Armour of the Ancient Greek Hoplite // In-depth overview of the Linothorax, aspis, helmets, + more!

Something that's important to remember when it comes to the ancient Greek hot plates is that they were not a professional force, they were all akin to a citizen militia. Every male citizen from roughly the age of 18 to 60 was eligible for military service and this meant that they had to afford and purchase their own equipment. The result of this would mean that you would see a lot of disparity and uniqueness and individuality within the hot plate phalanx and many soldiers would not be able to adorn themselves in every piece of armor. Not even the Spartans were a professional force as so commonly said to be. Now before me I've laid out a multitude of items from a hot plate panoply or equipment and we're going to go through it and explain to you some things about it. Let's start off with the helmets. Now though the Corinthian helmet seems to be the iconic typical Greek helmet there were actually many others that coexisted with it and actually outlasted it. Before you there are three helmets two of them being of the Corinthian type and one of them being the Illyrian helmet given its name because so many have been found around the city-state of Illyria. Now though the Corinthian helmet was incredibly popular so too was the Illyrian helmet with around one third of all archaeological finds being of this helmet type. There have been even more helmets that you would have found alongside the Corinthian such as the Chalcidian and later you would see the Pelos helmet, the Attic helmet, the Thracian helmet and even more. One of the most characteristic and defining factors of these helmets are the crests on top. Now before you you can see two different styles of crests the standard front to back and the transverse crest. There is one other typical design that we see which is called the J-crest which comes up in a sort of candy cane like hook. However this design seems to fall out of favour coming into the classical age. You wouldn't have just seen crests on helmets we have evidence of horns, antlers and even entire horse tails. However the art database does show that the crest seems to be the most common use. Now unlike the Romans we have next to no evidence at all suggesting that these had any rank indication even the transverse crest though it does seem to be rarer. Now there are many reasons for this for example most hoplites depict an arter from the side and the only transverse crest depictions in pottery are from the front which would automatically distort our perception of how common or uncommon these crests were. Now let's start with the Illyrian helmet. As I said this helmet does seem to be a very popular design and for good reason. It offers very good protection however allows a lot of air and vision as opposed to the Corinthian. Now this as always with armour is a compromise as typically the more vision and comfort you have the less protective. However this would still be very good especially against slashes as these cheek plates come out above your face. Now we see many different types of Illyrians however all basically following the same pattern. We sometimes see typically later on they open up ears and sometimes these cheek plates did not have a curve they were completely straight. However the basic foundation remained the same and it was a very effective and favoured helmet. However maybe not as iconic and epic looking as the Corinthian. Now the next helmet I want to talk to you about is what we call the Hermione Corinthian which is perhaps the stereotypical Corinthian helmet. Now this was actually a later reform of the Corinthian helmet that we probably more likely saw at Thermopylae coming into play in the 5th century BC. This saw the most closed form of the Corinthian helmet having very enclosed eyes and in very enclosed cheek plates and this one here is adorned with transverse crest. This was the most protective helmet that we probably ever saw the Greek hoplites wearing and it likely came into play during the Persian invasion because of the amount of missile fire that the Greeks had to deal with they favoured the more enclosed protective style. This helmet would stay around until around 450 BC where it seems to start to drop out of popularity in favour for more open-faced helmets. Now something else that you see here is that this has been painted with a checker pattern. We do have plenty of evidence suggesting that the Greeks painted their armour including their helmets and the checker pattern is one that we quite commonly see typically on Chalcidian helmets however also on some Corinthians. Now the next helmet I want to talk to you about is this style here which is commonly given the name the Archaic Corinthian helmet however nearly all Corinthian helmets were Archaic. This is sort of the one that was more likely going to be seen around the Battle of Marathon and Thermopylae the sort of earliest style of the Corinthian helmet you can see it doesn't have that very defined cranial ridge the eyes on this example are slightly bigger this is about the biggest we ever see in the archaeological record and the cheek plates are sprayed slightly further apart. Now you can see that around the edges here there's decorative rivets we do see this in the archaeological record and we also have evidence for stitching holes for installing a liner. Now as mentioned before all of these helmets have different types of crests however we do not entirely know how these crests were constructed. Before you there are three different styles one of them being a one that's being quite favoured now in the reenactment world which we'll have a closer look at now. Something that's so interesting about these crests is that though we have so many depictions we have no surviving versions which means that the construction method is left for us to try and figure out and is very much so in the dark. This method of construction uses horse hair which is accounted for in period sources however the crest box construction is actually leather and the checker pattern that we so commonly see is how the crest is actually secured inside with essentially the tufts of horse hair would have been curved into a u and stitched weaved and connected with this crest box checker design. Something else that we do see in period art is these dots which many of us have decided might represent beads and not only does it look very nice it also actually helps keep the hair up. Another feature that we see on these crests is a very long tail again this is likely just for decoration and to look grand and intimidating. These crests again don't seem to serve any military purpose they are more to make the hoplite look grand and intimidating and fierce and taller on the battlefield and I think they did that incredibly well. The crest design of this helmet is perhaps the most common that you see in reenactment which is a wooden crest box which has been painted to another design that we see commonly appearing in art with small holes bored out that tufts are glued in. Now when it comes to these crests again as we have no surviving finds it basically is up to speculation and it's likely that we would have seen many construction methods. Uniformity was not a thing really in ancient Greece and we can see that in many different styles and armor that we'll get onto especially when we talk about the famed lunar thorax or tube and yoke style armor and the crest box was likely the same thing. Many of these would have probably had different organic constructions from the leather weaved crest box that we see on the archaic style example to this bored out wooden box to even bone or weave. It's likely that they would have found many different ways to fasten these adorned crests. So there's a little bit on ancient Greek helmets and I could go on for so much more however I think we should move on. Next we're going to move on to two examples of body armor that we see throughout the archaic and classical world starting with the muscle cuirass. Now the muscle cuirass is a very famous example and a very typical example that we think of when talking about hoplites however the earliest evidence that we have for this style of armor coming in is about 490 BC so this style of armor would have been very new in the time of the Persian wars. Before that I do not yet have an example of whether I am actually getting one made of a bell cuirass which is a far more archaic style but probably more what you would have seen at the time of Leonidas which looks something like this. There's also a sort of transitional period where you see the bell cuirass forming into the muscle cuirass however it is definitely not impossible that all of these helmets could have overlaid with the muscle cuirass as again these coexisted. Something that's incredibly important to note when we talk about armor is it didn't just suddenly drop and change the same way that we look at the middle ages armor gradually came in and out of fashion it wasn't a sudden deadline of this is now the fifth century not the sixth therefore this armor is now in style. So it is highly possible that we would have seen overlay in equipment as this armor was incredibly expensive and each individual would have had to have bought his own stuff which means that if one of these helmets for instance the more archaic style fit very well and he wanted a new cuirass then it is highly possible that that helmet would have been worn with a newer styled cuirass. This style of armor would have been likely the most expensive and it offered the most protection we have actually done full-blown tests on this style of armor that shows that full powered spear thrusts if they even go through go through less than a millimeter. These would have had to have fitted very well as the weight of armor does not just hang on the shoulders it in fact fits the entire body it essentially acts as a second skin this also means that the armor though it makes you heavier doesn't necessarily feel too heavy in the period that you'll be wearing it for and the way of attaching this armor is done so with pins basically a hinge that you will be pinned into and this style of armor would likely have only been worn by very rich individuals unless you managed to pillage one off of a dead body and it did offer the most protection and actually out of personal experience I find this more comfortable than the tuban yoke or lynth wax style armor. Though it may look very big and bulky it actually doesn't restrict mobility that much and in fact armor itself isn't very good if it does that and throughout all of history we see armor being tweaked and developed in order to grant very good mobility and protection at the same time you're not simply a walking around tin can if armor wasn't very good and it was difficult to move in and was very uncomfortable then simply people wouldn't have worn it it's attested throughout thousands of years of human development that armor did work and it was better to have it than not. Next let's move on to perhaps the most typical and seen style of armor in the hoplite's time that being the tuban yoke or famously the nathorax similar to the crest box we are very much left in the dark in the ways of construction and basically all of our modern reproductions are it to a part a theory we have very few surviving finds and most of them are macedonian if they do one of them being fully metal and that's one of the issues when it comes to recreating ancient greek armor is that lots of it doesn't survive especially the organic stuff this has led to two main theories that being that the linothorax or tuban yoke was of a linen construction or a leather one which is commonly called a spolas now we have literacy attesting to both the name itself is a modern construction and likely many of these names that we give them the greeks would have simply called a helmet or a cuirass or a breastplate the sort of modern listing of armor doesn't really take place at the time except i believe corinthian helmets are actually called corinthian helmets this armor is by far the most commonly depicted at the time and we're likely looking at multiple different construction methods as usual the linothorax or the tuban yoke which was made up of the tube the torso and the yoke shoulders was likely a blueprint that many different materials were used to create this example here is that of glued layered linen which creates a very stiff and sturdy armor however isn't necessarily the most practical at stopping stabs another theory that we have is unglued quilted linen or even layered linen which upon testing can stop a full powered spear blow we also see the addition of scales on certain armors especially around the midsection and the sides and we even see some fully coat the entire armor we also have some surviving being of leather and it's pretty safe to assume that these would have again been made of multiple different materials one style that i myself want to have a go at making is having the yokes the shoulders out of a thick leather material and the core being out of a layered linen with scales which the scales adding protection allowed the layered linen far more mobility another aspect that we see on these are what we call peterogays which basically translates as feathers which hang down below the legs now these are very mobile but they do offer some protection for the bottom half we do sometimes see these attached to the cuirass and possibly worn as a belt underneath as well what's interesting about the tube and yoke is that it basically survives all periods of ancient greek history coming in in the archaic period and going through well into the hellenistic and you can even see lots of roman style armors again being that tube and yoke design for instance now next we're going to be talking about side arms or swords now in the greek time we really have two main ones that we can talk about that being the xiphos and the coppice being a slightly larger more of a chopper this here is an example of a xiphos a particular small example which seems to be favored by the lacedaemonians especially in the time of the peloponnesian war this as you can see is quite a small blade and it's very agile and very good at multi-tasking it's a good stabber and a good slasher you can imagine that in close quarters when the phalanxes clash together or when you get up close and your spears break or lost that this type of weapon would have been absolutely ruthless the small and agile design would have allowed you to get through eye holes and neck holes and get into all those nooks and crannies that the otherwise pretty well protected hoplites have uncovered another sword that we see the greeks use is what's called a coppice which is similar to the falcata this is a heavy front weighted blade though that doesn't mean that the blade itself is heavy more that its balance point is closer forward which allows for optimized cutting though this sword is very much told to be a cutting sword that does not mean that it could not be stabbed with in fact this would have also delivered a very powerful stab another important aspect of the hoplites panoply are what protects his legs or kinemides or greaves these are a very important aspect to the hoplites panoply and arguably even more important than torso protection as this is what goes and protects your lower half that your shield does not that we'll get on to that in a short while these are an example of anatomical greaves as we see the greeks very much like anatomical armor however earlier on you would have also seen non-anatomical greaves however this does come in around the archaic period and again survives into the hellenistic the method of attaching the specific style seems to be the most common which is simply a slip-on fit with self-clamping however we do sometimes see buckles or lace being added perhaps to second-hand greaves to make them fit better or just because this form of construction could probably be quite difficult to create as mentioned before numerous times the hoplites would have to afford and buy their own arms and armor which means that perhaps a hoplite couldn't afford greaves or they couldn't afford a muscle crass or even a tube and yoke style armor it's highly likely that actually a majority of hoplites that we saw on the battlefield were not this heavily armored in fact all you really needed to have to be considered the hoplite is a spear and a shield and preferably a helmet now before we get on to the shield perhaps the most important part of the hoplites panoply there are a few more weapons that i would just like to talk about starting with here two lesser known and lesser interpreted weapons that the hoplites likely had being javelins we seem to see again in the archaic period a far more sort of opened form of warfare and the actually whole way that the hoplites fight is not really well known or concrete to say the least coming out more and more in the academic community is the idea that the archaic era warfare of the hoplite was far more open and one weapon that they seem to drop in the classical is the javelin now these javelins are not like olympic level javelins they're not massive and they're frankly not designed to be thrown particularly far the furthest i've ever thrown these is around 85 feet so that is one of the most powerful sort of throws i've been able to do so it's likely that most of these would only really be thrown 50 60 feet just before your armies engage it's possible that these were still in use in the time of the battle of thermopylae however it's not really possible for us to know but this is just another weapon that we do see hoplites likely carrying especially coming into the classical and the archaic era next is the hoplites main weapon being the dory now this is a rather interesting spear it's roughly eight feet give or take we sometimes see them longer or even shorter than this but eight feet sort of the standard now it was a double-ended spear that being with the iron acme at the front and the bronze saruta at the back end which translates to roughly lizard sticker likely because they used to stab it in the ground another interesting construction method that we see which isn't yet present on my reconstruction i plan to add it very soon is an actual distal taper on the shaft of the spear this essentially counterweighted the spear it allowed you to hold it further back than forward and also made the whole thing lighter now why did it have two ends well that is an interesting question we have sort of a couple answers to this sort of a ancient greek multi-tool so the acme the iron spearhead was the stabbing end you would hold it like this and you would stab with that way as for the purpose of having the double end it's likely multiple reasons one of the most useful and again it's bronze so it doesn't corrode is that you can stab it in the ground and walk away from it and this is incredibly helpful as you don't have to bend down and pick it up you can simply grab it and be ready this end is typically believed to be heavier on reconstruction some of them are some of them aren't which again enforces that counterweight allows you to hold the spear further back than forward you can also if you really need to use it as a secondary weapon in case this end gets cut off however that is a little impractical as you would likely have a lot of excess spear sticking out that way hitting all your friends you can of course also use it to dispose of fallen enemies on the ground so they don't poke your ankles which isn't very nice now there has been quite a lot of debate about whether you hold the spear overarm or underarm however basically universally agreed upon now in the academic and reenactment community is overarm especially informational combat of course if you're not informational combat you're free to move however you want however when you have a guy tightly pressed up behind you you need that back end up and you can still get quite a lot of reach when you stab some people say you can't stab feet yes you can and another method that we can use to get an excess reach is a throw and catch method where essentially you stab and let the spear slide this was the most important weapon to the ancient greek hoplite and used with the aspis uh was a very effective combo talking about the aspis let's move on to that now this is perhaps the most important aspect to the hoplite this is basically what made you a hoplite did you have an aspis now as a side note here this shield was sometimes incorrectly called a hoplon the word hoplite comes from the word equipment or arms which is sometimes incorrectly labeled as the hoplon being the shield if you called the shield the hoplon you're essentially calling your shield equipment the term hoplite derives from that term which essentially translates to meaning man-at-arms the specific name of the shield was the aspis and there are a few characteristic elements that make the aspis what it is if you look at the shape of the aspis you see that it's quite a large circle they're around 36 inches average but we do see some bigger than that this one is a copy of the vatican shield which is an archaeological find and this is made with scans of that shield however slightly scaled up as that shield is slightly smaller one of the major things that we see is that there's a dome construction with a rim this actually allows the shield to quite ergonomically sit on your shoulder and also if your thesis theory is correct allows you to not get asphyxiated as you're crushed another major component of the shield is actually what's on the inside now this is what we call a strap shield today meaning that it's not a center gripped you would have the as you can see here center sort of armband which we call the porpax with the antelope going around now on this specific example the porpax is actually not in the center it's slightly shifted up and to the right we do see both in ancient greek art and this essentially does two major things it puts your hand close to the room of the shield which gives you more mobility and also makes more of the shield jut out to the side creating a stronger overlap for shield walls one of the questions that we get asked the most is what are these ropes for on the inside and quite frankly here's an answer that you probably won't like we don't know there's a lot of theories about this being that it was a carrying cord that you can wear as a backpack which some people have tested and it does seem to work others that it's just merely decoration which you know it does look quite nice especially if you have the uh little tassels hanging down there's some which suggest that you can hold this in a shield wall to basically make it harder for you to split to split and separate which i actually want to test this i haven't been able to do that just yet um and there's another theory which is it's essentially a throwback to older designed shields that basically that was a structural part now this shield covered the hoplite roughly from his neck to his knee and that's where the helmet and if you could afford them greaves sort of came into play there is obviously one thing that's staring you straight in the face that being what we call blazons or the sort of emblem that sits on front of the shield this is another area where we get asked a lot of questions and again i can give you multiple answers some of which might be correct we don't know um we see throughout lots of uh depictions of multiple different styles of of blazons um we see some that seem to be religious for instance the eagle of zeus the owl of athena or even the solar symbol here is commonly associated with the god apollo we do have some uh literary mentions of uh uniformed shields so for instance and we do have maybe one or two mentions of the spartan lambda however this is now more believed to have been a conscripted shield a sort of um laconian uh residents that were forcefully conscripted into the peloponnesian war were adorned with a lambda laconian shield so likely not actually used by this upper class spartans themselves and again this sort of standardized blazing that we sort of start to see is a later addition and definitely doesn't seem to be very uniform we also have descriptions for instance the spartan who painted the life-sized fly on his shield again supporting the idea that it was individual choice maybe it was a family heirloom it was sort of a heraldic symbol um but likely it was a multitude of all of these but the short answer is that we don't really know for sure so i can only really give you multiple answers to that question all of which might not be correct all of which could be correct or some of them could be correct we don't really know but it seems to be a lot of variety and a lot of disparity in these shield blazons so there you go that is sort of a rundown of the arms and armor of the typical hoplite and and again just to emphasize there would have been a lot of hoplites that would have looked simply how i am right now a spear and a shield and nothing much else