Toxotai
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Toxotai
Toxotai (; singular: , ) were Ancient Greek and Byzantine archers. During the ancient period they were armed with a short Greek bow and a short sword. They carried a little pelte (or pelta) () shield. ''Hippotoxotai'' (ἱπποτοξόται) were mounted archers and rode ahead of the cavalry. The term ''toxotes'' was used to describe the mythic Sagittarius, a legendary creature thought to be a centaur. Unlike cavalry or hoplites, toxotai tended to come from the lower classes of citizens, at least in Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe .... They were viewed with prejudice by both the elite and the non-elite in Greek society, many of their contemporaries thought of them as cowards. Classical Athenians usually defined courage in terms of hoplites remaining s ...
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Pelte
A ''peltast'' (, ) was a type of light infantry originating in Thrace and Paeonia and named after the kind of shield he carried.Williams, Mary Frances. "Philopoemen's special forces: Peltasts and a new kind of greek light-armed warfare (Livy 35.27)
" ''Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte'' H. 3 (2004): 257-277.
mentions the Thracian peltasts, while in the

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Herakles Niobid Krater Louvre G341
Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through Amphitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. Amphitryon's own, mortal son was Iphicles. He was a descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Origin Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being the twelve Labours of Hercules; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic a ...
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Hoplite
Hoplites ( ) ( ) were citizen-soldiers of Ancient Greek city-states who were primarily armed with spears and shields. Hoplite soldiers used the phalanx formation to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged the soldiers from acting alone, for this would compromise the formation and minimize its strengths. The hoplites were primarily represented by free citizens – propertied farmers and artisans – who were able to afford a linen or bronze armour suit and weapons (estimated at a third to a half of its able-bodied adult male population). Some states maintained a small elite professional unit, known as the '' epilektoi'' or logades ('the chosen') because they were picked from the regular citizen infantry. These existed at times in Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, and Syracuse, among other places. Hoplite soldiers made up the bulk of ancient Greek armies. In the 8th or 7th century BC, Greek armies adopted the phalanx formation. The formatio ...
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Ancient Greek Military Terminology
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BCAD 500, ending with the expansion of Islam in late antiquity. The three-age system periodises ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, with recorded history generally considered to begin with the Bronze Age. The start and end of the three ages vary between world regions. In many regions the Bronze Age is generally considered to begin a few centuries prior to 3000 BC, while the end of the Iron Age varies from the early first millennium BC in some regions to the late first millennium AD in others. During the time period of ancient history, the world population was exponentially increasing due to the Neolithic Revolution, which was in full prog ...
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Ancient Greek Infantry Types
Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian language, Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BCAD 500, ending with the Early Muslim conquests, expansion of Islam in late antiquity. The three-age system periodises ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, with recorded history generally considered to begin with the Bronze Age. The start and end of the three ages vary between world regions. In many regions the Bronze Age is generally considered to begin a few centuries prior to 3000 BC, while the end of the Iron Age varies from the early first millennium BC in some regions to the late first millennium AD in others. During the time period of ancient history, the world population was Exponential growth, e ...
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Ancient Greek Archers
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BCAD 500, ending with the expansion of Islam in late antiquity. The three-age system periodises ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, with recorded history generally considered to begin with the Bronze Age. The start and end of the three ages vary between world regions. In many regions the Bronze Age is generally considered to begin a few centuries prior to 3000 BC, while the end of the Iron Age varies from the early first millennium BC in some regions to the late first millennium AD in others. During the time period of ancient history, the world population was exponentially increasing due to the Neolithic Revolution, which was in full prog ...
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Scythian Archers
The Scythian archers were a hypothesized police force of 5th- and early 4th-century BC Athens that is recorded in some Greek artworks and literature. The force is said to have consisted of 300 armed Scythians (a nomadic Iranic people living in the Eurasian Steppe) who were public slaves in Athens. They acted on behalf of a group of eleven elected Athenian magistrates "who were responsible for arrests and executions and for some aspects of public order" in the city. Despite being called "archers", the Scythian police probably did not use bows and arrows. One of Aristophanes's comedies has a Scythian archer as a character, and he speaks broken Greek with an accent. Name The Scythian archers were called ''toxotai'' (, literally " hearchers"), ''Skythai'' (, literally " heScythians"), and ''Speusinioi'' (), which was named after a certain Speusinos, the alleged founder of the force. Rhodes, Peter J. (Durham), “Scythians”, in: Brill's New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert ...
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Demosioi
''Demosioi'' or ''Demosii'' (, singular ''Demosios'') generally referred to a class of public slaves in the system of slavery in ancient Greece at Athens, who were bought and owned by the state itself. They may in some cases have been privately-owned slaves leased to the state. Their legal status in the Athenian state was complicated. ''Demosios'' was a word that meant "public" or "of the state", but when used in the plural generally referred to this social class of public slaves. However the word had other applications. Some priesthoods were referred to as ''demosioi'', presumably not because they were slaves, but on account of some state relationship. The word could also be used -- as in the phrase ''demosioi aethloi'' -- to refer to the various athletic games sponsored by the state. Classes of ''demosioi'' Scholar S. Waszynski proposed the ''demosioi'' were divided into three classes: * ''scythai'', who formed a sort of police force * ''ergatai'', common workers who toiled at ...
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Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the European mainland. With its urban area's population numbering over 3.6 million, it is the List of urban areas in the European Union, eighth-largest urban area in the European Union (EU). The Municipality of Athens (also City of Athens), which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of . Athens is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, ...
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Hippeis
''Hippeis'' (, singular ἱππεύς, ''hippeus'') is a Ancient Greece, Greek term for cavalry. In Ancient Athens, ancient Athenian society, after the Solonian Constitution, political reforms of Solon, the ''hippeus'' was the second highest of the four social classes. It was composed of men who had at least 300 medimnoi or their equivalent as yearly income. According to the timocracy, Timocratic Constitution, the average citizen had a yearly income of less than 200 medimnoi. This gave the men who made 300 medimnoi the ability to purchase and maintain a war horse during their service to the state. Its counterparts were the Ancient Rome, Roman Equites, ''equites'' (equestrians) and Horses in the Middle Ages, medieval knights. Early formation In Sparta, the ''hippeus'' was the royal guard of honour. It consisted of 300 Spartan youths under the age of thirty. They would serve as heavily armed infantry soldiers in the King's bodyguard. The Athenian cavalry was formed after the Greco ...
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Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The u ...
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Centaur
A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version of the myth, the centaurs were named after Centaurus (Greek mythology), Centaurus, and, through his brother Lapithes (hero), Lapithes, were kin to the legendary tribe of the Lapiths. Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited the region of Magnesia (regional unit), Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Ancient Elis, Elis, and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia. Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology, and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature. Etymology The Greek word ''kentauros'' is generally regarded as being of obscure origin. The etymology from ''ken'' + ''tau ...
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