hoplite

plural hoplites

1. historicalA heavily-armed infantry soldier of Ancient Greece, wielding a one-handed spear and an aspis.

   […] it was in the line of "hoplites" that the mass of citizen-soldiers were to be found.

   1879, F. D. Morice, Pindar, chapter 4, page 45

   4 more examples

   However important the use of hoplites against, or in support of, troops of other arms had become, their chief function was still to fight other hoplites, though the battles of the early fourth century were very different from the ponderous confrontations that had filled King Xerxes and his courtiers with contempt.

   1970, John Kinloch Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, page 141

   The Athenian hoplites who routed the Persian invaders on the field of Marathon in 490 created one of the great 'myths' of Athens.

   1991, R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens, page 5

   Yet this war of ideals was also a war of many truces, for there were many grounds for accommodation between generals and hoplites. Generals were drawn from the ranks of the hoplites, as hoplites they fought; when they ceased to be generals, it was to the hoplite ranks that they returned. Such was the power of hoplite ideals that many commanders were delighted to compete as hoplites rather than as tacticians, as their frequent deaths in the line signify.

   2006, J. E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity, unnumbered page

   The hoplites of ancient Greece were an early form of militia. In Anglo-Saxon England, men were required to serve in a militia called the fyrd.

   2024, World Book Inc., The World Book Encyclopedia 2025: Volume 13, page 544