Peltasts

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Related to Peltasts: Hydaspes

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Peltasts

(in Greek, peltastai), a type of infantry in ancient Greece.

The peltasts appeared during the Peloponnesian War in the second half of the fifth century B.C. They were armed with a sword, javelins, a coat of mail of coarse cloth, and a light leather shield called a pelta. In the early fourth century B.C. the Athenian strategos Iphicrates introduced longer swords and long spears for the peltasts, which enabled them to fight against hoplites. Combining the characteristics of heavy and light infantry, the peltasts fought in extended order in coordination with hoplites. Their actions were effective against the relatively immobile phalanxes of heavy infantry.

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References in periodicals archive ?

However, Diodorus was happy enough to say that peltasts in the plural were named [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], not [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]; so the enigma remains.

peltastes from pelte...But in Attic prose only Thucydides (vii 75.5) uses "hoplon" specifically for "shield" (applied to both cavalrymen and infantrymen).

The myth of the hoplite's 'hoplon.' (shield)

And there was universal disdain in Greek literature for peltasts, slingers, javelinmen, and archers who killed men from afar.(25) Missiles were for common folk or auxiliaries, who lacked the courage for direct combat.

Demosthenes the general - protagonist in a Greek tragedy?

P., Thracian Peltasts and Their Influence on Greek Warfare.

Brasidas (d. 422 B.C.)

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