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Athenian Hoplite – Soldier Profile
Nov 10, 2010 - http://www.military-history.org/articles/athenian-hoplite-profile.htm
Athenian Hoplite of the Persian Wars
In pitched battle, the army formed a single phalanx of 10,000 men, a kilometer wide, eight ranks deep, protected by a wall of
overlapping shields with a hedge of spear-blades projecting above.
At a Glance
Appearance

Shield design: either individually chosen or representing clan,
neighborhood, or tribe
Clothing and Jewelry

Linen corselet: layers of linen glued together to a thickness of about 5mm to
form a series of strips and plates held together with straps and ties
Weaponry

Long thrusting-spear: between 2 and 3m in length, with leaf-shaped iron
blade and pointed iron butt

Sword: about 60cm in length, double-edged and leaf-shaped
Armor

Helmet: of ‘Korinthian’ type (i.e. with face enclosed by cheek-pieces and nose-guard, with dyed horse-hair crest, and head protection
from leather lining or woolen cap.

Greaves (optional): muscled lower-leg guards of bronze, flexible enough to clip on and off

Shield: between 80cm and 1m in diameter, and formed of bronze facing, wooden core, and leather lining, plus armband, handgrip, and
other internal fittings
Overview
The Athenian Army was a city-state militia in which every able-bodied, adult, male citizen was obliged to serve. Men were
ranked by wealth, and their service obligation reflected their resources. Roughly a third, mainly formed of prosperous
peasant-farmers, were deemed rich enough to equip themselves to fight as hoplites – heavy infantry – in the phalanx.
The panoply – the full set of arms and armor – was expensive. Items of equipment were almost certainly passed down the
family line and replaced only when necessary. There was therefore no official uniform or standardized equipment, and the
appearance of a hoplite phalanx would have varied from man to man. Each, though, would have had the basics of helmet,
shield, spear, and sword. Most would have had some form of body-armor, and some may have had greaves on the lower
legs, and perhaps a guard for the right arm and hand.
Hoplite helmets were made of bronze in a variety of designs. The most popular was the Corinthian helmet, which covered
the whole of the head, leaving only the eyes, nose, and mouth clear. The helmet was surmounted by a crest of dyed
horse-hair. Body-armor was of bronze for those who could afford it, typically in the form of a muscled cuirass, but most
men seem to have made do with the linen cuirass, a stiff shirt, and shoulder plates, all formed of many layers of linen
glued together. Leg, arm, and sometimes hand and foot guards were very much the exception.
The round hoplite shield, which had a convex shape and could be up to a meter across, comprised a core formed of
wooden strips covered by an outer plate of bronze. Weighing perhaps 7 kilos, the shield was held using an arm-band
combined with a hand-grip.
The hoplite’s principal armament was a thrusting-spear between 2 and 3m in length, with a long, leaf-shaped iron blade at
the top, and a spiked iron butt at the bottom. His secondary armament was a double-sided, leaf-shaped slashing sword of
about 60 cm length.
Trireme
Definition
by Mark Cartwright
published on 31 May 2012
http://www.ancient.eu.com/trireme/
Fast, maneuverable, and with a bronze-sheathed ram on the prow, the trireme (Greek triērēs) was the devastating
warship which permitted Athens to build her maritime empire and dominate the Aegean in the 5th century BCE.
Most scholars credit the Phoenicians with first inventing the trireme which was itself an adaptation of the earlier
bireme. According to Thucydides it was the Corinthians who first adopted triremes on the Greek mainland c. 700
BCE. However, it was the Athenians, with their newly found wealth from local silver mines, who constructed a fleet of
triremes large enough to hold sway over the Aegean.
Rowing Arrangement
The trireme was so-called because of the arrangement of rowers in three lines down the length of each side of the
ship. Concrete archaeological evidence is lacking and scholars debate the exact arrangement; however, from
depictions on ancient carvings and pottery and references from classical authors such as Homer, Thucydides, and
Apollonius of Rhodes, a wide consensus has been reached. As many as thirty oars, each with a single oarsman, ran
the length of the ship in three tiers. Consequently, the total number of rowers could have been between 170 and 180,
allowing a speed of as high as nine or ten knots in short bursts. Each oarsman had a fixed seat (and leather or wool
cushion) and the rowers were arranged with 31 on the top row (thranoi), 27 in the middle (zygoi) and 27 on the
lowest level (thalamoi). Their 4 m long oars were attached to a tholepin (fixed vertical peg) with a leather oar-loop.
Archaeological remains of boat houses, most notably at Piraeus, indicate that the maximum length of the ship would
have been around 37 m with a beam of 6 m. They measured about 4 m from deck to keel and may have weighed as
much as 50 tons. However, this was light enough so that crews could carry the vessel if necessary and easily beach it
overnight.
Materials
The ships were built using softwoods such as pine, fir, and cypress for interiors and oak only for the outer hulls. Oars
were made from a single young fir tree and measured some 4.5 meters in length. As a consequence of using lighter
woods, the ship was highly maneuverable. The full-size reconstruction, Olympias, built in the 1980's CE has
demonstrated that a trireme could turn 360 degrees in less than two ship's lengths and turn 90 degrees in a matter of
seconds in only a ship's length. The vessel also displayed impressive acceleration and deceleration rates.
The disadvantage of softwoods is their high absorption of water, and therefore the ships were usually pulled out of the
water at night using slipways and then housed in protective huts. The technique used in construction was to lay down
longitudinal beams joined by dowel pin-joints along an oak keel. These were then covered with the outer hull, a
sheath of closely fitting (but not overlapping) planks sealed with pitch and resin. The hull was made smoother by
adding wax to the pitch which added to the speed potential of the vessel. Ribs (zyga) and arrangements of tightened
ropes (hypozomata) were then fixed inside to add strength to the overall structure. Finally, a simple flat deck (without
rails) was added with a central space running down the length of the ship, giving access to the interior.
In addition to oarsmen, the ship was equipped with two sails of papyrus or flax, used when cruising and taken down
and stored on land when in battle conditions. Steering was achieved through two steering oars at each side of the
stern and controlled by a single helmsman (kybernetes). Next to the helmsman stood the ship's commander
(trierarchos), and both were protected by the upward curving structure at the stern known as the aphlaston. Other
crew members were the rowing master (keleustes) who shouted instructions, the 'bow officer' (prorates) who relayed
those instructions further down the ship, a piper (auletes) who kept time for the rowers playing an aulos, a carpenter
(naupegos), and deck crews to man the sails.
Prows were often decorated to resemble animal heads, and a common feature was the attachment of large, painted
marble eyes. The hull itself was painted with water-proofing pitch, giving the distinctive black appearance so often
referred to by Homer. Ships were regarded as females and also given names, for example, Artemis, Equality, Sea
Horse, and Good Repute.
Military Use
The principal weapon of the trireme was the bronze-sheathed battering ram affixed to the prow. These often took the
form of animals, for example, the head of a goat. However, ramming would have rarely sunk an enemy vessel and an
important secondary strategy was boarding the enemy ship. For this reason, the typical Athenian crew included a
compliment of ten hoplites and four archers.
In terms of operation, the lack of storage space on board the ship - for water and food - and the need for relatively
calm seas meant that battles were most often fought close to land. In addition, shipwrecked crews could then also be
more easily rescued.
The most celebrated military use of triremes, and perhaps the greatest naval battle in ancient history, was fought in
480 BCE at Salamis between the fleet of the Hellenic League (principally represented by Athens and Corinth) and the
invading armada of the Persian king Xerxes. The Greek victory not only ensured Greek autonomy but allowed Athens
to then take centre stage in the Aegean.
Themistocles,
(born c. 524 BC—died c. 460), Athenian politician and naval strategist who was the creator
of Athenian sea power and the chief savior of Greece from subjection to the Persian Empire at the Battle of
Salamis in 480 BC.
Early life
Themistocles’ father, Neocles, came of the aristocratic Lycomid family and was not poor, but his mother was a
concubine, non-Athenian, possibly non-Greek. He thus owed his citizenship to the legislation of Cleisthenes, which,
in 508, had made citizens of all free men of Athens. This no doubt contributed to his democratic sympathies. In 493
he was elected archon, the chief judicial and civilian executive officer in Athens; this is the first recorded event of his
life. As archon, he sponsored the first public works destined to make the defensible rocky bays of Piraeus, five miles
from Athens, into harbors, replacing the nearer but unprotected beaches of Phaleron. He must also have been
concerned in the trial of Miltiades, the great colonial Athenian prince, who arrived in flight from the Chersonese
(Gallipoli) and was prosecuted by aristocratic rivals for having ruled there as a monarch. Themistocles himself took
a cool view of Miltiades’ autocratic character, but his judgment was not at fault if he helped to save the strategist and
tactician who, in 490, beat off the first Persian attack on Athens at Marathon.
Advocacy of a large navy
After Marathon, most Athenians thought that the danger was past, but not Themistocles. He also saw that
Marathon—a victory for Athens’ spearmen, middle-class men who could afford the costly bronze panoply—could not
be repeated if the enemy, strong in archers and cavalry, came again in much greater force. The only hope was to
exploit the invader’s supply difficulties, which would be great if Persia’s naval allies, including the formidable
Phoenicians, could be beaten at sea. To carry out this strategy, however, Greece needed far more warships—the
newly developed, specialized triremes—than it then had. Themistocles urged that the Athenian fleet, then 70 strong,
be doubled or trebled, but he was opposed. The opposition was not without political overtones. Building a strong
navy would require the wealthy to pay higher taxes to purchase new ships while giving political weight to the men
who rowed the galleys, the poorer voters. Maintaining a land-oriented defense, by comparison, would cost less and
would increase the status of the infantry, whose ranks were drawn primarily from the middle class.
The 480s were a period of intense political struggle. Miltiades died in disgrace (489), and from 487 to 483 other
leaders were successively ostracized. Though never himself defeated, Themistocles must have been attacked
repeatedly; he was the man accused by his enemies of being a danger to the established order. Nonetheless, in 483
he won his greatest triumph. The state-owned silver mines near Sunium were the site of a rich strike, and he
persuaded the assembly, instead of “declaring a dividend,” to devote the whole surplus to increasing the navy. Thus
when Xerxes I, the Persian king, marched in 480, Athens had 200 triremes, though many of the rowers were still
untrained.
Themistocles further succeeded in selling his naval strategy to the Peloponnesians, headed by Sparta, who could
raise another 150 triremes. The combined fleet was to fight not on their own doorstep, as Greeks preferred to do,
but as far forward as possible, exploiting the geographical situation. Serving under a Spartan admiral (since Corinth
and Aegina would not serve under an Athenian), Themistocles conducted the main fleet to the straits north of
Euboea. Here their presence forced the enemy to approach en masse down a coast with few beaches, and a typical
north Aegean storm there inflicted losses that probably, in the end, proved decisive. The Greeks were still
outnumbered, however. In the Battle of Artemisium, fighting in a defensive half-moon formation, they suffered as
well as inflicted heavy losses, and they knew that they must retire even before they heard that their small holding
force on land had been destroyed at Thermopylae.
Battle of Salamis
One hope remained. Themistocles had persuaded the Athenians to evacuate women and children to
the Peloponnese and, in the last resort, to retire to Salamis. If the Persians attacked that island citadel, a battle in
the narrow sound might yet give a chance to the Greeks, with their armored marines and heavier ships, against the
better sailing ships commanded by the Persians. Persuading the Peloponnesians to join the Athenian fleet,
Themistocles then lured Xerxes by a false message, suggesting that he himself was ready to change sides, into
ordering an all-out attack. The Greeks enveloped the head of the Phoenician column as it emerged from the
narrowest part of the strait and destroyed it; and though most of the other Asian contingents in the rear escaped,
Xerxes had lost for good the command of the sea.
Sparta honored Themistocles with a great ovation; but Athens, led during the crisis by the Areopagus, or council of
nobles, gave the chief commands in 479 to the recalled exiles, Aristides and Xanthippus, and Themistocles’ postwar
history was a sad one. He outwitted the Spartans when they attempted to prevent Athens from rebuilding its
defensive walls, but he failed to induce the people either to transfer their capital to Piraeus or, at that time, to reduce
the powers of the Areopagus. The people, after their tremendous war effort, were in a mood of reaction. Though
praised (not by name) in Aeschylus’ Persians (472), Themistocles was at last ostracized. He lived at Argos for some
years, during which democracy made headway in some parts of the Peloponnese. Sparta then accused him of
complicity in alleged intrigues with Persia. He escaped, and, until his death in about 460, served as governor of
some Asian Greek cities still subject to the son of Xerxes.
Ancient Athenian Education
back to Greece
1. Purpose:
The Athenians wanted their sons to have a "rounded" education so that they would know something about a
wide
range of subjects and be able to "appreciate" many things.
Note: They were not concerned with specialization or preparation for any specific job.
2. Schools:
- most boys went to school roughly from age 7 to age 14 (girls stayed at home and learned the skills of
housekeeping and motherhood, but some families hired private tutors to educate their daughters - there
were some very well educated Athenian women)
- all schools were private schools - parents had to pay to send their children to school but the fees were so
low that even poor citizens could usually afford to have their sons educated and most did so because they
valued education
- schools were mostly only one room areas - often open to the streets on one side (perhaps with a drawcurtain to keep down distraction)
- equipment was minimal: students sat on benches and held their work in their laps - there were no
chalkboards or other teacher aids - the teacher might have some books, but students mostly did not
- the academic part of the school day began at dawn and lasted until about noon
- teachers were often retired military men - discipline was strict, beatings were given not only for
misbehaviour but also for careless mistakes
- boys were mostly accompanied to and from school by an educated and trusted slave called
a PEDAGOGUE,
whose job it was to protect the young man from undesirables, help him to choose good friends and oversee
his behavior and his progress in class (the slaves sat at the back of the class and observed)
3. What they studied:
The three main subjects that they studied were: Grammar, music and Gymnastics .
a. Grammar:
- purpose was to produce "literate" citizens
- content of this course was not just a study of the rules of correct expression in a language as we understand
the word today. It included most of the "basics" of elementary education in our society - the three R's,
reading, writing and arithmetic
- boys learned to write and calculate by scratching their letters with a sharp stylus onto the surface of a
board with wax. When they finished with a tablet they took it for grading and then dipped it into a tub of hot
wax so that it was ready for new work.
- in the higher levels they studied "good" literature so that they might improve their writing styles and
appreciate fine literature
- much memorization was done - some boys could recite by heart all of the Iliad or the Odyssey
- the teacher would add to his course whatever else he might happen to know such as some science
Most Athenian youths were finished school by about age 14.
b. Music: (two purposes & two parts to the program)
- boys were taught to sing, if possible, and accompany themselves on an instrument (the seven-stringed lyre)
- this was meant to help the boys so that they would be able to entertain friends at social gatherings
- boys were exposed to concerts of "good" music both to gain an appreciation for it and because the Greeks
believed that fine music had a purifying effect on their souls and might help them to grow up to be fine men.
c. Gymnastics:
- the Greek word for "gymnastics" meant "exercise done naked" (thus it was any form of exercise)
- in the afternoons, Athenian boys went to the PALESTRA, a large recreational complex on the outskirts of
the
city. It included changing and cleaning areas, playing fields, a swimming area, special exercise buildings, etc.
- when the boys arrived they removed their clothes and rubbed their bodies with olive oil, and under the
guidance of trained specialists, participated in many games and exercises
- they ran, learned to swim, threw javelin and discus, wrestled, played team games like early forms of field
hockey and football
- the aim here was not to produce professional athlete but to turn out young men who were fit, graceful,
attractive, with developed strength and coordination. It also gave the young men the habits of fitness which
they hoped would carry through their lives
- from Athens we get the well known motto: "A sound mind in a sound body"
After the young man finished his basic education, he might go for higher education to one of the schools of
philosophers or the sophists.
From age 18 to 20, all able-bodied Athenian youths were to take military training for the army or
navy. Athens was justifiably known as the
"School of Hellas" (Greece) because of their high standard of knowledge and respect for education.