in opposition to the more utopian efforts at Sparta to create a republic of virtue among a smaller and more static number of citizens.49 Athenian infantry, nearly 30,000 of both frontline and reserve garrison hoplites, was at its core probably as good a fighting army as any except for the Spartans and Boeotians. Yet like the Victorian British army, which was hardly designed to fight imperial German divisions in the trenches of Europe, the Athenian phalanx was never intended to face anything like Spartan hoplites, but was perfectly capable as a seaborne force for putting down recalcitrant
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