Xenophon interrupted his narrative because the defeat of heavily-armed infantry by much worse-armed opponents was so unusual. He writes, “a defeat was most unusual for the Spartans, there was much grieving throughout the army”. This emotional reaction to the defeat of the Spartan hoplites shows the vitality of a certain social and political ideal, an ideology, propagated especially among the Sparta citizens, that they comprised a community (to cite Plutarch Agesilaus 22.2) of “brave men”, “hoplites” and “Lacedemonians”. It shows the vitality of hoplite ideology, which, even if it did not correspond to more complicated military realities, was sustained. The persistence of the belief in the superiority of the hoplites over other, lighter-armed formations was so firmly established in the consciousness of the people of that time that the event…
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Ancient Warfare (Digital) - 1 Issue, AW XVIII.1