84 Conquest
nor by the greaves, cuirass, or corslet he may have worn—though these all
formed part of the standard hoplite panoply. He was set apart, instead, solely
by the peculiar shield that he bore. The long thrusting spears that hoplites
carried and the short swords to which they resorted when these spears were
broken or lost did little to distinguish them from infantrymen of other sorts.
Their hallmark was the aspís; and, tellingly, the Greeks sometimes thought it
sufficient to refer to this shield as the hóplon, using for this particular item the
generic term for hoplite equipment. It was, after all, the aspís that made the
hoplite a hoplite. This shield was designed for phalanx warfare, and it was very
nearly “useless” for anything else. So, at least, we are bluntly told by Aristotle,
who had this advantage over modern military historians: he had actually seen
Greek infantrymen equipped with the hoplite panoply. He may also have wit-
nessed hoplite armies practicing maneuvers, and he certainly had ample op-
portunity to converse with those who had borne the aspís in battle. When he
spoke on such a question, he spoke with a discernment and an authority that
we cannot ever hope to duplicate.^50
It is easy to see why the aspís would be of little use and perhaps even bur-
densome to an infantryman fighting in the manner of a prómachos. This shield
was round and, as the Greeks put it, “hollow” (which is to say, from the per-
spective of the man bearing it, the aspís was concave). It was also roughly three
feet in diameter; and, depending largely on whether its core, usually con-
structed of poplar or willow, was faced with bronze, it could weigh up to
twenty pounds. For an isolated individual, a fifteen-pound shield (which was
evidently the norm)—borne on his left arm and, when possible, supported at
the lip on his left shoulder—was an encumbrance more unwieldy and awk-
ward than we are apt to imagine. In ancient times, as we must with some fre-
quency remind ourselves, human beings were considerably smaller in stature
than they are today.
The aspís borne by the hoplite had a bronze armband in the center, called
a pórpax, through which the warrior slipped his left arm, and a leather cord or
handle on or near the shield’s right rim, called an antılabē ́, for him to lay hold
of with his left hand. This shield might provide adequate cover for a warrior
temporarily stretched out sideways in the manner of a fencer with his left foot
forward as he prepared to hurl a javelin or to put his weight behind a spear
thrust. But this pose could not long be sustained, for it left him exceedingly
vulnerable to being shoved to the right or the left and knocked off his feet.
Moreover, the minute he pulled his left foot back for any reason or brought his