The Hoplon Shield: The Colon In Ancient Greece

The Greeks, Trojans, and Spartans armies were very strategic and resourceful. They used battle forms, The Gods, their religion, and outside the box thinking to overcome battles and win wars. Tactics were highly impressive in the “Bronze Age” and are shown through the very impressive wars they have won. The Greeks used many tactics that included some strategies that are still used in today's

armor included a small convex square shield, an armband on the right arm, high leggings, an unusual helm which was decorated with the relief of a griffin’s head, and a gladius either curved or straight. He usually fought the hoplomachus or another Thracian. The hoplomchus was similarly armed as the Thracian except his small shield was round, his helmet plain, and his sword always straight. The secutor was armed with a gladius, a long rectangular shield, a metal greave, and a small closed helmet with two small eyeholes. He usually fought the net fighter called a retiarius. Because of his heavy armor, it was in his best interest to move in quickly and kill his opponent because he tended to tire out more quickly. The retiarius is a lightly armed gladiator that fought with a net, trident, and gladius. His left arm was fully armored while his right was completely bare.

Mythology was very huge in Ancient Greece. There are so many different folktales and myths

The Spartans fought in a formation called the Hoplite Phalanx. The Hoplite Phalanx is a highly organized fighting formation where Spartans are lined up side by side with overlapping shields. The goal of the Hoplite Phalanx is to protect the person to your left and right. When one person in the front line of the Phalanx is injured or killed someone behind them takes their place. The Hoplite Phalanx was very effective and it helped Spartans win battles where they were heavily outnumbered. The fighting formation that the Spartans used in the film included a variation of unorganized infantry lines, chaotic hand-to-hand combat, and a technique that they used which consisted of them laying down on the ground to let Persian horses jump over them as they approached. The hand-to-hand combat showed Spartans fighting by themselves with no teamwork from their fellow soldiers to help them battle the Persians. This fighting style would have never happened. The reason that Spartans were so successful in battle was because they fought as a team and kept to the Hoplite Phalanx. In “Herodotus, The Histories” Demaratus says, “so it is with the Spartans; fighting singly, they

Romans fought in a manner very similar to the Greeks. In early times they utilized the phalanx and a cavalry back-up, but around the 1st century BCE they began to form a “checkered board” pattern. This allowed them to cover more ground and allow men room to fight. In the first century they also retired using a cavalry (Cartwright). The form of foot soldiers only with no horseback cavalry was uncommon. In

The Grecian myths from Mythology and You demonstrate that the ancient Greeks valued strategy and guile above brute physical strength. This is especially apparent in the myth of the War Between the Titans and the Gods. The Titans and Gods were equally matched in strength so they were locked in a stalemate until the Gods used clever strategizing to help them achieve victory: “Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades were delighted to help her since they would be helping themselves at the same time. The three gods descended into the kingdom of Tartarus where they killed the guard and released their uncles from their chains.” (Rosenberg and Baker 26). By using guile and strategic planning the Gods were able to gain powerful allies who led them

when the Persia’s fleets of 20,000 soldiers and their top generals sailed across the Aegean Sea to reach the plain of Marathon, north of Athens. As a result, the Athenians sent Philippides, the fastest runner, “who ran approximately 150 miles in two days to request the help of the Spartans.” However, the Spartans insisted on “celebrating the religious festival of Artemis-Carneia” before going into battle. After the Athenians received the dreadful news, the Athenian general named Miltiades and his outnumbered Athenian soldiers marched to the top of the hills of the Marathon. The Athenian soldiers and Miltiades charged down the hills in unison using the hoplite technique as they smashed into the lightly armed Persian’s defense lines and they strengthened their two wings as they pushed the Persian’s soldiers around and back into the sea. Most of the Persian’s soldiers were either killed in battle or drowned in the sea, but some of Persian soldiers escaped back to their ships. The Athenian soldiers who fought heroically to try to climb over the side of the Persian’s ships were praised and honored for their amputated right hand when they returned home to Athens.

The Hoplite orthology says that critical changes happened in the in the Greek Warfare around 700 B.C. that is a major influence in today's society. ¨Prior to that “revolution” in arms, armor, and tactics, the aristocrats dominated in war and took part in military actions. They fought at long range with missiles and in close combat as individual “heroic” champions with swords. The main equipment they used included the short throwing spear, an open-face helmet, a round single-grip

Some classes are the Eques began their matches on horseback, but ended in hand-to-hand combat. They wore tunics, bronze helmets, round shields and a long sword. Another class was the Hoplomachus who fought with a long spear as well as a short sword or dagger; he wore a visored helmet with crest and long greaves over both legs to protect them since he carried only a small shield, usually round. The attacking class was the Provocator was the most heavily armed and the only one who wore a pectoral covering; the extent of the armour hindered the gladiator’s ability to dodge making it slower and agile. However, he was pair with another gladiator to assist him.

Though separated by two hundred and seventy-two years, the battles of Marathon and Cannae have much in common. Firstly, both battles employed the Pincer Maneuver, in which an army attacks both sides of the enemy formation in a movement similar to pinching. Miltiades and Hannibal extemporized brilliant tactics when they forwent the traditional blocked phalanxes to instead surround their opponent’s force, and Hannibal elevated this process with his strategic choreography of a feigned retreat in order to goad the Romans into the center of his attack and consequently, their doom. Both battles were of the ‘David and Goliath’ variety, and the end result of them was the same as the Biblical battle—the much stronger, larger, and in general more

An important contributing factor to an army's success is armor for defense. An army can have skilled soldiers, but cannot be successful without the right armor. Roman and Greek armies wore similar types of armor. The Roman and Greek foot soldiers wore a square breastplate on their torso. While the Romans only wore one greave on their left leg, Greeks wore greaves on both legs. A greave was a sheet of metal worn to protect the legs (Horsepower: Harnessed…). Soldiers wear greaves even in current day. Recently, the greaves have been upgraded to protect the legs from ‘Improvised explosive devices,’ such as those in Iraq (Frost, Quad Guard). Roman soldiers wore a helmet that protected the neck, and came around to protect their face. The Greek’s helmets were more full and protective than the Roman helmets. Greek helmets covered their entire head and only left small

The soldiers would enter the battle in chariots, launching javelins into the enemy formations, then dismount for hand-to-hand combat with more javelin throwing, rock throwing, and hand to hand sword and shield fighting. In the Iliad Homer also mentions the use of the phalanx formation being used by the Greeks. The phalanx is a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, or similar weapons . Scholars suggest that the Greeks would have used this tactic because the alignment of shields minimises the chances of projectiles hitting the men, and the men can move as one, strong unit.

The pre-eminence of the Greek soldier proved decisive in the Battle of Marathon. Although only ‘citizen soldiers’, the Greek hoplites were far more disciplined than their Persian counterparts and also better protected, with their bronze-visored helmets, solid bronze breastplates, shields and javelins. The Persians on the contrary were generally lightly dressed, with wicker shields and bows and arrows and sometimes had body armour of scales sewn to leather vest. Herodotus states that the Persians were “deficient in armour, untrained and greatly inferior in skill”. This crucial element destabilized the Persian assault as they fell at the hands of a much more skillful, better equipped and tactically superior Greek army. With their unprecedented use of battle strategy and intimate knowledge of their surroundings, the Greeks were able to defeat their Persian enemy.

The Persian army waited four days after their arrival on the Greek shore before actually engaging the Spartans in combat. On the fifth day Xerxes launched an assault on Leonidas’ position. To begin the attack the Persians fired a huge barrage of arrows at the Spartans. About 5,000 arrows were launched at the Spartans with no effect. The large bronze shields and helmets used by the Spartans proved to be too much for the Persian arrows. King Xerxes then ordered 10,000 troops forward to take the Spartans prisoners (Robinson). The wave of Persians moved forward and soon found themselves in a full frontal assault with a wall of spears and shields. The Spartan phalanx stretched from each side of the pass. The phalanx formation put each man shoulder to shoulder with their large shields forming a wall of bronze. Each man was armed with a spear that would protrude from the wall making it almost impossible for the Persian soldiers, with much smaller and weaker swards and shields, to penetrate their defense. The Spartan phalanx was positioned right behind the stone wall they had constructed as well.

A hoplite was a spearman with other armor included, that fought as a group not as an individual (Goldsworthy 2000) p. 34., thus this adaptation could very well of been what assisted the Roman army in there many successful conquests later on in the republic timeframe.