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By the fifth century BCE, the Greek world stretched from the Black Sea to the shores of southern France. It was divided into thousands of fiercely independent city-states. The major Greek city-states had developed a distinctive way of fighting based on heavily armed and armored infantrymen called hoplites arrayed in the serried ranks of the phalanx and closing with their enemies to fight in hand-to-hand combat. The unquestioned masters of this Greek way of war were the Spartans.