Couple of Questions on the Spartans

[armchairgeneral]

Although I have read a bit on the hoplite era it isn’t clear to me when the Spartans universally adopted the pylons helmet and abandoned the Corinthian helmet? Would they still have the Corinthian helmet at Plataea?

If Spartans were forbidden to have an occupation and be full time professional soldiers, were they issued body armour by the state? If so how would this have been distributed presuming there wasn’t enough for all?

[williamb]

The Pilos  first appears as military wear about 430 B.C., so several of dozen years after Plataea.  Pilos means felt so the design may have originated as a felt cap.  As long as they were still useable the older style helmets would have remained in use becoming fewer in number as they were damaged or wore out.  Xenophon mentions body armor worn by the Spartans as being the Spolas.  Linothorax is a modern term for this.  Greaves were still in use.  Tunics were usually died red.  Source:  "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars" by Duncan Head figure 16.

[SJWi]

Armchairgeneral,  I agree with williamb but would also add that the Spartans did abandon body armour.  Sekunda in Osprey's "The Spartan Armour" speculates that this may have been to increase battlefield mobility. This is quite a good book on the Spartans if you were looking to buy one specifically on the army.

Merry Christmas !

[armchairgeneral]

Thank you for the replies chaps. Merry Christmas to you both.

I am musing over fielding a Spartan army to oppose my Athenian hoplites and to be an allied army when facing a friend’s Persians. These armies would seem to appear quite different though? The former mostly  unarmoured and in the pilos helmet the latter mostly armoured and in the Corinthian helmet?

[mr ed]

It  depends then how attached you are to recreation. In terms of kit there's little to separate Athenians and Spartans in the Persian War period. So as Allies against the Persians for Plataea the main difference is probably haircuts, which are hidden under Corinthian helmets anyway.

When you get to the Peloponnesian War your on safer ground with the pilos and lighter armour for the Spartans, but the Athenians got lighter armed as well. One thing that's almost certainly true is that the level of uniformity of kit we tend to have in our armies is far too high for the reality of preindustrial societies.

All told, buy the ones you think are cooler.

[SJWi]

MrEd, agreed. I too have built Spartan, Athenian and Achaemenid Persian armies using the excellent Wargames Foundry figures. I have set mine during the later Pelopponesian  War with lighter hoplites and the Persian army more as per the Anabasis. The Persians are my next painting project. 

[Fremitus Borealis]

It  depends then how attached you are to recreation. In terms of kit there's little to separate Athenians and Spartans in the Persian War period. So as Allies against the Persians for Plataea the main difference is probably haircuts, which are hidden under Corinthian helmets anyway.

When you get to the Peloponnesian War your on safer ground with the pilos and lighter armour for the Spartans, but the Athenians got lighter armed as well. One thing that's almost certainly true is that the level of uniformity of kit we tend to have in our armies is far too high for the reality of preindustrial societies.

All told, buy the ones you think are cooler.

The bolded is a big bugbear of mine. I take way too much time (especially given my mediocre painting skills!) on keeping large Successor units from looking uniform. I know I should just "give in" and paint them all more or less the same, but....

[Unlucky General]

I have a Spartan army in 28mm for the Persian Wars period - or it can cover that. For what you are asking then it's most accurately reflected in the bronze cuirass (particularly the Bell-cuirass) and most definitely the Corinthian style helmet.

Don't forget that the Spartan population was not inclined to grow and tended to have a limited number and a relatively fixed army of Spartiates (citizen Hoplites) from one generation to the next. I'm happy to be challenged on this. Also bronze armour lasted a really (really) long time and would also have been passed down one generation to the next - hastened by the death of a former owner of course. I imagine it would need to fit? Provided that the Spartans remained consistently victorious, they would have recovered their dead and even claimed their foes and armour as prizes.

The uniform Lambda shield insignia didn't feature until the later period across the Peloponnesian Wars. Individuality appears to have been important in this period.

My Spartans are over ten years old (the models that is) but I've just ordered another complete army from the same supplier to create their opposition - the Argives. Because I need Bell-cuirass I have stuck with First Corps. I really like them and definitely recommend them.

[armchairgeneral]

Thanks very much for the replies Gentlemen.

If we’re talking cool figures I do like these figures below from Foundry for the rank and file and the ones below them from Gorgon Studios for the command. Just not sure I could get away with this sort of look for the Peloponnesian War.

[Jjonas]

The Gorgon figures are a slight bit larger than the Wargames Foundry ones shown. The Foundry cast on shields are small compared to the Gorgon models. I actually shaved one off for this unit of mixed figures. (The double snake one is the Foundry, the "Spartans" are Gorgon Etruscans (bell bronze cuirass) with added hairlocks- since I felt these made for nice Thermopylae Spartans.

https://ancientbattles.com/HeroesOfGreece/Spartan_shields.html

[armchairgeneral]

Thanks for letting me know and thanks for the link. Superb painting 

[Captain Harlock]

Although I have read a bit on the hoplite era it isn’t clear to me when the Spartans universally adopted the pylons helmet and abandoned the Corinthian helmet? Would they still have the Corinthian helmet at Plataea?

If Spartans were forbidden to have an occupation and be full time professional soldiers, were they issued body armour by the state? If so how would this have been distributed presuming there wasn’t enough for all?

The pylos helmet, same as the petasos and the theban ones, originate from popular hat designs. Pylos hats were made out of felt and were one of the most popular designs. Under the law of Lykourgos each spartan Homoios had a land plot that provided him the means to arm himself and feed his family. Those plots were worked by alocated state owned slaves-Helots and they were financially managed by their wives, when they were busy with their military training or expeditions/service. So you have a society that traditionally is patriarchical, but in reality the ''pater familias'' is always away leaving the mother with the real power in the household, pretty much in the same way the wives of the seamen actually run their households in modern Greece.
Now, each spartan owned land but as we are going forward from the persian wars and despite the tendency of modern people to see Sparta as some kind of communist regime, the things were not so equal in the long run. After a great earthquake with many victims among the population of Homioi and the natural effects on a society with selective breeding among a closed group that had continuous war casualties that could not be replenished, there was serious population decline. The enterprising wives many times managed to buy out unallocated plots of land of families that were extinguished or were down on their luck. The Spartans that could not contribute in money and produce to the common mess that was arranged in the form of guilds/fraternities, were losing their Homios status.
At the same time we are into the peloponnesian war. The first total war in the history where there were no  more campaigning seasons and the traditional rituals of battle were dropped for efficiency. Suddenly all kinds of alarm bells sound in the spartan society. They needed men. First they reinstated those out of luck Homioi. Then they gave citizenship in another category called Mothakes. A  Mothax, was the male bastard child of a Spartan father and a helot mother. Eventually they were allowed into the Agoge training program and filled the ranks. Lysandros the general that gave so many victories to Sparta was a  mothax. The next extreme measure in order to bolster the ranks was to free Helots. These men were not part of the agoge system and they formed their own regiments lead by Spartans or Mothakes with full citizenship. Brasidas used to lead such a troop.
Now we have everything coming together. A number of men with low social and financial entering the army ranks, and the need of the state to arm them, while at the same time military operations are intensifying. Probably this is the timeline where the famous Lamda makes its appearence on the spartan (state owned) shields given out to these new hoplites. We dont know if that original idea was spartan and then immitated by the other city states or vice versa. But the drop of individual/family or faction based episima (shield blazons) in favour of the city-state Archigrammata (initials), indicates distributed state owned shields. In order to have a hoplite phalanx you needed a hoplon. Even by spartan law you were not punished if you came back without your thorax or helmet or grieves. These were meant for your personal protection. But if you were a ''ripsaspis'' (a shield dropper) you were in real trouble, because the shield was there to protect the intergrity of the phalanx. So if you wanted some ''instant'' hoplites all you needed were shields and a cheap helmet so that they wont have their head bashed in at first contact. The corinthian helmet and all of its offshots were produced by raising a single sheet of bronze and then cut out the openings. The result might be very elegant but it was demanding and time consuming. So compared to it, a Pylos helmet could get the basic job done quicker and cheeper. When they added cheak and neck guards, they had  a helmet that protected them enough to be generally adopted. Due to the nature of the war, every side started dropping the armour standards in favour of increasing the hoplite numbers they could field.
I dont buy the mobility theory. At this point the Greek phalanx was still pretty static and the only ones employing more complex maneuvers were the spartans. There were the ''ekdromoi'' but that was more like a role within the main phalanx (filled by the younger hoplites) rather than a special troop. I believe that the ones that could still afford good armour they used it depending on the nature and the place of battle. Alkiviades is described owning a very elaborate set of armour and shield.

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Thanks for that, Cap'n.  That seems a very sensible analysis.

[Jjonas]

I don't buy the mobility theory. At this point the Greek phalanx was still pretty static and the only ones employing more complex maneuvers were the spartans. There were the ''ekdromoi'' but that was more like a role within the main phalanx (filled by the younger hoplites) rather than a special troop. I believe that the ones that could still afford good armour they used it depending on the nature and the place of battle. Alkiviades is described owning a very elaborate set of armour and shield.

I agree that state equipment led to a reduction in armor and turning to spolas (what we call linothorax for convenience- plus other padded jerkins adopted by innovators during the ongoing wars).
The "all or nothing amor" depictions of unarmored Spartans and mostly naked Thebans (at Nemea or Leuctra) go against logic. Also, armor became more common again after the victories of Thebes. This revealed to me at least that it had very little to do with tactical changes, but everything to do with wealth- levels of pay and accessibility caused by constant demand. Mercenaries working for and against Persia were both armored and unarmored. Later in the Macedonian phalanx and hypaspists we are told in translated words that "fleet of foot" or "lighter armed and equipped" troops would be turned into special task forces- but the translation can mean either.

The ekdromoi may likely have been unarmored for mobility- but it may also be in the Spartan phalanx the younger faster men would take off their armor if the need presented. The Spartan disaster at Lechaeum is often blamed on the failure of their 'runners' to affect the Athenian mercenary peltasts- but the real failure was the Spartan cavalry who did nothing except stay lined up with the mora. Plus the Athenian hoplites were well in range to support their peltasts and forced the Spartans to stay in a phalanx.

Other explanations of no armor for Spartans come from Spachteria where an ambushed isolated force of Spartans cut off on an island were pelted by missile troops landed in overwhelming numbers. Troops cut off on an island seems the perfect place where not all the armor might be available- and they were caught in a sneak attack and rousted out of their bivouac.

So I'm with Captain Harlock on this, it seems certain that the code of what a hoplite was equipped broke down over the long wars and armored and unarmored troops operating together would be the most common, also older gear that stood the test of time would be reused.

Long ago I did this mostly Foundry mercenary hoplite unit to be part of the Persian army- over time I expanded it and added in more armored models as the realization of 'all-armored or nothing' started to dissipate.

https://ancientbattles.com/merc_hoplites/merc_greeks_regiment.htm

[armchairgeneral]

Thanks for all the replies. All very helpful.