Ancient Greek weapons and armor Ft. Overly Sarcastic Productions

a massive thank you to my patrons who support me through patreon and who have brought this episode of Shanna versity to you if you would like to support University and help me make these videos to the best level that I can even a $1 donation per video is a tremendous help there's a link to my patreon page in the description below and thank you for watching [Music] greatings I'm shad and as high time I do kind of like a deep dive into Greek weapons and armor now you might find that rather surprising or high time considering I have such a strong focus on medieval weapons and armor and it's absolutely true I have an unashamed bias to the medieval period but to understand kind of the evolution and also at the context of medieval weapons and armor it really helps out to look before this period and see where these weapons and armor actually came from and in differing kind of cultures and periods so with this video yes we're going to be looking at Greek weapons and armor and as I've studied into these things I've had a bit of an interest in you know the pre medieval weapons and such for quite a while there's some really interesting things that I want to share with you to give us a better understanding and appreciation for these types of I'm saying weapons an armor a lot but but that's what the videos about weapons and armor yep to get a proper appreciation for how these weapons and I fit in to the historical period it's good to understand what's actually going on what's going on with the culture what's going on other times and stuff like that but I'm not actually an expert on Greek history so to get a good understanding of this I think we need a bit of help to establish some context context you say hey blue what brings you back to my chair holy crap I'm a cartoon one of my special powers now it's important that well your cartoon you don't go getting any crazy ideas crazy like trying to kill Sponge Bob Square yes that's exactly what I mean you're a real puppy and I'm not party pooper and that I'm trying to prevent murder yes I think you might be spending too much time with your swords blue you can never spend too much time with swords never okay anyway I heard you were talking about Greece so I kind of immediately zipped across the ocean yeah immediate is right how did you get here so fast it's teleportation also part of your cartoon animator superpowers teleportation aw man I wish now I just hop through an underworld passage kill the Hydra along the way would you like to borrow a sword on your way back I mean I do have enough of these things to supply a whole Norman army ah the normans those guys sure knew how to conquer a place boy did they anyway now that year what did you want to say about Greek historical context aha yes hey everyone I'm blue from overly sarcastic productions and I'm kind of an ancient history guy to give you the brief rundown Greek history splits up pretty neatly into three major sections there's the archaic period the Classical Age and the Hellenistic era and conveniently for us the tools and methods of warfare can be categorized the exact same way first up we have archaic Greece from the time of Homer to the eve of the Persian Wars you know 300 and all that here Greece wasn't unified in any significant way but rather divided into hundreds of independent city-states named polis and Greek these city-states and their surrounding farmland came in all shapes and sizes and there are a few dozen that stood out over time like Sparta Argos Corinth Thebes and Durrett Rhea Athens as it happens didn't really factor in yet at this point in these days the battles were fought by citizen militias so whenever cities tried to take neighboring farmland it was the citizen farmers themselves that would take up arms there weren't any long campaigns or big empires and each city typically fought just one or two battles all year since this was pretty small-scale the armies were all self equipped so the gear was fairly rudimentary bought built to last even before more famous episodes like the Golden Age of Athens a lot of the iconic elements of Greek warfare were already in play such as the shield or more specifically in this case the hoplon also known as the aspis now this is such an iconic shield though it should be mentioned it isn't the only type of shield that existed in this period which sometimes people can assume because it's so iconic but not specifically this is the type of shield for a hoplite okay and very prominent and iconic for Greek weapons now it's not refer cursing on still some of this other type of shields are kind of interesting like there's the Assyrian and that was more like a pointed kind of cone shape that was Center gripped but anyway I'm getting distracted back to the hoplon and my goodness is this a really intriguing kind of shield as you go into it first of all size and shape this is a big shield around 90 centimeters in diameter and the average weight is 7.5 kilos that's heavy for a shield but you can understand why this shield is so big being so early in history but still in at a period of time where warfare was quite common effective armor is actually difficult to make it could be made but it's more difficult making a shield on the other hand can be kind of straightforward though there is a surprising level of complexity in making a hoplon and I'll get to that a bit later but it creates a very active form of defense that can cover so much of the body in fact the hoplon covers the torso all the way down to the bottom of the knee and it's your shins and kind of head that's really the exposed parts which of course we see companion types of arm being developed later I've often wondered how these types of shields were made because they are such a distinct and strong dome on the front and curving wood can be really really difficult and this dome is very even and it has a very specific shape it would be really difficult to curve wood in this specific way in fact if you did that you wouldn't really be able to make an even curve in a circle more often than not you would end up making a square type of shield that would just have an oval curve in it other examples of shields that had a dome kind of shape they were made out of like triangular bits of wood glued together in a circle but they formed more of a conical cone like shield the hop-on isn't like this it has a very even dome so how on earth were they made well that would get kind of square bits of timber around 20 to 30 centimeters in there you know size of the square right and appropriate length glue them together so you'd actually end up with this pretty thick kind of board and then they would spin it on a lathe and carve out the cone from kind of the inside and then carve it out on the outside and then get the shape in that way well this is at least what Nick Secunda has observed it out of his book entitled the hoplites now it's true that some of these shields had sheets of bronze shaped to the outer edge but whenever we see a hop-on shield they always have bronze on the full cover okay leading to the assumption that they were all bronze shields when actually most of them were wood okay and when they did have bronze on them more often they would have a bronze edge okay all around the rim but as you can imagine wood does not survive nearly as as bronze which is why the surviving shields that we have you know museums and such are the ones that had the bronze layer over top still they were not the most prominent type of hoplon shield they certainly were there kay bronze shield just not the most common there so then you have the wood and sometimes sheets of bronze on the surface and then on the inside it was lined with leather one of the reasons for the prominently domed shape of the hot blonde was in direct relation to its size because with size they get heavier alright and remember 7.5 kilos this is a big shield so of course it's going to get tied now one of the ways in which the hoplon was carried or use is that the upward lip of that dome could actually come over the shoulder and then it could actually rest a bit on the shoulder while you are holding it but that's not to say that the actual you know arm strap configuration isn't unique because it's really interesting and it's made to work in conjunction with the ability to rest it on your shoulder but not only that it's specifically designed for the Phalanx formation unlike many other fields including shields that existed in this period the hop-on or aspis is not a center grip shield it strapped on to the arm but the other kind of counterintuitive thing about this is that the strap isn't actually centered usually when you have a strapped on shield the center point of the shield rests right about in the middle of your forearm the hop-on is different the actual side strap that comes over just you know after the elbow joint this is actually with the center of the shield this side strap is situated on the center of the shield and then the rope that you grab on the very rim of this shield is on there very rim of the shield this makes the shield off centered when held and it extends further on your left side than on your right now for an individual okay who is just fighting someone by themselves this is not at all the best configuration for combat in actual fact is quite detrimental and many re-enactors have actually tried this and found that this strap configuration is not nearly as effective as say is something other like a center grip so again holding a shield like this is specifically designed for rank formations why because the left side of the shield extends further to cover the person on left why they made to do that not cover the person on your right well most people are right-handed and this is where their weapon is okay and if your shield is extending too far on the right it's actually getting in the way of your weapon if it's you're wanting to use a sword of course the main main weapon in the spirit of the spear and getting you know that thrusting action the shield can actually get in the way but by having the rim of the shield right near where you're holding it it's much easier for your weapon to get through and attack your enemy and then the hot plate to your right his shirt is extending a bit further behind him fully covering him and then the small gap between you and him that's being covered and the shield would be overlapping just a little bit between the rim of your shield and his shield leaving a nice kind of V as those two circular shapes join for your weapon to slip through and attack there's an interesting design feature with the hoplon shield that really gets pointed out specifically and I think this is because there's a bit of mystery around it it's the ropes on the inside of the shield now these ropes they connect the actual section of rope that you use as your handhold and looking at all the references I can find it doesn't seem like these ropes could slide and adjust in length and this is also evident because you need a solid here and hold and if you grab that you know side rope and pull it and the slack on the other ropes just mean it comes forward you don't actually have a secure handhold so no these were solid and also it means that there's slack on the other sections of rope where they were put there for some specific utility or reason as to what that was I haven't found anything definitive there there's debate there's discussion that it might be used to help prop the shield up on your back or who could only hold it on your back or something like that or to be out or hook it onto a spear or something like that that there's some type of hand holds or something that you can just care help carry it with yet still we don't have anything definitive we don't fully exactly know why there there's an internal you know rope going all around the inside of the rim of the shield I'd certainly love to hear theories in the comments below if you've heard anything more on the subject than what I was able to look up yeah there you go mystery the typical hoplite soldier wasn't all that highly trained since they were farmers the other 99% of the time this at a simple cooperative combat strategy rather than relying on individual strength and skill and what we got was failings warfare like shad said the hoplon was massive and it was perfectly suited for forming a unified shield wall it's a pretty straightforward style of fighting you hold up your shield walk forward and then just stab it the other guy with your spear this was the best-case scenario for everyone involved since hoplites were easy to train tactics were simple and above all the casualties were really low even for the losers since combat depended on the strength of the Phalanx as a whole the battle ended when one side broken ran away and it usually only took a handful of injuries or deaths before that happened so sheer willpower played a surprising role in determining the outcome of these archaic era battles the sole exception to this rule of citizen farmer soldiers was Sparta and they dominated ancient Greek warfare for centuries precisely because their citizens didn't have to farm all the time the Spartans had subjugated a neighboring people called the helots and essentially made them do all of the work with almost the entire economy run on slavery Spartan citizens spent their whole lives training to fight and their psychological fortitude complimented their outright battle prowess there's a reason a relatively small band of Spartans could take out some 20,000 Persians at Thermopylae but that's also because of the specific conditions of the terrain they fought on and maybe some other things like the fact that the Persians were fighting with wicker shields which compared with solid bronze is like going into battle with paper plates so although it may not seem like it even these early hoplites were considered heavy infantry heavy because of their heavy armaments now you might be thinking well hang on they're not wearing full like suits of armor but if you look at them from the perspective of the enemy with such a big massive shield like I mentioned previously they're only real vulnerable Ares are the head and the shins and if you cover those areas which they did with the classic but also less known Greek style helmets and Greaves usually made out of bronze there is not many open areas to try and strike at the hoplite they are in this sense fully armored the main weapon of the hoplite was of course the spear for a lot of significant reasons but there's a kind of subject unto themselves and in fact I've made a whole video on that subject under appreciate historical weapons the spear and why the spear is actually such an awesome weapon and why it can you before ok the classical Greek period and well afterwards all the way even and so you know early firearms are around the spear was still there in place it is a devastatingly effective weapon but it's also a surprisingly cheap weapon to make there's only one major metal component and the rest is wood and wood it can be fairly accessible to the average person yet the spear wasn't their only weapon because as great as it is there are some drawbacks for instance Spears only have one major striking area a very tip and if you miss that the shaft isn't going to be doing much damage I mean you can whack people but unless you get a good wind up it's not really gonna do much damage after a missed thrust and that leaves opportunity for people to grab this beer and try and take it out of your hands it is also not good in close combat this is a more long-range weapon so if someone closes the distance the spear also becomes very difficult to use in those circumstances and so in those instances where two phalanxes get really close up against each other and then are just getting into a pushing match the people on the front lines are going to find it very difficult to use those Spears to hit these people who are pushing right against the men are so close so in this instance you need a weapon that's much better for close-range combat and here we come to the sword the most prominent types of swords used by the classic Greek hoplite was the zyphus and Copas there zyphus being a double edged leaf kind of shape blade and the copis being a single-edged blade that kind of has this interesting forward curve on it these swords are most predominantly made out of bronze very in the later periods we do see iron swords and such and funnily enough we do find swords made out of steel as early as 600 BC made a video about it but focusing in on bronze there is a huge misunderstanding misconception about bronze style weapons and that is to how fragile they are now of course they are far more fragile than say steel weapons and such but so many people including reproductions that you can buy miss out on a very significant important element in how these bronze swords are made and that is the process known as work hardening people assume that these on swords are just cast and then taken out polished up shaped ground down or made nice and sharp and that that's it alright a very important process was also added to it because bronze is soft enough to actually work cold you can shape it without having to heat it up unlike iron and steel and so what they actually did they pressed down the edge they hammered the edges compressing them making them much harder rigid and stronger than if they were just left in their cast States this enabled the edges to get surprisingly sharp and hard far more so than people realize and there are some people who are making reproductions and adding this crucial important element in of work hardening and they've put these blades to the test this test is specifically is done by a good French to the channel faint thread in which he was sent a properly made bronze sword that had a work hardened edge and he puts it up against a sheet of mild steel bronze vers steel and the bronze goes through it like nothing curved there didn't do much damage the blade was a matte effect it's still sharp and sorry there is actually a fairly valid argument in the discussion between bronze vers iron because iron is a much softer you know metal than steel is even though steel has a lot of I'm don't get me started all that but a properly made work hard and bronze sword could actually have properties that might excel and beat certain iron swords if the iron itself wasn't say work hardened or other methods employed on the iron swords to make its properties much better than if it was just in its natural forged state so in my mind bronze swords actually get a bit of the unfair treatment when people try and figure out how effective they really were and there are other designs added to these bronze swords to help enhance their properties and avoid say their propensity to bend if struck on a wrong angle and stuff like that because again still even with a proper work hardened edge to her edge the sword itself can bend easier than others types of swords you can't make it into a spring but one of the ways they this was you can find many bronze swords with a very distinct and quite large central ridge this is to make this sword far more stiff there is another big misconception around Bronson specifically the zyphus and that is in regards to their length people always assume that these swords were only short type swords some blade lengths being considered as short as 30 centimeters there are examples of that though the average does seem to be around 50 to 60 centimeters but there are examples of bronze swords being much much longer both ones designed to emphasize thrusting and other ones that would still be very effective at cutting bronze Greek swords were not universally short okay they're our long versions of them ones that are surprisingly long actually as long as what we would call an arming sword looking at medieval style swords there is also the iconic leaf shape that is often attributed to the zyphus you have to also understand that this wasn't the only type of blade shape that existed in the Greek period there are other bronze swords that actually have fairly straight uniform edges but this leaf shape is interesting because it is so iconic and it is pretty damn beautiful the design changes up the weight distribution on the blade putting more kind of focus on the end why would you want that well if there's more weight focused on the tip of the sword it increases its cutting power now this can kind of be a detriment depending on circumstances because sometimes you want a top-heavy saw just to do some really big cuts and if you have a good defense being nimble on the hand it isn't too much for a priority but because these swords did commonly come short they weren't always short as we mentioned but if you're having a leap style shaped sword that is shorter having more weight at the top end actually isn't going to impact maneuverability to a very detrimental level and you get the added cutting power as a result and so with a good understanding of the weapons and armor that was just been out of talk about we've gone in depth on the hoplon shield but also mentioning the helmet Greaves the spear and a much better understanding of the swords that's a solid place to start in looking at hoplite warfare and their weapons and armor but they did advance even further than this and things got a little bit more refined in the next major period in Greek history the class sickled age which started with the Persian Wars and lasted until Alexander the Great's campaign the biggest development in this period was the Persians showing up which forced the various Greek city-states two bands together most notably of course Athens and Sparta who hard carried that win and preserved Greek autonomy in the decades in the century that followed the main trend was that Sparta's legendary military culture and athens ludicrous wealth strengthened their armies and carried the - head and shoulders above the rest of Greece in the 5th century BC so unsurprisingly they started butting heads during the ensuing Peloponnesian War and this conflict was so shocking to the Greeks because it was completely unheard of for two cities to each exert such dominance over halves of Greece armies got bigger Athens got an entire Navy but that's really its own rabbit hole technology got more effective armor got heavier and the classic look of a Greek hoplite starts to solidify as armor became standard issue rather than BYOB specifically the centerpiece of classical era hoplite armaments and that is the line o thorax the line of thorax is a really intriguing type of armor and it seems to have been kind of the upgrade from the previous Greek bronze bell Kuras and also muscled Kuras and in case you didn't know the loner thorax is a type of linen or textile armor so if you know my you know unashamed to bias and love for the good old gambeson you might get an idea of why I find the line of thorax sari interesting because again it is a point of evidence for how effective linen armor was and what's also interesting we're looking at a situation where they're actually preferring it over bronze metal armor why would that be the case well it could be maneuverability and that that is lighter and remember bronze isn't steel ok in terms of resisting penetration and stuff like that and actually might have performed worse than what liner thorax could because the line of thorax there have been experimental archaeologists who have tried to remake this thing in as an authentic method as possible and it's defensive ability is actually very impressive first of all how's the liner thorax main ok it is made out of layers of linen and the interesting part about this glued together ok layers of linen glued each one then pressed down dried and you actually get a fairly stiff and rigid plate as a result this is quite interesting because in contrast this say in the medieval period when we see other you know linen typed textile armors being made gambeson they weren't glued they were generally just sewing together and so as to you how much more effective this room makes the armor it would have to be tested to really be seen and that is a result that I would be keenly interested in because I could see some kind of pros and cons having just sewn together gives a bit more cushion and padding to your heavier type of Blois but then having something that's fairly solid and rigid that would also be fairly you know protective against harder blows coming in as well so it's hard to tell which would be better yet you can kind understand that the glue would add a further stiff kind of layer against cuts and thrust so the glue actually might make the line of thorax even better oh and another reason why the line of thorax might have superseded the bronze one is it could have been a lot easier to make linen is actually quite you know plentiful people will be making cloth out of it already and so if you are having a production system that's already making this material in large quantities and you can make really good effective armor out of it it could be far more cost-effective so there we go linen textile armor being one of the most prominently used armors of a certain period even over metal armor and sorry why I said the Ambersons in the medieval period again linen Toyama they're good okay fully underappreciated in a larger kind of sense by pop culture and things like that and there we go these are the most common weapons and armor now the hot pipe would use of the Classical period but if you want to see a hoplite look ridiculous then look no further than the last major period in Greek history the Hellenistic era where Alexander the Great's big glorious empire fractured into tiny little pieces for our purposes what matters here is the technological arms race for bigger armies and better gear in particular the use of hoplite speeds increased from around 9 feet to 20 feet just pause and kind of soak that in that 20-foot spear holy crap the idea behind this was to have as many Spears at possible pointing at the enemy and so regularly you had the first line of you know hoplites with spears pointing in a second line their spears could kind of go over the shoulders in point and then the line behind that could point and so if you increase the length list there's more Spears being at a pass you know the hoplite in front of you to poke at the enemy the longest of these Spears actually had to be made out of two parts of the metal kind of fitting joining them together it's kind of comical the idea is just throw as many Spears at the enemy until the problem goes away so it shouldn't be a surprise that the Romans who actually knew what they were doing at this point eventually swooped in to conquer them all so that's been the history of Greek weapons and armor shed what do you think well I think it's very interesting that technology evolved to sweep the needs of warfare you still prefer the kite shield don't you blue there is no beating the kite shield I mean come on yeah that hot one didn't really stand a chance did it in any case a huge thank you for coming on blue and helping you it is always a pleasure cheers mate always a pleasure to be here now if you'll excuse me I've got to go explain to Hades why he's short one Hydra later say yeah he forgot the sword I was gonna give him he'll be alright also thank you guys for watching I hope you've enjoyed and if you haven't checked out overly sarcastic productions huge recommendation you might even see me appear on the channel somewhere in the future or now and of course be sure to stick around to catch my next video so I hope to see you there and until that time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 506,542

Keywords: ancient, greek, greece, weapons, armor, armour, hoplon, aspis, shield, round, hoplite, phalanx, warfare, xiphos, kopis, sword, swords, bronze, corinthian, helmet, linothorax, breastplate, cuirass, muscle, medieval, norman, weapon, classical, period, hellenic, history, historical, game of thrones, troy, lord of the rings, dnd, dungeons and dragons, odyssey, d&d, rpg, skyrim, top ten, top 10, anime, samurai, katana, assassin's creed, roleplaying, game, video, the iliad, sparta, 300, spartan, peloponnesian war

Id: UvcaWItHPpQ

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018