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Depends on whether you mean historically accurate uniforms or glammed up costumes for films like "300"?

In reality the Spartans were renowned for their heavy infantry and uniform would be similar to the Roman legions (i.e. armour over cloth) - however whereas the Roman legions wore almost exclusively mass produced banded mail (except for the officer corp who could afford either by position/standing or wealth a solid breast plate).

The Spartans appear to have had a much higher ratio of solid breast plate. Although the idea that they all were armoured in a uniform fashion is unlikely to be true; Armour was expensive to make and would, along with weapons, be handed down from generation to generation so, just as today, different patterns and styles would be evident in any large force.

Also worn would be a cloth or leather tunic; grieves to protect the lower leg and a skirt/kilt probably made of toughened leather. not enough to stop a determined and well aimed thrust but good enough to deflect a glancing blow from both melee and projectile weapons (think of how tough boot leather is and you wont go to far wrong). this gave the spartan some protection of the upper leg whilst still enabling a large amount of freedom and manoeuvrability

The styling of the helm and shield appears to be two of the few things that the film "300" were relatively accurate about, oh and the red cloak. The Greeks believed Red to be a lucky colour (something that the Romans later picked up too).

For a depiction of the Spartan uniform taken from art on pottery of the period and also more historically accurate artwork from a later period check these images out:

http://cd7.e2bn.net/e2bn/leas/c99/schools/cd7/website/images/greek-spartan-warriors-1.jpg

and

http://bfcz.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/spartan-warriors.jpg

hope this helps

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15y ago

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