Xenophon, a veteran and witness to countless battles, described victorious hoplites as “courageous, because they were in eager rivalry with one another and because their bodies were in thorough training” (Cyropaedia 3.3.57). But who did these ‘rivals’ represent to these men? And what made them ‘rivals’? Above all other factors critical to one's will to combat is what modern military anthropologists have termed the ‘primary group’. In short, a primary group can be equated to something akin to a modern military squad, a Roman legion's contubernium, or a classical phalanx's stichos (“file”). Regardless of name, it generally refers to the smallest, and most intimate, social (and often tactical) organization of any army, the social connections within which motivate soldiers to fight.
Given the nature of hoplite warfare, the massed ranks of the phalanx can be viewed as the ultimate expression of the primary group. The reason was simple – each man's survival was co-dependent upon his comrade's actions:
