Other cities chose symbols rather than letters, like the Theban club or the bee for Ephesos.Īdded to the front of the shield was sometimes a cloth that served as a protection from projectiles and was left hanging from the bottom of the shield like a curtain. Men from Mantineia were carrying the trident, Messenians carried an M, Syconians carried an E, and troops from Tega a T. During the Classical era, some cities or family clans started using uniform shield symbols, such as the famous L (Lambda) for the Spartans. The front of the shield was often painted, originally with individual motives. This was neccessary, because the minimum 10kg weight of the Aspis would make parrying and keeping the balance impossible otherwise. The Aspis was shaped like a bowl with a perpendicular rim, so that the Hoplite could rest the weight of the shield on his shoulder. Also on the inside was a rope that could be used to carry the shield on the back during marches, and to get a better grip of it in combat. The left arm of the Hoplite was placed in a grip called Porpax on the inside of the shield. It measured about one meter in diameter and was constructed from wooden planks covered by a layer of bronze metal. The shield - called Aspis - formed the core of their equipment granting protection for the whole torso. This fact is greatly reflected in their equipment. As such, they had to be right in the heat of the battle. The Hoplite was the backbone of the infantry, and the backbone of the Classical Greek military in general.
The correct term for the shield is Aspis. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't mean shield, but armament in general.
The combination of all these elements together was an original Greek notion as was their later association with a novel form of massed infantry tactics, the phalanx.The name Hoplite (greek Oplites) comes from the name of the armament of this heavy infantry, the Hoplon (greek Oplon). Other items again, the closed helmet of the type that the Greeks called Corinthian, and the large round shield with arm-band and hand-grip, were Greek variants devised as an improvement on foreign models, principally the metal open-faced helmets and round single-grip shields used by the Assyrians, Urartians and other Eastern peoples. Rather, they were revived or readopted: the corslet apparently under the influence of the metal-working cultures of Central Europe and Italy, the greave and ankle-guard spontaneously, although the Epic tradition had never forgotten their earlier use. I cannot believe, with some scholars, that such advanced and costly products of the bronze-smith had been produced continuously throughout the Dark Age that followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation and indeed for at least 400 years there is no evidence of any kind that they were. Other items resemble those used by Mycenaean warriors some five centuries earlier: these include the bronze plate-corslet, the greave and (an optional accessory) the ankle-guard. Certain of its components-the long iron sword and spear-were part of the equipment of most warriors of the era, and of many periods before and since. The equipment of arms and armour, which modern writers tend to group together as the ‘hoplite panoply’, was originally a motley assemblage. But there are historical implications which should be faced and also, I think, some further historical support for the conclusions there reached. There, I was of necessity concerned with the monumental evidence, and did not look far beyond it. I have tried to analyse elsewhere the archaeological evidence for Greek armour and weapons, and their possible effects on tactics, in the critical period of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
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