Tag Archives: Archaic Greek

The Myth of the Heavily Burdened Hoplite

15 Saturday Jun 2019

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How much weight did these warriors carry? Archaeological finds let us give a pretty good estimate. A Corinthian aryballos (oil flask)in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 41.162.157

Today, people with detailed direct knowledge of Iron Age arms and armour in the Aegean describe them as for athletes, as lightweight as the smiths could make them. Most hoplites had just one or two spears, a round shield, some kind of headpiece and some kind of sword, dagger, or cleaver. A hoplite was heavily burdened in comparison to man with a club and a selection of rocks in a fold of his tunic, not in comparison with modern ‘light’ (not motor-borne) infantry who often carry their own body weight in equipment. So where does the idea that hoplites wore 30 kilos of equipment come from? Back in 2010, Peter Krentz laid out the sad story.

Most scholars writing in English today estimate the weight of a hoplite’s equipment as 70 pounds (33 kilograms) or more, a figure that goes back to Delbrück, who took the figure 72 pounds from W. Rüstow and H. Köchly’s Geschichte des griechischen Kriegswesens von der ältesten Zeit bis auf Pyrrhos (1852). These are German pounds, each equal to 500 grams or 0.5 kilograms, as is clear from places where Rüstow and Köchly give weights in both pounds and kilograms. Their original estimate, therefore, was actually about 36 kilograms (79 avoirdupois pounds). Even this lofty figure has been exaggerated— in 1994 Richard A. Gabriel and Donald W. Boose gave the weight of a panoply (a full set of hoplite equipment) as 85–90 pounds (39–41 kilograms). But, as I say, most scholars writing in English today favor 70 avoirdupois pounds, which Victor Davis Hanson describes as “an incredible burden to endure for the ancient infantryman, who himself probably weighed no more than some 150 pounds.” Rüstow and Köchly’s figures do not deserve this veneration. They did not weigh museum pieces or attempt to reconstruct the equipment. As a result, a reviewer, Theodor Bergk, dismissed their figures as “purely hypothetical attempts,” while Hans Droysen justified his decision to ignore them by calling them “arbitrary estimates.” After all the archaeological discoveries of the past century and a half, especially in the German excavations at Olympia, we can do better today.

– Peter Krentz, “A Cup by Douris and the Battle of Marathon,” in Garrett G. Fagan and Matthew Trundle (eds.), New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare (Brill: Leiden, 2010) pp. 188-190

In short, this number persisted because it was the first one on the table, and because archaeologists refused to systematically measure and weigh finds until the 1990s (and when they did, they mostly did so in Greek and German, while the people becoming interested in hoplites only read English). Krentz estimates the weight of hoplite equipment as follows:

  • Helmet 1.2 kg {Extant Late Corinthian helmets}
  • Body Armour 3.6–6.8 kg {Extant bronze cuirasses and modern linen and leather armour}
  • Greaves (pair) 1.3 kg {Extant bronze greaves}
  • Shield 3.2–6.8 kg {Reconstructions based on two extant shields from Italy; for example, the poplar wood shield covered in 0.5 mm bronze sheet in the Museuo Gregoriano would have weighed 6.2 kg/13.5 lbs new}
  • Spear 1.5 kg {Reconstructions based on extant spearheads and buttspikes}
  • Sword, Scabbard, and Baldric 1-2 kg {Parallels with Roman gladii, weight of one damaged original}
  • Clothing 1 kg {Reconstructions}
  • Total (rounded) 13–21 kg

All of his figures are consistent with the weight of kit from other cultures. While modern infantry have to carry more than their body weight over the mountains of Afghanistan or the steppes of upper Mesopotamia, a Greek hoplite carried about as much weight into combat as I hauled to and from school five days a week.

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Edit 2019-08-03: Corrected the names of the editors of the collection with Krentz’ article

An grave stele from near Athens c. 390 BCE in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, accession number 40.11.23

Cross-Post: Hixenbaugh on Ancient Greek Helmets

21 Thursday Mar 2019

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A closeup photo of a Corinthian helmet with a rough blue-green patina

Randall Hixenbaugh, illustrated by Alexander Valdman, Ancient Greek Helmets: A Complete Guide and Catalog (Hixenbaugh Ancient Art Ltd: New York, NY, 2019) 738 pages (275 color pages), 8 1/2 x 11 in, ISBN 978-0-578-42371-5, USD 450 (hardcover)

From Jeffrey Hildebrandt, for the deep of pockets:

The most comprehensive study ever produced on the subject of ancient Greek armor, tracing the development of the ancient Greek helmet from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic Period, cataloguing over 2100 ancient Greek helmets and both public and private collections, examining every aspect of the design, manufacture, use, and cultural relevance of the military helmet in ancient Greek culture. Over 700 helmets are depicted in large full color illustrations.

Ancient Greek helmets are emblematic of the culture that created them at a time when entire nations were often obliterated by more powerful adversaries. This armor was the product of a culture that believed in free thought, free trade, and scientific inquiry unhindered by religious dogma. In their elegant and effective designs, we see the accumulation of these unique factors: individuality, industry, pursuit of excellence, and the desire to protect the lives and property of men that cherished these values.

The author “holds a Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology and has participated in a number of archaeological excavations of Roman and Punic sites in Tunisia.” I can’t afford $450 books, and I can’t endorse the second paragraph of the description at all (it tells us how 19th century freethinkers, Edwardian colonial officials, and Cold War propagandists wanted to be, not about how ancient cultures actually lived; it picks one culture to represent whatever virtues the speaker admires, then uses other cultures to represent the corresponding vices), but if this book piques your interest, you can learn more at Hixenbaugh’s website. Jeffrey Hildebrandt is very impressed with the author’s earlier work.

Some Thoughts on “Hoplites at War”

25 Saturday Feb 2017

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The cover of "Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE" ISBN-13 978-1-4766-6602-0

Paul M. Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray, Jr., Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE. McFarland and Company: Jefferson, NC, 2016. ISBN 978-1-4766-6602-0 (paperback) 978-1-4766-2636-9 (ebook). 233 pages.

In 1989 Victor Davis Hanson threw a match into some scholarly tinder by publishing a book which was both very readable and obviously flawed. Since no two scholars could agree about which parts of his book were incorrect, this has lead to thirty years of argument about just what happened on Greek battlefields. Unlike most scholarly debates, this one has fascinated people outside the university who follow the debates and try to push forward their own theories. Some of them have gone on to graduate school, others organize re-enactments and backyard tests, and a few write books. One of these amateur contributions is Hoplites at War: A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750-100 BCE by Paul Bardunias and Fred Eugene Ray. That is an ambitious title for a book of 233 pages, and the preface is bold too:

In this book, we make use of traditional sources, but combine those with cutting-edge (apt for a book on warfare!) science … We hope the result provides a comprehensive source on hoplite warfare that will advance key debates for modern scholars, while entertaining the general reader. … [what we present here] is an assessment of what we firmly believe to be most probable based on all evidence at hand.

While this book’s reach exceeds its grasp, I think it contains some important ideas.

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The Great Hall is Ablaze with Bronze

30 Saturday Apr 2016

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A corroded bronze helmet with cheek flaps and a narrow nasal

A “Chalcidian” helmet in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. From Nymphaion necropolis, tomb 16, acquired by the Hermitage in 1876. Attributed to the early fifth century BCE.


When we look at ancient bronze in museums, we usually see dark, corroded surfaces. Modern sculptors and costumers often deliberately imitate this look, leaving surfaces rough or coating the metal in green or brown coatings. Early Greek poets are explicit about how they preferred bronze to look:

The great hall is ablaze
with bronze; ranks of bright helmets
cover the ceiling and spill
white horsehair crests, ornamentation
for masculine heads. Glistening
metal greaves, legs’ ramparts
against the arrow’s force,
hang on the wall on unseen pegs.
Fresh linen corslets
and hollow shields clutter the floor;
here are blades from Chalcis;
here, belts in abundance and tunics.
From the moment we took on this job,
these are things we could not forget

Alcaeus of Mytilene, fragment 140 Voigt, as quoted in book 14 of the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. Most scholars estimate that Alcaeus lived somewhere within 50 years on either side of 600 BCE; Athenaeus lived 800 years later.

Translation by David Mulroy, Early Greek Lyric Poetry (Ann Arbour, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1992). I quote his translation because he lets his readers see how each of the broken fragments of Alcaeus’ work was preserved. A verse quoted to ornament a work on a different topic is different from a paraphrase is different from a scrap of papyrus pulled from a dump. In this case, Athenaeus thought that the poem showed that Alcaeus was more proud of manliness than poetry, and used his poems to urge men to be brave.

M.L. West has another prose translation in Greek Lyric Poetry (Oxford World’s Classics); if readers know of any good translations into verse, please suggest them in the comments!

Assorted bronze fragments in the Archaeologisches Museum, Schloss Eggenburg, Graz. Photo by author, September 2015.

Assorted bronze fragments in the Archaeologisches Museum, Schloss Eggenburg, Graz. Photo by author, September 2015.

The Armour of Patroklos

17 Sunday Jan 2016

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A painting of a circle withing which a man in Greek armour is crouching and bandaging the arm of a second who is sitting on his round shield

A Red Figure Vase of Achilles and Patroclus, painted around 500 BCE. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Akhilleus_Patroklos_Antikensammlung_Berlin_F2278.jpg

I am sick again this week and have not been able to finish a craft project which I wanted to talk about, so I thought I would post half a thought about armour instead. The vase painting above is one of the most famous. Pottery geeks try to assign it to a group of paintings from the same workshop, students of mythology appreciate that Akhilles and Patroklos are labeled, and students of material culture enjoy the details of military equipment. The view of the shoulder-piece springing upwards as soon as it is untied, and of the skirt of ‘feathers’ stopping above the genitals, have shaped many modern ideas about Greek armour. Long ago Peter Connolly repainted it for his Greek Armies.
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