Talk:Hoplite

message: "Greek hoplites wore sandals, except Spartans who were barefoot."
Deleted this section because it has no reference. Also, it is more than likely this was an isolated event, if true at all. 
It is highly unlikely ANY military force would fight barefoot - especially considering the Greek landscape was often rocky.
Intranetusa 03:43, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Deleted sections

message: The article implies that cavalry were used sparingly, if at all. Whilst this is certainly true of earlier Hellenic warfare, I was  somewhat under the impression that Alexander the Great used his cavalry to great effect in flanking manouevers, and only used his phalanxes to pin the enemy infantry whilst the cavalry manoevered. Is this true?--Xiphon 17:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Evidently no-one reads this page (sigh)--Xiphon 17:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You are absolutely correct about Alexander the Great, but his phalanxes were not composed of hoplites. siafu 17:26, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Oh, the dreaded "calvary". Peltasts, by the way, were certainly not cavalry, they were infantry skirmishers, meant to throw javelins at the heavy infantry (such as the hoplites) and quickly retreat away from danger. The common Greek cavalry was called Hippeis. Apart from the Thessalian Hippeis Thessalikoi, most Greek cavalry was mediocre. Macedonia used Hippeis Thessalikoi, scouting cavalry called Prodromoi and their elite heavy cavalry called Hetairoi. Sakkura 18:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Look, Sparta wasn't the only state to use the hoplite. Their system was unusual in Greece, and should not dominate this article. Hippeis was normally cavalry. The Spartan king would be fighting in the infantry along with his bodyguard "hippeis", like Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae. It's true that the Greeks didn't use cavalry much; the exceptions being Thessaly and Macedon. Cavalry was extremely effective against hoplites, but usually only when the hoplites were already engaged. The typical Macedonian system of warfare was to pin the enemy with the phalanx, then hit their flank or rear with the cavalry with devastating effect. By the way, the Persian Immortals were infantry rather than cavalry, so their performance at Thermopylae doesn't say much about the effect of cavalry on hoplite phalanxes. Sakkura 13:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Importance of cavalry?

message: Does the Spartan hoplite have horsehair cresent inverted sideways? Or is that for high ranked and elite hoplites of Greece.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.185.44.36 (talk) 12:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The typical Spartan hoplite would be wearing a conical bronze helmet (of pilos design) without any horsehair on it. Sakkura 13:42, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hoplites cresent 

message: Judging from its Galleic influenced helmet (similar to that of Romans, etc), the hoplite is a late version that appeared in the 4th-3rd century BCE, and not the ancient Corinthian helmets of the 5th century BCE.
Intranetusa 02:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then again, a linothorax would be more usual for a 3rd century hoplite than the bronze breastplate portrayed. Sakkura 04:31, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture of the hoplite

message: This article is very hard to follow at times, and the wording is just bizarre with no really transitions. If the writers really want to convey the differences between Spartans and non-spartan hoplites, then a new sections could be made.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.206.199 (talk) 05:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rambling

message: Removed the info about the movie Alexander, since that depicts sarrissa phalanx fighting, and not classical hoplite warfare. As for the Spartans "never running from battle" - that's false. There are numerous occasions when Spartan hoplites were routed and ran for their lives - ie. their defeat to a numerically inferior Theban army.
Intranetusa (talk) 17:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That must have been the exception that proved the rule I guess. Dr.K. (talk) 19:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Edits

message: I think this article needs some work - as other users have said, it doesn't read well, and needs tidying up. I have been editing the Phalanx formation article, which was also a bit of a mess, for style, grammar, logical progression and consistency. I propose to do the same for this article. I aim to link the two articles together better, and reduce overlap between the two. There are a couple of sections in the phalanx article which I think will be more appropriate in this article, and I will move these across. I don't intend to remove any information, except where it is obviously off topic.
I will work on this on my user page (see [], then upload the completed version to the article. In the mean-time, if anyone disagrees, or has any suggestions, please contact me! MinisterForBadTimes (talk) 08:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Renovation

message: Your the biggest idiot, linothorax armor was same a though linen corselet. We know how it was made and what it was. Normal classed citizens could only afford little armor and weapons. Higher class could afford more, and comsulsary units can become peltasts if too poor. You think your smart? You're not u made a fool of urself.
As opposed to the person who responded to a thought phrased in comprehensible english with a barrage of 'oh you're so wrong you retard' insults and the spelling of a fourteen year old with dyslexia. If you want to disprove him you need references, and you cited none. Good grief.
Anyway.
The references in this article are appalling; entire passages are given at length that are quite obviously the opinion of some historian without a single reference being made. For example, the section arguing whether or not hoplites used their spears underarm and overarm has no references whatsoever, for that section to be at all relevant we need to know who proposed these ideas and where they came from. As it is, no evidence is provided for any of these claims. I'd like to see the Bibliography section get smaller and the References section get larger, especially since the former should never be larger than the latter.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.151.60 (talk) 10:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: Book does not specfiy weater or not it is a sparten so thus should not be listed as such here is a link to a copy of that page http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=268753&imageID=438609&total=30&num=0&parent_id=268532&word=&s=¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&lword=&lfield=&imgs=20&pos=18&snum=&e=w 
-Sic dicit Defectu tui omnis iam = So Says your failure is always present 15:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image Text Edit 

message: "A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states." 
Like the article, this introductory statement does not fly. As goes the foundation, so goes the house. For as long as I can remember, "hoplite" means "heavy-armed infantry" as opposed to "peltast" meaning "light-armed infantry." The difference is mobility. What, were the peltasts, the hippeis, the archers and the sailors not citizen-soldiers? Some states traditionally supplied peltasts, such as the slingers. They would run up, do their thing and run out again. But if you wanted to sweep a larger area more certainly with a killing zone you used the hoplites. The function of these troops was to kill, kill, kill! Argh! Die, die, die! Let us not lose sight of the main goal of these troops, which was to MURDER the enemy! The pictures are pretty and the terminology is very cute but nobody was there to be cute and have historic arguments, they were there to kill, murder, slaughter, massacre - what have you. Hence the heavy-armed troops. They did the work. "Hear a warrior's chorus, sweep that line before us ...." That sounds great as a football song. What that meant on the ancient battlefield is that you walked a line of shields forward and with your spears sticking out in front of it killed everything in front of it for a distance of a couple of feet. If you walk 100 yards you kill, murder, slaughter, assassinate every living thing in 100 yards of field. The enemy tried to stop you but your shield wall and armor protected you. They were heavy so you moved very slowly. The Romans had hob-nailed boots to keep their footing in the mud and the blood. These events had nothing whatever to do with free or non-free citizenry, who was running for president, who owned what land, where the troops came from, whether you could vote in the next election, whether you owned your own gear, how much money you had or did not have or what your sexual preferences might have been. Those were totally irrelevant to being a hoplite. They had nothing to do with you at all. As a hoplite you were a killing machine plain and simple. I'm sorry, war is about death, butchery, being sliced up, torn apart, having your blood vessels opened, having your head chopped off and your teeth sliced out. It is not a social status in any way. You aren't running for prom queen. After a hoplite wall passed over a field it was littered with heads, arms, legs, people groaning and clutching at their abdomens to keep their intestines in, while some people paid for the job tried to carry away men who were still somehow alive. That is a hoplite. The hoplite was by definition a heavy-armed killer. He could not however run away so if you could catch him in an arrow or spear shower you could kill him before he killed you. Usually in write-ups of this sort one tries to objectify these events with military language but I see none of that here. Rewrite, lads, please. A hoplite is not a citizen-soldier. Some of them were quite nasty men, insisting very rudely on their money. Awful fellows. A hoplite was a heavily armed soldier who was protected by a shield wall when in line but had little mobility.Dave (talk) 07:08, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: The citizen-soldier

message: This Collection Armour founted in 1980 in Thesprotia Epirus Greece. After restoration, the Armour Collection, has been exposed in National Corfu Museum. From Year 2010 after the New Igoumenitsa National Museum opening, the Collection transferred in Igoumenitsa Museum, Epirus, Greece. Dr. Harry Gouvas, Epirus Greece Harrygouvas (talk) 11:52, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you are correct. But the image title says Corful. The photographer who gave us the image presumably knew where the photo was taken. We must continue to use the Corfu description. I've modified it to say the helmets are "from" the Corfu Museum, which is accurate, but allows for the possibility that they are moved.  We need a reliable published source to confirm if they are moved. Thanks. --S. Rich (talk) 15:04, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Tittle of Armour Collection Photo

message: id like to know when hoplites were last used on the battlefeild when they were last used in warfare. what kind of soldgier would have re-placed this type of combat. i do know that in the roman empire centuries later we had a soldgier called the legionary and these were deployed. im asking this question for acedemic reasons becasue i seek knowledge . having this answered will help me see how warfare has progressed in the centuries since the times of alexander the great. in the early 300's BC 99.164.105.120 (talk) 14:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  when did these hoplite units stop being used? 

message: There is no scholarly consensus about what Othismos referred to - a literal shoving match or not? - or about how Hoplites fought. 173.66.211.53 (talk) 18:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Othismos is extremely controversial 

message: Is "ὁπλίτης" modern Greek or is it the form of Greek spoken about 2000-3000 years ago (when ὁπλίται were used)?  If it is the modern Greek word, then what is the ancient Greek word for "hoplite"?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.146.216.163 (talk) 16:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  ὁπλίτης 

message: There are repeated comparisons between Greek hoplites and the Persian infantry and even archers. But the article fails to mention that these units were not supposed to face each other to start with, the hoplites were normally supposed to be engaged with cavalry (in the Greco-Persian Wars), this may lead the reader to assume otherwise. --Z 13:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison with Persian infantry 

message: Reading the section on the body armour, I'm a bit confused - the text is somewhat contradictory and vague.
 - The hoplite army consisted of heavily armoured infantrymen. Their armour, also called panoply, was made of full bronze, weighing nearly 32 kilograms (70 lb). The average farmer-peasant hoplite typically wore no armour, carrying only a shield, a spear, and perhaps a helmet plus a secondary weapon.
So... if the hoplite army consisted of heavily armoured infantrymen, how can the average hoplite wear no armour? I'm also not quite clear on what the weight of the panoply refers to. I that a weight for a full set of armour, including the linothorax, greaves, cuirass and helmet? Just for the cuirass? And, since in the previous paragraph we have explained that the equipment was non-standard and varied over time and location, how can we even give such a precise weight for it?
There seems to be a lot of information in this section, written by knowledgeable people, but it looks like it has had a number of sometimes conflicting insertions that detract from the overall sense - I don't know what to believe. It needs a bit of a tidy up, but I don't know enough about the subject matter to do a re-write. Are there any more clued-up editors who might be willing to do a bit of improving?Girth Summit (talk) 08:59, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Equipment - body armour confusion 

message: The first paragraph of the first section (entitled "warfare") ends thusly: "The Lacedaemonian citizens of Sparta were renowned for their lifelong combat training and almost mythical military prowess, while their greatest adversaries, the Athenians, were exempted from service only after the age of 60. This inevitably reduced the potential duration of campaigns and often resulted in the campaign season being restricted to one summer." 
Can the person who strung these sentences together please explain what they have to do with one another? Regarding the first sentence, Spartan military superiority could still be so AND have its soldiers exempted from military service at 60 as well, right? So why then use the conjunction "while" as if to imply the Athenians' 60 year age limit would somehow alone, put them at a military disadvantage from the Spartans? As for the second sentence, how would "this" (whatever 'this' is even referring to since we have two seemingly separate points; one being spartan military prowess and the other being an Athenian age restriction) "inevitably" reduce campaigns to one season? Either I'm really stupid and not getting it or someone is spouting incoherent babble. Apparently Wikipedia agrees with the latter, as evidenced by the "clarification needed" tag. 2001:569:5814:E200:5D43:7C23:E10F:154C (talk) 06:00, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Clarification needed" indeed... 

message: 1. "It would have been nearly impossible to swing both shield and sword if the man next to you is practically touching."
The word "you" should always be avoided and the third person should be used instead.
2. "Roman equipment also changed, trading spears for swords and heavy javelins (pilum)."
The word "swords" should probably be followed by "(gladius)" to add more context in the parallelism.
ICE77 (talk) 05:09, 30 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction and addition 

message: after alexander the great his kingdom of macidonia split into the diadochi kingdoms the greek city states were among them Matt.memarian (talk) 21:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  After alexander Hoplite