“[T]here are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.” Miss Maudie explains to Atticus Finch’s son Jem in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird. “Your father’s one of them” (Lee 215).

Thousands of years before, in Greece, the very cradle of Western civilization, stood a hoplite phalanx. In the parochial squabbles and battles among the Greek poleis, or city-states, warfare was universal. A wall of overlapping shields, with spears projecting from it, was the essence of a Greek phalanx. Hoplites, armored men standing shoulder to shoulder, themselves packed as deep and as tight, as densely as possible, in a box formation, comprised the phalanx.

Those standing behind the men in the front ranks pushed those in front of them as both sides initially slammed into each other and strove to push and shove each other off the field using the shield, which was the operative weapon. The mass collision and enormous force of the push had some men’s very faces and torsos pressed into each other, and all others could barely move. It was a wonder how one managed to thrust his spear, although it was not uncommon for him not to know who, or what, or how many he had hit, if anything.

Should his spear break, a secondary weapon was provided by a short sword. His only job was to push, and push some more. A cog in a machine, his only job was to hold fast his place in the phalanx— to bunch up and prevent at all costs, the enemy from tearing a gap in the ranks— and to prevent him from doing the same. The only requisite was discipline. Here was infantry battle in its rawest form.

These battles typically lasted a day, for a couple hours, between farmers who grew the food, voted, and stood in the phalanx—the backbone of civilization—over disputed farmlands and borderlands between the poleis, things to be coveted by farmers. Here there was no devious political objective, just a plain and simple territorial dispute over land dictated by how far their spears could reach. Even the gesture of trespassing onto one’s land was sacrilegious to an agrarian soul.

Hoplite battle was an extension of agrarianism, not to mention a short and especially terrifying style of warfare. Thus by mutual consent, intensive battle was a convention of getting it over with in one day, so stodgy and reluctant farmers could go back to their plots.

Like agriculture, being a hoplite in the phalanx was a dirty job. In the stark light of day massed battle was again a terrifying thing, and of that was hoplite battle the epitome. On a hot day in Greece, roughly sixty pounds of shield, breastplate, helmet, and greaves was half an ancient man’s body weight. Unwieldy, uncomfortable, and ungainly, it was a chore alone just to stand up in the panoply, and one could barely move.

“[T]he hoplite is a slave to his equipment,” playwright Euripides wrote (Hanson, The Other Greeks 247).

Sound the paean, or approaching hymn, and neither was there any telling what a cloud of dust could be kicked up by thousands of lumbering feet on a dusty plain. There was probably some shaking in the ranks then as both sides stared each other down before the clash. The influence of alcohol was routine in Greek armies before a battle, understandably to calm the nerves. Sometimes urination and defecation also happened. The Greeks recognized that a fine line lay between such courage and a failing of one’s heart in their unique method of “threshing it out,” as they called it (Hanson, The Other Greeks 223). Accordingly, colored by the duality of the profession of agriculture and the hoplite, it is not surprising that the Greek worldview was a blinkered, hard-bitten, almost pessimistic one.

For a lighter example, I went to the bar one night with my two friends. Shortly after setting foot in the bar, we noticed karaoke was done there. I decided to give it a shot for no apparent reason. So I walked up to the DJ to register my name and a song. I had never sung in public before, let alone even spoken into a microphone. I sat on the edge of my bar stool waiting for my name to be called with my leg shaking. I went onto the stage prepared to sing “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi. The audience appreciated my choice of song. Again, I had never sung before in public, and for the first half of the song I couldn’t even inflect my voice. When the break provided by the guitar solo came, I got the hang of it, and a new hobby was born. All of this, of course, was no more than part of a relentless experiment in getting an inch closer to that in which there are no correspondence courses.

There are no correspondence courses in suffering. No one knows the language of suffering but the Holocaust victim, the crucified first century A.D. Christian, or the Greek hoplite. One can know of, or maybe read of the misery of the hoplite; but no one knows the language of suffering but the hoplite, or what he is feeling or thinking, or the terror he is experiencing beneath his Corinthian helmet. Words and text cannot capture the experience. As for his counterparts in the First World War, before the charge to go up out of the trench into no-man’s land, some of these grown men were shaking. Some were crying. There are no correspondence courses in suffering.

Just as Atticus Finch seemed to have been born to do dirty jobs like serving as a lawyer for a black man in a setting like 1930s Alabama, I have always had a soft spot for those that, like Miss Maudie said, were “born to do our unpleasant jobs for us.” Often unsung, my stars have always been the offensive lineman, the World War I trench infantryman, and the Greek hoplite. On these do I smile sadly, albeit warmly.

I have always cherished these sponges, as I style them, that soak up all the pain and suffering, so others don’t have to.

So others don’t have to is the operative phrase. I too have always wanted to be a sponge. Some fight fires, others hunt dangerous criminals, and still others are elite soldiers breaching rooms. The last one is what I want to be.

Some people would ask, why would anyone sign up for the Army, or much more, for the Airborne, or the prestigious Ranger Regiment and Special Forces? I personally do not fathom this shallow thought process. To the reverse, my mind is attracted, thinking, It must be there for a reason, and somebody has to do it. Did you ever think of that? “Well it doesn’t have to be you,” I’ve heard. It might as well be me, I counter, because if not me, then someone else in my place.

It’s there for a reason, and somebody has to do it is my life’s philosophy. It provides me with an eternal reason for everything I do. To put it in other words, I do it for its own sake. C’est la vie. Everything to me is an end in itself. That is why all suffering has meaning to me. I have always had an affinity for dirty jobs.

The Greek poet of the seventh century B.C. Tyrtaeus wrote that the brave man “has well trained his heart to be steadfast and to endure, and with words encourages the man who is stationed beside him” (Hanson, The Western Way of War 149). Those are about the best words anyone could have ever described that of the hoplite in. That man having squared away his own heart also offers encouragement to the man next to him. The brave man for Tyrtaeus locks shields with his neighbor and says to him, Drive on! 

It moves me simply, to think of the hoplite at his position on line. I want to be there with him.

The last sentence was my entire thesis encapsulated. One needs only look to the book of Job, and the hoplite farmer’s dire outlook suddenly makes sense. Hoplite or not, it is not that I am incapable of experiencing pleasure, but only through the eye holes, or lenses, of a Corinthian helmet or such other ones. If I could only fuse somehow for a moment nerves and veins with him, or someone like him, only then could I know the language of suffering. I perpetually hurl myself into challenges and ordeals for their own sake, and the more of them I amass, the more I long to feel what he feels, and I feel I cannot be satisfied until I share in his suffering. In spirit at least have I grabbed up a shield and joined him on line.

I didn’t have to sing at the bar the night I did, but I did as an example of doing something for its own sake. In other words, I did it precisely because it was frightening, and that alone was a reason. I did it for no other apparent reason than to stare the likes of it in the face. I have to do it. I just have to. Because it’s there is enough of a reason. I just have to, out of sheer spite.

I can plunge myself into anything no matter how frightening or arduous because I always have an intrinsic reason. I always have a bigger why. I can’t live with myself for doing any less. Sure, I have been called crazy for getting up at 3:30 A.M. to ruck seven miles to work. Call me crazy if you want. That is a word superficial people use in my opinion. I don’t suppose you would call an Army Ranger or a Navy SEAL crazy. That is what I think of that word, anyway. That is why a sponge is what I want to be.

Works Cited

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: First Warner Books Paperback Printing, 1960. Print.

Hanson, Victor Davis. The Other Greeks: the Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization. New York: The Free Press, 1995. Print.

—. The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Print.