Our biggest event of the year, Military Odysey, is a three-day multi-period living history held on the August Bank Holiday weekend at the Detling Show Ground in Kent. The show is packed full of living…
Some representations of historical scenes from Ancient sources. The farewell scene of a warrior departing to battle is a frequent subject of Attic vases in late Archaic and Classical Greece, indicating a significant preoccupation with…
Hoplites (Οπλίτης) were citizen-soldiers of the Ancient Greek city-states. Primarily armed with long spears (doru) and shields (hoplon or aspis), hoplite soldiers use the phalanx formation in order to be effective in war with fewer soldiers. The formation discouraged…
This album is a collection of visual evidence of Ancient Greek clothing, mostly from ceramics. As you can see, there is a lot more variety, particularly in terms of edging and patterns, than many modern…
Greaves were one of the more fundamental pieces of hoplite armor, protecting the foot and lower leg that weren’t covered by the shield. They were made from a single piece of bronze, going from the…
Ancient Greeks wrote their books on rolls of papyrus, but, as papyrus was expensive, they also wrote less important things on bits of pottery. They called these pieces of pottery ostraka (singular ostrakon, ὄστρακον). These…
Hoplite shield design was incredibly varied. There seems little evidence of standardisation, at least up to and including the 5th century: each hoplite chose his own shield design. Plutarch tells the story of one Spartan…
The Linothorax (Greek: λινοθώρακας) was a popular form of body armour in the 5th and 4th century BC, gradually replacing the bronze bell cuirass from the 6th century onwards. It is extensively seen in pottery around the…
An interesting article on the actual colours of Ancient Greece and Rome, which was much more colourful and diverse than the white marble statues in the museums would lead us to believe. The Myth of…
The clothing of the women of Ancient Greece from the fifth century B.C.E., to the fourth century B.C.E., changed as the time periods changed. Changes in fashion are important, because these changes reflect some of…