A Battle of Hysiae is recorded by Pausanias as having been fought at Hysiae in the

Argolis Argolis or Argolida ( , ; , in ancient Greek and Katharevousa) is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the modern regions of Greece, region of Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, situated in the eastern part of the Peloponnese penin ...

, possibly 669 BC during the rule of the Argive tyrant

Pheidon Pheidon () was an Argive ruler, usually dated to the first half of the 7th century BCE (perhaps reigning ). While his dating is a matter of dispute and much of the information about him is fragmentary, he is almost always described as a powerful an ...

. One of the few major setbacks suffered by the

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

ns in conflict with their neighbors, the battle was mentioned by Pausanias as a significant victory for

Argos Argos most often refers to: * Argos, Peloponnese, a city in Argolis, Greece * Argus (Greek myth), several characters in Greek mythology * Argos (retailer), a catalogue retailer in the United Kingdom Argos or ARGOS may also refer to: Businesses ...

.Pausanias
ii. 24. § 7
Pausanias reports no details of the battle, although he was shown the burial-site of the Argive dead. Nothing else is known about the conflict, except that the location in the Argolis suggests the repulse of a Spartan invasion. Hysiae was a stronghold located to the southwest of Argos and east of

Tegea Tegea (; ) was a settlement in ancient Arcadia, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the Tripoli municipality, of which it is a municipal unit with an area o ...

, near the border with Sparta. Modern scholars suggest that the battle marked a turning point in military history, because their defeat led the Spartans to change their military strategy, adopting the

phalanx The phalanx (: phalanxes or phalanges) was a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, sarissas, or similar polearms tightly packed together. The term is particularly used t ...

hoplite Hoplites ( ) ( ) were citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states who were primarily armed with spears and shields. Hoplite soldiers used the phalanx formation to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged the sold ...

s in place of the loose spear-throwing formations prevalent until then. In the centuries to come, the phalanx revolutionised warfare in the

classical world Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the interwoven civilization ...

Battle

Conventional warfare at this time usually involved armies meeting in an open field. The reason why the Argives chose to give battle at Hysiae is unclear. By this time, the

aspis An ''aspis'' (; : aspides, ) or ''porpax'' shield was the heavy wooden shield used by the infantry in various periods of ancient Greece. Construction An ''aspis'' was deeply dished and made primarily of wood. Some had a thin sheet of bronze ...

, a shield of Argive design, gave their army an advantage over the Spartans, who were annihilated by their opponents. If the battle occurred within the walls of Hysiae, the Spartan army could have been packed in by the proto-phalanx employed by the Argives. This formation may have been the invention of Pheidon.

Sources

This battle, recorded only by Pausanias about eight hundred years later, is not to be confused with the battle that occurred there in 417 BC, recorded by Thucydides shortly afterwards. Pausanias relates: The fourth year of the twenty-seventh Olympiad corresponds with 669 or 668 BC. The dating of the Argive tyrant Pheidon is very uncertain, but some scholars have suggested that this Argive defeat of Sparta occurred when

was king of Argos, since Pheidon was famed for his military success and daring.Hall, ''History of the Archaic Greek World'', pp. 145–154. Some scholars suggest that the battle of Hysiae was invented by the Argives, or that Pausanias misunderstood what he had been told.Kelly, "Did the Argives Defeat the Spartans at Hysiae in 669 B. C.?"

References

Bibliography

* Pausanias, ''Hellados Periegesis'' (Description of Greece). * ''

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography'' is the last in a series of classical dictionaries edited by the English scholar William Smith (1813–1893), following '' A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities'' and the '' Dictionary of G ...

'',

William Smith William, Willie, Will, Bill, or Billy Smith may refer to: Academics * William Smith (Master of Clare College, Cambridge) (1556–1615), English academic * William Smith (antiquary) (c. 1653–1735), English antiquary and historian of University C ...

, ed., Little, Brown and Company, Boston (1854). * Antony Andrewes, ''The Greek Tyrants'', University of Virginia (1956). * Thomas Kelly
"Did the Argives Defeat the Spartans at Hysiae in 669 B. C.?"
in ''The

American Journal of Philology The ''American Journal of Philology'' is a quarterly academic journal established in 1880 by the classical scholar Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. It covers the field of philology, and related areas ...

'', vol. 91, No. 1 (Jan. 1970), pp. 31–42. * Richard Stillwell and William L. MacDonald (eds.), ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites'', Princeton University press (1976). * Jonathan M. Hall, ''A History of the Archaic Greek World, ca. 1200–479 BCE'', Blackwell Publishing, Malden (2007). {{coord missing, Greece Hysiae Hysiae Hysiae