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Battle of Mantinea
by Allen Parfitt
This article will discuss the events leading up to the Battle of Mantinea in
418 (all dates BC, of course) between the Spartans and their allies and the
Argives, Mantineans, a few Athenians, and their allies. It is usually referred
to as the first Battle of Mantinea, to distinguish it from a significant battle
near the same place in 362. Mantinea was the largest hoplite battle of the
Peloponnesian War, and had far-reaching consequences. Indeed, it is not too
much to say that the victory made the Spartan triumph fourteen years later
possible.
From the mists of prehistory until the battle of Cheronae in 329 the Greek
heavy infantryman was king of the battlefields of the eastern Mediterranean.
The dictionary will tell you that he was called a hoplite, from his three-foot
wooden shield, called a hoplon, but recent sources claim that the word hoplon
actually refers to all his military equipment so "hoplite" meant "fully armed".
The classical hoplite was indeed fully armed. He wore a metal cuirass to
protect his chest, with flaps hanging down to cover his upper groin. Greaves
snapped on to his lower legs, and his head was encased in a traditional helmet
that covered not only the top of his head, but his face and neck as well. His
primary weapon was a nine foot spear. The shaft was straight ash, with a
metal point at the business end and a metal butt-spike at the other. He also
carried a short sword. His characteristic shield was made of wood, about three
feet in diameter, and had leather holds attached to the inside so it could be
held at chest level by the left hand and forearm. All this equipment was
heavy--probably sixty pounds or more. The hoplite usually had a servant or
assistant to help him carry it, and waited until battle was imminent before
equipping himself. Taken by himself, the hoplite looked menacing, but a little
clumsy. The long spear was not a very flexible weapon, and the Corinthian
helmet restricted his vision and hearing. But the hoplite did not fight by
himself. He fought in a phalanx with thousands of other hoplites, drawn up
eight or more ranks deep. The round shield protected not only the hoplite who
carried it, but the right side of the man next to him. The spears of the first
four ranks of the phalanx stuck out like the teeth of some gigantic animal and
the weight of so many heavily armed men gave the formation power and shock value.
Whether advancing at the run, as the Athenians did at Marathon, or moving at the slow
but steady pace the Spartans preferred, no "barbarian" army could withstand
them. The Persians, with the immense resources of their huge empire, tried
several times, but their more lightly armed troops, even the famous "immortals",
failed against the powerful Greeks. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand in 401 was
a testament to the respect the Persians had for a hoplite phalanx, even a
phalanx very far from home.
The Greek battlefield dominance was surprising, because Greece itself was far
from united. The Greek world was divided into hundreds of city-states of
varying size. Typically a Greek city-state consisted of a walled city and some
surrounding countryside. Small states like this couldn't maintain a standing
army, so the hoplites that protected it were citizen soldiers. Farmers,
playwrights, merchants: as long as a male citizen could afford the equipment,
he could stand in the phalanx. When two Greek city-states went to war, one of
them would invade the other's territory and start destroying crops. This was
the signal for the defending army to march out for battle. A hoplite phalanx
did not maneuver well over rough ground, and did not like to advance uphill, so
these battles were usually held "by appointment" on a nice flat field. Assuming
that one side did not break and run, the two armies met in a terrific
collision, followed by a brutal pushing match, until one side gave way and
fled. Then the peace could be arranged, presumably with the loser conceding
something, and everyone still standing could go back to his normal life.
Then there were the Spartans. Sparta was different. By means of its military
prowess, Sparta conquered the largest land area of any city state, covering the
southern part of the Peloponnesian peninsula. But instead of farming
themselves, the Spartans made the previous owners continue to do it as serfs,
called helots. Spartan citizens had one occupation: soldier. Sparta's hoplites
devoted themselves to war, and were the best trained and best disciplined army
in ancient Greece. An intermediate class of "pereoici" (also transliterated as
"pereskoi") served as merchants and craftsmen. The Spartan citizen-soldiers
referred to themselves with a term often translated as "Similars"--a comparable
usage would be the British term "peers". Throughout most of its history, Sparta
had no walls, trusting in the dominance of its army.
In the fifth century hoplites began to shed some of their burdensome equipment
in the interest of mobility. The Spartans took the lead, substituting a conical
helmet that rested on the top of the head for the more confining Corinthian
helmet, and dispensing with the greaves and cuirass. All that remained the same
was the shield and the spear. This did not make the hoplite less dangerous. On
the contrary--he gained some flexibility and maneuverability without
sacrificing shock value. Interest also increased in the use of light
troops--light spearmen called "peltasts" and missile throwers such as archers
and slingers. Cavalry was mainly used for covering the flanks of an army, or
harassing a defeated enemy. It would be left to the Macedonians to show how
heavy cavalry could work with the phalanx to create an unbeatable military
system.
The Peloponnesian War broke out in 433 between the Peloponnesian League, led by
Sparta, and the Athenian Empire. But when the Spartans and their allies showed
up in Athenian territory, the Athenians refused to come out and fight. Their
great leader Pericles had a different idea. Athens had extended her walls down
to the port at Piraeus, and would rely on her naval superiority. The Spartans
could burn all the farmhouses and vineyards they wanted to. Athens would defend
her walls and project her power through the Aegean and Adriatic seas with her
fleet. Fleets cost money. Not only were triremes expensive and, as any boat
owner can testify, always in need of maintenance, but traditionally the
"thetes" who rowed them were paid. Athens was rich through taxes on the empire
and the silver mines of Laurium. Sparta was poor, and had no fleet to speak of.
Some of her allies, like Corinth, maintained fleets, but they could not equal
the Athenians, either in quantity or quality. However, in 430-428 plague broke
out in the crowded streets of Athens, and a quarter of the population died,
including Pericles. Neither Athens nor Sparta was able to gain an advantage in
this asymmetrical struggle, and in 423, they agreed to peace. The Peace of
Nicias, named after the Athenian leader who sponsored it, was supposed to last
fifty years. The Athenians wanted to replenish their treasury, recover their
wayward colony at Amphipolis on the north shore of the Aegean, and reclaim the
fort at Panactum on their border with Thebes. The Thebans were also holding
some Athenian prisoners following their victory over the Athenians at Delium.
The Spartans wanted to eliminate the outpost of Pylos in their territory, which
the Athenians had made into a magnet for disaffected helots, and get back
prisoners captured near there several years before.
But Sparta's allies were not so interested in the peace. The Corinthians could
not see that they were gaining anything, and the Thebans were also unimpressed.
The Amphipolans did not want to be returned to Athens, and the Spartan governor
was unwilling or unable to force them. So the Athenians held on to Pylos. The
prisoners on both sides were returned, but the Thebans destroyed Panactum
rather than give it to the Athenians. And there was Alcibiades. Handsome,
wealthy, ambitious, brilliant, sneaky, Alcibiades blazed across the history of
these times like a berserk meteor. Thucydides and Plutarch both say that
Alcibiades was angry when the Spartans came to Athens to negotiate peace and
slighted Alcibiades in favor of Nicias, even though Alcibiades' family had
historic ties to Sparta. It is also possible that he saw more scope for his
limitless ambition in war than in peace. He went looking for trouble, and found
it in Argos.
Argos was an ancient city-state in the northeastern Peloponnesus. The Argives
had been eclipsed by the power of Sparta, and the Spartans had once captured
land from them. Argos had stayed neutral and increased its strength during the
first part of the Peloponnesian War, and now set about creating an anti-Spartan
alliance. Their first addition to what Kagan refers to as the "Separate
Alliance" was the city-state of Mantinea, north and east of Sparta. The
Mantineans had taken the opportunity while Sparta was at war to gain territory
from their smaller neighbors and were worried about the Spartan reaction. A
third important member of the Separate Alliance was Elis, in the northwest.
Together these three city-states formed a broad arc across the northern part of
the Peloponnesus. The Spartans were not pleased and sent out their army. There
was some maneuvering, especially on the borders of Elis, but no major battle.
To make sure that the Spartans understood the purpose of this alliance, the
Eleans provided the Spartans with a calculated insult. Olympus, home of the
Olympic games, lay in Elean territory. At the games of 420, the Eleans told the
Spartans they were not welcome, on the grounds that some of this military
activity had taken place during the sacred truce. So concerned were the Eleans
that the Spartans might show up at the games with an army that they kept their
soldiers mobilized, and they were joined by a thousand men each from Mantinea
and Argos. A Spartan named Lichas entered a chariot under Thebes, then came to
the arena and crowned the charioteer when it won. The Eleans had him beaten up,
further creating tension.
When the Spartans sent representatives to Athens to try to patch up the peace,
Alcibiades tricked them into denying that they possessed powers to negotiate.
Angry, the Athenians made an alliance with Argos, and the next year Alcibiades
marched a small army clear across the Peloponnesus and persuaded the small but
strategic city-state of Patria to join the alliance. And if the Spartans
thought that the allies didn't mean business, the Argives attacked the
city-state of Epidaurus, on the Saronic Gulf between Argos and Athens. Conquest
of Epidaurus would make it easy for the Athenians to come to the aid of the
allies, and cut Sparta off completely from its friends in Corinth and Thebes.
The Spartans sent out their army, but as was their custom, they checked the
omens before they crossed the border, and found them unfavorable. They also
sent several hundred soldiers by sea to Epidaurus to make sure that the city
was not captured.
Everyone knew that a showdown was coming. The Argives tried to prepare by
forming an elite corps of a thousand aristocratic young men to stand up to the
Spartan hoplites. The Spartans--well, this might be a good time to discuss the
rather unusual Spartan system of government. Sparta was a monarchy--with two
kings! Its kings sat on the council of elders, the Gerousia, but their main
job was to lead the army. The actual administration of Sparta was handled by
five ephors. It isn't quite clear how the ephors were chosen--perhaps by lot
from among those eligible. One of the kings at this time, Pleistoanax, was
seriously identified with those who sought peace with Athens. As the peace come
unraveled, he lost prestige, so the Spartan army was placed in the hands of the
other king, a young man named Agis. He was the second of the four men by that
name to appear in Spartan history, and was not the Agis profiled by Plutarch.
In 418 he led the Spartan army north. The Tegeans were still loyal, and Spartan
allies from Corinth and Thebes were told to meet with the Spartans at Philea in
the northern Peloponnesus. The Argives tried to prevent the Spartans from
joining with the Corinthians and the Thebans, but it was notoriously difficult
to force a hoplite army to fight when it didn't want to, and Agis succeeded in
joining his allies via a night march. When he had done so he was in command of
what Thucydides described as the "finest Hellenic army ever yet brought
together." Agis had somewhere around 20,000 hoplites, another 5,000 light
troops, and 1,000 cavalry. The allies had about 12, 000 hoplites, none of whom
were Athenians, who had sent a token force of 1,000 hoplites and 300 cavalry
too late for the confrontation.
It appeared that a great battle was about to be fought very close to Argos.
Thucydides did not think much of the allies' chances. "The Argives were
completely surrounded", he says, "from the plain the Spartans and their allies
shut them off from their city, above them were the Corinthians, Phliasians and
Pellenians; and on the side of Nemea the Boeotians [Thebans] Sicyonians and
Megarians. Meanwhile their army was without cavalry, the Athenians alone among
the allies not having yet arrived." He also reports that the Argives and their
allies "did not see the danger of their position, but thought they could not
have a fairer field, having intercepted the Spartans in their own country and
close to the city." But then a very strange thing happened. Two men from the
Argive army, Thrasylus and Alciphron, one of them a general and the other a man
with historic ties to Sparta, went out and talked to Agis. Thucydides says that
they went on their own authority, "not by order of the people", and that they
assured Agis that the Argives were willing to submit any problems between them
and Sparta to arbitration, make a treaty and live at peace in the future. Agis
talked to one unnamed individual, presumably an ephor accompanying his army,
granted the Argives a four months truce, told his allies to go home without
consulting them, and led his army back to Sparta.
Kagan suggests that these two men told Agis that a oligarchic pro-Spartan coup
was soon to occur in Argos, as, indeed, it eventually did, so the battle would
be unnecessary. He also thinks that Thrasylus was the Argive commander,
although this is conjecture. We might expect that when Thrasylus and Alciphron
returned to Argos they would be greeted as heroes, and the Argives and
Mantineans would proclaim a day of thanksgiving for their narrow escape. Not so!
Thucydides reports that the Argives were furious. They still felt that they
should have fought the battle, "and began to stone Thrasylus" He fled to the
sanctuary of a temple, and his property was confiscated. About that time the
Athenians finally showed up. Alcibiades, there as an ambassador, persuaded
the Argives that they should not have made a truce without the consent of all
their allies, and that they should resume the war, truce or no truce. They
marched on the border city of Orchomenos, where the Spartans had parked some
"hostages from Arcadia", and forced it to capitulate and join the Separate
Alliance.
When Agis returned to Sparta, the Spartans were equally furious with him. To
have assembled such an army and sent it home without teaching those annoying
Argives a lesson seemed like a huge mistake. And when they heard about the
capture of Orchomenos they were twice as mad. "Departing from all
precedent......", an unusual thing for the tradition-bound Spartans, [they]
"...almost decided to raze his house and fine him ten thousand drachmas." What
a way to treat a king! Agis had to plead with them, promising to do better if
they would only give him another chance. Since the Spartans still lacked
confidence in Pleistoanax, who had also been previously exiled for bribery,
they decided to stick with Agis as their general, but they appointed a
committee of ten citizens to oversee his every move. Then the Spartans received
word from their friends in Tegea that they had better send an army there
immediately if they didn't want Tegea to go over to the Separate Alliance. This
would be a catastrophe for Sparta. Tegea was one of their oldest allies, and
commanded the approaches to Spartan territory. With that city in hostile hands,
the Spartans could go nowhere and do nothing.
Agis and his ten guardians marched out of Sparta to the north with every man
possible. They called for help again from their allies at Corinth and Thebes,
but having marched halfway across Greece only to be sent home unceremoniously,
the Corinthians and Thebans weren't in a hurry to do it again. The Spartans also did something they
had been doing throughout the Peloponnesian War, but on a larger scale:
training and arming the pereoici and helots to fight as hoplites. Thucydides
tells us that this was happening, but does not comment on their effectiveness.
We might guess that they were not as effective as fully trained "Similars", but
perhaps as good as average citizen hoplites from other cities. The Spartan army
went to Tegea, secured it, was joined by Tegean hoplites, and continued on
toward Mantinea. On the way Agis got some good news. The Eleans had disagreed
with the Argives and Mantineans about strategy after the capture of Orchomenos
and gone home in a huff. Dumb, dumb. This meant that Agis would have numerical
superiority, and he felt he could send home the oldest and youngest of his
soldiers to provide some security for Sparta itself.
When Agis arrived at Mantinea he found the allied army drawn up on rising
ground. Thucydides says he did not know how many soldiers were on each side,
but that the Spartans had the larger army. Kagan estimates that King Agis had
about 9,000 soldiers and the Argives about 8,000, including a thousand
Athenians. There were also about 300 Athenian cavalry. In spite of his
numerical superiority Agis faced a tough problem. A battle was absolutely
necessary, and as soon as possible. The Eleans might come to their senses and
return at any time, and the Athenians were also likely to send additional
troops. But attacking uphill was very difficult for a hoplite army. When the
armies met, there was intense combat, and a huge pushing contest as the
hoplites attempted to create a break in the enemy army. Even soldiers as good
as the Spartans would have a hard time pushing uphill. But Agis attacked
anyway! We'll let Thucydides tell the story: "The Spartans at once advanced
against them, and came on within a stone's throw or javelin's cast, when one of
the older men, seeing the enemy's position to be a strong one, shouted to Agis
that he must be thinking to cure one evil with another; meaning that he wished
to make amends for his retreat from Argos, for which he was so much blamed, by
the present untimely wish to engage." Who was this guy? Was he one of the ten
"minders"? An ephor? Or just a wise old soldier? We don't know, but Agis
immediately called off the attack. Now what? It was too late in the year to
destroy crops, so Agis and his army began diverting water onto Mantinean lands.
Meanwhile the Argives got impatient. Maybe this campaign would also end without
a battle. They began complaining to their generals, who remembered what had
happened to Thrasylus and moved down onto the plain.
When the Spartans finished playing with the water and returned to their camp
the next day, they were astonished to find the Argives and Mantineans drawn up
in front of them in battle formation. "A shock like that of the present moment
the Spartans never remember to have experienced", says Thucydides. But he also
says that their efficient chain of command allowed the Spartans to fall into
line quickly and draw themselves up for the approaching battle. Thucydides is
quite precise about the respective orders of battle. On the Spartan side the
pereoici hoplites and some helots who had served previously near Amphipolis
were on the left. The main body of Spartans, including the "Similars", was in
the center, and some Arcadians, Tegeans and a few Spartans on the right. On the
other side, the Mantineans stood on the right, along with the picked "thousand"
of the Argives. The rest of the Argives stood in the center, then some
allies, Cleonians and Orneans, and the Athenians on the far left. As the armies
approached each other Thucydides makes reference to a well-known phenomenon of
hoplite battles: the drift to the right. It's human nature. The last man on the
right corner of the army does not want to see an enemy approaching from his
unprotected right side, so he edges right. All his comrades follow him, seeking
to tuck their unprotected right sides into the cover of the shield of the man
next to them. So both armies not only drift right, but turn slightly on their
axis, typically engaging their right wing first. For this reason hoplite armies
usually put their best troops on the right. Agis became disturbed at the way
the Argives were overlapping his left, and ordered the commanders there to
extend their line to match the Mantineans. This opened up a gap in the line.
The effectiveness of the hoplite phalanx depended on a solid line of shields,
eight or more ranks deep. A big hole was worse, much worse than being
outflanked on the left. Agis ordered two of his subordinates, Aristocles and
Hipponoindas, to take their units and fill the gap. They refused! Why? It was
not common for hoplite armies to do much maneuvering once they started to
advance. It was usually a case of advance, fight hard, hope for the best. It is
also possible that Aristocles and Hipponoindas had completely lost confidence
in Agis, who seemed to be mismanaging the battle. In any event the result of
all this is that the advancing Mantineans and the "thousand" Argives marched
into the gap and routed the Spartan left wing.
Now if you were conducting the Battle of Mantinea as an imaginary board game,
you would have a good chance of winning the battle and changing history. You
would turn your victorious right wing to the left, take the Spartan center on
the flank, and perhaps rout them. But reality was different. We do not know who
the Argive and Mantinean generals were, but we know where they were--in the
front of their army fighting for their lives. Greek generals led from the
front, and frequently got killed there. So the victorious allies made the more
natural move to their right to pursue the fleeing remnants of the Spartan left,
clear back to the baggage wagons. Meanwhile the Spartan center continued to
advance. The older Argive soldiers, and those Cleonians and Orneans were
"instantly routed,.....the greater number not even waiting to strike a blow,
but giving way the moment they came on, some even being trod under foot, in
their fear of being overtaken by their assailants." The Athenians were
surrounded, but Agis was still in control, and ordered his army to turn left to
help his defeated wing. The Athenians, Argives, Cleonians and Orneans were able
to escape, but the victorious Mantineans, outflanked and disorganized, "took to
flight", suffering heavy casualties. Thus the Spartans, in spite of being
outgeneraled and outmaneuvered, won the battle. Thucydides attributes it to
their greater courage, but perhaps it was more due to their greater discipline
and organization, which allowed them to make the necessary tactical moves in
the heat of battle. He estimates that the Allies lost about a thousand dead,
which would be typical, and the Spartans about three hundred, which would also
be typical. The Spartans set up a trophy of victory, stripped the dead, and
then returned the bodies under truce, according to custom.
No one was better placed to appreciate the victory at Mantinea than the
Spartans themselves. Agis came home a hero. There was no more talk of fines or
house-burning, and he was able to have Aristocles and Hipponoindas tried,
convicted of "cowardice", and exiled. Two months later he led out an army to
intimidate the Argives. They agreed to a treaty which forced them to give up
Orchomenus, stop attacking Epidaurus, and renounce the alliances with Mantinea
and Elis. Argos then had its oligarchic coup, and a Spartan-friendly government
took power. The Mantineans also fell in line, agreeing to an alliance with the
Spartans, and giving up territory they had previously conquered. Once again the
Spartans could go anywhere in Greece outside the walls of Athens.
The Athenians shrugged their shoulders and went on to their next project, which
was conquering the island of Melos in 416, killing all the adult men, and
selling the women and children into slavery. But they had missed their golden
opportunity to win the war. What if they had sent a more powerful contingent to
fight at Mantinea? Had more Elean and Athenian troops been available at
Mantinea, Kagan says, "the battle almost surely would have had a different
result." We'll never know. But the Athenians seemed to have the curse of
zigging when they should have been zagging throughout the war, and had they put
a quarter the effort into helping their allies who were fighting the Spartans
in their own back yard that they did in the disastrous expedition to Syracuse
in 415, they might have won the Peloponnesian War instead of losing it.
Notes on Sources (in order of importance)
Thucydides The Peloponnesian War I used The Landmark Thucydides
edited by Robert B Strassler, translated by Richard Crawley. The Free Press
1996 The beginning of historical writing (with apologies to Herodotus), our
indispensable source for the period. This edition is filled with useful maps,
commentary, appendices, etc.
Kagan, Donald A New History of the Peloponnesian War Cornell
University Press 1969-1987. Far more than just commentary on Thucydides, Kagan
blends ancient sources, modern scholarship and his own insights to create a
lengthy (four volumes, 1600 pages) and readable account of the war. The Battle
of Mantinea appears in Volume III "The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian
Expedition", especially chapters 4-6.
Hanson, Victor Davis The Western Way of War Alfred A Knopf 1989. This
excellent book looks deeply into the details of Greek arms and combat in the
classical period. Very insightful and easy to read.
Hanson, Victor Davis The Wars of the Ancient Greeks Cassell
1999. The title speaks for itself. An overview rather than a detailed
account of any one battle.
Sekunda, Nick The Spartan Army Osprey 1998 The best part of this book
is the illustrations, and the way it relates them to ancient artifacts. The
text is spare but informative and accurate.
Sekunda, Nick Greek Hoplite 480-323 BC Osprey 2000 Well written, well
illustrated.
Plutarch Lives I used the Dryden edition from the Modern Library. Of
particular interest are "Alcibiades" and "Nicias"
Grant, Michael The Classical Greeks Charles Scribner's Sons 1989
Cartledge, Paul The Spartans The Overlook Press 2003
Warry, John Warfare in the Classical World University of Oklahoma
Press 1995
The Editors of Time-Life Books What Life Was Like at the Dawn of Democracy
Time-Life Books 1997
A couple of useful websites:
www.4hoplites.com
www.larp.com/hoplite/
Copyright © 2006 Allen Parfitt.
Written by Allen Parfitt. If you have questions or comments on this article,
please contact Allen Parfitt at:
aparfitt@comcast.net.
About the author:
Allen Parfitt is a retired teacher. He has had a life-long interest in military affairs. He lives near Kalamazoo, Michigan with
his wife and four cats. He is continually adding to his library of books on military history.
Published online: 01/15/2006.
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