Athenian hoplite Peloponnesian War

In this blog, we look at the equipment of the Athenian marine hoplite Pelagios in 415 BC. He sails with the commander Alcibiades on a trireme to Sicily to besiege the city-state of Syracuse, as part of the Peloponnesian War. In the second half of the fifth century BC, the Greek world was in the grip of an all-encompassing conflict between Athens and Sparta, which was fought far beyond the peninsula.

In ancient Greece, the polis (and its citizenship) was central to society. Male citizens of these poleis had, in addition to economic privileges, special rights. For example, they could participate in exclusive religious rituals and have a say at various levels in the political sphere of their city-state. The position of citizenship in the polis can be compared to the warrior class of other Indo-European societies. Like these related peoples, Greek society was hierarchical and divided into classes, with no distinction made between the warrior class and the religious class. Citizenship of a polis was therefore not only a privilege but also entailed obligations. The greatest of these was a form of military conscription for male citizens: if you were a member of the city community, you also had to be able to defend it. This connection between political rights and military duties also worked the other way around: the Athenian democracy arose from the fact that the rowers of the Athenian fleet were given a say by the statesmen Solon and Cleisthenes precisely because they fought for their city.

Hoplites were as citizen-soldiers in their daily lives farmers or craftsmen with legal personality, who had to gather their own armor and were called up in times of war to fight for their polis. This was not always the case: Spartan hoplites were an exception because even in times of peace they were almost exclusively engaged in politics and martial arts . All other work in Spartan society was carried out by the Perioikoi and the Helots, lower classes of non-citizens. Due to their strong culture of small-scale autonomy, competition, and self-determination, the Greeks were fiercely opposed to any form of external domination; they saw this as a form of slavery compared to Greek 'freedom'. This freedom did not apply to the lower (working) class; they belonged to the land and had no legal personality. 

Polis like Athens and Sparta had their own form of government and urban identity, but shared a common Greek culture of mutual competition. These cities ruled over the surrounding land and were constantly in conflict with each other over power and territory. Every summer was a 'war season', in which cities fought these conflicts with each other. This was done in battles where the shield walls (phalanx) of both sides collided and pushed until one of the two lines was broken. The way the hoplites fought in these battles ensured that their collective identity was strengthened: they fulfilled their civic duty together with friends, family members, and acquaintances and were protected by the shield of the soldiers (and fellow citizens) next to them. Due to this strong urban warrior culture, the Greeks valued not only individual heroism but also a kind of collective heroism for the prestige of the city community.

After the Greeks expelled the Persian army of Xerxes from the Greek peninsula in 480 BC, there was significant interest among the Greeks in forming a defensive alliance to prevent another invasion. Athens took the initiative by establishing this alliance in 477 BC: the so-called Delian League (also known as the 'Delian-Attic League'). 

The league was presented by Athens as a cooperation among equals, but in fact existed to create Athenian hegemony over the Aegean Sea. Not all city-states could provide troops or ships, so Athens imposed a financial contribution on them to the league's treasury, initially kept on the island of Delos and later the Athenian Acropolis. This treasury was used to build, among other things, the Athenian fleet and the enormous fortifications between Athens and the brand-new port city of Piraeus, the so-called 'Long Walls'. When the war with the Persians ended in 449 BC, the Delian League continued to exist, even though its original purpose had disappeared.

By exerting economic and military pressure on smaller poleis, Athens spread its democratic system. New colonies and city-states that adopted this political system with Athenian help became loyal to the Delian League. The Athenian fleet and democracy provided opportunities for poorer groups to gain political influence. As a result, strong democratic (and thus Athenian)-oriented movements emerged in many Greek city-states within and outside the league. Through this power politics, Athens became the economic, political, and cultural center of the Greek world. 

The rulers of aristocratic and oligarchic poleis felt threatened by these developments and feared losing their aristocratic system and independence. They formed a counter-alliance against Athens, the so-called Peloponnesian League with Sparta as the leader. A cold war emerged in the Greek world: Sparta against Athens, aristocracy versus democracy. These alliances were also very asymmetrical on a military level. The Delian League had by far the largest and most developed naval force, but the Peloponnesian League had the strongest land army. 

The war broke out in 431 BC, when the Spartans marched through Attica with a land army to besiege Athens and the port city of Piraeus. The Athenians were protected by the Long Walls, but the following year they were struck by a severe plague epidemic. This resulted in 30,000 deaths, including Pericles, the Athenian statesman who had played a major role in building Athenian power. For the next ten years, Athens and Sparta fought it out on the mainland, but no definitive winner emerged from these conflicts. As a result, a temporary truce was declared.

The second phase of the war began in 415 BC when Athens, led by Alcibiades, attempted to conquer Syracuse, the Spartan ally in Sicily. However, this expedition failed so badly that the Athenian fleet and army were almost completely destroyed. With their tails between their legs, the Athenians fled back to Greece to lick their wounds and quickly build a new fleet. Meanwhile, the Spartans also developed their own navy, almost as strong as that of Athens. They did this with the help of their old enemy; the Persian king Darius II supported them with a large amount of silver, hoping he could recapture parts of Anatolia from the Athenian empire. In the next naval battle, the Athenians would still have a larger fleet than the Spartans, but their hegemony over the Aegean Sea was broken.

The famous Spartan naval commander Lysander lured the Athenians into an ambush in 405 BC by cutting off their grain supply and destroyed the Athenian fleet in the Battle of Aegospotami. The desperate Athenians were then driven back to their Long Walls, but this time they did not withstand the siege for long. The following year, the starving Athens finally surrendered, after an almost 30-year-long war that had engulfed the entire Greek world. 

Although the city-states of Thebes and Corinth advocated for the destruction of the city and the enslavement of the Athenian population, Lysander was strongly opposed to this. He reminded them that Athens had played an important role in the Persian Wars and chose to make Athens an oligarchic vassal state of Sparta. This indeed happened; although it wasn't long before the Athenians would rise in rebellion in the name of their democracy.

Pelagios wears a tunic, a belt, and a pair of simple leather sandals under his armor. When it rains or when he is cold at sea, he wears his thick woolen cloak.

Greek tunics were made of linen, sometimes also of wool. The tunic that Pelagios wears under his armor has long sleeves, but in the warmer months, Greeks often wore light garments that left their arms and shoulders uncovered. Classical Greeks did not wear trousers under their tunic, as they considered them barbaric.

Due to the warm, temperate climate, sandals (sandaloi) like these were worn in classical Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean region. Although Zeno wears simple military sandals that are less open to better protect the feet, there were constantly new fashion trends for sandals in antiquity, determined by fashionable Athens. 

Besides sandals, from the fifth century BC, people also wore a kind of lace-up boots (such as endromis and embades) and in winter, felt socks (piloi) to keep the feet warm. 

To shape the tunic, both simple leather belts and fabric belts were used.

The chlamys was a woolen cloak worn in classical Greece. It kept the clothing clean and offered the wearer protection against the elements.

The cloak that Zeno wears is not only meant to keep him warm but also forms part of his armor. On the battlefield, he wraps the cloak around his weapon arm to protect it against spears, swords, and arrows.

The cloak was fastened with a fibula, a metal clothing pin that was often decorated.

The armor of Pelagios is representative of the average Greek hoplite from the Peloponnesian Wars; he wears a large bronze shield, 'Corinthian' bronze helmet, linen linothorax, and bronze greaves to protect his body. He uses a long spear, the doru, to fight in formation and a short sword, the xiphos, as a secondary weapon.

The large bronze shield (hoplon / aspis) was the most important component of the hoplite's equipment; the name 'hoplite' is even derived from it. This heavy shield was designed to fight in a dense shield wall formation (phalanx), where a hoplite was partially covered by the shield of those next to him.

The hoplon was often decorated with bronze work or paint. These decorations were applied for various reasons but usually had a symbolic meaning. For example, the hoplon was used to show the identity of the hoplite's polis. For Athens, this was an owl, the symbol of the goddess Pallas Athena who protected the city. In Sparta, this was done with a lambda (the L in Greek script) as a symbol for Lacedaemonia, the area where the Spartans came from. 

Many hoplites also had a monster from Greek mythology on their shield. This was a less patriotic decoration, intended to ward off evil forces and intimidate their enemies. The shield of Pelagios is decorated with a gorgoneion, the head of a monstrous gorgon demon that could petrify people with her gaze. This decoration also had a deeper meaning, discussed in the chapter on the linothorax.

The bronze Corinthian helmet was used from the eighth to the fourth century BC. This type of helmet had an iconic profile and protected the entire head, making it very popular among heavily armed hoplites. Until 500 BC, the Corinthian helmet was completely closed, and thereafter helmets with openings for the ear were increasingly made. Because the helmet completely covered the face, it was also pushed back to give the wearer a better hearing and field of vision. Some helmets like those of Pelagios also had a crest of horse hair.

In the following centuries, people eventually switched to the Phrygian and Chalcidian helmets, which restricted the wearer's sight and hearing less. However, the Corinthian helmet remained very important in Greek art as a symbol of the classical period.

The linothorax (literally ‘linen breastplate’ in Greek) was a type of armor worn by warriors throughout the Mediterranean region until the third century BC. It was a cuirass made of thick layers of linen that protected the torso and upper legs against bronze arrowheads

While a linothorax offered less protection for the body than full bronze breastplates, it was much lighter, more maneuverable, and cheaper to produce. It was also much more resistant to corrosion from seawater than metal armor: particularly when traveling or fighting over the sea, one would therefore have preferred the linothorax. As an Athenian marine, Pelagios cannot imagine wearing a bronze breastplate; otherwise, he would be constantly occupied with maintaining it.

The linothorax and the shield of Pelagios are both adorned with a gorgoneion. This decoration to ward off evil forces also draws inspiration from Greek mythology: specifically from the aegis, a mythological armor or shield to which a gorgon head was attached. It could protect the wearer against all dangers and was worn in myths by the gods Zeus (as a shield) and Athena (as armor). Pelagios, who is unsure which version of the myth is correct, has (to be safe) chosen to use both.

Because the shield of the hoplite was round, it could not cover the entire lower body. Therefore, hoplites like Pelagios also wore bronze greaves. These were anatomically shaped and provided protection for the knees and shins.

The spear that hoplite Pelagios carries was the most important weapon of the hoplite and was used from the Archaic period to the time of Alexander the Great. The doru (or dory) had a length of 2-3 meters, long enough for multiple lines of hoplites to fight as part of the shield wall. 

The spear was made of ash wood and had, in addition to a leaf-shaped spear head, a pointed butt cap that could be used in various ways. This allowed the spear to be stuck into the ground, and hoplites could easily kill wounded enemies while holding the spear upright. The butt cap could also be used by the hoplite as a backup spear head when his doru broke in half.

Hoplites and other Greek soldiers also used smaller javelins.

The xiphos was an iron sword that served the hoplite as a secondary weapon and was only used when their spear (dory) broke or when fighting at very close range was necessary, such as when lines were breached. 

You can also choose to use a kopis (also known as falcata for the Iberian variant)  for your composition, a single-edged sword. This became increasingly popular during the classical period and even took over the role of the xiphos as the primary 'hoplite sword'.