Armor in the late fifth century bc.

[Paullus Scipio]

I too can add to the confusion ! As Giannis says, it seems 'de minimis' Hoplite 'panoplia' consisted of shield, spear, and helmet. Body armour, greaves and swords do not seem to have equipped all in the phalanx. Following the Persian wars, we see Hoplites depicted thus in action against Persians ( and incidently with crestless helmets), whereas previously pottery depictions ( our major source for the appearance of Greek Hoplites) depicted the mythological Heroes and Gods, who of course always had the richest and most complete panoplies, thereby leading to a distorted view and false conclusions about the appearance of contemporary Hoplites.

And this in my opinion cannot mean that suddently thousands of citizens decided that they can afford a full panoply.

This is quite correct, and for example, the idea that Hoplites were always 'middle class' landowners who provided their own equipment is demonstrably wrong. During the expansions of the city states in the Peloponnesian and subsequent wars, as Giannis says, the need for ever more hoplites grew, and in Athens, the 'Thetes'/poorer classes provided hoplites on land, and especially for service as Marines ( the philosopher Socrates was one such who served as a 'Hoplite' despite not being wealthy enough to belong to the 'Hoplite Class') and in Sparta, units of Helot serfs were raised as hoplites ('neodamodeis') who certainly couldn't afford panoplies.

Certainly, with the growth of professional soldiers who marched on campaign, rather than simply fronting up outside a city for a quick battle, we see a definite lightening of the hoplite panoply generally - shields, armour, helmets all grew ligher and the use of greaves seems to decline - but despite the fashion in funeral monuments to show unarmoured hoplites, and the consequent conclusion of some that later Spartan hoplites were 'un-armoured' and did not wear body armour, this is demonstrably incorrect, as demonstrated by the literature. In addition to Giannis' example of a soldier fined for fighting 'naked'/unarmoured, we also hear of King Agesilaus wounded "through his armour" for example, and lest it be thought that only Kings and the very rich wore body armour, Xenophon tells us of a humble Spartan mercenary killed by an arrow through his armour.

but it seems that a bit of everything holds some truth and it might have been no much different than in the past,with the front rankers well armoured and the rear rankers not so well armoured.

Certainly, from the Persian Wars onward, when real soldiers are first depicted, we see hoplites without body armour, and also a tendency toward lightening of equipment, so I agree with Giannis here. Hoplites with differing grades of equipment evidently always existed. To what extent the proportion of 'lighter' un-armoured Hoplites formed the phalanx probably varied from time to time, state to state, and the corresponding wealth of both individually, and state, equipped troops in any given campaign.....

Confused enough yet? :wink: :wink: