In fact, there were few middle-class hoplites because our modern notions of class didn’t exist. A poor man, like Socrates, might still be an aristocrat to his finger ends. A rich man, like the former slave who gave a thousand aspides to support the rearming of Athens in the fourth century, remained a former slave. Unless the term ‘middle class’ has no other meaning than to stand as a group between the poor and the rich, it can’t be made to apply.
And finally, or perhaps first, it may be that only the veterans among my readers will know the truth that military historians often cannot stomach — that all races and breeds are equally brave or cowardly, regardless of government, loyalty, race, creed or sexual preference. That all men lose combat effectiveness with fatigue and confusion.
That only a few men are killers, and they are supremely dangerous.
Really, friends, it is all in the Iliad. And when my inspiration failed, I always went back to the Iliad, like a man returning to the source of pure water. I have enormous respect for the modern works of many historians, classical and modern. But they weren’t there.
I have seen war — never the war of the spear and shield, but war. And when I read the Iliad, it comes to me as being true. Not, perhaps, true about Troy. But true about war. Homer did not love war. Achilles is not the best man in the Iliad. War is ugly.
Arimnestos of Plataea was a real man. I hope that I’ve done him justice.