Evolution of the Hoplite: From the Bronze Age to Classical

Hello guys, welcome to today's video. Today we're going to be going through sort of the evolution of the hoplite from the Mycenaeans all the way to Alexander the Great and see what they become as we go through the ages. So really when we can first sort of talk about hoplites is the Bronze Age where the Mycenaeans settle in Greece. This was about from 3,300 BC to 1,200 BC, sort of the time period that we are talking about. So I have some examples here of the armour that the Mycenaean warriors would be wearing and as you can see it's very crude but yet it's also extremely intelligent and whilst very well armoured it's very similar actually to some later 14th, 15th century, 16th century medieval style armour even from the pauldrons especially. And though it does look quite crude in some of these pictures quite roughly thrown together, as you can see there is very elaborate designs and extremely well put together pieces of armour. Now one thing that I also find incredibly interesting here is that they actually have horned helmets, some of them, not all of them, and I find it interesting that Vikings seem to be the stereotypical horned helmets when historically that never happened. Now these are the type of warriors that you would see during the Trojan Wars, so not like the movie Troy where they're very sort of classical or archaic inspired Greeks. There's another full suit of the armour so they were pretty much entirely covered. Now they had a variety of different shield types but lots of them were quite rounded, some of them even coated in bronze and others had some sort of oxide or some sort of leathery coating over them. So the armour that I just showed you is called Dendra armour and the weapons that they would use as well during this time would be bronze swords and spears and actually the swords that you see, when they're well made they're incredibly well made and they're incredibly elaborate and they are extremely, extremely advanced for especially the time period that we think of. Now this was also before the Greek Dark Ages which is why the next era which we're going to be going into, which is called the Geometric Era, isn't quite as advanced as the Bronze Age or the Mycenaeans. So the Greek Dark Ages happened from about 1100 BC to about 750 BC and the Geometric Era warrior was from 900 BC to about 700 BC so these guys were essentially in the Greek Dark Ages. Now the armour that they had here was not as advanced as the Mycenaeans. Their helmet, funnily enough, was basically an early prototype for the Illyrian helmet which was actually a later Greek helmet. So they didn't really wear too, too much armour. This here is an example of some of the armour or some of the clothing that the Geometric Era hoplites would be wearing. Now unfortunately as this is in the Greek Dark Ages we don't know nearly as much about how they fought here or really how effective they were. We do however know that they again had a quite typically rounded shield and actually quite typically depicted with swords which is quite interesting. They did still have spears but this era sort of, as I said, as it is the Dark Ages we don't know as much about it. But it does seem to show more swords being used than in other eras of hoplite warfare. Now coming out of the Geometric Era we come into one of my favourite eras of history, the Ancient Greek Archaic Era. Now this was about 600 BC to 500 BC and 500 BC is basically my favourite time period for Greece, around that period. Now this is really where we can see the hoplite that we think of today really start to emerge. So here's some examples of the armour that they would be wearing in the Archaic Era. So this one is actually a Spartan Archaic breastplate and this is a recreation from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. So this is apparently a Spartan Archaic and I think what the difference is between that cuirass that he's wearing there is a bell cuirass and it has the abs. I think that's sort of what makes it a Spartan style. But as we can see it's quite heavily armoured again from arm armour to thigh armour to even foot armour. And the helmets that they would be wearing typically in this time is the very early styled Corinthian helmet and this is sort of where the J-crest, which if you don't know the J-crest is the crest that sort of comes up and curves forward. I did a whole video on the origin of Ancient Greek crests which perhaps I'll link up on the top or in the description. Now also there are quite commonly depicted to have groin flaps as well and these guys were essentially knights of the Archaic Era. This is also where the aspis, the hoplite shield we can for sure know was used with the argive grip and the domed shape and this is sort of really where the hoplite of classical Greece really starts to form. Now the Archaic Era hoplites once again carried the dory which was the double ended hoplite spear and the xiphos or a kopis style sword. But one of the things that also makes these different from the classical or slightly later period hoplites is they actually also carried a smaller spear or a javelin that was used for throwing. This did sort of go out of fashion basically at the Greco-Persian Wars which was quite interesting as to why they decided to drop the javelin. One thing as well with the Archaic Era is that they weren't quite as anatomically correct armour suits and what I mean by that is that the bell cuirass obviously isn't quite as realistic as the later muscle cuirass and their greaves were also not muscled nearly as much. Some of them were but not quite as realistic as the Classical Era. These here are an example of some earlier Archaic style greaves and as you can see they are quite smooth and not as cool looking I suppose as the later anatomical greaves. Now as far as we know as well this is also sort of where the linothorax starts to come in or the Greek tuban yoke style armours or the spolas as well and also towards the end of the Archaic Era the famous bronze muscle cuirass starts to sort of overcome the bell cuirass. However the bell cuirass was still in use and for actually quite a long period of time. So now we come into my personal favourite time period of Greece which is the Early Classical Period which is about 500 BC. This helmet here is an example of what an Early Classical Helmet, a Corinthian Helmet would be. So it still has a closed ear and not quite as open as later models of the Corinthian Helmet become. Now this is the type of hoplite that would be fighting in the Greco-Persian Wars and also the start of the Peloponnesian Wars. So this is where the linothorax or the spolas or tuban yoke or whatever you want to call them really started to kick off in Greece. The Corinthian Helmets evolved to, well not just Corinthian Helmets there, Greek Helmets evolved to open up the ears so they could hear and invariably the cheek guards as well. The muscle cuirass now completely overtook the bell cuirass and the bell cuirass is sort of back in the Archaic Times. The thigh and the arm armour has now been lost and so has the javelin. Now what a wealthy hoplite from this time period would have would be a helmet, an aspis, most likely a bronze coated aspis if we're talking Spartans as well. Also if they could afford it, greaves and either a xiphos or a coppice or of course the dory as well. Now one thing that I also really like about Ancient Greeks is their unique designs and sort of artistic influence on their armour. Now I will do a separate video on this but their shield blazons as well are heavily customised, more so in the Archaic and Classical eras than any other period as we know because as I said we lost a lot through the Greek Dark Ages. But really this is where the prime of the hoplite really comes in. So the phalanx had been developed and perfected over the Archaic era as the phalanx was invented around 700 BC-ish, give or take. And yeah this is where the hoplite really saw its prime, though they were actually less armoured than their previous Archaic era hoplites. Now as we go into the Peloponnesian Wars, things start to change as war is inevitable and funnily enough the Spartans, which were basically the most heavily armoured of all Greeks throughout the Archaic and Classical era, start to sort of see a decline in their armour and favour the pylos-type helmet which is more of a cone shape. It's also shown as well that many of them lost armour and were just fighting in tunics and this is where again Sparta was an extremely complicated city-state as they had periuchoi, helots and homoioi fighting at the same time. This is also the time period where the lambda comes onto the shields for Spartans, however there's lots of debate whether the homoioi Spartans, and there's also supposedly Moors as well which are essentially groups, like essentially Spartan legions that would all have shield designs, but it's all all over the place and lots of people can't really settle on what was fact and what wasn't. Though it's possible that why the typical Spartan hoplite, and this time because the homoioi population had decreased significantly, especially over the earthquake that happened in I think 464 BC, around there. So it's possible that the periuchoi Spartans were the less armoured ones and also then made up more of the Spartan army and that's why. But what we see here is a very lightly armoured hoplite and really isn't what we think of with hoplites with the typical Corinthian helmets and heavily armoured infantry that they were. And for the final one that we're going here is the Lacedonian Hippispist. This is an advanced unit from Alexander's army and though this isn't a hoplite anymore, this is sort of what happened to the hoplite around the time period of Alexander the Great, which the Hippispist basically was around the 4th century BC. They would typically wear a Thracian helmet, muscle cuirass, greaves, a rounded shield and a dory as well. So still not the Macedonian pike phalanx but still very resemblant of the hoplite. So that is basically how the hoplite itself evolved from the Bronze Age all the way to the Classical. Thank you so much for watching this video and I really hope you enjoyed it and learned some stuff from it. And please like and subscribe if you did, all that typical YouTube mumbo jumbo. And if you want to check out some other videos, there will be one coming up in just a second. Thank you so much for watching this one and I'll hopefully see you in the next video.