In this blog we look at the equipment of the Spartan hoplite Eurysthenes 431 BC. He fights in the siege of Athens under his king Archidamus the second. The city is protected by the Long Walls, enormous fortifications built with the wealth that Athens accumulated with its empire over the Aegean Sea. 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, two ancient allies that had become arch-enemies over time.

In ancient Greece, the polis (and its citizenship) was central to society. Male citizens of these poleis had, in addition to economic privileges, also special rights. For example, they were allowed to participate in exclusive religious rituals and to 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 brought 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: thus the Athenian democracy emerged 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 citizen-soldiers who, in their daily lives, were farmers or craftsmen with legal personality, who had to gather their own armor and were called upon during wartime to fight for their polis. This was not always the case: for instance, Spartan hoplites were an exception because even during peacetime they almost exclusively engaged in politics and martial arts. All other work in Spartan society was performed 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 fiercely opposed any form of external domination; they saw this as a form of slavery compared to Greek 'freedom'. This freedom was not afforded to the lower (working) class, who were tied to the land and had no legal personality. 

Poleis like Athens and Sparta had their own form of governance 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', during which cities fought these conflicts. This was done in battles using the shield walls (phalanx) from both sides colliding and pushing against each other 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 combat culture, not only was individual heroism valued by the Greeks, but also a kind of collective heroism for the honor of the city community.

After the Greeks had driven the Persian army of Xerxes out of the Greek peninsula in 480 BC, there was a great interest among the Greeks to form a defensive alliance that could prevent a future invasion. Athens took the initiative by establishing this league 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, it 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, first kept on the island of Delos and later on 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 the original purpose of the alliance 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)-minded 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 established 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. For instance, the Delian League had by far the largest and most developed naval power, while the Peloponnesian League had the strongest land army. 

Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to the main settlement in the valley of the Evrotas River in Laconia, in the southeast of the Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, Sparta grew into the dominant military land power in ancient Greece. 

Sparta distinguished itself from other Greek city-states by its unique social system and constitution, which were said to have been introduced by the semi-mythical lawgiver Lycurgus. His laws transformed Sparta into a militaristic society in which all social institutions of the free class were focused on military training and physical development. The population was divided into Spartiates (full citizens), mothakes (free non-Spartiates of Spartan descent), perioikoi (free non-Spartiates), and helots (enslaved non-Spartan local residents). The helots formed the majority of the population and were strictly oppressed by the Spartiates. 

An essential part of Spartan military education was the Krypteia. This was a secret service aimed at keeping the helots under control and suppressing potential uprisings. The Krypteia was also an extension of the agoge, Sparta's rigorous educational system. After young men completed the agoge at age 21, the best among them were selected to fight as hoplites in the Spartan army. The Krypteia can be seen as a Spartan variant of the Proto-Indo-European warbands, known as the koryos, in which young warriors were trained in guerrilla tactics and clandestine operations.

After this period, younger individuals became full members of the free class, which in this case was synonymous with being a member of the warrior class. The Spartan phalanx was considered one of the best battle formations in antiquity. Free Spartan women enjoyed significantly more rights than elsewhere in the classical world. The Spartans themselves believed that the division of their society was much older. This is partly correct because this division can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European. 

According to their tradition, the helots were descendants of the Achaeans, the original inhabitants of the Peloponnese, who were enslaved by the Dorians, the ancestors of the Spartans, after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. This so-called 'Dorian invasion' was said to have been led by the descendants of Hercules, known as the 'return of the Heraclids'. This narrative played a central role in Spartan identity. Both the Spartans and the helots likely descended from the same Dorian populations and differed little in ethnicity or culture. Their complex relationship may have arisen from a deep-rooted conflict in the past. Because the Spartiates were numerically in the minority and the hostile helots threatened them, they developed a society entirely focused on the warrior class and transformed Sparta into a military state. At the same time, the helots were collectively forced into the unfree 'working class'. Thus, Sparta created a permanent professional army dedicated entirely to warfare.

The war broke out in 431 BC, when the desperate Spartans advanced with a land army through Attica to besiege Athens and its port city Piraeus. The Athenians were protected by the Long Walls, but the following year they were hit 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 over 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. In the meantime, the Spartans also developed their own powerful 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 that he could reconquer 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 pushed 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 Thebes and Corinth advocated for the destruction of the city and the enslavement of the Athenian population, Lysander strongly opposed 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 also happened; although it did not take long before the Athenians would rise up in the name of their democracy.

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

Greek tunics were made of linen, sometimes also of wool. The red tunic that Eurysthenes wears under his hoplite armor is made of wool and has short sleeves, but in the warmer months, Greeks often wore light, warm 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 hoplite Eurytsthenes wore simple military sandals that were less open to better protect the feet, there were constant new fashion trends for sandals in antiquity determined by fashionable Athens. 

In addition to sandals, from the fifth century BC onwards, a type of laced boots (such as endromis and embades) were also worn, and in winter, felt socks (piloi) were used to keep the feet warm. 

To shape the tunic of a hoplite, both simple leather straps 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. However, the cloak worn by Eurysthenes is not only intended to keep him warm but also forms part of his hoplite armor. On the battlefield, he wraps the cloak around his weapon arm to protect it from spears, swords, and arrows.

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

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

The large bronze shield (hoplon / aspis) was the most important part of the hoplite's equipment; the name 'hoplite' is even derived from it. This heavy shield was intended for fighting in a tight 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 the Greek script) as a symbol for Lacedaemonia, the region 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 Eurysthenes is adorned with a gorgoneion, the head of a monstrous gorgon demon that could petrify people with her gaze. 

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 the heavily armed hoplites. Until 500 BC, the Corinthian helmet was completely closed, and thereafter helmets were increasingly made with openings for the ear. Because the helmet completely enclosed the face, it was also pushed back to give the wearer better hearing and vision. Some helmets also had a crest of horse hair, but Eurysthenes wears one without.

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

Eurysthenes wears a bronze cuirass that is anatomically shaped. A so-called musculata was the most expensive form of chest armor for the hoplite.

The musculata of Eurysthenes is decorated with a gorgoneion, just like his shield. This decoration to ward off evil forces is also inspired by the Iliad: namely from the aegis, a mythological armor or shield to which a gorgon head was attached. It could protect the user from all dangers and was worn in myths by the gods Zeus (as a shield) and Athena (as armor). Eurysthenes chooses to depict both versions of the myth with his equipment.

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

The spear wielded by hoplite Eurysthenes was the primary 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 phalanx. 

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. It helped to stick the spear into the ground and allowed hoplites to easily kill wounded enemies while keeping 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 used, besides the doru, 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 broken. The Spartans are known to have preferred a shorter type of xiphos, possibly more in the length of a dagger. This was advantageous to use as a thrusting weapon in tightly closed shield formations. 

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'.

The parazonium was a weapon that fell between a short sword and a long dagger. This was developed from the acinaces, a dagger used among others by the Persians and Scythians. It had a broad, leaf-shaped blade and could also be used as a tool. The weapon was later adopted by the Etruscans and the Romans, who primarily used it as a status symbol for officers. This dagger can be used as an alternative to the Greek xiphos.