Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece by Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano

Abstract

172 PHOENIX collective experiences. Second, they should be acknowledged as significant factors in the making of Athenian policy, and not explained away as mere propagandist cover-up for the pursuit of power and expediency, as frequently seen in the so-called “Realist” approach to Greek history. Steinbock is definitely at his best in outlining the impact of social memory on Athenian politics and public discourse. When it comes, however, to exploring the workings of social memory itself—how and why certain events were preserved in the “collective consciousness” of the Athenians—his argument too frequently hinges on speculation and platitude. Although he deploys an impressive knowledge of literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, the conclusions he arrives at hardly ever aim at breaking new ground, and when they do, they lack persuasiveness. Explaining the Athenian memory of Thebes’ medism, or that of the Theban aid to Thrasybulus’ democrats, in terms of bad or good relationships between the two poleis respectively is, of course, legitimate; however, the attention and scholarship mustered by Steinbock to prove these arguments (105–106, 113–115, 254–267) give the inescapable impression of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. The same can be said of the lengthy discussion on why the threat of Athens’ eradication in 404 b.c. was indeed a “traumatic” and therefore “persistent memory” (291–300). I remain unpersuaded by the argument attributing the recollection of Theban benefactions to the topographic proximity of Boeotia and Phyle (236–245), Thrasybulus’ first foothold on Attic soil, which indeed occupied a privileged place in Athenian public discourse. The book also suffers from excessive repetitiveness: three times, for instance (41, 290, 331–332), we are told the same story, along with all the relevant quotations, about Demosthenes’ recollection of the Theban proposal to raze Athens (19.65). My last quibble is the organization of the argument in each chapter, which, to my mind, is allowed too much meandering into issues only tangentially related to its main thrust, such as the Theban-Plataean antagonism (Chapter Two) or the inscriptional record of the capture of Phyle (Chapter Four). In the end, however, I believe this is a work worth recommending to the student of ancient Greek, and particularly Athenian, history. Though not always easy to follow and sometimes frustrating in the attention it lavishes on secondary or self-evident questions, it brings together formidable scholarship and provides an up-to-date and reliable discussion of many important issues, a good example being the funeral oration (49–58). University of Silesia, Katowice Janek Kucharski Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece. Edited by Donald Kagan and Gregory F. Viggiano. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2013. Pp. xxi, 286. The subject matter of this volume—which is sure to be cited a great deal in coming years—is at once both wider-ranging and more specific than its subtitle suggests. It is more wide-ranging because hoplite warfare has been of interest not just to military historians, but because it seems to be inextricably entangled with our understanding of the emergence and development of the polis as a distinctive social and cultural phenomenon. The focus is more specific in two ways. First, this book is not an introduction to or a survey of Greek land warfare. It is essentially historiographical: it is a contribution to, and an attempt to frame the terms for the future development of, a particular debate BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 173 within modern scholarship. Second, it is primarily concerned with the archaic period, as the key moment of the influence of the military on the political. This chronological point causes problems for all scholars in the area (and not just the contributors to this volume), as relevant written material from the archaic period is exiguous at best and the archaeological record is not always conducive to answering the questions we want to ask. The editors make clear what they intend the book to do very early. Their introduction and first chapter both outline a history of what they call “the hoplite debate.” They posit a long-standing orthodoxy which has only relatively recently come under sustained attack from revisionists. These pieces are supplemented by two more...