This laughably inaccurate short was to be the introduction to a cartoon adaption of Lysistrata. The press material says: "Man against man and sword against spear, the soldiers are determined to sacrifice themselves for a greater purpose"
"man against man"? Classical age conflict between Greek city states was
NOT melee pairing it was phalanx warfare. That is almost ritualized and surprising low violence, with an estimated 5% casualty rate per battle. Violence was almost entirely confined to combatants and phalanx fighting was essentially set piece pushing matches. There was virtually no "man against man" fighting at all.
That the cartoons was utterly inaccurate in detail as well is also important since the the details go to bigger issues. The greaves ALL hoplites wore and the type of shield (the word hoplite means shield warrior), and the standard length spear ALL had were for fighting in FORMATION. And the formation (the phalanx) reflected the citizen warrior fighting in a unified group -- as part of their responsibility to their city state and their fellow citizen warriors. Breaking off for melee pairings as in "Prologue" as it itself an act against one's fellow citizens since it compromised the phalanx.
Each citizen had to privately own the infantry arms and amour. This was an important part of egalitarian underpinnings of most city states.
The reason the Eight to Fifth century BC city states did not subjugate huge amounts of foreigners is because their fighting method, citizen, non professional solders who had their own equipment. Assyrians, Persians, later Macedonian Greeks, and empire period Romans all had armies were paid or impressed soldiers, who did not own their weapons and who were permanent professional soldiers. those other forces did NOT have to get back to the fields or regular jobs" like Lysistrata era Greeks had to.
The cartoonist completely misses the point: If warfare today was like classical age Greek warfare, with its lack of full time professional soldiers, with its lack of central armories, but instead owned arms, with its "winning" by having 5% or so of combatants die on the field, and victory declared, instead of "total war" with its lack of razing cities in most cases -- we would be a LOT better off.
The author/cartoonist, and anyone interested, ought to read the preeminent scholar on Lysistrata era Hoplite warfare: Victor Davis Hanson's "Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience" so they do not get confused.
