GREECE
BY CHRISTOPHER BLACKWELL
Th e wall and vase paintings from the Minoan and Myce-
naean Bronze Age, during the second millennium b.c.e., are
the earliest evidence of the existence of weaponry and armor
in the ancient Greek world. Th ese paintings show warriors
carrying shields in the shape of a fi gure eight, an oval with
semicircles cut out on either side of the middle; these warriors
wear helmets and carry long, narrow swords.
Th e Homeric epics, composed in their present form
around the seventh century b.c.e., present a backward-look-
ing view of warfare from an earlier age. Th ey describe warriors
armed with bronze helmets—although Odysseus, in book 10
of the Iliad, goes on a nighttime raid wearing a leather helmet
studded with boars’ tusks, bronze breastplates, and greaves
(metal armor covering the shins) and carrying one or two
spears and a sword. Th ese Homeric warriors would throw
their shields, either from chariots or while standing, and then
engage the enemy, one on one, with their swords.
Th e Archaic Period (ca. 600–ca. 480 b.c.e.) saw the so-
called hoplite revolution. Th e term comes from the Greek
word hoplon, or “weapon; a hoplitēs was a soldier outfi tted
with heavy bronze armor and trained in the tactics of the
phalanx. Th e phalanx was a line of infantry in close forma-
tion, each man’s shield covering half of his own body and half
of his neighbor’s, trained to present a theoretically impreg-
nable mass of spear points and shields. Victory depended on
numbers and on the discipline of the individual soldiers.
Th e hoplite’s armor consisted of a breastplate, or thorax,
made of bronze; a bronze helmet, kranos or korus, closely fi t-
ted and covering the whole head and with a T-shaped slit ex-
posing the eyes and mouth (and oft en a noseguard descendingfrom the brow); bronze greaves, knēmides, for covering the
shins; and the bronze and leather shield, aspis or generically
hoplon. Th e hoplite’s weapons were the sword (or xiphos), a
short-bladed stabbing weapon for close combat, and the spear
(doru), a longer thrusting weapon. Hoplites typically did not
fi ght with the thrown spear, akontion, although mounted
cavalry and some more lightly armed units did.
Because each soldier was responsible for providing his
own armor, at his own expense, there must have been a cer-
tain amount of diversity in the style and quality of arms. Th e
historian Th ucydides, in recounting how the Athenians pre-
pared for their invasion of Sicily in 415 b.c.e., describes a cer-
tain competition among soldiers to show off by acquiring the
best armor, saying that “the land forces had been picked from
the best muster-rolls, and vied with each other in paying great
attention to their arms and personal accoutrements.”
Th e cost of this armor limited participation in land com-
bat to those who could aff ord to arm themselves; these were
generally men who owned land and who therefore had the
most at stake in any confl ict between neighboring states. But
in contrast to the Bronze Age “heroic” warfare described by
Homer, which was a series of acts of single combat between
champions, hoplite warfare was communal, requiring co-
operation and mutual trust. Historians see connections
between the rise of this form of fi ghting and the increasing
broadening of political participation in the Archaic Period,
as power moved out of the hands of individual kings and into
the hands of aristocracies or oligarchies, with governance be-
ing shared by those who were in a position to fi ght on behalf
of the state.
Th e weight of metal that provided protection presented
its own problems, and vase paintings of soldiers from the
sixth, fi ft h, and fourth centuries show them, more oft en than
not, with their heavy helmets perched back on the top of their
heads, leaning on their shields, or standing by their unworn
armor. Historical accounts, particularly those of Xenophon,
a historian and mercenary commander of the fourth century
b.c.e., contain many anecdotes of soldiers waiting to put on
their armor until literally the last minute before engaging
the enemy.
Cavalry did not have a large role in land warfare among
Greek states until the period of Macedonian supremacy in
the fourth century b.c.e. Likewise archery played a limited
role, except when Greeks fought as mercenary units in the
larger armies of Asia Minor. Archers, toxitai, do appear in ac-
counts of siege warfare, as well as in the Homeric epics, where
the Trojan Alexandros (Paris) is shown using a bow, as is the
Greek Odysseus.
During the fourth century b.c.e. some Greek armies ex-
perimented with units of more lightly armed foot soldiers,
called peltasts, some armed mainly with throwing javelins or
slings. But the most signifi cant improvements to arms came
through innovations among the armies of Philip of Macedon,
who arrayed his phalanxes several rows deep and armed each
row with the Macedonian spear, the sarisa, using diff erentVase from Mycenae depicting warriors in battle gear (Alison Frantz
Photographic Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)1168 weaponry and armor: Greece0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1168 1168 10/10/07 2:31:19 PM