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What armies looked like
CITY, STATE AND WAR
Hoplites – the Greek shock troops
The Greeks were all of the same race, so they all looked alike. So how did the soldiers know who was on their side and who was the enemy? How did they know where their commander was?
The ancient Greek armies did not use flags or uniforms, but put symbols (which they called episema) on their shields (picture 1). They used symbols such as an owl (Athens) or an eagle (Macedonians) or pictures of gods. The Spartans used the Greek letter L ( ) on their shields, which stands for Laconia, the name of the area surrounding Sparta.
 3 Helmet with cheekplates.
The heavily-armoured soldier in any Greek army was known as a Hoplite (picture 4). Hoplites were citizens, and as such were responsible for defending their city. Each hoplite had to pay for his own equipment, so they used nothing fancy or expensive (picture 3). The total cost of the gear was roughly equivalent to a middle-sized car in our time.
F 4 A hoplite had a breastplate, a bronze helmet with cheekplates, and leg armour. He had a bowl-shaped wooden shield called an aspis which was about 1 metre across. He used a 3m or longer spear. Because this could break during
a charge, hoplites also wore a short (60 cm) sword called a xiphos.
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