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THE BRONZE HOPLITE PANOPLY AND THE OTHISMOS IN THE EARLY PHALANX

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2025

H. W. Lanphier
H. W. Lanphier*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia, USA
*
hwl8sc@virginia.edu
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Abstract

There is a long-standing controversy in Greek History about whether the othismos, or ‘push’, of the hoplite phalanx mentioned by classical authors was real or metaphorical. Experimental archaeology – structural and finite element analysis with both physical reconstructions and computer modelling (presented non-technically here) – suggests that the archaic Greek hoplite panoply of bell cuirass, Corinthian helmet, and large bowl-shaped shield (aspis), which seems at first to present contradictory design choices, in fact offered important mechanical advantages under compressive force; that cuirass, helmet, and shield were designed or evolved to work together to allow the Greek warrior to survive and fight in a pushing mass of men without being crushed or asphyxiated. The hoplite othismos was, then, real and was presumably practised from the earliest era to which this equipment can be dated, the late eighth century bc.

Keywords

experimental archaeologyGreek armourhoplitepanoplyphalanxothismosbell cuirassCorinthian helmetaspisthorax

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Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , October 2025 , pp. 292 - 310
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

This paper begins by noting some puzzling features – highlighted by reconstruction – of the archaic Greek bronze so-called ‘bell’ cuirass (from c. 725–c. 500 bc) and the contemporary Corinthian helmet and hoplite shield (aspis).Footnote 1 Likely solutions to those puzzles reflect on the perennial question of how hoplites fought in the phalanx and suggest that in the earliest phalanx (understood as a massing of men) hoplites did push against enemies and friends in front of them, seeming to confirm – the controversy is ongoing – the reality of the hoplite mass-push, or othismos, and, indeed, an early date for the phalanx itself.

Archaic hoplite equipment

The cuirass

Archaic hoplites girded their chests with heavy and intricate bronze armour.Footnote 2 The cuirass (thorax) could be padded with felt or linen, but it remained the bulkiest and most taxing part of the panoply to wear. And it was certainly the single most costly item of the panoply to procure, requiring the most bronze and individual fitting. The habit of using ‘war grade’ lead-free bronze with a high proportion of tin also made this cost significantly higher.Footnote 3 Tin deposits do not occur in mainland Greece, so the metal had to be imported from abroad.Footnote 4

Archaic Greek smiths, furthermore, greatly increased the time and effort required to produce a thorax by attending carefully to the edges of the chest plate. Rather than leaving the edges plain, the smiths laboriously drew iron into wire for a core around which they carefully rolled the edges of the bronze thorax.Footnote 5 Not only is the process of drawing wire extremely time- and labour-intensive, but reconstructions of the hoplite thorax show that the process of rolling around a solid core is more difficult and time-intensive than merely curling the plate edge back upon itself, which produces a hollow, although identical-looking, rim (see Figure 1).Footnote 6

Figure 1. Comparison of hollow (left: reconstruction; lack of wire not visible) and solid wire rims (right: drawing by D. Weiss after a surviving bell cuirass in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, L.2004.22.2).

In addition, the hinges and joins found on the bronze thorax of this early period show a level of complexity that defies easy explanation.Footnote 7 Intricate hinges (Figure 2a), as many as six, secured with metal pins and augmented with seemingly redundant leather straps and buckles (Figure 2c), ensured that the front and back halves of the cuirass did not slip apart. In some instances, the hinge ran in a single contiguous tube up the entire left edge of the join of the thorax, creating the most secure connection possible that would still allow the plates of the cuirass to open enough to be put on.Footnote 8 Cuirasses could also include bronze tubular projections that slotted the two halves together at the top and bottom, offering a triple redundancy against any possibility of separation of the plates (Figure 2b).Footnote 9 If aesthetic preference suggested these elaborate hinges, it was an odd one, because these features were frequently hidden on the inside of the cuirass or covered by the arms and shield of the hoplite. The investment of so much time and effort into securing a solid connection between the front and back plates suggests, rather, a dogged insistence on ensuring that the thorax stay together.

Figure 2. Methods for securing the front and back plates of the bell cuirass from slipping: the left image (a) is from a thorax on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1999.36.3.2), while the middle image (b) is of the Argos panoply, and the right image (c) is of a thorax on display at the British Museum (1856.1226.614) (drawings by D. Weiss; b and c after Connolly [n. 8], 55–6). Left (a): multiple hinges (further back) and (closer) an additional bronze panel securing the halves on top and bottom of the cuirass. Centre (b): tubular projection at the top to slot the two halves together. Right (c): redundant strap over hinge secured by a pin.

The early forms of the thorax, furthermore, feature a flared lower rim, which is why they are often called ‘bell cuirasses’, or the equivalent in modern languages (Figure 3).Footnote 10 This rim extends out several inches and serves no immediately obvious function. Scholarship postulates that the flaring prevented the rim from digging into the hips and stomach of the hoplite, or perhaps that the rim deflected downward strikes away from the legs.Footnote 11 But reconstruction demonstrates that a significantly smaller flaring of the rim suffices to prevent the rim from being painful, and it has been drily observed that although the rim does indeed deflect downward strikes, it also channels upward strikes directly into the genitals and lower abdomen.Footnote 12

Figure 3. Greek bell cuirass: thorax in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España, Madrid. From the Axel Guttmann collection (Creative Commons).

Finally, as far back as the bronze bell cuirass existed, there seems to have been an alternative, a cuirass of linen, the linothorax (the Greek word appears first in Homer, Il. 2.529, 830), formed by gluing together multiple layers of cloth. The experimental data of Gregory Aldrete’s 2010 study demonstrated that the linothorax offered comprehensive protection against the piercing and slashing attacks of arrows, spears, and swords at a third the weight of the bronze thorax, and at a fraction of its cost in materials and labour.Footnote 13 But despite this alternative, for two centuries many hoplites preferred to don the bronze thorax instead.Footnote 14 The choice suggests that they sought something from the bronze beyond its ability to defeat weapon-strikes to the torso, and were willing to pay a high price to do so.

The Corinthian helmet and hoplite shield

The peculiar design of the Corinthian helmet highlights yet another oddity of the panoply.Footnote 15 The famous 1977 calculations of Philip Blyth demonstrated that this helmet exquisitely balanced protection and weight because the helmet could withstand weapon-strikes delivered in normal combat settings, but could be punctured if the helmet were struck while braced against the ground.Footnote 16 Further evidence for this close approach to the line between protection and weight arrives with the Greeks’ mastery of work-hardening bronze during the late sixth century bc: as the helmets became harder, they were correspondingly made thinner and lighter.Footnote 17 But the armourer’s eye for balancing protection against weight was inconsistently applied. While the top of the helmet, which damage studies suggest was the most likely part to be struck in combat, provided just barely enough protection, the Corinthian helmet had curiously thicker nose and face-guard areas, although Blyth’s study found these regions unlikely to suffer weapon strikes (see Figure 4 for variable thickness at different point on a helmet).Footnote 18

Figure 4. Variable bronze thickness at different points of a Corinthian helmet found at Marathon, now in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM no. 926.19.3). Drawing by D. Weiss after R. Mason, ‘Weapon Wednesday: The Nugent Marathon Corinthian Helmet’ (2014). https://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/weapon-wednesday-the-nugent-marathon-corinthian-helmet Accessed 12.31.2023.

And finally there was the round hoplite shield, heavy, at around fifteen pounds because of its robust construction and three-foot width.Footnote 19 The shield’s double grip locked the centre of the aspis to the elbow and thus restricted the shield’s range of movement, severely limiting the hoplite’s options for intercepting incoming attacks, and leaving the hoplite’s right side unprotected, while at the same time the shield extended out to the left beyond the distance needed to protect the hoplite – thus wasting both protection and weight.Footnote 20 In the later classical period, at least, this vulnerability caused the massed hoplite phalanx to edge ever to the right, as each hoplite sought to protect his unshielded right side behind the left edge of his neighbour’s shield (Thuc. 5.71.1). And Greek shield-makers could certainly produce lighter shields: indeed the peltast, the usual Greek light-infantryman in later times, was so-called from his smaller, lighter peltē (πέλτη).

Possible solutions

The enigma of the early hoplite panoply resides in the choice to accept so many apparent disadvantages and complexities of construction despite available alternatives, while simultaneously attending carefully to the avoidance of these very same failings elsewhere in the war-gear: what we might consider excessive weight, but only in shield and nose and face guards of the Corinthian helmet; laborious and seemingly pointless detail-work on the hinges of the thorax; a double-grip shield that limited its wielder’s ability to wield that protection. Such despair does the bronze panoply inspire in students that some recent scholars have downplayed its purpose as functional armour and focused instead on its role as a signifier of social status, demonstrating wealth through conspicuous consumption.Footnote 21 Or was it perhaps a Homeric revival? For in the Iliad much attention is given to the gleam of the heroes’ bronze armour.Footnote 22

It is perhaps best to focus on what the archaic bronze hoplite panoply did well, and what it did well was withstand tremendous amounts of crushing force. Thus, too, can many of its puzzling features be explained. For those features provided significant mechanical advantages and increased the ability of the panoply to protect its wearer from sustained levels of pressure from front and back well above what would otherwise have killed the hoplite within.Footnote 23

It was long ago suggested that the large, heavy, double-grip hoplite shield evolved or was designed for pushing.Footnote 24 The rolled edges of the armholes of the cuirass played a parallel role, making the finished chest plate far better at holding its shape under pressure, similar to the way that corrugated cardboard or other complex shapes better resist bending. The use of a wire core in those rolled edges is not necessary to roll them, but as both reconstructions and computer modelling demonstrate, the increased expense guarantees that the rolled edges will not become crimped, since a single weak point would critically compromise the thorax under pressure by causing the armour to deform and buckle at the crimp rather than flex elastically and distribute the pressure evenly throughout the rim (see Figure 5).Footnote 25

Figure 5. Reconstructions of the rolled rim edging: the thorax on the left had folded rims rather than rims rolled around a wire. When placed under pressure, deformation (left) occurred at a single weak point, rather than the rim flexing evenly, as did the rolled rim on the right.

The redundantly secured joins of the front and back plates added nothing to the thorax’s capacity to stop weapons, but they did ensure that the thorax halves would stay in place under great strain and that pressure would be safely and evenly transferred across the thorax without the plates slipping, which might cause rapid deformation of the armour and injury to the hoplite underneath. The jutting bottom rim of the bell cuirass also serves a clearer role in this context, for it offers support against buckling by distributing the force along the entire rim. In mechanical engineering, such protruding rims are called flanges, and are a well-known answer to bending movement (any load-bearing structure that uses an I or T cross-section uses this principle).Footnote 26 As long as the thorax did not buckle, the hoplite could withstand immense forces with minimal risk to himself and, compared to a soldier without a bronze thorax, the hoplite could both deliver and receive more pressure without injury than his lesser-armoured opponent could endure (see Figure 6).Footnote 27

Figure 6. Finite element analysis showing the distribution of stress within the thorax when squeezed between top left shoulder and bottom right edge.

If in fact withstanding pressure was the primary purpose of the bronze thorax, then the oddities of its construction serve a clear function, as does the fact that hoplites were so generous to smiths and sacrificed so much mobility and endurance to achieve this end. While Aldrete’s data demonstrated linen’s parity with bronze for stopping blades, it did not test linen’s ability to withstand pressure. And, in fact, the linen armour must be bent around the body when it is put on, as both the experimental reconstructions and vase depictions indicate, so its very design requires that it be ductile rather than rigidly resistant to buckling: far less useful for resisting crushing forces.Footnote 28

The form of the Corinthian helmet also attests this need to withstand pressure, and its puzzling design choices find clear functions in this role. The hoplite thought it more important to have a helmet that could withstand and deliver pressure than one that could offer more complete protection. The thrust-forward angle of the helmet’s cheek guards left the front of the neck exposed if the hoplite was not careful, but it allowed the neck to be pulled in and the head braced at the moment of impact. The increased thickness around the nose and face sections of the helmet turn out to be an important feature for protecting the hoplite’s nose and mouth from smashing into the rim of the hoplite’s own aspis when hoplites collided shield to shield. But even with the protection of the thicker parts of the helmet, protecting the face against crushing remained a problem – a problem the interaction of the elements of the panoply helped to solve. Even on low-velocity impact, experiment shows, the aspis rim can slam into the bearer’s nose and mouth if the shield is not braced against the hoplite’s cuirass.Footnote 29 But by tucking the left elbow firmly into the chest, the hoplite could pull his own aspis in close, ensuring its contact with the thorax and bracing it securely. The hoplite could, moreover, tuck his chin down and to the left, placing the left temple and brow of his helmet in contact with the rim of the shield; by doing this, he denies his shield – if pushed back against him – space to build up any momentum that might strike him in the face (see Figure 7).Footnote 30 With his panoply tightly secured and controlled at the point of collision, the hoplite ensured that he could weather a powerful impact with his nose and teeth intact.Footnote 31

Figure 7. Bracing the aspis for a controlled collision.

Many of the hoplite shield’s other apparent disadvantages also disappear if the early panoply as a whole is understood as a device to resist or deliver pressure. The failure of the shield to extend forward farther than the elbow can reach becomes irrelevant if the hoplite intends to bring the shield into direct and sustained contact, and indeed its close-in grip and double handle – preventing twisting of the shield left or right – is useful for controlling the collision safely. The considerable weight of the aspis, furthermore, is distributed over the hoplite’s own thorax and further reduced if he pushes forward, maintaining sustained contact with the shield of an enemy or the back of a comrade. Testing demonstrates that leaning against an opposing shield even lightly creates enough pressure to pin both shields in place and helps to lessen the effort required to carry the aspis (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. A 17lb aspis held in place by light pressure, without using the central porpax (arm band) or antilabe (handle).

It is attractive to suggest that during lulls in the battle to rest – which scholars now realize must have been common during any battle that lasted longer than a few minutes – leaning shield on shield against the enemy hoplite in front is exactly what the archaic warrior did.Footnote 32 Those in the back, of course, could just rest their shields against the backplates – or backs – of the comrades in front of them: it would be just as easy to lean against those in front as it would be to lean against a wall.

Experimental reconstruction also suggests that the aspis worked together with the thorax to increase the hoplite’s resistance to enemy pressure, and to inflict pressure on the enemy hoplite, because the inside edge of the shield rim rests directly on the thorax where the front and back plates overlap, rather than on the muscle of the hoplite’s unarmoured shoulder (see Figure 8 again for the shield resting on the thorax). This means that the pressure applied to the aspis was transferred directly to both the front and back halves of the thorax, rather than directly to the human body; and this, in turn, distributes the force of impact across the armour during a collision and prevents the shield rim from bruising or damaging the shoulder or collarbone. If the hoplite is, moreover, braced from behind by a comrade’s aspis, the compressive forces from both the front and the rear are channelled across the thorax into the shields without impeding the hoplite’s ability to use his weapons (see Figure 9): even in the press, the bronze-armoured hoplite can still wield the spear in his right hand over his own shield and that of his enemy in front.

Figure 9. Right arm mobility: the right arm remains free even when a shield is pressed directly under the arm.

Finally, what hoplite armour did not protect also re-affirms this emphasis on exerting and resisting pressure: the cuirass hardly extended below the waist, leaving the genitals and femoral arteries exposed, as vases show and as Tyrtaeus’ poetry graphically illustrates.Footnote 33 This design allowed very forceful pushing motions by the legs, legs that could be thrust far back or bent far forward like those of the players in a rugby scrum (see Figure 10).Footnote 34

Figure 10. The rugby scrum (Picture from Peter Griffin, CCO Public Domain).

Flexible leather or fabric flaps, pteruges, might hang from the lower edge of the cuirass, but they did not restrict the legs, nor was the bell cuirass ever, so far as we can see on countless vases, extended down far enough to do so (as, for example, a medieval coat of mail did).Footnote 35 At the cost of considerable peril to the warrior, the hoplite’s equipment carefully kept the legs’ movement unencumbered, since the greaves did not cover the back of the knee or impede the motion of the thighs. Pushing was all.

Conclusion: the hoplite othismos

The debate about the physical existence of the othismos, the mass push of a hoplite force referred to without explanation by the Greek historians, is now almost a century old and, at the time of writing, still waxing alarmingly. Even a summary of the literature before 2009 runs to seventeen pages.Footnote 36 But nearly as old as the controversy itself is scholars’ complaint that the ancient literary evidence touching upon the argument is exhausted. Here we have tried another route to bring in new evidence, experimental archaeology – building and testing replicas of ancient arms and armour assisted by computer modelling.Footnote 37

Our argument has been, simply, that the bronze hoplite panoply was invented or evolved to let its wearer survive and triumph in a mass push – perhaps resulting initially from the collision of the two forces running towards one another (the metaphor inherent in phalanx, ‘beam’ or ‘roller’, never died)Footnote 38 – with his enemy pushing shield-against-shield in the front, and his comrades, perhaps in a mob or perhaps in rows, pushing him from the back. A fortiori such a mass push – the othismos –was a real event in hoplite battles.Footnote 39 It follows that pushing was not fatal to those in the centre of it, as has been suggested by those who argue that the othismos was impossible: that those in the centre would be squashed into jam, or asphyxiated, or suffer, in the delicate words of Frazer, who began the controversy in 1942, ‘a degree of squeezing that is distressing to contemplate’.Footnote 40 It was indeed dangerous (the crush of mobs is: consider any number of tragedies at European soccer grounds), but the Greeks understood this and concocted a protection against this danger, exactly the bronze hoplite panoply.Footnote 41 We have illustrated that, against expectation, the spear, wielded over-hand in the right hand, can indeed be used during the othismos (although probably, because of its length, not against the enemy soldier directly in front). Denying that possibility is another well-worn argument against the possibility of the othismos.Footnote 42 And most broadly, if the archaic panoply developed at least in part to push and be pushed, then some sort of mass phalanx should be regarded as co-eval with that equipment – 700 bc at the latest (and probably earlier) – not a subsequent development of the seventh, sixth, or even fifth century.Footnote 43

Footnotes

*

My thanks to the anonymous reader for Greece & Rome, J. E. Lendon, Elizabeth A. Meyer, and the Ancient History Fund at the University of Virginia. Reconstructions discussed and depicted in this paper come from the panoply elements made as part of an interdisciplinary study conducted with the Department of Physics of Loyola University Chicago in 2018. I thank R. Graells i Fabregat for discussion of the unpublished Olympia cuirasses.

References

1 The earliest such bell cuirass so far published with a reliable date, discovered at Argos, is dated to 725–700 bc (P. Courbin, ‘Une tombe géométrique d’Argos (planches I–V)’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 81 (1957), 339–40), and although in Greece the number of such cuirasses seems to fall off around 500 bc, they lasted longer in Italy and Thrace and may never have entirely died out. See R. Graells i Fabregat, ‘La tumba de la armadura de 1942 y la panoplia defensiva arcaica en Magna-Grecia’, in A. Bottini, R. Graells i Fabregat, and M. Vullo, Metaponto. Tombe arcaiche della necropoli nord-occidentale (Mainz and Basilicata, 2019), 244–55, for dates, spread, and literature. R. Graells i Fabregat, ‘Greek Archaic Panoplies: An Archaeo-Iconographic Diachronic Approach’, in G. Bardelli and R. Graells i Fabregat (eds.), Ancient Weapons. New Research Perspectives on Weapons and Warfare. Proceedings of the International Conference – Mainz, September 20th–21st 2019 (Mainz, 2021), 161–85, shows that bell cuirasses continued to be dedicated at Olympia through the end of the sixth century and into the start of the fifth. He confirms these dates by noting that between 525–500, 50 per cent of the representations of hoplites on vases show them with the bell cuirass, while between 500–475 the number drops to 4.2 per cent. (Other data points for bell cuirasses on vases are 580–550: 83 per cent, 550–525: 66.7 per cent.) For the Corinthian helmet, Graells i Fabregat (2021 [above, this note], 165, fig. 3, 174–82) shows that representations dip dramatically to 18.3 per cent between 500–475, but measured at 98.3 per cent in 580–550, 89.9 per cent in 550–525, and 81.8 per cent in 525–500. For the hoplite shield, which continued in common use far longer than the bell cuirass and Corinthian helmet, Graells i Fabregat 2019 [above, this note], 237, gathers the literature.

2 V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York, 1989), 78, estimates c. 30–40 lbs for the cuirass; but A. Schwartz, Reinstating the Hoplite. Arms, Armour and Phalanx Fighting in Archaic and Classical Greece (Stuttgart, 2009), 67–8 sets the range of current scholarly estimations between 5 and c. 22 lbs and P. Krentz, The Battle of Marathon (New Haven, 2010), 45–50, accepts an average cuirass weight of 8–15 lbs. In fact, reconstruction has shown the difficulty of bringing a 1.6 mm-thick cuirass much below 17 lbs even without allowing for any padding. Rough calculations thus suggest that each millimetre of bronze thickness would add 10.6 lbs of weight to the cuirass on top of the padding, buckles, and wire cores. By this reasoning, a 3mm-thick cuirass would weigh at least 32 lbs, a 2mm-thick cuirass would weigh at least 22.1 lbs, while a 1mm-thick cuirass would weigh at least 10.6 lbs. We know of no published examples of the thickness of the padding, and so its additional weight can only be loosely estimated, but it seems prudent to guess that the typical weight-range of the whole cuirass assembly was between 15 and 30 lbs, with significant allowances for upper and lower outliers. It can be guessed also that on average the cuirass began heavier and became lighter over the course of the archaic period, conforming to other observable changes in the panoply.

3 For more detailed analysis of the war grading of bronze, P. Blyth, The Effectiveness of Greek Armor against Arrows in the Persian War (490–479 B.C.). An Interdisciplinary Enquiry (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Reading, 1977), 78–80. The three Afrati cuirasses range between 9.5 and 11.05 per cent tin, H. Hoffman, Early Cretan Armorers (Mainz, 1972), 54. Cf. H. Born, Die Helme des Hephaistos. Handwerk und Technik griechischer Bronzen in Olympia (Munich, 2009), 37–43, for the study of helmet-specific alloy compositions, where the percentages seem to be lower, with an average 8.23 per cent tin use. Born (p. 37) reports significant uniformity in the composition of helmets from the eighth through the fifth centuries – but this significant uniformity in the percentage of tin ranges between 6.10 and 13.66 per cent (p. 43, Tab. 1 comparing no. 6 to no. 23).

4 For Classical Greece, Spain and Central France provided the most likely sources, although it remains unclear whether the Volokastro site in Thessaly might also have had minor deposits (R. J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology, Vol. IX [Leiden, 1964], 136–7). For discussion of tin and the difficulties of importing tin, M. Treister, The Role of Metals in Ancient Greek History (Leiden, 1996).

5 E. Jarva, Archaiologia on Archaic Greek Body Armour (Rovaniemi, 1995), 20. Such wire cores can be found in the Argos cuirass, the Olympia 979, 980, and 981 cuirasses, as well as the Afrati cuirasses (Courbin [n. 1], 340; A. Furtwängler, Die Bronzen und die übrigen kleineren Funde von Olympia [Berlin, 1890], 153–7; Hoffman [n. 3], 19) and although there was no standardized design, this seems to have been a common feature.

6 For the process of drawing iron wire, see D. Sim, ‘Roman Chain-Mail: Experiments to Reproduce the Techniques of Manufacture’, Britannia 28 (1997), 359–71.

7 A. Snodgrass, Early Greek Armour and Weapons (Edinburgh, 1964), 73, 81; Courbin (n. 1), 344; T. Everson, Warfare in Ancient Greece: Arms and Armour from the Heroes of Homer to Alexander the Great (Stroud, 2004), 88.

8 An excellent image of such a hinge found on a thorax fragment at Olympia (Olympia Museum number B5101) may be found in P. Connolly, Greece and Rome at War (London, 1981), 55, no. 8.

9 Courbin (n. 1), 344–8. The Argos cuirass features the tubular slots, pin-securing mechanism, and buckles. See Jarva (n. 5), 24; Snodgrass (n. 7), 73; and for clear illustrations Connolly (n. 8), 55–6. Hoffman (n. 3), plate 55 (no. 1), shows a possible example of the slot that would secure the backplate, preventing it from sliding upward or outwards, since the lip curls over the top and side of the back plate. His plate 55 (no. 2) shows an example of the wire-rolling process, although in this particular case the wire was cut bronze, rather than the typical iron. Diagrams of various hinge arrangements of the later muscle cuirasses, which feature many of the same arrangements, can be found in R. Graells i Fabregat, ‘Le corazze nei santuari dell’Italia meridionale’, in R. Graells i Fabregat and F. Longo (eds.), Armi Votive in Magna Grecia: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Salerno-Paestum 23–25 novembre 2017 (Mainz, 2018), 164.

10 Jarva (n. 5), 20–5. Jarva catalogues 42 extant bell cuirasses.

11 Hanson (n. 2), 76; Schwartz (n. 2), 67; D. Fink, The Battle of Marathon in Scholarship: Research, Theories, and Controversies since 1850 (Jefferson, NC, 2014), 37.

12 Schwartz (n. 2), 67; Fink (n. 11), 37.

13 G. Aldrete, S. Bartell and A. Aldrete, Reconstructing Ancient Linen Body Armor: Unraveling the Linothorax Mystery (Baltimore, 2013), 6; and see now M. Zerjadtke, ‘Leinenpanzerplatten und Belastungstest’, in M. Zerjadtke (ed.), Der griechische Leinenpanzer im experimentalarchäologischen Versuch (Norderstedt, 2024), 133–48.

14 Preferred bronze, Snodgrass (n. 7), 49–50. An additional argument could be made that the bronze bell cuirass itself was often thicker than was needed to fend off weapons effectively, and so heavier. C. Matthew, A Storm of Spears: Understanding the Greek Hoplite at War (Havertown, PA, 2012), 137, 139, calculates that while an armoured hoplite could deliver a spear with 22 foot-pounds force (one fpd is equal to 1.356 joules of energy) in an overhand strike and 34.3 fpds with an underarm strike, in the worst-case scenario of a straight-on spear strike (hardly likely, since the curved surface of the cuirass is extremely difficult to strike straight on, and requires the struck hoplite not to twist or move with the strike), armour of 1mm could stop 28 fpds, while 1.5mm could stop 53 fpds (Matthew allowed for angled strikes as well, finding that a 20° angle required 10 per cent more force, while a 60° angle required 200 per cent more energy to pierce the armour). So any armour of more than 1mm in thickness – as some bell-cuirasses seem to have been (Courbin [n. 1], 339, 354; L. Ognenova, ‘Les cuirasses de bronze trouvées en Thrace’, Bulletin de correspondance héllenique 85 [1961], 526; Jarva [n. 5], 20–3, 25) – was likely to have been superfluously thick and heavy. Why? Nothing certain can be said before the publication of the numerous Olympia cuirasses in R. Graells i Fabregat, Die Panzer aus Olympia (forthcoming), with their thicknesses and other significant data, and consideration as well of the metallurgy of Greek bronze bell cuirasses; but see n. 27 below.

15 For the difficulty of fabricating the Corinthian helmet, see A. Snodgrass, Arms and Armour of the Greeks (Ithaca, NY, 1967), 51: ‘To beat a complete head-piece out of one sheet of bronze has always been a feat requiring exceptional skill on the part of the smith; in the seventeenth century AD, for instance, armourers seem to have lost this art…while even in 1939 a modern Greek artificer, making a replica of a similar form, found it difficult to beat out the back of the helmet unless a deep recess was left over the forehead.’ For a more general study of the helmet construction, see Born (n. 3), 47–81, with particular attention to the diagrams on pp. 74–5 for the casting and tooling processes. For a detailed catalogue of Corinthian helmets found at Olympia and a discussion of their morphology, see H. Frielinghaus, Die Helme von Olympia: Ein Beitrag zu Waffenweihungen in griechischen Heiligtümern (Berlin, 2011). For publication data on the Corinthian helmets from Olympia, see E. Kunze, VII. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Olympia (Berlin, 1961), 57–137; cf. E. Kunze, VI. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Olympia (Berlin, 1958), 118–51; E. Kunze, VIII. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Olympia (Berlin, 1967), 111–83, for helmets of other types. For discussion of the divergence of the Corinthian helmet from earlier forms, see Snodgrass (n. 7), 9; for the possible evolution of the Corinthian helmet from earlier Assyrian patterns, see T. Dezsö, Oriental Influence in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Helmet Traditions in 9th–7th Centuries B.C.: The Patterns of Orientalization (Oxford, 1998).

16 Blyth (n. 3), 84–5. Since the helmet would in practice move with the wearer’s neck and head to reduce the force of the spear’s impact, a hoplite’s helmet would presumably not be perfectly immobile, but Blyth’s test indicates that the helmet’s design hovered on the very edge of providing enough protection if it were indeed immobile, which is presumably how ancient Greek smiths tested it.

17 Born (n. 3), 68–81; Blyth (n. 3), 69–71, 79–80. Work-hardening is the process of compacting and dislocating the metal’s crystal structure with repeated hammer blows at a sub-recrystallization temperature, which studies of Corinthian helmets reveal increased the hardness by 60 per cent (from 100 Brinell to 160 B). See Born (n. 3), 68, for his discussion of Blyth’s study and adjustment of the ranges from a prework-hardening of ±70–100 B to ±140–200 B around c. 530/520 bc.

18 Blyth (n. 3), 80–4; cf. Schwartz (n. 2), 57.

19 For the size and weight of the aspis, Schwartz (n. 2), 28–31.

20 Schwartz (n. 2), 35, n. 104, gathers the literature on the awkwardness of the shield; but this is nearly a truism in the scholarship. Sed contra H. van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (London, 2004), 168–9, who advocates a stance that places the hoplite more centrally behind his shield. But the side-on stance van Wees proposes, while better than the front-on stance, is still not perfectly balanced, nor does it fully mitigate the problems of coverage (Schwartz [n. 2], 38–41).

21 E.g. van Wees (n. 20), 53: ‘If the Greeks nevertheless preferred bronze, it was because the material lent itself well to display’, cf. Aldrete (n. 13), 168; Jarva (n. 5), 158–60; Graells i Fabregat 2021 (n. 1), 166–7, 174, 182. About conspicuous consumption: accepting that many bronze bell cuirasses (Jarva [n. 5], 20–3); Corinthian helmets (Born [n. 3], 87–100); and bronze fittings of shields (E. Kunze, Archaische Schildbänder [Berlin: 1950]) were decorated with etching or relief, we are rather surprised to discover how rare adorning bronze gear with precious metals (or imitating silver with tin) – which would have made a wealthy warrior stand out even more, and of which the Greeks were fully capable (H. Born, ‘Archaischer Silberglanz: Verzinnte Schildbänder und Schildbügel aus Olympia’, Das Altertum 52 [2007], 241–56; Born [n. 3], 106–19) – appears to have been. Did only a vulgarian like Alcibiades gild his arms (Plut. Alc. 16.1)?

22 J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (New Haven, 2005), esp. 45. Lendon does not specifically claim this about archaic bronze cuirasses but accepts (pers. com.) that it is the overwhelming implication of his wider argument.

23 The computer modelling and Finite Element Analysis employed Dassault Systèmes 2018 SolidWorks Simulation software, in which a model thorax was subjected to simulated compressive forces (see n. 25 below).

24 Hanson (n. 2), 68–9; V. D. Hanson, ‘Hoplite Technology in Hoplite Battle’, in V. D. Hanson (ed.), Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience (New York, 1991), 69. And others have agreed, including Schwartz (n. 2), 192; S. M. Rusch, Sparta at War. Strategy, Tactics, and Campaigns 550–362 BC (London, 2011), 17; and J. Crowley, The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite: The Culture of Combat in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2012), 56.

25 By reconstructing a model of the thorax from the Argos thorax publication data (Courbin [n. 1]), the Loyola team was able to confirm the role of the rolled rims in maintaining the thorax’s form and verified that they act as a pressure sink, enduring higher stress than the surrounding material (see Figure 5). When the thorax was squeezed between the top of the left shoulder and the bottom of the right bell rim, all of the thorax’s rims became sites of high-pressure distribution (see Figure 6). Thus, even though they were not directly in contact with the sources of the compression, the solid-cored rims on the neck and arms would have added to the thorax’s ability to withstand force without crumpling. This function of the rims guaranteed that they would be the points that experienced the highest levels of stress, and thus the primary loci of any catastrophic failure (see Figure 5). The mechanism behind the increased risk of collapse in a hollow rim can easily be demonstrated by a rolled-up tube of paper or a straw set upright. So long as the tube remains uncrimped, it can hold significant amounts of weight, but once bent, it will easily bend again in the same spot. This vindicates the smith’s additional work to ensure that the rim would not crimp, and corroborates the logic behind including a solid iron wire core.

26 The strain on the material is proportional to the distance from the neutral axis. See R. Huston and J. Josephs, Practical Stress Analysis in Engineering Design (Boca Raton, 2009), 109–10, for a deeper explanation of this engineering principle. For practical reasons, most of the trials cited in this present paper were conducted with a low-carbon-content steel adjusted to mimic bronze according to the yield-strength tables provided in Philip Blyth’s study ([n. 3], 90).

27 Schwartz (n. 2), 189: ‘hoplites would in many cases be wearing armour; and such armour, especially if made of bronze, would help alleviate the pressure somewhat’. More than somewhat, we think. If, upon publication, some of the many Olympia bell cuirasses turn out to be thicker than the c. 1mm necessary to prevent piercing by weapons (see above n. 14), that may be another instance of design to prevent crushing and asphyxiation.

28 Aldrete (n. 13), 13, 23. The men in the middle or back of the phalanx would not need the rigidity of bronze and could thus wear the linothorax or probably – given the costs – no cuirass at all; every hoplite presumably wore the armour he could afford.

29 Thus Schwartz (n. 2), 192, does not exhaust the topic when he says that ‘the shield … would be slowly but surely pressed against the body’. It actually hits the hoplite in the face first.

30 ‘How sweet to see his imprint on the porpax, and on the round shield rim running round, the sweat that often fell from Hector’s brow, as when enduring the toils of battle, he would press it against his beard’. (ὡς ἡδὺς ἐν πόρπακι σῷ κεῖται τύπος ἴτυός τ᾽ ἐν εὐτόρνοισι περιδρόμοις ἱδρώς, ὃν ἐκ μετώπου πολλάκις πόνους ἔχων ἔσταζεν Ἕκτωρ προστιθεὶς γενειάδι. Eur. Tro. 1196–200). Clearly the head (in Euripides’ likening of Homeric combat to hoplite fighting) came into contact with the shield rim, and the formidable capacity of the head and neck to push are well known to any modern wrestler.

31 A seatbelt performs a similar function in the event of a car accident – by securing the occupants to the seats, there is no room for them to build up any momentum when the car abruptly changes vectors, nor for them to suffer any secondary impacts.

32 The need for rests during battle, however obvious in retrospect, needed to be pointed out to Classics by a historian of modern air power: P. Sabin, ‘The Face of Roman Battle’, Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000), 14–16; cf. L. Rawlings, The Ancient Greeks at War (Manchester, 2007), 95; R. Taylor, The Greek Hoplite Phalanx. The Iconic Heavy Infantry of Classical Greece (Barnsley, 2021), 456. The usual assumption is that hoplites would rest – presumably by tacit mutual consent – after withdrawing beyond spear-reach of the enemy. In fact, much like wrestlers ‘posting up’ against each other in the third period, it can be easier to rest while in contact with an opponent than standing up straight a distance apart.

33 ‘To breathe out in the dust his valiant life, clasping his bloody groin with clinging hands’ (θυμὸν ἀποπνείοντ᾽ ἄλκιμον ἐν κονίῃ, αἱματόεντ᾽ αἰδοῖα φίλαις ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντα, West 175; trans. Burtt).

34 The rugby scrum comparison is that of G. B. Grundy, Thucydides and the History of his Age, vol. 12 (Oxford: 1948[1911]), 268, mocked by A. Goldsworthy, ‘The Othismos, Myths and Heresies: The Nature of Hoplite Battle’, War in History 4 (1997), 3; but in some respects it is quite right. J. P. Franz, Krieger, Bauern, Bürger. Untersuchungen zu den Hopliten der archaischen und klassischen Zeit (Frankfurt, 2002), 304, also properly emphasizes the importance of a hoplite’s legs for pushing. In a very different world, Ammianus Marcellinus (16.12.37) describes pushing with the knees against a close formation in a late-Roman battle: ‘making a front of their shields joined most closely, clouds of thick dust arose. Then there were various movements, with our soldiers now holding and now withdrawing, and some of the most experienced barbarian warriors worked to force back their enemy with the pressure of their knees’ (frontem artissimis conserens parmis, erigebantur crassi pulveris nubes variique fuere discursus nunc resistentibus nunc cedentibus nostris, et obnixi genibus quidam barbari peritissimi bellatores hostem propellere laborabant); and cf. Taylor (n. 32), 415–19, for later references to such physical pushing in antiquity (although Taylor does not believe pushing was important in the Greek phalanx).

35 For the suggestion that the ‘flair’ at the bottom of the bell cuirass functioned to free the legs, Hanson (n. 2), 76; Schwartz (n. 2), 67.

36 Summary: Schwartz (n. 2), 183–200, with much of the older literature gathered on p. 188, and we are happy to follow Schwartz’s interpretation of the literary evidence, which is not our subject here. The mechanics of hoplite combat were discussed earlier in both Germany and England. The earliest and most recent writings can be found in R. Konijnendijk, Classical Greek Tactics, A Cultural History (Leiden, 2018), 133, n. 93, whose own discussion is at pp. 133–8; for other summaries, see Rawlings (n. 32), 95; Crowley (n. 24), 53–7; Matthew (n. 14), 205–37; M. A. Sears, Understanding Greek Warfare (Abington, 2019), 37–45; and D. Kagan and G. F. Viggiano, ‘The Hoplite Debate’, in D. Kagan and G. F. Viggiano (eds.), Men of Bronze. Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 2013), 1–56 (describing the controversy at length and putting it in a wider scholarly context). And add now Taylor (n. 32), 391–462. The othismos debate per se is usually regarded as having begun with A. D. Frazer’s ‘Myth of the Phalanx Scrimmage’, Classical Weekly 36.2 (Oct. 12, 1942), 15–16; and it is pleasant to note that Frazer founded the discipline of Classical Archaeology at my institution, the University of Virginia. This is now an almost entirely Anglophone controversy (although Franz [n. 34], 299–308, is an honourable exception), and it does not seem to be mentioned in the new 1,379-page German Neue Pauly supplement on ancient military history, L. Burkhardt and M. A. Speidel (eds.), Militärgeschichte der griechisch-römischen Antike: Lexikon (=Neue Pauly Supplemente 12; Stuttgart, 2022).

37 The testing of recreated equipment, is, of course, not new, but goes back at least to the 1970s (Blyth [n. 3]); and see recently Matthew (n. 14) and K. R. De Groote, ‘’Twas When my Shield Turned Traitor’! Establishing the Combat Effectiveness of the Greek Hoplite Shield’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 35 (2016), 197–212.

38 Schwartz (n. 2), 109.

39 In the terms of the hoplite othismos debate, therefore, we support a modified ‘orthodox’ position. We take no stance as to the proportion or absolute number of archaic Greek warriors who went to war with a bronze panoply, but suspect, with recent students, that, especially in early days, it was small (Graells i Fabregat 2021 [n. 1], 166), perhaps little larger than a rugby scrum.

40 Schwartz (n. 2), 188–91, collects the ancient evidence and discusses the modern literature; add Sears (n. 36), 37–8. Quoted: Frazer (n. 36), 15.

41 P. Bardunias, ‘The Aspis. Surviving the Hoplite Battle’, Ancient Warfare 3.1 (Oct./Nov. 2007), esp. 13; P. Bardunias, ‘The Mechanics of Hoplite Battle: Storm of Spears and Press of Shields’, in J. Oorthuys (ed.), The Battle of Marathon: 2011 Ancient Warfare Special Edition (Zutphen, 2011), 60–8; P. M. Bardunias and F. G. Ray, Jr., Hoplites at War. A Comprehensive Analysis of Heavy Infantry Combat in the Greek World, 750 – 100 BCE (Jefferson NC, 2016), 134–6, argues that the bowl shape of the hoplite shield was intended to prevent asphyxiation by preventing pressure to the chest, and we are happy to concur and acknowledge his inspiration.

42 See Schwartz (n. 2), 191–3, for the modern literature.

43 Graells i Fabregat 2021 (n. 1), 163, gathers the scholars who advocate this ‘gradualist’ approach (with which he appears to agree), the most systematic argument to this end being that of H. van Wees, ‘The Development of the Hoplite Phalanx. Iconography and Reality in the Seventh Century’, in H. van Wees (ed.), War and Violence in Ancient Greece (London, 2000), 125–66, and van Wees (n. 20), 166–97.

Figure 0

Figure 1. Comparison of hollow (left: reconstruction; lack of wire not visible) and solid wire rims (right: drawing by D. Weiss after a surviving bell cuirass in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, L.2004.22.2).

Figure 1

Figure 2. Methods for securing the front and back plates of the bell cuirass from slipping: the left image (a) is from a thorax on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1999.36.3.2), while the middle image (b) is of the Argos panoply, and the right image (c) is of a thorax on display at the British Museum (1856.1226.614) (drawings by D. Weiss; b and c after Connolly [n. 8], 55–6). Left (a): multiple hinges (further back) and (closer) an additional bronze panel securing the halves on top and bottom of the cuirass. Centre (b): tubular projection at the top to slot the two halves together. Right (c): redundant strap over hinge secured by a pin.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Greek bell cuirass: thorax in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España, Madrid. From the Axel Guttmann collection (Creative Commons).

Figure 3

Figure 4. Variable bronze thickness at different points of a Corinthian helmet found at Marathon, now in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM no. 926.19.3). Drawing by D. Weiss after R. Mason, ‘Weapon Wednesday: The Nugent Marathon Corinthian Helmet’ (2014). https://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/weapon-wednesday-the-nugent-marathon-corinthian-helmet Accessed 12.31.2023.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Reconstructions of the rolled rim edging: the thorax on the left had folded rims rather than rims rolled around a wire. When placed under pressure, deformation (left) occurred at a single weak point, rather than the rim flexing evenly, as did the rolled rim on the right.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Finite element analysis showing the distribution of stress within the thorax when squeezed between top left shoulder and bottom right edge.

Figure 6

Figure 7. Bracing the aspis for a controlled collision.

Figure 7

Figure 8. A 17lb aspis held in place by light pressure, without using the central porpax (arm band) or antilabe (handle).

Figure 8

Figure 9. Right arm mobility: the right arm remains free even when a shield is pressed directly under the arm.

Figure 9

Figure 10. The rugby scrum (Picture from Peter Griffin, CCO Public Domain).