Abstract

There is still something to be said about these figures for the Athenian hoplite force, the more so as the most reasonable discussion of them, Meyer's, is spoilt by some unsound inferences and has in consequence not found support. Their difficulty is apparent: a muster πανσημει in 338 meant calling up all classes up to the age of 50, and since Socrates fought at Delion and Amphipolis when he was in his late forties, and not at Mantineia when he was over 50, we may assume that it meant the same in the fifth century; we also assume that ‘the youngest’ are those in their nineteenth and twentieth years, as in the fourth century, certainly after the reform of the Ephebeia, perhaps earlier ; military service ceased at 60. But how could the number of men in these twelve classes, 19-20 and 51-60, stand in the proportion of 13: 17 to the men between 21 and 50? They could not be more than a third, and might be less. (Beloch, 1923, tries to make the problem more difficult by the arbitrary assumption that the 13,000 citizen hoplites are all the men of 21-60, instead of 21-50. Meyer, who accepts Thucydides’ figures, forgets that there must have been ‘oldest and youngest’ metics, besides the 3,000 who marched into Megara. Busolt and Meyer also argue that the classes 51-60 will have suffered specially heavy losses in the battles of 459-445, while the eight youngest classes would have seen no fighting