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A Hoplite was a Greek armoured foot soldier (hopla= panoply of arms, ie the primary weapon, the spear, sword, shield, sword, cuirass, shield, greaves and helmet). These armaments were expensive, costing probably as much as a small farm, and were either passed from father to son, or acquired from defeated enemy on the battlefield (hence in the epics the struggles for the armour of the fallen). This type of warrior is first depicted on pottery in the late 8th Century BCE. They were drawn from the farming class (mostly poor small-farmers) who formed the city-state militias to defend their land. The Hoplite was displaced in the 4th Century by the Phalangites (soldiers who formed the phalanx and consequently were less heavily armoured as the phalanx itself was an armoured formation). Also, at this stage, professional soldiers progressively supplanted the militias for those cities and kingdoms which could afford them.

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14y ago

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