Great Battles in History

Thermopylae, Part 3-The Greeks and Their Way of War

June 30, 2020 Darryl Dee Season 1 Episode 1
Great Battles in History
Thermopylae, Part 3-The Greeks and Their Way of War
Show Notes

By the fifth century BCE, the Greek world stretched from the Black Sea to the shores of southern France. It was divided into thousands of fiercely independent city-states. The major Greek city-states had developed a distinctive way of fighting based on heavily armed and armored infantrymen called hoplites arrayed in the serried ranks of the phalanx and closing with their enemies to fight in hand-to-hand combat. The unquestioned masters of this Greek way of war were the Spartans.