ORGANIZATION OF EARLY ITALY
Some aspects of the shift stand out more than others. The increasing scale and sophistication of the fortifications that came to surround many communities plainly illustrate both the greater intensity of warfare and the higher levels of organization in war making. By contrast, shifts in military organization and tactics, and changes in the political and social structures that may have accompanied them, are far more obscure. In the Greek world, which was the source of important innovations, the new way of war making centered on hoplite infantry, who were protected by body armor or corselets (made either of metal or of leather reinforced with metal), bronze greaves (leg armor), and bronze helmets. These hoplites carried a large circular shield or hoplon, and were armed with both a spear and a sword or dagger.
This new equipment, the hoplite panoply, made the warrior less vulnerable to the weapons of others, and so favored close combat over fighting at a distance with weapons that were thrown. At the same time the panoply made combatants less mobile in the field, so that hoplites fought in a dense formation, or phalanx, where warriors were protected and reinforced by those on either side. So long as each soldier kept his place, the phalanx had considerable offensive and defensive power. The new tactic emphasized formal battles over a more fluid warfare of raid and counterraid. Moreover warfare between phalanxes generally favored the larger formation over the smaller, so that communities had a positive incentive to increase the number of men serving in their armies. The development of the hoplite phalanx was a long process: The new equipment appeared first (per¬haps as early as the last decades of the eighth century), but the phalanx itself developed only slowly, and some communities did not make the full transition to it until the sixth or fifth centuries.
The cities of central Italy may have followed a broadly similar course of devel-opment. After around 700, weapons and body armor became more expensive, more complex, and perhaps more widely diffused over the adult male population of some communities. In the eighth and seventh centuries, deposits of weapons and armor (or models of them) are common in the wealthier graves. In seventh-century graves in Etruria, elements of the hoplite panoply begin to replace equipment of an earlier pattern. By the end of the century, hoplite equipment can be found in aristocratic graves in the coastal regions of Etruria, Latium, and Campania. Around 600, representations of helmeted warriors carrying round shields and moving in dense formations begin to appear on vases and friezes. Finally, in the sixth century, fig¬urines of warriors wearing the hoplite panoply appear in votive deposits, especially in Etruria.