loading . . . Collections: Hoplite Wars, Part II: Hoplite Equipment, Hoplight or Hopheavy? This is the second part of what looks like it’ll be end up as a four part series discussing the debates surrounding ancient Greek hoplites, the heavy infantry of the Archaic (800-480) and Classical (480-323) periods. Last week, we outlined the contours of the debate: the major points of contention and the history of the debate and how it has come to its current – and I would argue, unsatisfactory – point.
This week, I want to stay laying out my own sense of the arguments and what I see as a viable synthesis. I’ve opted to split this into three parts because I don’t just want to present my ‘answers’ but also really use this as an opportunity to contrast the two opposing camps (hoplite orthodoxy and hoplite heterodoxy) in the process of laying out where I think the firmest ground is, which as we’ll see is something of a blend of both. That is a larger project so I’ve opted to split it up. **This post** will cover the question of **equipment** , both the date of its emergence and its use and function (which have implications for chronolgy and tactics). Then the **next post** will cover the question of **tactics** , both in terms of **how the phalanx might have functioned on an Archaic battlefield** where light infantry and cavalry remained common and important and how it may have**functioned in a late-Archaic or Classical battlefield** when they were less central (but still at least sometimes present). Then, at long last, the **final post** will cover what I think are some of the **social and political implications** (some of which falls out of the first ideas), which is actually where I think some of the most explosive conclusions really are.
However before I launch into all of that, I want to be clear about the perspective I am coming from. On the one hand, I am an ancient historian, I do read ancient Greek, I can engage with the main bodies of evidence (literary, archaeological, representational) directly, as an expert. _On the other hand_ , I am not a scholar _of hoplites_ : **this is my field, but not my _sub_ -field**. Consequently, I am assessing the arguments of folks who have spent a lot more time _on hoplites_ than me and have thus read these sources more closely and more widely than I have. I can check their work, I can assess their arguments, but while I am going to _suggest_ solutions to some of these quandaries, I want to be clear I am coming at this from a pose of intellectual humility in terms of raw command of the evidence.
(Although I should note _this post_ , which is on _equipment_ basically is square in my wheelhouse, so if I sound a bit more strident this week it is because while I am modestly familiar with hoplites, I am _very familiar_ with hoplite (and other pre-gunpowder) _equipment_.)
On the other hand, I think I do come at the problem with two advantages, the value of which the reader may determine for themselves. The first of these is simply that _I am not a scholar of hoplites_ and so I am not ‘in’ one of these ‘camps;’ an ‘outsiders’ perspective – from someone who can still engage directly with the evidence – can be handy. The second of these is frankly that I have very broad training as a _military historian_ which gives me a somewhat wider base of comparative evidence to draw on than I think has been brought to bear on these questions before. And that is going to be relevant, particularly this week, **because part of my core argument here is that one _mistake_ that has been repeated here is treating the hoplite phalanx as something special and unique, rather than as an interesting _species_ of a common phenomenon: the shield wall**, which has shared characteristics that occur in many cultures at many times.
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## The Emergence of the Hoplite Panoply
We need to start with three entwined questions, **the nature of hoplite equipment** , **the dates at which it appears** and **the implications for the emergence of the ‘true’ phalanx** (and its nature). As I noted in the first part, while the two ‘camps’ on hoplites consist of a set of linked answers to key questions, the strength of those linkages vary: in some cases, answer A necessitates answer B and in some cases it does not. In this case, the hoplite orthodox argument is that **hoplite equipment was too cumbersome to fight much outside of the phalanx** , which in turn (they argue) _necessitates_ that **the emergence of the full panoply means the phalanx must come with it**. Consequently, **hoplite orthodoxy assumes something like a ‘hoplite revolution’** (a phrase they use), where hoplites (and their equipment) and the phalanx emerge at more of less the same time, rapidly remaking the politics of the _polis_ and _polis_ warfare.
By contrast, hoplite heterodoxy _unlinks_ these issues, **by arguing that hoplite equipment is not that cumbersome and so need not necessitate the phalanx** , while at the same time noting that **such equipment emerged gradually and the fully panoply appeared rather _later_ than hoplite orthodoxy might suggest**. But this plays into a larger argument **that hoplites developed _outside_ of close-order formations and could function _just as well_ in skirmish or open-order environments**.
As an aside, I want to clarify terminology here: **we are not dealing, this week, with the question of ‘the phalanx.’** That term’s use is _heavily_ subject to definition and we need to have that definitional fight out before we use it. So instead, we are going to talk about ‘**close order** ‘ formations (close intervals (combat width sub-150cm or so), fixed positioning) as compared to ‘**open order** ‘ (wide intervals (combat width 150cm+), somewhat flexible positioning) and **skirmishing**(arbitrary intervals, infinitely flexible positioning). And in particular, we’re interested in a big ‘family’ of close-order formations I am going to call _shield walls_ , which is any formation where combatants stand close enough together to mutually support with shields (which is often _not_ shoulder-to-shoulder, but often more like 1m combat widths). We will untangle how a phalanx fits into these categories _later_.
We can start, I think, with the easy part: **when does hoplite equipment _show up_ in the evidence-record**. This is the easier question because it can be answered with some decision by archaeology: when you have dated examples of the gear or representations of it in artwork, it exists; if you do not, it probably doesn’t yet. We should be clear here that we’re working with a _terminus post quem_ (‘limit before which’), which is to say our evidence will give us the _latest possible date_ of something: if we find that the earliest, say, Archaic bell-cuirass we have is c. 720, then c. 721 is the _last possible date_ that this armor might not yet have existed. But of course there could have been _still earlier_ armors which do not survive: so new discoveries can shift dates _back_ but not _forward_ in time. That said, our evidence – archaeology of arms buttressed by artwork of soldiers – is fairly decent and it would be a major surprise if any of these dates shifted by more than a decade or two.
(An aside before I go further: I am focused here mostly on the _when_ of hoplite equipment. There is also a really interesting question of the _where_ of early hoplite equipment. Older hoplite orthodox scholars assumed hoplite equipment emerged in Greece _ex nihilo_ and was peculiar to the Greeks, but this vision has been challenged and I think is rightly challenged (by, e.g. J. Brouwers, _Henchmen of Ares_ (2013), reviewed favorably by Sean Manning here). In particular, the fact that a _lot_ of our evidence comes from either Southern Italy or Anatolia is not always well appreciated in these debates. We don’t have the space to untangle those arguments (and I am not versed enough on the eastern side) but it is well worth remembering that Archaic Greece _was not culturally isolated_ and that influences eastern and western are easy to demonstrate.)
And **what our evidence suggests is that Anthony Snodgrass was right** :2 **hoplite equipment emerges peicemeal and gradually** (and were adopted even slower), not all at once and did so well before we have evidence by any other metric for fighting in the phalanx (which comes towards the end of the equipment’s developmental timeline).
The earliest piece of distinctively hoplite equipment that we see in artwork is the circular _aspis_ , which starts showing up around c. 750, but **takes a long time to displace other, lighter shield forms** , only pushing out these other types in artwork (Diplyon shields with ‘carve outs’ on either side giving them a figure-8 design, squarish shields, center-grip shields) in the back half of the 600s. Metal helmets begin appearing first in the late 8th century (a couple of decades behind the earliest _aspides_), with the oldest type being the open-faced Kegelhelm, which evolved into the also open-faced ‘Illyrian‘ helmet (please ignore the ethnic signifiers used on these helmet names, they are usually not historically grounded). By the early seventh century – so just a few decades later – **we start to get our first close-faced helmets, the early Corinthian helmet types** , which is going to be the most popular – but by no means only – helmet for hoplites for the rest of the Archaic and early Classical.
Via Wikipedia, a black-figure amphora (c. 560) showing a battle scene. The warriors on the left hold _aspides_ and wear Corinthian helmets, while the ones on the right carry diplyon shields (which look to have the two-points-of-contact grip the _aspis_ does). I useful reminder that non-hoplite equipment was not immediately or even necessarily very rapidly displaced by what became the hoplite standard.
Coming fairly quickly after the appearance of metal helmets is metal body armor, with the earliest dated example (to my knowledge) still being the the Argos cuirass (c. 720), which is the first of the ‘bell cuirass’ type, which will evolve into the later muscle cuirass you are likely familiar with, which appears at the tail end of the Archaic as an artistic elaboration of the design. Not everyone dons this armor right away to go by its appearance in artwork or prevalence in the archaeological record – adoption was slow, almost certainly (given the expense of a bronze cuirass) from the upper-classes downward.
Via Wikipedia, a picture of the Argos bell cuirass with its Kegelhelm-type helmet dated to c. 720. Apologies for the side-on picture, I couldn’t find a straight-on image that had a clean CC license.
This element of armor is eventually joined by quite a few ‘add-ons’ protecting the arms, legs, feet and groin, which also phase in (and in some cases _phase out_) over time. The first to show up are greaves (which are also the only armor ‘add on’ to really stick around) which begin to appear perhaps as early as c. 750 but only really securely (there are dating troubles with some examples) by c. 700. Small semi-circular metal plates designed to hang from the base of the cuirass to protect the belly and goin, ‘belly guards,’ start showing up around c. 675 or so (so around four decades after the cuirasses themselves), while other add-ins fill in later – ankle-guards in the mid-600s, foot-guards and arm guards (quite rare) in the late 600s. All of these but the greaves basically phase out by the end of the 500s.
Via Wikipedia, a late classical (c. 340-330) cuirass and helmet showing how some of this equipment will develop over time. The cuirass here is a muscle cuirass, a direct development from the earlier bell cuirass above. The helmet is a Chalcidian-type, which seems to have developed out of the Corinthian helmet as a lighter, less restrictive option in the fifth century.
Pteruges, those distinctive leather strips hanging down from the cuirass (they are part of the textile or leather liner worn underneath it) start showing up in the sixth century (so the 500s), about two centuries after the cuirasses themselves. There is also some reason to suppose that textile armor is in use as a cheaper substitute for the bronze cuirass as early as the seventh century, but it is only in the mid-sixth century that we get clear and unambiguous effort for the classic stiff tube-and-yoke cuirass which by c. 500 becomes the most common hoplite armor, displacing the bronze cuirass (almost certainly because it was _cheaper_ , not because it was _lighter_ , which it probably wasn’t).
Via Wikipedia, from the Alexander Mosaic, a later Roman copy of an early Hellenistic mosaic (**so quite a bit after our period**), Alexander the Great shown wearing a tube-and-yoke cuirass (probably linen, clearly with some metal reinforcement), with visible pteruges around his lower waist (the straps there).
Note that there is a second quieter debate about the construction of the tube-and-yoke cuirass which we’re just going to leave aside for now.
**Weapons are less useful for our chronology** , so we can give them just a few words. Thrusting spears were, of course, a bronze age technology not lost to our Dark Age Greeks, but they persist alongside throwing spears, often with visible throwing loops, well into the 600s, even for heavily armored hoplite-style troops. As for swords, the Greek hoplites will have two types, a straight-edged cut-and-thrust sword of modest length (the _xiphos_) and a single-edged foward curving chopper of a sword (the _kopis_), though older Naue II types – a continuation of bronze age designs – continues all the way into the 500s. The origin of the _kopis_ is quite contested and meaningfully uncertain (whereas the _xiphos_ seems a straight line extrapolation from previous designs), but need not detain us here.
So in summary, **we do not see a sudden ‘revolution’ in terms of the adoption of hoplite arms** , but rather a fairly gradual process stretched out over a century where equip emerges, often vies with ‘non-hoplite’ equipment for prominence and slowly becomes more popular (almost certainly faster in some places and slower in others, though our evidence rarely lets us see this clearly). The _aspis_ first starts showing up c. 750, the helmets a decade or two after that, the breastplates a decade or two after that, the greaves a decade or two after that, the other ‘add-ons’ a few decades after that (by which point we’re closing in on 650 and we have visual evidence of hoplites in close-order, albeit with caveats). Meanwhile adoption is also gradual: hoplite-equipped men co-exist in artwork alongside men with different equipment for quite a while, with artwork showing unbroken lines of uniformly equipped hoplites with the full panoply beginning in the mid-to-late 7th century, about a century to a century and a half after we started. It is after this, in the sixth century, that we see both pteruges – which will become the standard goin and upper-thigh protection – and the tube-and-yoke cuirass, a cheaper armor probably indicating poorer-but-still-well-to-do men entering the phalanx.
Via Wikipedia, the Chigi Vase (c. 650). Its hoplite scene is (arguably) the oldest clear scene we have of hoplites depicted fighting in close-order with overlapping shields, although the difficulty of depth (how closely is that second rank behind the first?) remains.
Consequently, **the Archaic hoplite _must_ have shared his battlefield with non-hoplites** and indeed – and this is one of van Wees’ strongest points – **when we look at Archaic artwork,_we see that a lot_**. Just all over the place. Hoplites with cavalry, hoplites with light infantry, hoplites with archers (and, of course, hoplites with hoplites).
Of course that raises key questions about how hoplites function on two kinds of battlefield: an early battlefield where they have to function within an army that is probably still predominately lighter infantry (with some cavalry) and a later battlefield in which the hoplite is the center-piece of the army. But before we get to how hoplites fight **together** , we need to think a bit about what hoplite equipment means **for how they fight individually**.
## Hoplight or Hopheavy?3
If the basic outlines of the gradualist argument about the development of hoplite equipment is one where the heterodox camp has more or less simply won, the argument about the _impact_ of that equipment is one in which the orthodox camp is determined to hold its ground.
To summarize the arguments**: hoplite orthodoxy argues, in effect, that hoplite equipment was so heavy and cumbersome that it _necessitated_ fighting in the phalanx**. As a result **orthodox scholars tend to emphasize the significant weight of hoplite equipment**. Consequently, this becomes an argument against any vision of a more fluid battlefield, as orthodox scholars will argue hoplites were simply too encumbered to function in such a battlefield. This argument appears in _WWoW_ , along with a call for more archaeology to support it, a call which was answered by the sometimes frustrating E. Jarva, _Archaiologia on Archaic Greek Body Armour_ (1995) but it remains current. The latest attempt I am aware of to renew this argument is part of A. Schwartz, _Reinstating the Hoplite_ (2013), 25-101.
By contrast, the heterodox camp argues that **hoplite equipment was not that heavy or cumbersome and could be used outside of the phalanx** (and indeed, _was so used_), but this argument often proceeds beyond this point to argue that **hoplite equipment emerged in a fluid, skirmish-like battlefield and was, in a sense, at home in such a battlefield** , as part of a larger argument about the phalanx being quite a lot less rigid and organized than the orthodox camp imagines it. Put another way **at the extremes the heterodox camp argues there is _nothing_ about hoplite equipment which would suggest it was _designed_ or _intended_ for a close-order, relatively rigid infantry formation**. There’s a dovetailing here where this argument also gets drawn into arguments about ‘technological determinism’ – a rejection of the idea that any given form of ancient warfare, especially hoplite warfare, represented a _technologically superior_ way of fighting or set of equipment – which _also_ gets overstated to the point of suggesting weapon design doesn’t particularly matter at all.4
This is one of those areas where I will make few friends **because I think both arguments are actually quite bad** , a product of scholars who are _extremely well versed_ in the ancient sources but who have relatively less training in military history more broadly and especially in pre-modern military history and _especially especially_ pre-modern arms and armor.
So let me set some ‘ground rules’ about how, generally speaking, pre-modern arms and armor emerge. When it comes to personal combat equipment, (almost) no one in these periods has a military research and development department and equipment is rarely designed _from scratch_. Instead, arms and armor are evolving out of a fairly organic process, iterating on previous patterns or (more rarely) experimenting with entirely new patterns.**This process is driven by _need_** , which is to say **arms and armor respond to the _current_ threat environment** _,_ not a projection of a (far) future threat environment. As a result, arms and armor tend to engage in a kind of ‘antagonistic co-evolution,’ with designs evolving and responding _to present threats and challenges_. Within that space, imitation and adornment also play key roles: cultures imitate the weapons of armies they see as more successful and elites often use arms and armor to display status.
The way entire _panoplies_ – that is full sets of equipment intended to be used together – tend to emerge is part of this process: **panoplies tend to be pretty clearly planned or designed for a specific threat environment** , which is to say **they are intended for a _specific role_**. Now, I want to be clear about these words ‘planned,’ ‘designed,’ or ‘intended’ – we are being quite metaphorical here. There is often no single person drafting design documents, rather we’re describing the outcome of the evolutionary process above: many individual combatants making individual choices about equipment (because few pre-modern armies have standardized kit) thinking about _**the kind of battle they expect to be in**_ tend very strongly to produce panoplies that are _**clearly biased towards a specific intended kind of battle**_.
Which **absolutely does not mean they are never used for any other kind of battle**. The ‘kit’ of an 18th century line infantryman in Europe was _designed_ , _very clearly_ for linear engagements between large units on relatively open battlefields. But if what you had was that kit and an enemy who was in a forest or a town or an orchard or behind a fence, well that was the kit you had and you made the best of it you could.5 Likewise, if what you have is a hoplite army but you need to engage in terrain or a situation which does not permit a phalanx, you do not suffer a 404-TACTICS-NOT-FOUND error, you engage with the equipment you _have_. That said, **being very good at _one sort_ of fighting means making compromises **(weight, mobility, protection, lethality) **for _other kinds of fighting_** , so two equipment sets might be _situationally_ superior to each other (panoply A is better at combat situation Y, while panoply B is better at situation Z, though they may both be able to do either and roughly equally bad at situation X).
Via Wikimedia Commons, a black figure amphora (c. 510) showing a mythological scene (Achilles and Ajax) with warriors represented as hoplites, but carrying two spears (so they can throw one of them).
Naturally, in a non-standardized army, the individual combatants making individual choices about equipment are going to be considering the **primary kind of battle they expect** but also the **likelihood that they are going to end up having to fight in other ways** and so **nearly all real-world panoplies**(and nearly all of the weapons and armor they use)**are not ultra-specialized hot-house flowers, but rather compromise designs**. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have a primary kind of battle in mind! Just that some affordance has been made for other modalities of warfare.
If we apply that model to hoplite equipment, I think it resolves a lot of our quandaries reasonably well towards the following conclusion: **hoplite equipment was a _heavy infantry_ kit which was reasonably flexible but seems very clearly to have been intended, first and foremost, to function in _close order infantry_ formations**, rather than in fully individual combats or skirmishing.
Now let’s look at the equipment and talk about why I think that, starting with:
**Overall Weight**.
I am by no means the first person to note that absurdly heavy estimates dating back more than a century for the hoplite’s ‘combat load’ (that is, what would be carried into battle, not on campaign) are absurdly high; you will still hear figures of 33-40kg (72-90lbs) bandied about. These estimates predated a lot of modern archaeology and were consistently too high. Likewise, the first systematic effort to figure out, archaeologically, how heavy this equipment was by Eero Jarva, skewed the results high in a consistent pattern.6 Equally, I think there is some risk coming in a bit _low_ , but frankly low-errors have been consistently less egregious than high-errors.7 Conveniently, I have looked at _a lot of this material_ in order to get a sense of military gear in the later Hellenistic period, so I can quickly summarize and estimate from the archaeology.
Early Corinthian helmets can come in close to 2kg in weight, though later Greek helmets tend much lighter, between 1-1.5kg; we’re interested in the Archaic so the heavier number bears some weight. Greek bronze cuirasses as recovered invariably mass under 4.5kg (not the 4-8kg Jarva imagines), so we might imagine in original condition an upper limit around c. 5.5kg with most closer to 3.5-4.5kg, with probably 1-2kg for liner and _pteruges_ ; a tube-and-yoke cuirass in linen or leather (the former was probably more common) would have been only modestly lighter, perhaps 3.5-4kg (a small proportion of these had metal reinforcements, but these were very modest outside of Etruria).8 So for a typical load, we might imagine anywhere from 3.5kg to 6.5kg of armor, but 5kg is probably a healthy median value. We actually have a _lot_ of greaves: individual pieces (greaves are worn in pairs) range from ~450 to 1,100g, with the cluster around 700-800, suggesting a pair around 1.4-1.6kg; we can say around 1.5kg.
For weapons, the _dory_ (the one-handed thrusting spear), tips range from c. 150 to c. 400g, spear butts (the _sauroter_) around c. 150g, plus a haft that probably comes in around 1kg, for a c. 1.5kg spear. Greek infantry swords are a tiny bit smaller and lighter than what we see to their West, with a straight-edged _xiphos_ probably having around 500g (plus a hundred grams or so of organic fittings to the hilt) of metal and a _kopis_ a bit heavier at c. 700g. Adding suspension and such, we probably get to around 1.25kg or so.9
That leaves the _aspis_ , which is tricky for two reasons. First, _aspides_ , while a clear and visible type, clearly varied a bit in size: they are _roughly_ 90cm in diameter, but with a fair bit of wiggle room and likewise the depth of the dish matters for weight. Second, what we recover for _aspides_ are generally the metal (bronze) shield covers, not the wooden cores; **these shields were _never_ all-metal like you see in games or movies**, they were mostly wood with a very thin sheet of bronze (c. 0.25-0.5mm) over the top. So you can shift the weight a lot by what wood you use and how thick the core is made (it is worth noting that while you might expect a preference for strong woods, the ancient preference _explicitly_ is for _light_ woods in shields).10 You _can_ get a reconstruction really quite light (as light as 3.5kg or so), but my sense is most come in around 6-7kg, with some as heavy as 9kg.11 A bigger fellow might carry a bigger, heavier shield, but let’s say 6kg on the high side and call it a day.
How encumbered is our hoplite? Well, if we skew heavy on everything and add a second spear (for reasons we’ll get to next time), we come out to about 23kg – our ‘hopheavy.’ If we skew light on everything, our ‘hoplight’ could come to as little as c. 13kg while still having the full kit; to be frank I don’t think they were ever this light, but we’ll leave this as a minimum marker. For the _Archaic period_ (when helmets tend to be heavier), I think we might imagine something like a typical single-spear, bronze-cuirass-wearing hoplite combat load coming in something closer to 18kg or so.12
**And now we need to ask a second important question** (which is _frustratingly_ rarely asked in these debates – not never, but rarely): **is that a lot?** What we should _not_ do is compare this to modern, post-gunpowder combat loads which assume very different kinds of combat that require very different sorts of mobility. **What we _should_ do is compare this to ancient and medieval combat loads to get a sense of how heavy different classes of infantry were**. And it _just so happens_ I am wrapping up a book project that involves computing that, _many times_ for quite a few different panoplies. So here are some brief topline figures, along with the assigned combat role (light infantry, medium infantry, heavy infantry):
* A fully plate-armored late 14th/early 15th century dismounted knight: 24-27kg (Heavy Infantry).13
* **Hop-heavy** , c. 23kg
* Roman Hastatus/Princeps of the Middle Republic: c. 20-24kg (Heavy Infantry)
* Macedonian Phalangite: c. 20kg (Heavy Infantry)
* **Typical Hoplite** , c. 18kg
* Hellenistic Peltastai: c. 17-18kg (Heavy Infantry, modestly lighter than above)
* Gallic Warrior: c. 14kg (Medium infantry, assumes metal helmet, textile armor so on the heavy side for the Gauls)
* **Hop-light** , c. 13kg.
* Iberian Warrior: c. 13kg (Medium infantry)
* Celtiberian Warrior: c. 11.5kg (Medium Infantry)
* Hellenistic _thureophoroi_ : c. 10.5kg (Medium Infantry)
* Roman _veles_ : c. 8kg (Light infantry).14
Some observations emerge from this exercise immediately. First _combat role_ – which I’ve derived from how these troops are used and positioned in ancient armies, not on how much their kit weighs – **_clearly_ connects to equipment weight**. There is a visible ‘heavy infantry range’ that starts around 15kg and runs upward, a clear ‘medium’ range of lightly-armored line-but-also-skirmish infantry from around 14kg to about 10kg and then everything below that are ‘lights’ that aren’t expected to hold part of the main infantry line.15
But I’d argue simply putting these weights together exposes some _real problems_ in both the extreme orthodox and extreme heterodox views. On the one hand, the idea that hoplite equipment was _so heavy_ that it could _only_ function in the phalanx is clearly nonsense: the typical hoplite was _**lighter**_ than the typical Roman heavy infantryman who fought in a looser, more flexible formation! Dismounted knights generally fought as close-order heavy infantrymen, but certainly could fight alone or in small groups and maneuver on the battlefield or over rough terrain and they are **heavier still**. So the idea that hoplites were _so heavily equipped_ that they _must_ fight in the extremely tight orthodox phalanx (we’ll come to spacing later, but they want these fellows crowded in) is silly.
On the other hand **hoplites are very clearly typically _heavy_ infantry**. They are not mediums and they are _**certainly not lights**_. _Can_ you ask heavy infantrymen to skirmish like lights or ask light infantrymen to hold positions like heavies? Well, you can and they may try; the results are generally awful (which is why the flexible ‘mediums’ exist in so many Hellenistic-period armies: they can do both things not-great-but-not-terribly).16 So do I think soldiers wearing this equipment generally _intended_ to fight in skirmish actions or in truly open-order (note that Roman combat spacing, while loose by Greek standards, is still counting as ‘close order’ here)? Oh my _**no**_ ; across the Mediterranean, we see that the troops who intend to fight like that even a little are markedly lighter and those who specialize in it are _**much**_ lighter, for the obvious reason that running around in 18kg is a lot more tiring than running around in 8kg or less.
**So the typical hoplite was a _heavy_ _infantryman_ but not the _heaviest_ of heavy infantry**. If anything, he was on the low(ish) end of heavy infantry, probably roughly alongside Hellenistic peltastai (who were intended as lighter, more mobile phalangites)17 **but still very clearly in the ‘heavy’ category**. Heavier infantry existed, both in antiquity and in the middle ages and did not suffer from the lack of mobility often asserted by the orthodox crowd for hoplites.
But of course equipment is more than just weight, so let’s talk about the implications of some of this kit, most notably the _aspis_.
## The Aspis
Once again, to summarize the opposing camps, **the orthodox argument is that hoplite equipment** – particularly the _aspis_ (with its weight and limited range of motion) and the Corinthian helmet (with its limited peripheral vision and hearing) – **make hoplites ineffective, almost useless, outside of the rigid confines of the phalanx** , and in particular outside of the ‘massed shove _othismos_ ‘ phalanx (as opposed to looser phalanxes we’ll get into next time).
The moderate heterodox argument can be summed up as, “**nuh uh**.” It argues that the Corinthian helmet is not so restricting, the _aspis_ not so cumbersome and thus it is possible to dodge, to leap around, to block and throw the shield around and generally to fight in a more fluid way. **The ‘strong’ heterodox argument** , linking back to **development** , **is to argue that the hoplite’s panoply actually _emerged in_ a more fluid, skirmish environment and the phalanx **– here basically _any_ close-order, semi-rigid formation fighting style – **emerged only later** , implying that the hoplite’s equipment must be robustly multi-purpose. And to be clear that I am not jousting with a straw man, van Wees claims, “the hoplite shield did not presuppose or dictate a dense formation but could be used **to equally good effect** [emphasis mine] in open-order fighting.”18
The short version of my view is that the moderate heterodox answer is correct and very clearly so, with both the orthodox and ‘strong’ heterodox arguments having serious defects.
But first, I want to introduce a new concept building off of the way we’ve already talked about how equipment develops, which I am going to call **appositeness** which we can define as something like ‘situational effectiveness.’ The extreme orthodox and heterodox arguments here often seem to dwell – especially by the time they make it to public-accessible books – in a binary can/cannot space: the hoplite _can_ or _cannot_ move quickly, _can_ or _cannot_ skirmish, _can_ or _cannot_ fight with agility and so on.
But as noted above **real equipment is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but ‘situationally effective’ or not** and **I want to introduce another layer of complexity in that this situational effectiveness** – this **appositeness** – is **a spectrum, not a binary**. Weapons and armor are almost invariably **deeply compromised designs** , forced to make hard trade-offs between protection, reach, weight and so on, **and those tradeoffs are _real_** , meaning that they involve real deterioration of the ability to do a given combat activity. But ‘less’ does not mean ‘none.’ **So the question is not can/cannot** , but rather **how apposite is this equipment for a given function** – how _well adapted is it_ for this specific situation.
You _can_ do almost any kind of fighting hoplite armor, but it is _**very obviously**_ adapted for one kind of fighting and was _**very obviously**_ adapted for that kind of fighting _when it emerged_ : fighting in a shield wall. And that has downstream implications of course: if the _aspis_ is adapted for a shield wall, that implies that a shield wall _already existed_ when it emerged (in the mid-to-late 8th century). Now we may, for the moment, leave aside if we ought to call that early shield wall a phalanx. First, we ought to talk about why I think the hoplite’s kit is designed for a shield wall but also why it _could_ function (less effectively) outside of it.
So lets talk about **the form of the _aspis_**. The _aspis_ is a large round shield with a lightly dished (so convex) shape, albeit in this period with a flat rim-section that runs around the edge. The whole thing is typically about 90cm in diameter (sometimes more, sometimes less) and it is held with two points of contact: the arm is passed through the _porpax_ which sits at the center of mass of the shield and will sit against the inside of the elbow of the wear, and then holds the _antelabe_ , a strap near the edge of the shield (so the wearer’s elbow sits just to the left of the shield’s center of mass and his hand just to the left of the shield’s edge). That explains the size: the shield pretty much has to have a radius of one forearm (conveniently a standard ancient unit called a ‘cubit’) and thus a diameter of two forearms, plus a bit for the rim, which comes to about 90cm.
Via Wikimedia Commons, a Corinthian black-figure alabastron (c. 590-570) showing hoplites in rows, which really demonstrates just how **big** the _aspis_ can be. A 90cm shield is a **really big shield** although the artist here has certainly chosen to emphasize the size.
**In construction** , the _aspis_ has, as mentioned, a wooden core made of a wood that offers the best strength at low weight (e.g. willow, poplar, not oak or ash) covered (at least for the better off hoplites) with a very thin (c. 0.25-0.5mm) bronze facing, which actually does substantially strengthen the shield. The result is, it must be noted, a somewhat heavy but _very stout_ shield. The dished shape lets the user put a bit of their body into the hollow of the shield and creates a ledge around the rim which sits handily at about shoulder height, allowing the shield to be rested against the shoulder in a ‘ready’ position in situations where you don’t want to put the shield down but want to reduce the fatigue of holding it.
And here is where I come at this question a bit differently from my peers: that description to me demands _comparison_ but the _aspis_ is almost never compared to other similar shields. Two things, however, should _immediately_ stand out in such a comparison. First, **the _aspis_ is an unusually, remarkably _wide_ shield**; many oblong shields are _taller_ , but I can think of no shield-type that is on average _wider_ than 90cm. The early medieval round shield, perhaps the closest comparison for coverage, averages around 75-85cm wide (with fairly wide variation, mind you), while the _caetra_ , a contemporary ancient round shield from Spain, averages around 50-70cm. The _famously large_ Roman _scutum_ of the Middle Republic is generally only around 60cm or so wide (though it is far taller). So this is a very wide shield.
Via Wikimedia Commons, an Attic black-figure Kylix (c. 560) which gives us a good look at the two-point grip of the _aspis_ (though note this aspis is something of a diplyon-hybrid with two small cutouts!).
**Second** , **the two-points-of-contact strap-grip structure is a somewhat uncommon design decision**(center-grip shields are, globally speaking, more common)**with _significant_ trade-offs**. As an aside, it seems generally assumed – mistakenly – that ‘strap-grip’ shields dominated European medieval shields, but this isn’t quite right: the period saw a fair amount of center-grip shields, two-point-of-contact shields (what is generally meant by ‘strap grip’) and off-center single-point of contact shields, with a substantial portion of the latter two supported by a _guige_ or shield sling, perhaps similar to how we generally reconstruct later Hellenistic version of the _aspis_ supported by a strap over the shoulder. So the pure two-point-of-contact _porpax-antelabe_ grip of the _aspis_ is actually fairly unusual but not entirely unique.
But those _tradeoffs_ can help give us a sense of what this shield was _for_. On the one hand, two points of contact give the user a strong connection to the shield and make it very hard for an opponent to push it out of position (and almost impossible to rotate it): that shield is going to be where its wearer wants it, no matter how hard you are hitting it. It also puts the top of the dish at shoulder level, which probably helps keeping the shield at ‘ready,’ especially because you can’t rest the thing on the ground without taking your arm out of it or kneeling.
On the other hand **the two-point grip _substantially_ reduces the shield’s range of motion and its potential to be used _offensively_**. Now this is where the heterodox scholars will point to references in the ancient sources to war dances intended to mimic combat where participants jumped about or descriptions of combatants swinging their shield around and dodging and so on,19 and then on the other hand to the ample supply of videos showing modern reenactors in hoplite kit doing this.20 To which I first say: granted. Conceded. _You**can**_ _move the_ aspis _with agility_ , you **can** hit someone with it, you **can** jump and dodge in hoplite kit. **And that is basically enough to be fatal to the orthodox argument here**.
**But remember our question is appositeness** : is this the _ideal_ or even a _particularly good_ piece of equipment to do that with? In short, the question is not ‘can you use an _aspis_ offensively’ (at all) but _is it better than other plausible designs_ _at it_. Likewise, we ask not ‘can you move the _aspis_ around quickly’ but _is it better at that than other plausible designs_. And recall above, when the _aspis_ emerged, it had competition: we see other shield designs in early Archaic artwork. There were alternatives, but the _aspis_ ‘won out’ for the heavy infantryman and that can tell us something about what was _desired_ in a shield.
In terms of _offensive potential_ , we’re really interested in the range of strikes you can perform with a shield and the reach you can have with them. For the _aspis_ , the wearer is limited to variations on a shove (pushing the shield out) and a ‘door swing’ (swinging the edge at someone) and both have really limited range. The body of the shield can never be more than one upper-arm-length away from the shoulder (c. 30cm or so)21 so the ‘shove’ can’t shove all that far and the rim of the shield can’t ever be more than a few centimeters in advance of the wearer’s fist. By contrast a _center-grip_ shield can have its body shoved outward to the full extension of the arm (almost double the distance) and its rim can extend half the shield’s length in any direction from the hand (so striking with the lower rim of a _scutum_ you can get the lower rim c. 60cm from your hand which is c. 60cm from your body, while a center-grip round shield of c. 80cm in diameter – smaller than the aspis – can project out 40cm from the hand which is 60cm from the body).
So that two-point grip that gives the shield such stability is dropping its offensive reach from something like 60 or 100cm (shove or strike) to just about 30 or 65cm or so (shove or strike).22 That is a _meaningful difference_ (and you can see it represented visually in the diagram below). **Again, this is not to say you _cannot_ use the _aspis_ offensively, just that this design _prioritizes_ its defensive value over its offensive value** with its grip and structure.
And then there is the question of coverage. Can you swing an _aspis_ around, left to right, blocking and warding blows? Absolutely. Is it _good at that_? **No.** It is not and I am always surprised to see folks challenge this position because _have you seen how a center-grip round shield is used?_ And to be clear, we know the Greeks could have used center-grip shields because center-grip dipylon shields show up in Archaic Greek artwork (though many diplyon shields have the same two-point grip-system as _aspides_ as well): they had the other option _and chose not to use it_.23 With a two-point _porpax-antelabe_ grip, the _aspis_ ‘ center of mass can never be more than an upper-arm’s length (again, c. 30cm) away, which really matters given that the average male might be c. 45cm _wide_. In practice, of course, it is hard to get an elbow much further than the center of one’s chest and that is basically the limit for how far to the right the center of the _aspis_ can be. Likewise, there’s a real limit to how far you can cock your elbow backwards.
By contrast, the center-point of a center-grip shield _can be wherever you fist can be_ , which is a lot wider of a set of places: you can get a center-grip shield all the way to the far side of your body, you can pull it all the way in to your chest or push your entire arm’s length into the enemy’s space. Moreover, with just a single point of contact, these shields can _rotate around your hand_. You can see the difference in coverage arcs below which honestly also understates how much easier it is to _move_ a center-group shield into some of these extreme positions because it isn’t strapped to your arm.
Note: We’re going to return to the ‘side on’ vs. ‘straight on’ question in a future post, but I’ve provided both for now. The heterodox school (van Wees, _op. cit._ , 168-9) supposes a side-on stance but in practice hoplites must have been transitioning frequently between side-on and straight-on simply to use their weapons (you bring your back leg forward when striking to get your whole body into the blow) or to march (these guys did not run sideways into battle, even if they might turn sideways as they reached the enemy). However I will note that you can see very clearly that it is only in the ‘straight on’ (or nearly so) position that Thucydides’ statement about the tendency of hoplites to drift right-ward to seek to protect their unprotected right side makes **any sense** (Thuc. 5.71.1), something Thucydides says “all armies do so” (ἅπαντα τοῦτο) and so must have been a general feature of the warfare he knew.
**Note also: the semi-circles are the exact same diameter** , to give you a sense of just **how far further a center-grip shield can _project_**. And in our best reconstructions of shielded combat, you do often want to be pushing the shield into your enemy’s space to block them off, to get contact with their shield (to push it out of position) or to strike with the shield. As you can see, the _aspis_ can barely get beyond the c. 60cm circle, while the center-grip shield can be pushed much further out – it’s **center** can be as far out as the **edge** of the aspis.
So the _aspis_ ‘ design has significantly compromised offensive potential, mobility, maneuverability and the range of coverage on the sides. What it _gains_ is a stout design, a very stable grip and an unusually high amount of width and we know they chose _these_ trade-offs because the _aspis_ replaced other shield designs that were present in the Archaic, at least for this kind of combatant (the emerging hoplite). **The question then is _why_** and here certainty is impossible because the Greeks do not _tell us_ , but we can approach a plausible answer to the question in two ways: we can ask in what situation would those positive qualities – stoutness, stability and width – be more valuable or we could look at how similar shields (large round shields) are used in other cultures.
A very wide shield that covers a lot of space in which the combatant is not (because it is much wider than the combatant is) is not particularly useful in skirmishing or open-order fighting (cultures that do that kind of fighting tend to drift towards either large oblong shields or small buckler-style shields that don’t waste weight covering area the combatant doesn’t occupy). But that extra width is really handy if the goal is to create an unbroken horizontal line of protection without having to crowd so tightly with your buddies that you can’t move effectively. A hoplite can ‘join shields’ with his mates even with a file width of 90cm, which is certainly closed-order, but not absurdly tight – a Roman with a _scutum_ has to pull in to about 60-65cm of file width to do the same. Where might you value stoutness over mobility or range of motion? Well, under conditions where you expect most strikes to come from a single direction (in front of you), you are more concerned about your ability to meet those strikes effectively than your ability to cover angles of attack that aren’t supposed to be threatened in the first place – such as, for instance, a situation where that space is occupied by a buddy who also has a big shield. In particular, you might want this if you are more worried about having your shield shifted out of position by an enemy – a thing that was clearly a concern24 – than you are about its offensive potential or rapid mobility (or its utility for a shoving match). By contrast, in open order or skirmishing, you need to be very concerned about an attack towards your flanks and a shield which can rapidly shift into those positions is really useful.
What is the environment where those tradeoffs make sense? **A shield wall**.
Alternately, we could just ask, “what contexts **in other societies** or **other periods** do we tend to see large, solid and relatively robust round shields” and the answer is _**in shield walls**_. Or we might ask, “where do we see infantry using two-point grip shields (like some kite shields, for instance)” and find the answer is _**in shield walls**_. Shields that are _like the aspis_ : robust, either wide, two-point gripped or both and used by infantry (rather than cavalry) tend in my experience to be pretty strongly connected to societies with shield wall tactics.
I thus find myself feeling very confident that the _aspis_ was designed for a shield wall context. Which, given how weapons develop (see above) would suggest that context _already existed to some degree_ when the _aspis_ emerged in the mid-to-late 8th century, although we will leave to next time working out what that might have looked like.
## A Brief Digression on the Corinthian Helmet
We can think about the Corinthian helmet in similar terms. Victor Davis Hansen, who can only compare Corinthian helmets to modern combat helmets – because again a huge problem in this debate is that both sides lack sufficient pre-modern military _comparanda_ – suggested that hoplites wearing the helmet could “scarcely see or hear” which essentially forced hoplites into a dense formation. “Dueling, skirmishing and hit-and-run tactics were out of the question with such headgear.”25 The heterodox response is to dispute the degree of those trade-offs, arguing that the helmets don’t inhibit peripheral vision or hearing and are not as heavy as the orthodox camp supposes.26 That dispute matters quite a lot because again, as we’ll get to, the ‘strong’ heterodox position is that hoplite equipment didn’t develop for or in a shield-wall formation, but for skirmishing, so if the Corinthian helmet is a bad helmet for skirmishing, that would make its emergence rather strange; we’ll come back to the question of early Archaic warfare later. Strikingly, there is a lot of effort in these treatments to reason from first principles or from other later ancient Greek helmets but the only non-Greek _comparandum_ that is regularly brought up is the open-faced Roman montefortino-helmet – other _closed-face_ helmets are rarely mentioned.
Via Wikimedia Commons, a relatively early design (c. 630) Corinthian helmet, showing the minimal nose protection (albeit there was some more here before it was broken off) and very wide gap over the face. The punch-holes are presumably to enable the attachment of a liner. Via Wikimedia Commons, a sixth century Corinthian helmet (so the ‘middle’ stage of development) – the face gap is not yet fully closed, but we have the fully developed nose guard and more curved overall shape.
So **does the Corinthian helmet limit vision**? It depends on the particular design but a general answer is ‘perhaps a bit, but not an enormous amount.’ The eye-slits in original Corinthian helmets (as opposed to sometimes poorly made modern replicas) are fairly wide and the aperture is right up against the face, so you might lose some peripheral vision, but not a very large amount; the Corinthian helmet design actually does a really good job of limiting the peripheral vision tradeoff (but it is accepting a small tradeoff). The **impact to hearing is relatively more significant** , but what I’ve heard from reenactors more than once is that it only gets bad _if you make noise_ (which then is transmitted through the helmet), but that can include heavy breathing.27 Of course the best evidence that the impact to hearing was non-trivial (even if the wearer is still able to hear somewhat) is that later versions of the helmet feature cutouts for the ears. **Breathing itself is a factor here** : the width of the mouth-slit varies over time (it tends to close up as we move from the Archaic towards the Classical), but basically any obstruction of the front of the face with a helmet is going to be felt by the wearer when they are engaged in heavy exertion: if you are running or fighting your body is going to feel just about anything that restricts its ability to suck in _maximum air_.
Via Wikipedia, a 13th century German great helm, showing the narrowness of the vision-slits and the breaths (breathing holes).
But those drawbacks simply do not get us to the idea that this was a helmet which could only be used in a tight, huddled formation for the obvious reason that other, far more enclosed helmets have existed at other points in history and been used for a wider range of fighting. 13th century great helms _also_ have no ear cutouts, feature _even narrower_ vision-slits and use a system of ‘breaths’ (small circular holes, typically in patterns) to enable breathing, which restrict breathing more than at least early Corinthian helmets (and probably about the same amount as the more closed-front late types). Visored bascinets, like the iconic hounskull bascinet design likewise lack ear-cut outs, have breaths for air and notably move the eye aperture _forward_ away from the eyes on the visor, reducing the area of vision significantly as compared to a Corinthian helmet. And yet we see these helmets used by both heavy infantry (dismounted knights and men-at-arms) and cavalry in a variety of situations including dueling.28
Via Wikipedia, a hounskull visored bascinet. The visor was attached via hinges so that it could be swung open (some designs have them swing upwards, others have two points of contact and swing horizontally). The large bulge beneath the eyes served in part to make breathing easier, creating a larger air pocket and more space for the breaths.
Which puts us in a similar place as with the _aspis_ : the Corinthian helmet is a design that has made some trade-offs and compromises. It is _capable_ of a lot – the idea that men wearing these were forced to huddle up because couldn’t see or hear each other is excessive (and honestly absurdly so) – but the choice has clearly been made to sacrifice a bit of lightness, some vision, a fair bit of hearing and some breathing in order to squeeze out significantly more face and neck protection (those cheek pieces generally descend well below the chin, to help guard the neck that Greek body armor struggled to protect adequately). That is not a set of compromises that would make sense for a skirmisher who needs to be able to see and hear with maximum clarity and who expects to be running back and forth on the battlefield for an extended period – and indeed, skirmishing troops often forgo helmets entirely. When they wear them, they are to my knowledge invariably open-faced.
Via Wikimedia Commons, an early classical (and thus ‘late’) Corinthian helmet design (c. 475). The face has almost totally closed off and the eye-gaps have narrowed, although there is still a decently wide cutout to avoid harming peripheral vision.
Instead, when we see partially- or fully-closed-face helmets, we tend to see them in basically two environments: heavy cavalry and shield walls.29 Some of this is doubtless socioeconomic: the cavalryman has the money for expensive, fully-enclosed helmets while the poorer infantrymen must make do with less. Whereas I think the _aspis_ was clearly developed to function in a shield wall (even though it _can_ be used to do other things) I am less confident on the Corinthian helmet; I could probably be persuaded of the idea this began as a cavalryman’s heavy helmet, only to be adopted by the infantry because its emphasis on face-protection was so useful in the context of a shield wall clashing with another shield wall. **What it is very obviously not is a skirmishers helmet**.30
## Conclusions
As you have probably picked up **when it comes to equipment, I find the ‘orthodox’ position unacceptable on almost every point** , but equally **I find the ‘strong’ heterodox position unpersuasive on every point _except_ the ‘soft’ gradualism in development** (the Snodgrass position) which I think has decisively triumphed (some moderate heterodox objections to orthodoxy survive quite well, however). Of the entire debate, this is often the part that I find most frustrating because of the failure of the scholars involved to really engage meaningfully with the broader field of arms-and-armor study and to think more comparatively about how arms and armor develop, are selected and are used.
On the one hand, the idea that the hoplite, in full or nearly-full kit, could function as a skirmisher, “even in full armour, a hoplite was quite capable of moving back and forth across the battlefield in the Homeric manner” or that the kit could be “used to equally good effect in open-order fighting” is just not plausible and mistakes _capability_ for appositeness.31 **Hoplite equipment placed the typical hoplite very clearly into the weight-range of ‘heavy infantry,’** by no means the _heaviest_ of heavy infantry (which fatally undermines the ‘encumbered hoplite’ of the orthodox vision) but also by no means light infantry or even really medium infantry except if substantial parts of the panoply were abandoned. Again, I could be sold on the idea that the earliest hoplites were, perhaps, ‘mediums’ – versatile infantry that could skirmish (but not well) and fight in close order (but not well) – but by the early 600s when the whole panoply is coming together it seems clear that the fellows with the full set are in the weight range for ‘heavies.’ We’ll talk about how we might imagine that combat evolving next time.
**Moreover, key elements of hoplite equipment show a clear effort to prioritize protection** over other factors: shield mobility, offensive potential, a small degree of vision, a larger but still modest degree of hearing, a smaller but still significant degree of breathing, which contributes to a larger tradeoff in endurance (another strike against the ‘skirmishing hoplite’). The environment where those tradeoffs all make sense is the shield wall. Which in turn means that while the ultra-rigid orthodox vision where these soldiers cannot function outside of the phalanx has to be abandoned – they’re more versatile than that – the vision, propounded by van Wees, that the hoplite worked _just as well_ in open-order is also not persuasive.
Instead, it seems most plausible by far to me that this equipment emerged to meet the demands of men _who were already beginning to fight in shield walls_ , which is to say relatively32 close-order formations with mutually supporting33 shields probably _already existed_ when the hoplite panoply began to emerge in the mid- and late-8th century.
And that’s where we’ll go next time: to look at _tactics_ both in the Archaic and Classical periods.
**Did they shove?**
(No, they did not shove)
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1. To be fair, I would probably by a full set of mid-republic legionary kit first.
2. A not-unusual-occurrence. _Arms and Armour of the Greeks_(1967) holds up almost absurdly well on a lot of points, given how old it is and how much archaeology has happened since. There are newer and more up-to-date things to read (T. Everson, _Warfare in Ancient Greece_ (2004) for instance), but it has been striking how often I will see a mistake, later disproved by more recent archaeology and go back and find that Snodgrass _was already on the right side of it_ , decades earlier.
3. I stole this joke from Jonah Goldberg, but it was too good not to use. I apologize for nothing.
4. E.g. F. Echeverría, “Weapons, Technological Determinism and Ancient Warfare,” in _New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare,_ edited by G. G. Fagan and M Trundle (2010). I find this argument very frustrating: weapon design does matter, some weapons _are better_ than others in both technological and non-technological ways (e.g. a weapon can be _better_ but also _better suited_ to a given situation).
5. On this specifically, there are two fantastic recent books, A.S. Burns, _Infantry in Battle: 1733-1783_ (2025) and M.H. Spring, _With Zeal and With Bayonets Only: The British Army on Campaign in North America, 1775-1783_ (2008).
6. That is, again E. Jarva, _Archaiologia on Archaic Greek Body Armour_ (1995), which I may now stop bashing. It is not, on the whole, a terrible book, but the bias towards over-heavy estimates of weight is pervasive, an effect of Jarva trying to get where the _WWoW_ thesis requires him to be.
7. In particular, Krentz’ figures “A Cup by Douris and the Battle of Marathon” in _New Perspective of Ancient Warfare_ (2010), which you can find listed in summary in the link above, are on the one hand well within the range of _reasonable_ but on the other hand they are consistently towards the _low end_ of that range in a way that suggests a light but perceptible thumb on the scale (though some of that is justified by the choice to look at _later_ hoplites).
8. The Etruscans pick up the tube-and-yoke armor and, for whatever reason decide, “this would be _even more awesome_ if it were _**entirely covered with metal scales**_. It fits the broader trend towards heavier armor in Italy than in mainland Greece.
9. A point where I actually run marginally _lighter_ than Krentz, who reasons from larger Roman swords, but that was hardly unreasonable: coming up with correct masses for Greek swords was a major challenge for my dissertation/book project. The information would not have been easily available for him in 2010 and my figure ends up well within his range, so no harm, no foul.
10. Pliny _HN_ 16.209, confirmed by wood fragments in the ‘Vatican’ (Bomarzo) and Basel Shields, poplar and willow respectively. See Blyth, H. “The Structure of a Hoplite Shield in the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco.” _Bolletino dei monumenti, musei e gallerie pontificie_ 3 (1982): 5-21, Cahn, D. _Waffen und Zamzeug_ (1989), 15-6 and Schwartz, _op. cit_., 28.
11. See K.R. de Groote, ‘”Twas When my Shield Turned Traitor!’ Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield” _OJA_ 35.2 (2016) for a rundown.
12. Cf. Krentz _op. cit._ , who gives a range of 13-21kg and Schwartz, _op. cit._ , who gives a range of 15-30kg. Schwartz’ ‘high’ is much too high, borrowing too many old over-estimates, but I also suspect Krentz’ low – though I’ve adopted it here for the sake of argument – is substantially too low, particularly the 3kg _aspis_. If you _forced_ me to tighten the range, I’d say 15-25kg.
13. Obviously there’s a lot more variation than just this one fellow’s accurate kit, but his equipment is quite reasonable for a ‘complete’ set of late medieval plate armor and is instructive with how it compares to the rest below.
14. We’re not well informed about the kit of most light infantry except for the Roman _velites_ , but as far as I can tell, the _velites_ are probably the heaviest ‘lights’ in terms of gear, since they carry javelins (heavier than arrows or sling bullets), a sword and perhaps sometimes a helmet, along with a small shield.
15. Unless you are Antiochus III at Magnesia, in which case they are _**and it goes terribly**_ , an immediate reminder of why _you don’t do that_.
16. Just for the love of Sweet, Sweet Athena do not ask them to go toe-to-toe with the uber-heavy (for the period) Roman heavy infantry in a shock engagement unless you have a very good tactical plan to get them out of that fight _quickly_.
17. Note: these are _**not**_ the peltastai of the Classical period, who were true ‘lights.’ Also it is worth saying that of my list, the Hellenistic peltastai are the _most speculative_ of the bunch, because it is unclear how much armor they really wore.
18. van Wees, _Greek Warfare_ (2004), 169.
19. See van Wees, _Greek Warfare_ (2004), 189, fn. 27-28 for the standard references; there are a fair number.
20. Hat tip to reader Ynneadwraith for commenting with a link to a set of these so I didn’t have to go and hunt down the ones I’ve seen (of which there are quite a few).
21. Probably a touch high for most men in antiquity, but 30 is a nice round number and not entirely out of range.
22. Because the _aspis_ ‘ rim projects a bit beyond the hand, we need to add some centimeters, which is why it is ’65cm or so.’
23. E.g. Everson, _op. cit._ , fig 26 for a very clear example: the shields clearly held by a single point of contact in the fist at the center of mass.
24. see van Wees, _op. cit._ , 168, fn 10. and Tyrtaeus F. 11.31 and 19.14-15 (West)
25. _WWoW_ , 71-2. This argument is renewed in an only modestly softer form by Schwartz, _op. cit._ , 61-66. This is picked up, I think overly credulously so, by Everson, _op. cit._ , 80
26. Of particular note, J.P. Franz, _Krieger, Bauern, Bürger_ (2002), 134-8
27. I’ve heard this a couple of times informally, but if you are not prepared to take my word for it, Lloyd (Lindybeige) made exactly this point about his replica helmet a decade ago.
28. Cf. also some earlier medieval closed-face helmets, like the Sutton Hoo helmet and some partially closed (around the eyes and nose, but not closed around the mouth) Scandinavian ‘nasal’ helmets
29. Cf. also face protection for the Japanese samurai class, called a _men-yoroi_ or _mengu_. Of course the _bushi_ , while they might fight on foot had armored, mounted warfare as their primary combat role.
30. We’ll come back to this, but just to head off immediate objections: just because a warrior carries a javelin does not make him a skirmisher. Roman heavy infantry carried javelins too and they were not skirmishers (indeed, they had _dedicated_ skirmishing troops because they were very much not skirmishers).
31. van Wees (2004), 169, 171.
32. Important word, we’ll get to spacing later.
33. Which may or may not mean overlapping.
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