a corruption exists.

Lazenby is also sensitive to the criticism that 1,200 is not a strength given by any ancient authority, for a mora, but rather than argue the case he cavalierly dismisses all the sources but notes that Hesychios’ 1,000 is very close! Not only preferring a late source but also ignoring the half of it which gives 500 as the strength of a mora!

This is not just an esoteric exercise in mathematics either; it warps the interpretation of any battles involving the Spartans. For instance, the 5,000 Spartans Herodotos become a smaller draft (25 age groups) at the crisis of Greek freedom than was common for policing actions during the Fourth Century BC (35 age groups at Leuktra). So the Saviours of Greece, for as such were they lauded, did not field their full force despite the fact that the Persian fleet, which might have necessitated a home-guard, had withdrawn to Asia watched by the Greek fleet.

Similarly, doubling Spartan numbers at Leuktra reduces their percentage losses and necessitates an increase in the Boeotian and particularly Theban strength. In the reconstituted Boeotian Confederacy Thebes itself still supplied 2,000 hoplites but she had taken over the voting rights of two other units, Lazenby has to make this mean that they supplied 4,000 hoplites which is not the case (and following his reasoning for increasing Spartan numbers from 3,000 to 6,000, surely this is too small an army for a state that held the Hegemony for ten years?).

Mantineia is a case apart for Thukydides numbers certainly do not stack up but nowhere to be seen in his account are the periokoi, as was noted by Forrest in ‘A History of Sparta 950 – 196’, this leads to fanciful suggestions from Lazenby that the Periokoi were not called up for service in the Peloponnese; so a Peloponnesian power allegedly left at least half its military force at home whenever it had to flex its muscles locally, there is a distinct theme emerging of detachment from reality.

Thukydides researched the organisation of the Spartan army as a separate topic from the events at Mantineia, it would seem that he ‘forgot’ periokoi in the battle though which is remarkably lax, but he was struggling with the nomenclature used by his sources; ‘Lakedaimonioi’ could include the periokoi or exclude them, he seems to have misunderstood that his sources for the battle were speaking both inclusively and exclusively in turn.

The left wing of Agis army consisted of the Skiritai (600) and the Brasideans (1,000), in the centre we should place the periokoi in equal numbers (3,072) to the Spartan troops, then the six lochoi of Spartans (3,072) and the Tegeans (2,000-3,000). This gives the same strength as doubling the Spartan numbers but avoids the problems therein. It also makes more sense of Agis’ seemingly ludicrous attempt to move troops from the right to fill a gap made by the Skiritai and Brasideans moving further to the left. Surely had the Bradisdeans been contiguous with the Spartan lochoi, Agis would simply have had the lochoi move in company with the Brasideans. If, however there was an intervening body of men, of standard hoplite training ie rudimentary, who probably could not execute such a manoeuvre, it would make a sort of sense to despatch his overlapping lochoi from the right a distance of maybe 650 yds? A distance that was covered twice over by the messenger delivering the original order to move left and then the countermand, were it not feasible it is difficult to see why Aristokles and Hipponoidas were convicted of cowardice.

Xenophon’s mention of 6,000 Lakedaimonians at the Nemea would be an inclusive number , 3000 each of Spartiatai and periokoi.

In order to posit twice the number of Spartans in their organisation one has to ignore all of the ancient evidence and distort the interpretation of many engagements. The problems which do exist can be explained much more simply without rejecting the testimony both Thukydides and Xenophon, not to mention Ephoros and Kallisthenes.

Polybios and his cohort are best explained as referring to the later reformed Spartan army of Kleomenes III.
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agesilaos
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Re: The strength of Spartan Units

Post by agesilaos »

To Whit;

Among the evidence for the strength of units in the Spartan army is Plutarch’s statement (Pelopidas 17 ii) that ‘Polybios, among others, gives the strength of 900’ for the ‘mora’. This appears nowhere in his extant writing and we do possess the books concerning its most likely context, the reforms of Kleomenes III. The next best context would be his lost Taktike.

The extant Taktikeis display some confusion over Spartan nomenclature, not least because for them a ‘lochos’ was a file rather than a higher formation. Some of the error stems from this mis-reading of information in Xenophon and Thukydides but there are other aspects that cannot come from their descriptions and may, logically have originated with Polybios.
Aelian
5.2 The whole file is called a row (stichos), and is also termed a dekania, and by some an enomotia. Others, however; use the term enomotia for a quarter-file and call the commander of an enomotia an enomotarch. (18) Two enomotiai they call a dimoiria and its commander a dimoirites, so that the half-file (hemilochion) is also termed a dimoiria and the half-file-leader (hemilochites) a dimoirites.

Arrian
6 [1] Some term this a lochos or stichos, others a dekania, [2] the lochos was formerly ten strong. It is doubtful what enomotia means: for some say this is another name for a lochos, others that it is the fourth part of a lochos, and that its leader is an enomotarch , two enomotiai make a dimoiria and it is led by a dimoirites. [3] Xenophon can certainly be shown to consider the enomotia part of a lochos: always less than a half at least, he says that the lochagoi form each enomotia in their own lochos.

Asclepiodotos
2 ii Now the file (lochos) was formerly called a row (stichos), a synomoty, and a dekania, and the best man and the leader of the stichos is called a lochagos while the last man was called the ouragos. But when later on, the row was re-organised, its parts received different names; for the half is now called the half-file (hemilochion), or the double quarter (dimoiria), the former being used for a file of sixteen men the latter for one of twelve, and the leader is now called the hemilochites and the diamoirites and the quarter file is called the enomotia and its leader an enomotarch.

The underlying organisation, then is; two enomotiai to a dimoiria and two dimoiria to a lochos; the simplest reconciliation might be to make an enomotia a file, but in the first place it had never meant that and in the second the numbers yielded would be too low. Were there to be three files of sixteen in an enomotia, as there had been of twelve in Lak Pol then, a dimoiria would contain 96 men and a lochos 192, five of these lochoi would then make a Polybian mora of 960. A possible confirmation for the high total can be sought in Hesychios’ comment under ‘mora’ that it was ‘a Spartan unit of either 500 or 1,000.’ Which reflects the earlier strength as reported by Ephoros and the later Polybian one rounded up (implying that Plutarch has rounded down).

Herodotos implies that there were five lochoi of 1,000 Spartiates at Plataia in 479, although then that was the whole army and here part of the lower organisation and since Kleomenes raised 4,000 citizen sarissophoroi (Plut. Kleo. 11 ii) there would be four morai, until two more were raised from rich helots (ib 23.i) which would parallel the Fourth century army of six morai.

Both Agis IV and Kleomenes were looking back into Sparta’s glorious past so these echoes may not be entirely fortuitous, though they are not conclusive either.

Since there is clear confusion in Arrian’s description of Xenophon being one of the authors making an enomotia part a lochos and taking lochos as ‘file’ and we meet dimoirites elsewhere as meaning ‘double-pay man’ rather than signifying any position in a file (a definition resting solely on these passages), and the inherent unlikelihood of a level of command at the three man, a quarter of a twelve man file (an artefact of the original source’s reading of Xenophon and his twelve man stichoi , or maybe it reflects the twelve files in a lochos) make it seem likely that there is the posited double confusion here.

At the lowest level, stichos, the tripartite formation may reflect the three original tribes mentioned by Tyrtaios, with which Kleomenes III would have been familiar.

The later organisation may have been;

Six Morai (four citizen and two helot) each of 960 men in 60 files composed of
Five lochoi of 12 files (192 men) composed of
Two Dimoiriai 6 files (96 men) composed of
Two enomotiai 3 files (48 men).

edited to include quote, :roll:
When you think about, it free-choice is the only possible option.
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